Response to County Mayor Carruthers
Dear Editor,
Mayor Caruthers comments in her letter: “Being a County Commissioner requires many practical things, including a flexible schedule, accessibility and travel. It is difficult to manage a normal 40-hour work week and effectively serve, and more difficult to support a family solely on a Commissioner’s salary.” This validates citizen’s concerns that new entrants must be wealthy or beholden to special interests for funding a Keys wide campaign.
Ask yourself: “Who would possibly be against letting citizens decide how they elect their local representatives?” It is a specious argument that we have access to and get responses from all Commissioners under the current at-large system. I have been giving evidence of climate engineering to all these Commissioners for years to no avail – but to the detriment of our citizen’s health and environment. They listen only to the business community (big brother?) who want to maintain the myth “there are no sharks in these waters.”
County Commissioners should buck the trend and consider placing the Single member districts question on the November 2016 ballot themselves and Let “we the people” decide. Get involved and collect some signatures. Visit www.Smartdistricts.org. All politics is local.
Ron Cole
Islamorada
Thank you for mentioning Carruthers’s “working folks just don’t have time” argument. There are so many issues that affect the workforce – affordable housing, the high cost of the sewer system, the escalating cost of capital projects in general, the Emergency Services Surtax.
Carruthers’s attempt to discourage working people from running is way out-of-line.