|
Much Thanks for Gutsy Reporting
As
the Miami Beach firefighter/inspector written about in the Sept.
20 article “Safety Burn,” I want to thank Rebecca Wakefield and
the SunPost for the accurate documentation of some of the
problems in the Miami Beach Fire Prevention Bureau. Journalists
like Ms. Wakefield, along with their publishers who are willing
to cover controversial issues and expose government wrongdoing,
often go without proper thanks and appreciation. Yet, they are
an essential link to making the public aware of corruption and
neglect in our government agencies. And while the issues and
neglect covered in the article may not add up to huge monetary
fraud such as has been found in other parts of the county
recently, deliberate undermining of public safety is perhaps the
worst type of corruption of all. Thanks also to the other
inspectors willing to speak out for the article. Their desire to
remain anonymous is certainly understandable given the climate
of hostility and retaliation that management directs at some of
those who try to do their jobs well.
Consider this administration’s litany of ills: failing to
appropriately remedy code violations in many city buildings;
falsely closing cases as compliant when violations still exist;
imposing inspection quotas to falsely inflate statistics with
minimal quality assurance oversight; pushing and intimidating
inspectors for impractical numbers of inspections; ignoring
deficient inspection practices and even rewarding for
unreasonable numbers of inspections; harassing and punishing
inspectors that document deficiencies and violations in some
city and private buildings; demonstrating hostility and
retaliating against inspectors who point out deficiencies and
failures in management practices and policies; charging
fees for inspections that knowingly fail to take place; and
failing to provide adequate resources, policies and procedures.
Unfortunately, it often takes fatalities to spur proper reform.
Recent investigations of the deaths of two firefighters in New
York and nine firefighters in Charleston, S.C., have documented
failures in inspection programs and other management
responsibilities. The evidence here is very clear. The truth is
for many years the highest levels of city management have
knowingly neglected some life safety issues and resource needs
in the area of fire prevention and fire code enforcement. Their
misguided priorities are politics, cost-cutting and artificially
inflated inspection statistics, resulting in a dangerous state
of neglect. These failures have resulted in unnecessary risks to
the public, employees and fire rescue responders. Unfortunately,
some of the highest members of the fire department
administration have been complicit in these breaches of public
trust. They have sacrificed their courage and integrity while
violating their oaths to public safety in order to gain
political favor and possible promotion. Their actions and
inactions are utterly shameful and negligent now, but perhaps
criminal when someone dies because of them.
Jim Llewellyn
Miami Springs
Thanks
for the Awareness-Building
Your article, [“Housing the Invisible,” Oct. 4] was terrific and
will definitely help raise awareness of the needs of homeless
women. We are so grateful!
Constance Collins
Director, Lotus House
What’s
That Seeping Into the Street? Our Pending Doom
I
have lived in the South Beach area for the last 15 years. During
that time, I have noticed the growing effects of rising sea
levels. It is getting worse every year, especially during full
moon high tides.
All the water that you see on the streets from time to time is
not rainwater. It is seawater that percolates up through the
ground and storm sewers. Those strange folds you see in the
street pavement, such as at Alton Road and 10th Street, are
caused by seawater pushing up asphalt.
They say sea levels will rise three feet during the next 25
years. Twenty-five years will come and go in a blink of an eye.
We should be thinking about it now: What are we going to do when
the sea comes in?
Juan E. Rodriguez
Miami Beach
The
Politics of Chucky: Crushing Dissent and Feeding Misinformation
I am more than grateful that the mayor of the town of Surfside,
my hometown for more than 50 years, took time out of his busy
schedule of “running” the town to respond to one of his
constituents [Letters, “The Political Bedfellows of Joe,” Sept.
27]. This especially after Mr. Burkett apparently gave so
much thought to responding to me, a resident, who like so many
other residents, he obviously knows little about.
I took the time to write a letter to inform residents about
facts and issues that he and other town officials never include
in the town newsletter, facts and issues that they prefer not to
discuss with town residents. Not openly at least. In response,
the mayor writes a letter attacking me for my
community activism. Mayor Burkett, doing that is shameful in
itself; however, it surprised me about as much as not winning
the Florida Lottery.
Despite the letter from Mayor Burkett, I certainly do not regret
being an active resident of the town of Surfside. In fact, I
encourage all residents to speak their minds and participate in
town issues.
Mr. Burkett’s SunPost letter, just as found in his
monthly “Mayor’s View” in the Surfside Town Gazette, is
full of his usual distortions, deceptions and the many notably
omitted and very important actions taken by the Town Commission
during what residents recognize as the Burkett Regime, including
trying to change the town charter to extend the terms of elected
officials from two years to four years. Members of the U.S.
House of Representatives,
members of the State House of Representatives and plenty of
elected officials have terms of two years, which give voters the
power to evaluate performance and to change them out when
appropriate.
Other actions include: taking a stipend of $500 per month
available for commission members, despite the charter provision
that limits compensation for elected officials to $1 per year;
changing the variance process from an ordinance procedure to a
resolution procedure to make it quicker and easier to grant
future variances; passing the largest budget in the town’s
history; spending 500 percent more on the newsletter than any
prior commission and using it as a propaganda tool to mislead
residents; and continuously and falsely launching personal
attacks and insults at former town officials as part of the
Burkett Regime’s ongoing mud-slinging campaign, which some have
now unleashed at me too.
Frankly, Mr. Burkett’s term in office, his decisions and
actions, his style and offensiveness, and his overthe-top false
rhetoric, have been quite disturbing to many Surfside residents.
However, because of the many years of work by dedicated
officials making a token $1 per year, Surfside is a wonderful
place to live.
If our residents get more involved in what is happening now,
Surfside will remain a great place to live, despite the course
that Mr. Burkett wants the town to follow.
Joseph Graubart
Surfside
The
Abolition of FCAT: A Cause Worth Pursuing
In the heyday of chattel slavery in this country, the idea of
its “inevitability” was one of the pillars on which it survived.
Resistance was futile; slavery was the way things were and so
would they forever be. Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner and John Brown
refused to shrink from the fight based on the idea and, though
it cost them their lives, they were right. From the moment this
vile and inhumane system came into existence it was destined to
be torn apart by good people. Many perished in the bloodiest war
ever fought on American soil, but slavery was consigned to
history’s trash — where it belonged.
Just like slavery, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test,
the FCAT, is a vile and inhumane instrument that has advanced
the political and economic fortunes of a few at the cost of so
many children’s pain, suffering and, in the worst cases, their
destruction. And just like slavery, the FCAT is hoisted on the
petard of inevitability.
The Superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Dr.
Rudolph Crew, has observed publicly that “the FCAT dumbs down
education in the state of Florida,” but turned around and told a
gathering of the NAACP that “everyone I’ve spoken to in
Tallahassee says the test is here to stay, so get used to it.”
With all due respect to Dr. Crew, he should have laughed in the
faces of the people he spoke to in Tallahassee. What nonsense!
The only inevitability associated with the FCAT is its death —
“and this, too, shall pass.”
The FCAT will not be abolished in the dramatic fashion of
slavery. There will be no call to arms, no civil war. Instead,
the FCAT will fade away much as the U.S. involvement in the
Vietnam War did. The people of Florida will force an “exit
strategy” on the state government. The resistance which goes
back to pioneer test abolitionists like State Sen. Frederica
Wilson and Pastor Victor T. Curry and the members of the Florida
Coalition for Assessment Reform are being joined by more people
of goodwill everyday now.
Broward School Board member Stephanie Kraft wants to banish the
FCAT from the high schools, Hillsborough County’s John
Hilderbrand is leading a testing director’s assault on the
unfairness of the test and Broward Superintendent Jim Notter,
speaking of FCAT, has said, “What we’re doing to our children
and administrators and teachers is blatantly wrong.”
Now the man who replaced the Simon Legree of FCAT testing in the
governor’s office may finally be making good on his pledge to
modify the overwhelming reliance on a single testing instrument
for branding Florida’s public schools and students. On Nov. 14,
Gov. Charlie Crist will see off a delegation of Florida’s
education leaders to New York to examine their subject area
Regents Exams testing system. The exit strategy is beginning to
take shape. The tide is turning.
The fact that our FCAT nightmare will soon surely end will not
change the fact that we did live through it. This unfortunate
generation of students and their teachers and parents will carry
deep scars into the future. In recent years, tens of thousands
of 9- and 10-year-old children have been told they are failures
and humiliated with third-grade retention. Pray they will be
healed of bitterness for all our sakes. Hope that someday they
will tell their children, freed from testing tyranny, the horror
stories of the bad old days when some people actually believed
the FCAT was inevitable.
This letter is dedicated to Staff Sgt. Donnie D. Dixon, Miami
Carol City Class of 1988; U.S. Army Sgt. Joe Polo, MCC Class of
1995; and Army Private First Class Charles M. Sims, MCC Class of
2002. These three glorious young men shaped in our “failing”
school went to their deaths in Iraq in service of their country.
Paul A. Moore
Teacher, Miami Carol City High School
And Now
Another Fan of the Media …
While it may seem like a long way off, we will be voting for a
new president in November 2008.
I
will not be voting for CBS, ABC, NBC, The New York Times
or any of the opinionated media. While the media may not tell
the electorate what to think, they do tell you what to think
about. This is quite evident in their everyday presentations.
By
their very well-chosen subjects, they themselves are censoring
the news. They select what best suits their beliefs and
purposes. All too often there is not even the pretense of
objectivity in their reporting. As we have seen most recently on
one major network, CBS, they all are in too much of a rush to
judgment regarding a totally fallacious situation because of
bias (against President Bush).
By
their own admittance, 92 percent of the media are liberal and
Democrats. This in and of itself should cause the electorate to
be aware of all the nuances and innuendo in news stories.
When it comes to CBS — it is almost an abbreviation for Cannot
Believe Story content — or completely biased stories when it
pertains to anything regarding Republicans. Their reporters
can’t see a Republican belt without wanting to hit below it.
When those in the media try to influence elections, it is time
for us to wonder just how much freedom of the press might be
just too much for us to consume.
When Edward R. Murrow was the stalwart at CBS, the news ended
with “and that’s the way it is.” Now it is “and that’s the way
it is — not!”
To
the voters I say: Beware of what you see, read and hear, for it
is seldom presented impartially and fairly on your major news
networks.
Ronald Rickey
Miami Beach
|
