Port St Lucie council trashes garbage refund process
This would be funny if it were not so sad.
Our esteemed Port St. Lucie City Council is concerned about the cost of mailing our refunds, costing about $200,000. I, for one, would not be opposed to taking $2 from my refund to cover the cost of mailing. Neither would any of the citizens I have talked to.
The mailing cost would be covered by the refund money and not the current or any future city budget money. I hope the council will reconsider and vote to send out the refunds. Are we not trustworthy enough to pay our taxes?
Another question for our esteemed council is this: Will the Interest on the settlement to be paid to the city also become part of the money to be applied to our taxes? I imagine the money would sit in the bank until our taxes for the year are billed and collected.
City council should remember this is our money, paid for services we did not receive, and many of us could use this money for current living costs. We will pay our taxes when they become due.
Until that time, give us our refunds.
Roland Schmidt, Port St. Lucie
No way Martin teacher deserves his job back after Kirk comments
I am appalled a judge would recommend that Martin County teacher Matthew Theobold be allowed to continue teaching and be awarded back pay.
His remarks about Charlie Kirk were vile and despicable. Theobald is an embarrassment to the school district and Martin County residents.
I understand free speech, but wouldn’t common sense make someone who teaches young people hesitant to post on Facebook inflammatory remarks like he did?
Not everyone followed Charlie Kirk, but he certainly did not deserve to be gunned down. And a teacher should have respect for views he might not agree with.
The judge also remarked Theobold is a good teacher. I beg to differ. Anyone with that much hatred in his heart should not be a teacher.
Has he apologized? Not that I have seen.
Do not rehire him, please.
Melissa Noyes, Palm City
Judge right to protect Theobald’s job, reprehensible speech
I applaud the administrative law judge’s recommendation Matthew Theobald be reinstated with back pay and benefits.
I find his comments after the murder of Charlie Kirk reprehensible, but the school board’s decision based on his private speech was wrong.
My father taught me two principles of civil discourse. Never prohibit people from showing you how dumb they are and never speak ill of the dead.
Theobald’s right to express his views, no matter how disgraceful, goes all the way back to a school room in Des Moines, Iowa, and a 13-year-old named Mary Tinker. As a private citizen, he has every right to express his opinions and show everyone his bias towards people with whom he disagrees.
Our private speech expresses the nature of our character. Theobald has publicized his intolerance and temperament.
“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence,” Justice Louis D. Brandeis said.
My sympathies and prayers go out to both the families of Mr. Kirk and Mr. Theobald. Murder and hate should never prevail.
Peter M. Dayton, Stuart
Don’t let unelected Florida CFO, GOP minions control our local governments
Republicans in recent months have castigated local county governments for “excessive, wasteful spending” in their budgets. Recently, Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia accused Palm Beach County of $1.23 billion in excessive taxation since 2020.
Ingoglia will not publish the specific data used to make this declaration about Palm Beach County, St. Lucie County and other local governments.
The Florida population in 2019 was 21.48 million. In 2026, it is 23.6 million. This is a 9.4% difference. The Florida state budget was $90.98 billion in 2019. In 2026, it’s $114.5 billion. This is a 26% difference. Compared with the 20%, 35% or 50% budget increases in Florida counties during the same period, this would seem OK.
But people don’t move to “Florida.” They move to Port St. Lucie, Martin County or Fort Pierce. They move to Palm Beach Gardens or Lake Worth or Wellington or Palm Beach County. City, county and school governments bear the burden of population growth.
If you live in or have driven in any local city or county, you know how awfully crowded the roads are. Roadways are deteriorating. Water service needs refurbishing. Sewer lines need maintaining and extending. Garbage needs collecting. Gasoline and diesel have to be purchased. Local government has to pay insurance.
Quality of life and modern, effective infrastructure are parts of city and county budgets. Quality of life is a legitimate concern and a legitimate goal, but it doesn’t seem to be a concern of state Republicans.
Republicans in Tallahassee don’t care about Florida residents. They care about how much control they can secure. Republicans in Tallahassee want to put their hands around the necks of local governments.
Please don’t help them.
Thomas Knippel, Port St. Lucie
Columnist off base with regard to White House trolling, response?
USA Today columnist Dace Potas seems to feel he has identified swearing as the root cause of “declining civility” and poor political strategy. While I agree profanity is offensive and should have no place in public discourse among our elected leaders, from whom we should expect a better model, I find his supporting argument puzzling.
Is it naivete on his part or an attempt to misdirection? Potas briefly mentions in passing that our leader-in-chief is heard using profanity almost daily, but he singles out a specific quote from the Democratic Party to Stephen Miller to “Shut up you ugly (expletive).”
I can guess at the word, and, again, do not find it acceptable language.
What is glided over, however, is what precipitated that response: the White House chief of staff Miller’s “trolling” a Democratic candidate for Senate by “falsely claiming” the candidate was transgender. The very definition of ” trolling” is “deliberately provoking, mocking or antagonizing … to get an emotional reaction or cause disruption.” Potas dismisses this action as “silly.”
So, to get this straight, having an emotional reaction to being openly lied about can lead to the decline of civility, actual lying about and baiting a reaction is merely “silly.”
Somewhere along the line, I think Potas has been rewired to think backward, or am I just being silly?Bettie Marshall, Fort Pierce
Antisemitism only reason to bring up USS Liberty 60 years later
Thomas Massie was born in 1971. He wasn’t even alive during the six-day Israel war against Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
Israel, without any aid from the United States, defeated these Egyptian forces solely on their own bravery and resolve. Ironically, in 1979, when Massie was 8 years old, Israel and Egypt established diplomatic relationships.
To me, the only conceivable rationalization for Massie’s unfounded claims from 59 years ago can be an intense antisemitism, maybe dating back to his own childhood. There has never been a great love for Jews. Always an irrational hatred. You would think 15 million worldwide Jews against a billion Arabs would reverse the sympathy.
I have no idea whether the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 was intentional. There would seem to be no motivation on the part of Israel. It had enough problems fighting Egypt, Jordan and Syria simultaneously. What would there be to gain from alienating the United States at that time?
If the conspiracy is true that President Lyndon Johnson colluded with Israel, why doesn’t Massie denigrate LBJ’s memory and demand his name be disgraced? That’s why one can only conclude this entire charade is based on igniting the flames of antisemitism.
Finally, if Israel attacked the USS Liberty, it would have been a terrible action. Yet, according to Massie, the attack was provoked by order of LBJ, thus the United States.
That may not justify Israel’s actions, although Israel’s survival was at stake. Obviously, its own survival was predominant to them. Meanwhile, it would have been the United States that chose to eliminate its own people. The fact Massie brings this up can only be to promote hatred. It certainly does not bode well for his own personal legacy.
Peter Degen, Port St. Lucie
How my husband became Cleveland Clinic legend
This is how my husband became a legend in the cardiology section of Cleveland Clinic Vero Beach as they called him!
He is 80 years old with cardiovascular problems, a quadruple bypass, stents and extensive plaque deposits on arteries. He was also diagnosed several years ago with aortic valve stenosis.
This condition was observed and followed in the past few years and diagnosed as “waiting and monitoring stage” until his new cardiologist, Tudor Scridon, noticed in his last echocardiogram signs of deterioration. He asked for a new cardiogram, and when he saw the result, he immediately arranged for my husband visits with a team of surgeons in Cleveland Clinic Vero Beach, which is highly specialized in heart treatments.
More tests and the intervention was scheduled. However, this was not a typical aortic valve replacement due to my husband’s previous conditions.
The team that operated on my husband performed a very difficult thoracic procedure, and this is how my husband became a legend.
Dr. Luis Velazco-Dávila, thoracic surgeon, together with Dr. Carlos Gonzalez Lengua, interventionist cardiologist, formed a team. After a few more tests and consulting with other doctors, they found a solution to reach his heart without using the direct arteries’ access and performed a miraculous thoracic intervention.
The surgery lasted several hours, and after three days in the intensive care unit with extremely attentive care by ICU nurses and doctors, my husband came home in good spirits, good appetite and good perspective on life.
Thank you, Cleveland Clinic cardiology team. Against the unfavorable conditions, you saved his life!
They are the legends.
Wanda Cristali, Fort Pierce
Iran-U.S. temporary agreement fraught with errors
The Iran-U.S. memorandum of understanding signed at Versailles is best understood not as peace, but as a seriously flawed Peace of Necessity — shortsighted, fragile and borne of exhaustion, political considerations (midterms) and economic calculations (oil supply) rather than resolution.
The choices ahead are all bad ones. Resume military strikes and risk a wider regional war with depleted interceptor stockpiles after weeks of sustained Iranian missile barrages. Or hold to a 60-day window in which Tehran, true to form, slow-walks negotiations while pocketing reopened oil revenues with a lifted naval blockade. Neither path inspires confidence; both carry real cost and risk.
Most troubling is who was left out. As with the tragic Doha framework and other unilateral arrangements from this administration, Gulf allies — Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain — were not consulted before the war was launched or when the MOU was signed, yet their waters, security and economies hang on its outcome. The MOU even punts the future administration of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran, Oman and other Gulf states to sort out later, after Washington and Tehran made the deal.
More strikingly, Israel — the nation most directly threatened by Iran’s nuclear ambitions and most engaged militarily — is not a party to this agreement at all. A deal addressing Iran’s nuclear weapons program was struck without the nation with the most at stake.
Strategically, this leaves the Gulf States exposed, damaged, diminished and improvising, and leaves the rest of the world economically injured with great uncertainty, while watching Washington negotiate unilaterally, again, with allies as bystanders. A ceasefire bought without consultation, without Israel’s or the Gulf States’ security, and without free passage through the Strait is not a foundation for lasting peace — it is a pause, purchased out of necessity, with the hardest choices still ahead.
John McCoy, Vero Beach
Political extremism threatens our freedom
Anyone who thinks the chaos in our world or nation inflicted by the current administration is good for America and its people is sadly mistaken.
Democracy is greatest when we analyze and work together to solve the complex issues we face, not when we are divided by ego, fear, retribution, hate and lies. To think otherwise ignores our history and is delusional.
We need to elect representatives at every level of government who will work together to solve our complex issues, not individuals using lies and rhetoric to advance their self-serving goals.
To think eliminating research and environmental protections are good for our country and its future is stupid. It’s bad for our health, and economically ludicrous to spend billions on resiliency and mitigation for climate change, while increasing our dependence on dirty, costly and unstable energy while eliminating incentives for diversification.
Russia and the Arab nations, along with major oil companies, are the big winners of this policy. Our health, budgets and environment are the losers.
God gave us this beautiful world and a brain which we should use to protect it.
It’s sad many Americans don’t understand there is little difference between the societal impacts of extreme left-wing, right-wing or religious socialism; both exercise social and economic control often for the benefit of the leaders, using rhetoric to aid one group and hurt another.
Authoritarianism is often the ultimate goal.
This appears to be the trend we face in our nation. Freedom isn’t increased by taking away citizens’ rights.
Frank Wacha, Jensen Beach
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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Florida city’s trash deal garbage. Stuart teacher fate | Opinion
Reporting by Letter writers, Treasure Coast Newspapers / Treasure Coast Newspapers
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By Letter writers, Treasure Coast Newspapers | USA TODAY Network
