Call for renewal: Florida's 1838 constitution

Or should we call for repentance, for how far we've strayed?

Howard Troxler, St. Pete Times, skewers members of the double-dipping, special interest, pay-for-play Florida Legislature:

One of my favorite Florida fun facts is that our constitution of 1838, written while we were still a U.S. territory, banned three special classes of people from public office:

Bank officers.

Duelists.

"Ministers of the Gospel."

We could learn a lot from those pioneers (including some of my own ancestors who settled here before 1820). Who could look at our current legislature, follow the strings all the way to the bank, the church and the gun lobby -- and think otherwise?

Continue . . .

Here's the tip — uh, paycheck, senator
Thomas Dawsey, Florida pioneer

Has the train left the station?

For residents of West Central Florida - and ultimately Florida taxpayers - who are the losers in a secret deal between Gov. Jeb Bush and CSX Rail, it's enough to make the blood boil:

LAKELAND - In 2002, an Orlando-based planning group produced a paper titled: "Why Can't We Solve Orlando's Traffic Congestion Problems By Moving the Freight Trains?"

Five years later, the answer is they can and they are - by dumping the problem on Polk, Hillsborough and other counties to the west.

Florida is about to spend half a billion dollars in public money to move freight trains off the rail line running through the Orlando region and onto another rail line running west of it.

The benefits for Orlando are twofold: Easing traffic congestion in the Orlando area's urban core and clearing rail lines now used by CSX to make way for new commuter trains.

Orlando's neighbors lose on both counts.

Read the report . . . Orlando train transfer to impact Bay area counties

Updates on CSX rail in Polk

For residents interested in the impact of CSX rail's plans for Polk County and Lakeland, see Billy Townsend's blog entry for Tuesday:

One entire section of this study [the 2005 Rail Relocation Feasibility Study] is devoted to recapping previous papers and studies that focused on problems posed by Orlando’s freight train traffic.

One of those, a 2002 paper prepared by METROPLAN Orlando, was titled: “Why Can’t We Solve Orlando’s Traffic Congestion Problems by Moving the Freight Trains?”

More . . . 2005 state study cited freight traffic headaches

In today's Tampa Tribune, Lindsay Peterson reports on public aid for CSX:

Times have never been better for America's major railroads. Profits are rising. Stock prices are up. And so are subsidies from taxpayers.

State governments are giving freight rail companies millions to build new tracks, bridges and tunnels. Since 2005, Florida officials have approved plans to give CSX Transportation and other railroad companies more than half a billion dollars through 2010.

That's not all the rail companies want. They're lobbying Congress this year for a federal tax credit worth more than $1 billion a year to pay for track improvements.

The money isn't for safety measures at public crossings. Government has paid railroads billions over the years to build, repair and maintain crossing signals at public roads. This money is for business expansion in areas the public never uses. -

More . . . CSX seeking public aid amid its growing profit

Continuing Updates . . .

• Oct. 12: Commissioner wants more answers...
• Oct. 16: Lakeland Local
• Oct. 20: CSX: No state money, no realighment deal

Another "devious plan" hits the fast rail

In a deal to bring commuter rail to central Florida and take hundreds of cars off the road in congested Orlando, Gov. Jeb Bush and CSX railroad last year announced the sale of tracks for $491 million in taxpayer money.

Bush touted the deal as a strong public-private partnership, though he brokered the plan in secret with no public discussion of the downside.

To make the deal work, CSX must move its Orlando operations to a new hub in Winter Haven, a move the company claims would benefit the state's ports and bring skilled and well-paying jobs to the region.

But the new hub also would put more freight trains on tracks through downtown Lakeland and Plant City, which could severely disrupt neighborhoods, traffic and redevelopment efforts. It also would add more than 1,000 trucks a day to Polk County's roads.

The backroom deal began in December 2004, a month after voters defeated the bullet train. As reporters Lindsay Peterson and Billy Townsend tell it, CSX visited the Department of Transportation and unveiled a new business strategy for Florida. The state adopted the railroad's plan: Taxpayers would pay for road access to the Winter Haven hub and help CSX upgrade its Polk freight line to handle more traffic. And we also would pay for 61 miles of track around Orlando.

Meanwhile, Florida East Coast Industries, which owns a north-south rail corridor on Florida's east coast and had previously rebuffed state attempts to buy its corridors, also began talking to the state.

As talks ensued, a group of private equity investors offered $3.5 billion for FEC. It appears the negotiations raised the value of the railroad and its real estate holdings. Bush supporter and former employer Armando Codina made $250 million in the deal.

What to make of all this?

Neither Bush nor CSX executives are talking. Given the deal's enormous impact on our region and state, both owe Floridians more than silence.

Perhaps it's to the state's advantage to allow the hub. Winter Haven city leaders surely want it. But it looks like this deal was put together primarily to benefit CSX, a major political contributor to Bush, his family and friends.
- Tampa Tribune

There's more . . . .

• Backroom deal between friends taints worth of CSX rail deal
• Special Report: Tampa Tribune Investigation
• CSX rail hub controversy
• Jeb reveals his political MO, 2002

Loxahatchee: Florida's 'river of turtles'

Photo: Florida State Parks

Significance: The Loxahatchee River is the only blackwater stream in south Florida. It has diverse fish and plant species containing a mix of temperate and subtropical species. Florida's first river to be designated a federal wild and scenic river.

Meaning: River of Turtles in Seminole language.

Location: Northern Palm Beach and southern Martin counties, north of Jupiter.

View special Lakeland Ledger report, including multimedia and photo gallery:

• A pristine Florida habitat is home to abundant and varied wildlife

Highway would split 7-generation homestead

Longtime Polk family fears highway will create a dead end
for their way of life.

WINTER HAVEN - The Atkins family is proud of its heritage and deep roots in Polk County.

A visit to the family homestead is a trip back in time.

The oldest home [on the property] is a beige two-story house built in 1850, and at one time it was the only house between Winter Haven and Bartow. It is filled with beautiful old furniture, and black and white family pictures line the walls.

Today, the Atkins family faces the prospect of a modern highway that they say threatens their way of life. The road, an extension of Thompson Nursery Road, could split the 180-acre homestead that has been in the family for seven generations.

"For 150 years we've hunted, fished and gone horseback riding here," said Ken Atkins. "This would destroy us."

There are two proposals for the 8-mile Thompson Nursery Road extension through the Atkins land.

One would have the road curve through a nature preserve filled with gopher tortoises and scrub jays.

Worse for the Atkins family is the second proposal. It has the road curving south directly behind one of the oldest houses in Polk County.

Instead of pastures and grazing cattle, the family would have a view of concrete and cars. [....]

Ken Atkins has urged the county to consider a different plan that would have the road running next to the land. He said the current proposals have too many curves and aren't well-designed.

"I was hoping that my grandkids would be able to enjoy this like I did," Robert Atkins said. "My father would not be happy."

• Ledger report by John Chambliss

Update, Feb. 15, 2007: County officials hear plea to reroute highway; ask planners to prepare alternative proposals for consideration

Teen volunteers get 'off the couch and on the job'

LAKELAND -- Online job hunters have their Monster, and Polk County students in need of volunteer work now have a Sweat Monkey. SweatMonkey.com, the internet creation of a 16-year-old Lakeland resident, will be introduced Thursday during an information session at Florida Southern College.

The web site aims to eliminate one frequent headache in the lives of high school students: finding volunteer opportunities to satisfy graduation requirements.

Founder Callahan Fore wants to make the process easier by having local non-profit groups post their volunteer jobs to the free site, which also will track and verify the number of hours served by individual members.

Fore also hopes that private businesses will use the site to attract teenage candidates for paying jobs. [....]

Sweat Monkey, whose slogan is "Off the Couch and On the Job," includes a board of directors comprised of Polk high school students and has already seen interest from entities like United Way, Big Brothers Big Sisters and Volunteers in Service to the Elderly.

"Anything that makes it simpler to connect a person with a volunteer opportunity is good for the community," said Terry Worthington, president of the United Way of Central Florida. [....]

Use of Sweat Monkey is free to students, organizations and employers, and the site has applied for non-profit status.

• SweatMonkey works for volunteers (Kyle Kennedy)
• SweatMonkey.com

Florida 'cowhunters' reenact cattle drives of a bygone era

Photo and report from Lakeland Ledger

More than 500 people recently completed a five-day trek through Osceola County to reenact Florida's great cattle drives of the 1800's.

Much of the drive traversed established dirt roads rather than wilderness, yet at times, amid the vast expanses of Overstreet Ranch or the palmetto flatwoods of Three Lakes Wildlife Management Area, it was possible to envision an earlier Florida devoid of highways, a place where cow hunters spent weeks driving their herds to market.

Riders camped each night in tents, their horses tied to lines strung between trees. As night fell Thursday at Overstreet Ranch, on the shore of Lake Kissimmee, dozens of campfires pierced the darkness and sent forth a smoky aroma.

The Seminole Tribe of Florida was well represented, fitting for a group that began ranching in the 1500s after horses and cattle arrived in Florida with Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon. Skeeter Bowers and other Seminoles wore the lime-green bandanas of the cowhunter circle, and Billy Joe Johns drove a horse-drawn, covered wagon that also carried his wife, Tara, and their 8-year-old son, Jobe.

While the gathering stirred fond musings on Florida's past, it also spawned wistful thoughts about the future.

"There is a plague in Florida, and it's called dirt peddlers; you might call it real estate," said Carl Sharp, a self-proclaimed Cracker cowboy poet and the drive's oldest participant at age 92. "It's real, real sad."

Robert Burney, one of the cowhunters on the cattle drive, worried that the shadow of the Magic Kingdom's Tomorrowland might eclipse the proud past of Florida's cowboys.

"This is our heritage; that's what Florida was built on," Burney said.


Lakeland Ledger special report . . .

• Ghost riders
• Photo gallery
• Slide show and campfire music
• Video clips

Most times, the gator wins

LAKELAND - At about 4 a.m. this morning, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office received multiple calls about a man yelling for help in the area of Lake Parker county park....

[....]

Deputies immediately entered the alligator-infested water and began a search for the man who was in the grasp of an alligator. Once located, deputies pulled the man from the alligator and made their way approximately 40 feet to shore where an ambulance was waiting to transport him to Lakeland Regional Medical Center.

[....]

The very dark conditions and risk of injuring the victim made shooting the alligator impossible, leaving deputies to contend with their own safety after becoming exhausted in waist deep mud. All deputies made it out of the water without injury.

The victim ... was transported to LMRC in critical condition with an apparent broken right arm, a partially amputated left arm and major trauma to his left upper leg.

• Report: Sheriff deputies pull man from gator's jaws
• Videos, Local News box: Gator found and Gator caught

The Florida Solar Cracker House

I stumbled onto a web site describing "an energy efficient, solar-powered home" in Central Florida. Interlachen is located southwest of St. Augustine, east of Gainesville and north of the Ocala National Forest.

According to Liz, who published the online document, she and her husband Randy have been living in the house since mid-1998. She describes their successes and failures:

"Our original plan was to use no fossil fuels at all. We have relaxed that ideal a bit, and now have some propane appliances as convenience and backup systems. Our total use of propane is about 30-35 gallons per year, for which we pay about $75, including delivery. We also have a backup Honda gas generator, which we rarely use."

If you're interested in this sort of thing, check out the site with its loads of useful information and photos. . . .

• Florida Solar Cracker House

See also. . . .

• You may qualify for energy incentives
• Florida Zero Energy Home - Lakeland
• Florida Solar Energy Center

10 great places to discover the 'hidden' Florida

USA Today recently published ten "unspoiled" areas of Florida. The list is a good beginning, but by no means exhaustive.

• The Panhandle
• The Big Bend
• Gainesville and towns south
• Highway A1A through Nassau and Duval counties
• Deland, Lake Helen, Cassadaga
• Lakeland
• Pinellas County
• Stuart
• The Redland
• Calusa Blueway Paddling Trail

Here's a sample of the descriptions provided by author Herb Hiller to USA Today reporter Anne Goodfriend:

The Panhandle

This region of northern Florida is "typified by State Road 2, aka Hog and Hominy Road," Hiller says. You'll see old, steam-driven grist mills and "still-operating general stores where you can buy county newspapers no one ever heard of." Among its highlights is the old Chautauqua town of DeFuniak Springs with its Victorian architecture. In Falling Waters State Park, the state's highest waterfall pours up-side down into a sinkhole: "You stand and look down at it, not up."

[Photo: Cedar Grove Church is on Hog and Hominy Road in Holmes County. The church was built on land donated by my great-grandparents about 1895.]

Read the rest of the USA article here . . . .

• Discover hidden Florida
• Visit Florida.com

(HT to Empirical Polk.com)

Run off to Swampwater . . .

. . . and see what a difference sea level makes

Swampwater, Florida

"In the great comedy of human endeavor, where enterprise, government, art and science converge, the pillar of achievement, seeking to rise above man's greed, delusion and stupidity, provides a guiding...did I ever tell you that I was born with antlers?...I'm hungry now, I want a sandwich."

• Col. Addison "Damp Powder" Swarth-Waither, founder

Way down upon the Suwannee

Home for the holidays...
one of the views along the way.

Click on image to enlarge.

Never trust a rattlesnake

I would say this guy is an idiot, but he's dead. Perhaps his experience can be a lesson for all of us to avoid risky behavior:

GAINESVILLE, FL: In a career dedicated to public service, Putnam County Fire Marshal Joe Guidry was planning a leisurely life to begin next year with his retirement. On Friday afternoon, Guidry passed away at Shands at the University of Florida, surrounded by family and friends.

Guidry spent his final days fighting for his life after a deed for a neighbor turned tragic.

The 54-year-old fire marshal, an organ donor, died from complications of a snakebite wound after lapsing into unconsciousness early Friday morning.

You won't believe how it happened:

Officials said 54-year-old Putnam County Fire Marshal Joe Guidry shot the 5-foot snake multiple times and thought it was close to death or dead. When he reached out to grab the snake, he was bitten on his right hand.

Guidry had also worked as a firefighter in Clay and Collier counties and an emergency medical technician in St. Johns County.

Well.

Complete story here: Snake bite is deadly for Putnam County official