by Mike Byerly, Alachua County Commissioner
If you have only enough time or motivation to attend one government meeting in 2018 in defense of our environment, make it Jan. 23, 5 pm, at the County Administration building. The stakes are high, and turnout could make the difference.
Alachua County is a “charter county.” That means we have a charter, sort of like a constitution, that is the ultimate law on certain matters, and it can only be changed by popular vote.
by James Thompson
In the August 30th Democratic primary for the Alachua County Commission races, the people get to decide who runs our community–Chamber of Commerce candidates supported by PAC money, or locally grown grassroots issue-based progressives. As sitting Commissioner Robert Hutchinson has acknowledged alongside his own race for re-election, the more difficult challenge is getting his colleague Mike Byerly to keep his seat against the charismatic Jacksonville transplant, Pastor Kevin Thorpe. If Thorpe wins, Plum Creek (now Weyerhaeuser) will resubmit its plans to undermine our Comprehensive Plan and build a city on the wetlands in Eastern Alachua County, and we will see a decline in the focus on social services and a County living wage. The primary is the sum of the election, since no Republican is running, and you must be registered as a Democrat to vote in it. You can do this and request a mail-in ballot at www.votealachua.com. Continue reading
Posted in Articles, July-August 2016
Tagged mike byerly, plum creek, robert hutch hutchinson
Your county budget is undergoing some serious changes at the hands of the new “conservative” Alachua County Commission majority.
Each year, the Property Appraiser determines the market value of all taxable property in the county and reports this to the County Commission. The County Commission then applies a rate, the millage rate, to this total in order to produce the budget for the coming year. The budget and the millage rate are not the same thing, and can’t be used interchangeably.
If property values decline, but the millage rate stays the same, then the budget will decline by the same percentage as property values. So, it’s possible to increase the millage rate while actually reducing the budget.
This is what happened last year, and the year before.
The budget for the current year’s General Fund (by far the county’s largest fund) is $127,423,057.
Property values are projected to decline by about 3.4 percent this year. To maintain the same actual budget next year, the millage rate would have to be raised 3.4 percent. This is the course I supported. Commissioners Lee Pinkoson, Susan Baird and Winston Bradley voted to keep the millage rate the same, which will now require that the budget be reduced by 3.4 percent, or about $4.4 million.
Posted in Articles, September 2012
Tagged Alachua County, alachua county budget, alachua county commission, byerly, mike byerly
We’re two months from Election Day on Nov. 6 as this Iguana goes to print. We will have another edition out in early October, but now the campaigning has moved from the primaries to the main elections.
From our point of view, the primaries went well with one exception. There was one surprise in the District 21 race, and on this I must apologize. Both candidates in the race were good, and, without a lot of research, I went with the candidate who had more name recognition and money – Aaron Bosshardt – as the incumbent Republican Keith Perry was going to be hard to unseat.
Well, Andrew Morey (Bosshardt’s opponent) knocked on a lot of doors with a grassroots campaign and beat Bosshardt in the primary, and we couldn’t be happier.
We have subsequently found Morey to be an excellent candidate, and Bosshardt has rolled his campaign into Morey’s. This is a winnable race, and we encourage volunteers to help out.
Locally, we also hope people will jump in on the County races listed below with whatever support they can give. This is a pivotal election for both the Alachua County Commission and the Alachua County School Board, and these candidates will make a big difference in the coming years for our County.
The U.S. Congress District 3 had a surprise on the Republican side when the Tea Party’s Ted Yoho knocked out long time Congressman Cliff Stearns. Yoho will now face JR Gaillot, a Democrat who had no primary opponent. This is a pretty stacked conservative district, so it’ll be an uphill battle. It’ll be interesting if the talkative Yoho will agree to the rigorous debate schedule Gaillot is requesting.
Dr. Martin L. King Jr. said in his “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” “One of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution.”
Suppressing voter turnout is but the mirror image to ballot box stuffing, same effect. Unfairly drawn districts, negative advertising powered by huge corporate donations, an election campaign process that keeps many great potential public servants from running, a news media focused on the shallow and sensational, and a right-wing talk radio industry all work to increase cynicism. These are forces that put us to sleep. People died to get the right to vote, and now we have a majority of voters sitting on their hands come election day. It is not a healthy situation.
Has Obama been a disappointment? Heck yeah. But do we give the steering wheel back to the ones who drove us into the ditch last time? Hell no! Three words: The Supreme Court. This is not a time to stay home to “send a message,” we did that in 2010; it wasn’t that the Rs came out big, it was the Ds who stayed home. I’ll take a disappointment over a disaster.
But there are other reasons to vote, and that is the power of the vote locally needs to be ready to counter the attempted Republican takeover of the Alachua County Commission. The voting in the primaries takes place August 14.
The Iguana strongly endorses Byerly, Hutchinson and Chestnut for the County Commission, and Wheeler for the District 20 State House seat, who faces a tough Primary race. You can find links to the candidates’ info through the Supervisor of Elections website.
If you’ve got the time or resources, plug in in any way you can; there are a lot of really good folks in this town who participate in the electoral campaign process regularly. And if you are a student, or a temporary resident, there’s been talk of suppressing your vote by some in the Republican legislature. You are representing the future waves of students, get registered and vote!
As we look forward to the elections season this year, it is obvious that big money is flexing its muscle. In the presidential race, Romney (or “R.money”) has simply buried his opponents with his huge war chest and all the negative campaigning that large money permits – the ads, the robo-calls, the opinion research and push polls.
Well, get ready Alachua County. The Republican Party is gonna be trying to buy seats on the County Commission. Even though the qualifying period for candidates isn’t until early June, they have their high-funded candidates picked out. and they are piling up the money.
In District One, Mike Byerly’s seat, Brandon C. Kutner already has $11,000. In District Three, which pro-science environmentalist Robert Hutchinson will be running for, the
R’s have Jean Calderwood with $13,000. And then in District Five, local developer’s son Dean Cheshire already has $25,000!
And this is before the April 10 reporting period information comes in; all this money came in before February. The Supervisor of Elections site is very handy to follow the money.
That is not to say the Dems won’t raise some serious money, but from where and what increments is significant to study.
There will be primary elections to thin the field down on Aug. 14. The main election is, of course, Nov. 6.
It is not too early to volunteer and get the word out about the good candidates. We’d suggest in Alachua County support for Byerly, Hutch and Chestnut.
One other candidate needs a mention. Maryhelen Wheeler will (as of now) face Clovis Watson in a Democratic Party primary on Aug. 14 for the District 20 Florida House of Representatives seat. She is a newcomer to electoral politics, but a woman of great experience in education issues, trying to get things done in Tallahassee as an advocate for our schools. Watson has a record of questionable conduct from his time in the City of Alachua as City Manager, and at one point renounced the Democrats and very publicly joined the Republican Party. Now, supposedly, he is back to being a Democrat. Please support Wheeler. Again, the supervisor of election’s site has contact info for the candidates. If you’ve got time, do what you can.