Readers comment on the race for Gainesville mayor, the impact of COVID-19 and more
Gainesville City Commissioners left to right, Harvey Ward, David Arreola, Cynthia Chestnut and Desmon Duncan-Walker, at the State of the City address at the Cade Museum for Creativity & Invention, in Gainesville on Feb. 28.
Terrible records
There are at least two current city commissioners who are candidates for mayor in this fall's election. They don't deserve support or election to mayor.
The state auditor's report exposing financial mismanagement/poor oversight would be reason enough to reject them, but there are lots more reasons: Gainesville Regional Utilities’ 7% electric rate increase this year and then endless more in the future; massive GRU debt; a property tax increase; growing gun violence/murders; disregard of citizen input in development plans/decisions; endless attacks on single-family and historic neighborhoods; luxury student apartment concrete jungles; thwarting citizen participation at City Commission meetings; total chaos/drama at City Hall; charter officer turnover and executive level terminations.
This isn't a track record deserving promotion from commissioner to mayor! These incumbents have failed the citizens of Gainesville.
George Braun, Gainesville
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Earlier this year, two members of my family succumbed to COVID-19. They died in separate ICUs in hospitals miles apart, just weeks before their 55th wedding anniversary.
Ironically, neither were medicine averse. In fact, they presented for every check-up, test, screening and inoculation suggested by their physicians — except for the recommended coronavirus vaccines.
Their doctors could only say, with every check-up, "We’ll revisit this next time.” Until, of course, time ran out
I’m not attempting to offer a lesson; everything that could be said about COVID-19 has been regurgitated constantly since early 2020. Everyone has their own convictions. But I would like to offer my simple and honest thanks, to those who received the vaccines, to those who socially distanced, to those who wore a mask even if it meant physical or emotional discomfort.
Story continues
You gave our family two years with our loved ones that we otherwise wouldn't have had. Two more Christmases and birthdays, of reunions and celebrations and, of course, two more anniversaries of a happy, decades-long marriage. It’s amazing how quickly things are swept away. Sometimes, tragically, and without us seeing it coming, we just don’t get a “next time.”
Darlene Drake Brooks, Gainesville
I just received my renewed Florida driver license in the mail. I will be 78 next month when my current license, issued in 2014, expires. It is valid for eight more years, until I will be 86. It uses my old photo and did not require an in-person interview or vision test.
Years ago, my father received a mail renewal in his 80s, when he was legally blind. Fortunately, he was no longer driving.
This license is our primary form of photo identification. Would it not make more sense to require in-person renewal with vision test for applicants over a certain age? If they fail the vision test they could be issued a state-issued identification card, without driving privileges.
Sally E. Ryden, Gainesville
Some Senate Republicans now say that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson should not be added to the Supreme Court because she is “soft on crime.”
How many of these same senators voted against convicting then-president, and now ex-president, Donald Trump for the crimes for which he was twice impeached? How many of them really believe that Trump had nothing to do with the Jan. 6 insurrection, and that even if he did, the rioters were only an enthusiastic bunch of tourists exercising their free speech rights?
Richard Hiers, Gainesville
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This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Letters to the editor for March 25, 2022
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