LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Country Going Down Hill

I live in Spring Hill. Daily I go for walks on our residential streets. Daily I watch vehicles drive by me speeding.

I would like to say it's just kids who don't know better, but it's not. It's adults and even seniors. While walking I have had insults shouted at me, and have even had cars swerve towards me. I can't count the number of times I have had to step off the road because a car would not move over enough to allow me the room to walk on the white line at the edge of the road.

Whatever happened to obeying the laws and yielding the right of way to pedestrians? In the past two months on my street a neighbor's dog was killed standing beside its owner on the white line and a wreck at the intersection beside my house that was due to speeding and also running a stop sign.

What happened to the rules of the road? What happened to respecting the law? Have we deteriorated so much as a society that we can't even obey simple traffic laws?

Like I said, this isn't just kids. I have seen men and women of all ages driving like this. I have seen speeds on my street as high as 100 mph - a motorcycle. But it's routinely 15 to 30 miles over the speed limit. People who drive like this should be ashamed. They know better, and eventually they are going to kill someone.

It's not because the Hernando County Sheriff's Office doesn't write enough tickets. It's because people have no respect for the law, other people or themselves. It's sad to see this country go down hill, and it's each and everyone of our faults, because we don't stand up for what is right anymore.

Steven Cummings

Spring Hill

No Need For Two

County Administrators

Alas, once again our illustrious county commissioners are embarking on another quite frequent scenario to hire a county administrator, at a salary comparable to and exceeding that of our governor.

It should be noted that each of the previously selected administrators' tenure was short-lived as a result of allegedly being micro-managed by several of our inept sitting commissioners. But surprisingly no great problem arose because the assistant administrator, Larry Jennings, was always waiting in the wings to accept the interim position of administrator - I might add at a salary almost comparable to that of the governor.

Also to be noted, several of our illustrious commissioners practically pleaded with Jennings to accept the position on a full-time basis to eliminate additional costs of taxpayer money in recruiting and hiring a new candidate. However, Jennings continually declined the offer as he still commands a lucrative salary with perks and continues to hide behind the cloak of responsibility.

It should be strongly emphasized that once the new administrator is hired, there is no logical reason to maintain the position of an assistant administrator at an almost equal salary to that of the principle administrator. This is another example of our current board of commissioners wasting our tax dollars.

A suggestion to the candidates vying to replace Commissioners Rowden, Kingsley and Stabins in the coming election this year, should call attention to this inefficient management and wasteful spending of our tax dollars and mandate a policy to either demote and/or terminate Jennings' position as an assistant county administrator.

Ron Dixon

Weeki Wachee

Rise Up And Fight

Wasteful Spending

Re: "Funding our own Bankruptcy" in the Jan. 23 edition of Hernando Today.

It seems, to me at least, that someone identifies and exposes enormous government waste about once every year at a minimum. The waste outlined in Doug Patton's column is typical of a wasteful spending earmark presented into daily legislation.

It's almost as if congressional aides are waiting in hiding to slip some wasteful project or favor into any bill that happens past their desk. My question is: Why After all these years, is this type of behavior still going on? The culprits have been exposed many times, and the system has been identified as being flawed, but it just keeps happening as if no one dare do anything about it.

What needs to be done is for all Americans to rise up and tell these elected representatives what is expected of them, and any behavior outside of what we expect will be dealt with accordingly. Too many are let off the hook because we feel it would be improper to file a complaint against them.

We may be a greedy capitalist society, but we must make sure our accounts have funds in them before we spend. Right now our government funds are depleted, and no more spending should be the policy, especially wasteful earmark spending.

Fred Greenwalt

Spring Hill

Outpouring Of Support

As the parents of a soldier stationed at Camp Taji who is operating in patrols within the towns and villages of Iraq as an infantryman, I can't tell you how appreciative I am of you and your newspaper article on this subject.

Since his recent deployment in December, the outpouring of support for our son by family, friends and strangers has been overwhelming, and our gratitude cannot be expressed in words by those of us who have sons, daughters, husbands and wives serving in defense of our country.

God bless these children and all of those who show enough concern to take the time to materially, but more importantly emotionally, support our men and women in the armed forces - men and women who put themselves in harm's way to protect us and our country.

Congratulations on an excellent article and thank you!

John and Joan M. Mikluscak

Venice

Proud parents of

Pvt. Zachary J. Mikluscak