Mrs. Amontree’s goal is to bring more industry to Charlotte County. She wants sewer projects moving forward making sure we have clean water. She favors the 1% sales tax extension that is on the November ballot, saying “people in the county are getting a lot for their money and that projects like the Cultural Center could be delayed if it does not pass.” She also believes every department in the county can cut 5% from its budget.
This vacuous promotion is without a shred of any plans to get it done with a timetable, a budget, the willingness of the electorate or any experience in any of the fields that could bring all this to fruition.
To be fair, Mrs. Amontree is a quick learner and while she will, if elected, find her footing, where she puts her confidence is the question.
If she had planned to run for the office she seeks, we might ask how she was so silent on the above and the method she will use to make her desires more fact than words.
We are a county of shopkeepers for the most part and those larger companies, the construction related companies, the banks and financial institutions are more regional than locally grown or locally financed.
If Mrs. Amontree thinks that the construction of houses, most fit for those with the minimum needed to relocate to Florida, then being the choice to replace Commissioner Deutsch is misplaced.
Given the PAC money she has received from the construction industry and those who work with them, she is not shy about who and what she supports.
Mrs. Amontree owns two residences, both expensive and while I applaud her ability to do so, her approach to win a commissioner’s office, while legal, smacks of chicanery and of “back door politics.”
Our sewer projects, once THE political problem, continue to befuddle the ability to pay going forward. Sewers, the pipes in the ground in every building, is only part of the problem. It’s the “processing facility,” the cleansing of the effluent that is the 800 lb. gorilla in the room.
I want Mrs. Amontree to tell me how all this is an absolute need before any water or sewer lines are laid. How is it going to be funded, and where will it be built? If she knows her “sewers and such” I would like to hear it.
With one plant built in 1982 and renovated in 1994, another built in 1978 and renovated in 2010, and yet another “upgraded” in 2004, it says much about how prepared we are for a county when fully “built out” will be able to process and dispose of the products of wastewater treatment.
Mrs. Amontree is all for bringing us those who want what we have. However, how she plans for newcomers and how the expectations they bring with them are to be accommodated, she has not said.
By being fully conversant with referendums, the special 1% sales tax used to fund shortcomings in the school budget, she sees a 20-year referendum as something that will “give us a lot for our money.”
Yes, it is “our” money and what we are going to “get” for this money Mrs. Amontree does not explain nor why we will need it or if we will even “want” it. She never asked us what we wanted.
If she believes in term limits, she will not be in office when the public will continue to suffer for her plans for those, she seems to want to help. Her idea that the referendum she wants to hang around the financial necks of Charlotte County is to pay for projects, like a new Cultural Center, is at best misplaced.
Referendum money cannot be used for capital projects and is used primarily for transportation projects. She should know that and as she does not speak to a New Cultural Center when trying to lure her voters, her talk of a new cultural center is just that — talk.
In her latest mailing to the voters, Mrs. Amontree promotes her abilities and insultingly to the majority of Charlotte County’s population uses her opponent’s age as a liability, if the voters reelect him.
She sees her opponent out and about every day. He goes to work every day, and unlike Mrs. Amontree does not miss taking off from his obligations.
School budgets are passed by the board and for the most part is opaque from the parent’s ability to see how it is spent. Cutting 5% from the county’s budget is not as easy as it looks. Unlike Mrs. Amontree, her experienced opponent has kept the promises he made to advocate for budget cuts.
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by Senior Blog Writer Dr. Pitz