2007 In Review

We hope everyone was able to enjoy the holiday season to its fullest. The WayneWho staff took some time off and decided to not bother our readers with governmental silliness or political dramas during this time. However, with 2007 drawing to a close and 2008 just a few hours away, we figured it was time to get back to work.

If you have been keeping up with the local newspapers at all, you have probably read the "Year in Remembrance" pieces that they put together as filler this time of year. These pieces are put together so no one has to do any real work requirements over the holiday. In an attempt to keep our unnews stories in line with the "real" media, we would like to take a look back on some of our unnews for 2007.

The year for the WayneWho staff started in March as reports of the demise of Political Activist Doug Guetzloe and his band of merry Ax-the-Taxers filled the airwaves. Of course, what would Central Florida be without the zany antics of Mr. Guetzloe who instead of being silenced, was recently scene at a campaign rally for Mike Huckabee.

In April we had our first court-mandated special election. The newly created districts saw their first election with the District 2 seat being a majority Hispanic district. The first Hispanic was elected to office in more than a decade with much fanfare and celebration. Since that election we would like to note that there has been no radical shift in government as many predicted. Things have basically stayed the same and it has been business as usual. We had hoped for more.

Rumors of a Food Court opening up in Kissimmee City Hall to offset the looming budget cuts were swirling like agitators at the water treatment plant, but the plans never came to be. Depending on how the property tax amendment vote goes, we may still see an Orange-Julius moving in.

The City of Kissimmee decided to put together a Charter Review Committee, but not before making all the changes they wanted to first. They then banned certain parts of the Charter from being reviewed by the hand-picked Charter Review committee. It seems the concept of Democracy is a difficult one for some to grasp.

As the year progressed, discussions on creating and implementing a Fire Fee (Tax) continued to gather steam. In the end, the business community, or as we like to call them - our economy, took the hit while the governments cried about what the State had done to them. The year continued with threats of cutting public safety services if the voters of Florida forced a reduction in taxes by voting for it. While the WayneWho staff understands that services provided by our local governments cost money that comes from taxes paid by our residents, we believe that this year proved that government has lost all touch with reality as it pertains to what services our community demands. Public Safety is the number one request, followed by an effective traffic infrastructure.

Rumors of self cleaning restroom facilities surfaced some time in June. This rumor surfaced after the stinging defeat in the All-America City pageant. It is our belief that the restroom rumor was a decoy issue to divert attention away from the real issue of money spent on entering a pageant when the community was in the middle of a budget crisis. The WayneWho staff would like to know how many Meals-On-Wheels meals could have been served with the money spent on the Anaheim, California junket? Was it really worth it?

June saw the birth of Kissimmee Puppet Commission Theatre which became a great hit in the local online community and gave the local government channel "Access Osceola" a competitive run for its money. Although many that tuned in for the online delights of Kissimmee Puppet Commission Theatre were confused on if what they were watching was real, most realized politics and comedy go hand in hand.

The summer months of 2007 saw local governments deteriorate into a quagmire of ambiguous resolutions and discussions that dealt mostly with the loss of government income and less on what actions government was going to take to insure that service to it residents would remain a priority.

A $200,000 fountain (Aquatic Sculpture) became the talk of the town as Kissimmee prepared to redevelop itself into the next Sin-City. One commissioner declared that she wanted to see fountains all through out the city because they are pretty. The commission threw caution and your tax dollars to the wind and approved the measure.

There were exciting elections in St. Cloud that left a lot of people wondering why School Board members would threaten candidates if they were not in favor in building a housing project in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Was a developer to blame or was there more to the story? Besides all of the silliness, the WayneWho staff believes that this was a great election because of the range of issues and debates that came out during the process. We find it amazing that the current St. Cloud election cycle is probably one of the most boring and issue-less campaigns we have seen in a long time. Elections are about ideas, and from what we are hearing, there are none.

The year ended on a more quiet note except for the fact that the public learned that risky investments made by a group controlling state funds (local tax money) had all but crashed. The state had gambled with our tax dollars and lost, which left the taxpayers stuck with finding a way to cover the losses.

We know that this is not all that happened this year, but the WayneWho staff all agreed that these were some of most striking unnews issues of the year. While the other local news outlets paint a picture of limited success for the year, we think that assertion deserves a challenge. It is too bad the "real" media is not equipped to cover the issues.