Welcome to Wherever You Are

We recently learned of the CVB’s new marketing campaign, “Kissimmee: The Heart of Florida.” As usual, we have questions and thoughts.

First, the easy stuff. It appears that the whole discussion of turning the tourism marketing over to a third party, leaving the CVB to focus on convention marketing has, in the words of our governor, “dropped like a rock.” Also, we’re somewhat amused by the decision to focus almost all of the marketing spending on web promotion, here in the Central Florida county with arguably the lowest level of high-tech employment. Hopefully the folks who are looking for Osceola County tourism information are web-savvy. Discuss among yourselves.

No, our main discussion today is about the brand. As far as tourism goes in Osceola County, Kissimmee is the brand. After all, it’s the Kissimmee Convention & Visitors Bureau. The website is www.floridakiss.com. The slogan is “Kissimmee: The Heart of Florida.”

But as the locals know, tourism has long since fled the City of Kissimmee. There are some hotels along 192 struggling to make it, but we’re not sure they’re catering to the tourist trade anyway. The only real remaining tourist destinations within the city boundaries are Lake Toho and Medieval Times. Everyone knows that the “power” in Osceola County tourism is West 192...the BeautiVacation district...where the money is going for any number of convention center projects.

So we have a tourism district using the brand of a dilapidated municipal business district while we have a county government that is turning their development attention to flashy projects on the other side of the county. How did we get here?

We’ll leave the “how” answer to the folks who like to tell stories about how they used to ride horses down the streets in downtown Kissimmee. The real question here is what do we do now. Tourism, like it or not, is Osceola County’s lifeblood. Tourism brings tax dollars. Tourism brings service level employment, which is our bread and butter. Tourism drives new construction, both for tourist related buildings and for housing for those service workers. And in Osceola County, Kissimmee is the tourism brand.

So, City of Kissimmee and West 192 area, we say, get together. Annex it. Annex the hell out of it. West 192 gets the brand they are already dependent on. Kissimmee gets tax dollars, a larger base to spread their operations across, and some amount of expertise in rebuilding and maintaining commercial corridors. Osceola County can go on to focusing on developing new communities on the east side of the county.

Know what else has a catchy ring to it? “Celebrate every day in Celebration.”

Funding Follies

It is Monday morning and the City of Kissimmee Commission Meeting agenda has finally been put online for the public to see. We know it is troublesome when city business gets in the way of holiday shopping and party planning, but it is important that the agenda gets posted early enough for the public to react to agenda items if needed. From what we have seen so far from the newly seated commissioners, it looks like the public is going to have a busy couple of years reacting to what government is trying to do.

As we had mentioned in previous articles, the city's portion of funding for the Small Business Development Center is up for discussion at Tuesday night's meeting. We believe that the commission should demand answers be given to business relevant questions and that a better system of accountability should be established to verify the program is having a lasting success. The WayneWho staff has heard that a couple of the commissioners are already planning to vote against the approval of these funds because they do not believe that it is government's responsibility to get involved with the business community. Funny how that has become a convenient argument now that the development community has no more use for our area and small businesses cannot afford the same level of campaign contributions they once did. We would argue that this type of business educational resource is exactly what is needed and provides the smartest way to help create solid businesses and honest economic development in our community. With more and more people losing their jobs and the pool of available jobs drying up, more people will make the decision to start their own business as a means to continue to survive. This would not be the best time to cut off an educational resource that may not only help them get started, but help our community by creating employment for others along the way. Demand answers. Demand Results. Fund accordingly.

Another request for funding to help pay for a bus to help transport the elderly and disabled is also on the agenda for Tuesday night. While we feel this is not the best transportation system to fund, given the lack of other transportation options, this is a must fund situation until commissioners with some basic understanding of public transportation get elected to office. Since local governments have forced Lynx to cut routes because of funding cuts, other transportation options will be needed. While we believe it is vital to fund this request, we are very discouraged that only one group of our community is being considered. There are many Osceola County high school students who relied on Lynx transportation so they could stay late after school for educational or extracurricular activities who have been left stranded. While it is not government's role to provide this transportation, we find it odd that some get transported while others do not.

We would also suggest that some accountability be requested of the Council for this new project. The Council has a tendency to expand its role despite funding constraints. Their "whole family" approach of helping the seniors of our community has made the agency much larger than it needs to be. While we understand that there are large groups of people in our community from all walks of life who need help, the Council needs to stick to its primary role of helping seniors to assure that funding goes where it has been allotted. While this may be a heart-wrenching task, it must be demanded.

Opposed To New Business

The City of Kissimmee's own self proclaimed Graffiti Czar has set his sights on eliminating a new blight in the City of Kissimmee since realizing he is powerless when it comes to getting graffiti removed from the new CRA mobile home community built in the downtown. His new mission seems to be stopping the creation of new businesses in the City of Kissimmee. “I think the timing right now is horrific for anybody to start a business. I’m opposed to this. This is how I feel,” stated Commissioner Gemskie according to the Osceola News-Gazette. Opposed to new business? The WayneWho staff thinks that is a very strong statement for someone whose name is being thrown about as a possible County Commission candidate in a few years. We are not sure what type of community Commissioner Gemskie would like to preside over if he were able to win a County seat, but we are sure what a community with no new jobs would look like, and it is not a pretty site.

The WayneWho staff hopes that at next week's meeting, Mayor Swan, Commissioner Gemskie, and Gemskie's new found buddy Commissioner Irizarry would explain their concepts of what economic development is because the ideas they have attempted to implement so far have failed and don't make much sense. While Commissioner Irizarry cried the loudest when taxpayer money was to be used for the successive years of All-America City awards pageant try-outs because money was going to be tight and spending money on an award made little sense, he was one of the first to proudly herald the benefits of 'Economic Development' when the award was finally won. The first year that the public began paying attention to this nonsensical pageant was the year that a group spent $80,000 in tax money to try to buy the All-America City title and failed. You may remember watching the video presentation on our tax funded TV station Access Osceola that showed Community Vision representatives, as well as representatives from the County's Economic Development Club, City of Kissimmee, Osceola County, the Chamber of Commerce, the HOME Project, and others who enjoyed a fun filled vacation at the taxpayers expense to Anaheim California in the name of Economic Development. For weeks the battle raged and commissioners told the community that we would stand a better chance of attracting new businesses into the area if we could 'win' the All-America City Award. Well, we won the award this past year and now our big plan from the commission is to oppose anyone opening a new business? How American is that? And besides, where is all the economic development we were promised? Was the All-America City pageant just a way to justify travel expenses or were we really trying to get businesses to open in our community?

Besides the obvious point of "Nobody really cares what Commissioner Gemskie says because he has little insight or knowledge when it comes to business," we would like to point out a little looked at principal of a free market. Risk is essential to the proper operation of a free market because risk helps to determine profit or loss and risk is what helps to create opportunity. If we were to listen to the commission's advice, we would stop businesses from opening that could benefit from this bad market. This commission does not even want to give the American Entrepreneurial Spirit a chance to study and discuss their opportunities with seasoned Small Business Administration Officials because it is more important to spend $30,000 on 'Sculpture Walks', downtown drinking parties, and a dwindling farmers market than it is to help create opportunities for the future business leaders of our community. There is no risk on spending $30,000 on events that have no true failure point, but it is another to spend $30,000 where judgment may come into play.

On a side note to this article; whoever is pulling the string on Mr. Horner, tell him to stay home on Tuesday night. Let the professionals speak instead of him. Economic Development is not about how good your 'Dog and Pony' show is, but instead it is about how smart your team of people is advising the business community. The Kissimmee/Osceola County Chamber of Commerce, like its Kissimmee Main Street counterpart has failed in this mission, but that does not mean that a good program, that these groups are not responsible for running, should be scuttled because of them. We would also suggest that the person who is going to represent this program be someone who does understand the difficulties governments are having with limited revenues to spend on parties and such. This would help put them on the same playground as our local elected officials. One last thing to the presenter, remember that the magic word is 'multimodal'. The commissioners just love that word.

Failed Vision

A couple of weeks ago the non-profit organization 'Community Vision' gave its annual 'Community Report Card' update to the Kissimmee City Commission. Gone from the report were the typical practiced gleefull cheerleading routines pointing out taxpayer subsidized projects that had held our community together with band-aids for far too long. Gone was the cheery disposition from the organization's Executive Director who's cheeriness during the All-America City debacle was the first indication that the Award meant more for non-profits than it did the community at large. Gone from the report was any sense of direction in which the community should turn to make things better. The vision for the community, it would seem, is not looking all that good.

As the director finished her briefing, we waited to hear ideas from our City Commissioners and heard nothing. Reports from the County Commission meeting indicate that same scenario repeated itself in their chambers. No ideas, no vision. Many would think that with an all star cast of who's who sitting on the Community Vision Board of Directors that a solid vision for our community vision on how to move forward would be only a simple phone call away, but still no vision. The WayneWho staff was not all that shocked by the fact that the idea well had run dry since, when you look at the cast of characters on the Community Vision board, you notice the same recycled cast of characters from almost every other board in the community. You also notice the same politicians and special interest personalities that seem to come together like white-on-rice. Considering every agency in Osceola County seems to be on the brink of financial ruin, it seems that instead of relying on the same group of people who have helped create the problems in our community, the groups would start to branch out and bring in some new blood. Of course that would take vision, and as we stated earlier, there seems to be no vision left in our community.

So where will the community go from here? Who will lead us to better days ahead? Well the City Commission spent most of it's meeting last night arguing how the titles of vice mayor and mayor pro-tem should be decided, so obviously they are not going to be a big help. The county commission is still wrapped up in making sure the favors for campaign supporters are finalized before the bottom falls out of the budget and another round of layoffs begins. The school board is... let's just say they are not really holding it together that well and should not be relied on for much of anything except for a good dance-off now and again. Many of the individuals these organizations have come to count on to serve on boards have begun to abandon their posts like rats from a sinking ship. This was proven at the same Kissimmee Commission meeting as commissioners argued over who would be stuck on the Community Vision board. It seems no one wants to get sucked into any organization that might look like a tax money blackhole. So the question remains, where do we go and who will get us there?

We would say that the answer is more simple than most would think. There is only one group of people who can force governments to be accountable for their actions and responsible with the money we entrust in them. There is only one group that can, by the power of voice and vote, force government to follow the strict vision of the people it is meant to govern. The answer is you. You have the power to not only layout the vision for your community, but you have the power to make sure it gets implemented. Remember that it is you that makes government work and not the other way around. It is not the vision of campaign mailers and billboards that will build a better community, it is the ideas from members of our community that will.

It might sound simple, but in the absence of any false vision created by government officials and non-profit tax-subsidized organizations, it is the vision that we should explore and trust first. You have been selected to serve.

Multimodal

Tonight the Kissimmee City Commission will have a second and final hearing on the adoption of ordinance changes to adopt a Multimodal Transportation District. This basically means that the commission is adopting language that shows they are 'kinda-sort-of' interested in improving transportation options in the City. This is a good first step considering that most of those who are now singing of the praises of this 'Get Out of Transportation Jail Free Card', are the very individuals who let public transportation grind to a halt for many in the community who rely on it every day. Don't worry though, years of damage to our public transportation system due to funding cuts so round-about fountains could be added will be wiped away with the adoption of any ordinance with the word 'Multimodal' in it.

One thing that shocked the WayneWho staff in reading this proposed ordinance was that it would amend the Bicycle/Pedestrian plan. We were shocked because from what we can tell from trying to get around town on foot these days, the current plan resembles a scene from 'Death Race 2000' starring David Carradine where 'Hit and Run driving is no longer a felony, it's a national sport!' While we have heard the election year rhetoric of creating a 'Walkable Community,' we have yet to hear any reports of any of our elected officials walking around town to see if we really have one. For those of us who do walk, we know that every time you try to navigate any of the ill-conceived sidewalks or crosswalks it feels more like someone has applied a point system to vehicles trying to hit you whether you were in a crosswalk or not. If 'Multimodal' means jump or dive out of harms way, then this plan is the one the community has been dealing with for years.

In the end, this shiny new ordinance is not really about the community as much as it is about the city scoring more grant money to build light rail stations that no one can get to while neglecting the transportation needs we already have. The ordinance does much more than this when you dig into it though. This ordinance also becomes the blueprint on how new development in the city will be squashed under the more mounds of red tape. Now new projects will have to jump through even more hoops to get approved which is always great when trying to jump start an economy.

Just Remember - Fountains are worth 200 points and points are doubled if it is a round-about fountain.

Keeping The Faith

An article in the Orlando Sentinel today notes the arrests of 34 suspects in the McLaren Circle neighborhood of Kissimmee. The arrests come at the end of a nine-month undercover investigation of violence and drug dealing. In the arrests, guns and bullet proof vests were also seized. All the WayneWho staff can say is "Great Job!"

Sometimes we have to all remember that while the day to day whimpering and finger pointing between politicians and money hungry special interest groups can make the whole area seem on the verge of completely imploding, the hard working people of Osceola County keep everything going. In this case it is the hard working law enforcement officers who do their jobs with pride and honor. While some politicians will pat themselves on the back for their wisdom in all things pertaining to law enforcement because they once spent a night at a Holiday Inn Express, we shouldn't lose focus on those who really do the work. They, after all, are what makes this community work.

Ostrich Economics

Like most local governments, the City of Kissimmee's unfolding strategy for dealing with current Central Florida economic crisis is to stick their collective heads in the sand and hope it goes away. While staff and elected officials alike will suggest they have met the crisis head on by making 'necessary' cuts to trim general fund spending, the WayneWho staff, and all of those e-mailing us, would argue that governments have all made hatchet wielding cuts with no planning on how to provide the services government should be providing instead of popularity based programs. In essence, governments have jammed money in the faces of the programs they think will get them re-elected, and then stuck their head in the sand to block out the foul cries from the public and the small business community.

The lack of any honest understanding of business economics became more than apparent at this week's City of Kissimmee Commission Meeting. What many would call the most blatant proof of this was the denial of $30,000 to the Small Business Development Center which is housed at the Kissimmee/Osceola County Chamber of Commerce. While we agree with the questioning that commissioners engaged in with Chamber President Mike Horner on accountability and the program's level of success, we have to disagree with the overall concepts brought fourth in the denial of the program. If the City Commission, Osceola County Commission, staff at both entities, and the useless Economic Development 'rah... rah...' group, had any idea of how to put a plan together on how to actually begin building an economy in Osceola County, the blunders that the City Commission has made during this budget cycle may not have happened. We also feel that all levels of government are to blame.

We will begin our examples of idiocy by pointing out the most basic of blunders. The City Commission denies a request for funding $30,000 to the Small Business Development Center which is backed by the Small Business Administration of the United States Federal Government and by the University of Central Florida. The commissioners made this decision based on all of the 'hard' decisions that they have had to make during this budget year and they need to hold on to as much money in their 'General Fund' as possible. While we applaud this idea, we have to argue on its execution. The commissioners turned down a Federally backed SBA program of it's $30,000 and gave the $30,000 instead to the Kissimmee Main Street Club that specializes in alcohol related drinking events, for the generic task of Business Recruitment and Retention. If any of our readers have driven downtown, or anywhere in Kissimmee, we believe they would have noticed that it is apparent the retention part is not working. While we believe that the people involved with the Main Street Club are honest good-hearted fun loving people, we would have to question their business experience and the faith, and dollars, put in them during these dark economic times. The Main Street Club has had a hard time expanding and growing the Kissimmee Farmers Marketing with backing and advertising help from the City of Kissimmee, and we should believe that they are better equipped to smartly spend $30,000 as opposed to the SBA? It doesn't make sense to us either.

What we really found interesting about the dialog on this issue between the commissioners the other night was their lack of the basic understanding of what our local government's role is. As much as the senior citizens of our community need our help, they are not the future of this community. While the senior population may continue to grow, the benefits to our community because of the growth are non-existent. While we would never suggest that we should not find ways to help senior citizens or suggest they are not wanted in our community, we would argue that dumping all or our funding into programs for seniors does not create a path for economic recovery in our area. While we understand that the 'Senior Vote' is what gets commissioners elected, they are not the group that is going to develop new industries that increase our tax base and provide jobs.

We would also have to laugh at the thoughts the commissioners shared about wanting to create more jobs by helping small businesses because they are the backbone of our community. They made these comments after just creating an ordinance to charge one segment of businesses in our community a new 'Database Tax'. They also created new red-tape for the Security Industry to navigate through. Creating more jobs and helping small business takes more than election cycle rhetoric. A plan to help actually needs to be developed to make it happen and cutting the funding to the Small Business Development Center is not a good start in this plan. Demand accountability, demand data, demand that a better plan be developed, but don't stab the small business community in the back again. Hiding behind empty wording that is spoken week after week is just another way of sticking ones head in the sand.

This announcement brought to you by the color green

Well, it’s that time of year again...it seems like every week another bag of telephone books is deposited by your front door.

What to do with the old ones? For years, it seems that the people who run the recycling programs and recycling bins have posted big warnings about how whole paper recycling loads will be rejected if phone books are found inside. So huge amounts of paper end up in the trash can, and then the landfill.

A WayneWho staffer was watching a home improvement show over the weekend, and they went to a factory that makes that blown-in cellulose insulation. The staffer was amazed when the plant manager said that their two preferred sources for paper fiber (the main content of cellulose insulation) were newspapers and PHONE BOOKS, and that they didn’t like office paper as much because the fibers were shorter and dustier.

So we went out in search to see if recycling opinions have changed. Nope. According to the Osceola County web site, phone books are still prohibited from the recycling bins. Next stop was the “Recycle Your Phone Books” link on Yellowpages.com. According to their site, the closest dropoff site for phone book recycling is the City of Orlando. Not encouraging.

Just for fun, we dropped a “bag o’ phone books” fresh off the curb onto the WayneWho office postal scale, and it came in at 7.4 pounds. Maybe one of the mathematicians among us wants to figure out how many tons of phone books are being hauled to the landfill (and remember, folks, a large part of your trash pickup fee is the tonnage taken to the landfill).

Local recycling folks, we have laid down the challenge. Maybe you want to talk to the cellulose insulation people before next year’s annual binge of phone books. We bet they’ll pay you to collect old phone books for them.

As a footnote, we read in the Monday business section of the Sentinel that Waste Management Inc. had recently presented Keep Winter Park Beautiful with a $10,000 check to be used for a number of projects, including a phone book recycling initiative. Huh. Waste Management. If only there were someone in our community who had a connection to that company. As long as we’re here, how is that grant-funded study of curbside recycling pickup going, commissioners?

Second Read

The WayneWho staff was surprised to see the return of the 'Security Tax' ordinance return so quickly for a second reading which would be the final reading before the Alarm System Ordinance became a revenue generator. What really surprised us was the complete change in the ordinance from the first reading to the second, and we wondered how it could even be legal to make such drastic changes to an ordinance and not have to bring it back for a first reading so the public and businesses involved could be given time to voice their opinions. Of course our commission has a long standing tradition of finding ways to cut the public out of the process, so our surprise was a muted response.

We were happy to see that the new direction of the ordinance was to eliminate any yearly charges to individual homeowners and businesses for owning a security system, but they would still have to register the system by permit every year. Seems very reasonable.

Where the real change in the ordinance appears is in the fact that now the commission wants to charge alarm companies a yearly registration fee of $100.00 and provide the city with an updated list of the systems they operate. If they do not provide the information on an annual basis there will be a fine on the company. Our problem is not that this is up for discussion, it is that there will be no time for the companies to have any say before this is passed. They will believe that some sort of ordinance that resembles what was passed in the first reading is what will be voted on for the second reading. This will not be true in this case. Of course this gives the Kissimmee/Osceola Chamber of commerce time to duck on the issue by saying 'We didn't know about it.' even though they have again chosen to be silent on another business related decision. Of course they are probably keeping their mouth shut on this issue because they are trying to hold on to their funding for the seldom used Small Business Development Center. The funding for this 'Chamber' program is also up for discussion tonight. We would hope that the Chamber would stand up for the businesses it takes money from every year, but that would not be the norm.

So what we are left with is a system of failures leading to an ordinance that will end up costing more money than leaving the current system in place. It will cost more money in trying to track down who provides alarm and/or monitoring services in the city. It will cost more in taking data from multiple sources and then trying to bring that into a single program that can bring it all together. It will cost more money in IT time and hardware because of course what the city already has will not be enough to do the job. All of this while doing very little to curb the number of false alarm calls to the Police Department.

While we believe that the merits of the ordinance should be debated, the problem is there will be no debate. From the first reading to the second, there is a completely different ordinance. Local impacted companies have probably not been contacted, and what is supposed to be the voice for local businesses will stay silent. We believe the new ordinance deserves a second reading.

Big Kids and Big Toys

You couldn’t help but notice that, in the local print media over the last week, the Kissimmee Police Department has been announcing their acquisition of two 3-wheel traffic enforcement vehicles (motor-tricycles?). Complete with pictures!

We’ve seen some of these vehicles cruising down the 192 strip. For those on our staff who aren’t motorcyclists, we thought, “gee, that might be a nice high-mileage adult vehicle/toy, if we had the money.” Kind of like a Honda Gold Wing.

But in a time when the City Commission and city management squeal at every opportunity about how budgets are being cut and there are no funds available for anything, we wonder about the purchase of what are admittedly not standard police patrol vehicles.

We were surprised to learn that the purchase price of these vehicles hovers at the $16,000 range, before emergency equipment and markings (according to the papers). This seems to put these bikes within a couple thousand dollars of a fleet-purchased Ford Crown Victoria (again, before emergency equipment and markings). But, we assume that these bikes will not be any officer’s primary mode of transport, rather, available for shared use for special events and those special traffic details.

Certainly they seem safer than a two-wheel motorcycle, and from the pictures, have lots more opportunities for more blinky lights. But the accompanying articles note that the police department will continue to operate their Harley-Davidson patrol motorcycles as well. And we wonder whether these three-wheel things will have the ability to move in traffic the way motorcycles do, which is one of the supposed strengths of police motorcycles.

So, the police department is buying special equipment that costs almost as much as a patrol car, but won’t be used as much. Probably safer than a motorcycle, but not replacing motorcycles. In these trying financial times, we would have loved to have seen the last line of the press release read:

“The manufacturer, in exchange for KPD’s feedback on how these vehicles perform as police vehicles, is leasing them to the police department for $1 per year.”

or:

“Officers assigned to these vehicles will use them as their primary patrol vehicle, in an effort to increase visibility and reduce fuel costs. When those officers need a standard squad car, they will use an older shared car from the city fleet.”

Alarmist Reaction

Today's edition of the Osceola News Gazette continues the sales pitch to the residents of the City of Kissimmee on why they should get down on one knee and thank city government for the opportunity to pay them even more money. To shake your dollars from your already shrinking wallet they are now using alarmist tactics to scare the public into giving up their hard earned cash more readily. As in their editorial, we will use the same analogy of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf".

First we will take a quick look at the numbers that were presented in their editorial on this "crisis" of false alarm calls from automatic alarm systems. The periodical notes that the Kissimmee Police Department responded to almost 4,000 automated calls of which only around 1,000 were real emergencies. Which means, in essence, less than 3,000 calls in a 12 month period were false alarms. Since the Osceola News Gazette is using nice round numbers, when you divide these numbers down to come up with daily number of false alarms, you are looking at 9 non-emergency false alarms per day give or take a few calls for math accuracy. While the WayneWho staff agrees with KPD, the City Commission, and their mouth piece, the Gazette that these amounts of false alarms are unacceptable, we do not believe that creating a 'Security Tax' will fix the problem, and will probably create other problems instead.

First, where did this idea of creating a tax to force the collection of data come from? It came from the company that has been hired to collect false alarm fees for alarms that have had too many false alarms. This ideas was presented and accepted with no real discussion. There has been no obvious attempt by city government to handle this issue in any other way. It is easier to sit back and scream in a panic demanding the citizens charge card be swiped again. Wolf... Wolf...

As one of our commenters posted yesterday, "Aren't the police on duty anyway?" We feel that this is a very valid question that of course no one seems to want to address in their list of scary numbers. Are we to believe that officers are not responding to calls to real emergencies because of false alarms? Has staffing at the police and fire departments dropped to a level where this is a problem? We know that standing by a building with a blazing alarm for twenty-minutes sucks, but is this creating problems in emergency response times? Will this new 'Security Tax' aid in a reduction in crime? Maybe the Police Chief should present that information instead of looking upset at the podium because the public might want this issue debated.

Another point about the new 'Security Tax' or fee as some want to call it, is that we listened to all the arguments about the new Fire Fee being what we needed to finally fund our Fire Department without being tied to the ebb and flow of government income. But here we are again, asking for another fee to fix another problem that was either overlooked or ignored. Wolf... Wolf...

The scary part is that elected officials are supposed to help provide a vision for our community that represents the will of the people, and they do not. Today's elected officials represent a vision of our community that campaign contributors want to see and a vision of how big and strong government should be. The WayneWho staff would not be so opposed to this new fee if other avenues, which would require some vision, would have been tried first. Maybe someone can come up with other ideas that will achieve the same goal of reducing the number of false alarms. The Mayor stated that was really our goal and not revenue collection, so maybe we should give it a try.

Why not set up a space on the cities website that allows security alarm owners to register and maintain contact information at no charge. The city could even print out registration forms with links to the website registration system that could be given out to the security alarm companies doing business in this county. The city could also use 'Access Osceola' and all the groups the city pays to be a member of to get the word out there that we are doing a 'No False Call' registration drive to promote safer communities and a better working relationship with KPD. This could even be opened up as an opportunity for neighborhood watch groups to help register their neighbors and let them become part of the solution. Maybe working from the point of community pride, instead of the idea that 'We have to tax you morons so we can handle all of this for you!' would work out better than expected. If not, then institute the tax, but at least government would not have bitten at the first fluffy thing it thought was a sheep to feed its belly. Wolf.. Wolf..

Know Nuthin'

Many people believe that the stupidity of government knows no bounds. The WayneWho staff believes that government is not inherently stupid, but that a sense of moronic ignorance overtakes elected officials once they take office because of a constant tug-of-war between the different mentalities of the public and private sectors. Of course at last weeks City of Kissimmee Commission meeting, our beliefs were stretched thin as the Commission attempted to debate a new 'Security Tax' ordinance that seems to do more to discourage citizens and businesses from protecting life and property than it does to promote it. What we found most interesting about the meeting was the commission and the staff's complete ignorance on the particulars of this ordinance when a citizen/business owner began asking questions.

Before we continue on with the questions that were asked we would like to point out one simple fact. The Dallas based company that has already been hired by the commission, which it seems they were unaware of, made these recommendations to improve their ability to collect fines imposed by the current ordinance. A 'salesperson' from the company then devised a plan that would increase the amount they could bill, and city staff fell right in line, quickly creating an ordinance that would charge all owners of security systems excessive fees whether or not they had ever had a false alarm call. The staff and the commission were excited about this new revenue stream because their cut would go straight to their general fund for use on pet projects like round-about fountains, government subsidized farmers markets, and kick-backs to non-profit organizations that may or not may be in the public interest. We are unaware, at this time, of how much money the city will make as the 'Security Tax' collection agency sells the personal data it collects to telemarketers or whomever might have an interest in such information because the original ordinance was written so badly, and the ordinance that has passed its first reading was left so full of holes, that it is just not clear. Originally we would have assumed the commission or staff would have had a slight grip on the ordinance they were attempting to pass, but as we continued to watch we were proven wrong.

A single citizen was allowed to speak on the issues surrounding this ordinance which, the commission realized right away, was a mistake. To the citizens questions, the commission responded with dumbfounded "ahh... we aren't really sure", "we don't have answers to that", and the occasionally gurgling noises that at least let the viewing audience know they were somewhat conscious, but unfortunately their Commander, Christopher Pike retorts left little clarity in the minds of anyone watching in the audience. To be fair to the citizen, we would note that the questions that were asked were very simple and were not as difficult as some on the commission would lead you to believe. Questions like, "Would the fees have to be paid if my alarm system does not automatically call the police?", "If a fee has to be charged, why is there a difference between commercial and residential security systems?," and "Commissioner Otero, being a staunch Ronald Reagan Republican, how is it you can be for more government and higher taxes especially on businesses in an economy that is this bad?" Beep once for yes, twice for no.

Of course after the commission discussed all of the problems with the ordinance and ignored the citizens questions, the motion was made to pass the first reading of the ordinance so it could be completely modified before the second, and final, reading. This even though a motion had already been made to postpone the first reading of the ordinance until it could be fixed. So much for procedure.

Beep... Beep...