 |  | They're Building What Across the Street from My House??!!!??
I live in Cape Canaveral, one of Brevard County’s sixteen municipalities. While it isn’t as small as Melbourne Village with its 693 residents, our 10,413 population is still at the lower end of the scale for the County. Because of that and the fact that the whole town is barely two square miles in area, it would seem pretty hard for something of consequence to happen here without most of the citizenry knowing at least something about it.
But not terribly long ago some of those citizens rose up at a City Council meeting to vent their anger over the construction of a multi-generational facility in place of the ball field in the park across the street from their homes. They had never heard of it, had never been notified about it, were horrified by the cost [their grandchildren will be paying for it forever], it would damage their way of life and ruin their property values, not to mention the traffic congestion, parking issues, candy wrappers blowing into their yards, etc. How could the City possibly be erecting this surprise monstrosity in front of their homes?
Of course, it was no surprise. It had been talked about in visioning meetings for years, planning and financing had begun some five years previous with full notice to the world through published City Council and Planning and Zoning Commission agendas, minutes, meetings, public notices and recorded archived meetings. And all of that took place in City Hall, a dauntingly distant two blocks from the protesters’ homes. So, one might ask [and I do] how could these folks not have known? The answer is that they were uninvolved in civic life. Until the bulldozers and backhoes were lining up on their block, they were oblivious.
In much the same way, the average Floridian [not to be confused with Floriduh Man] is frighteningly oblivious of the onslaught against democracy unfolding in Tallahassee. During our recent Hot Topic former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Peggy Quince outlined for us the three-prong attack on fundamental constitutional rights being rushed through the legislature. As Mark Twain observed, “No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” In the most basic terms, our one-party government will be making citizen initiatives virtually impossible, suppressing our right to assemble in protest and impeding our access to the ballot box.
I challenge you to walk up to a few randomly selected Florida citizens and ask them basic questions about what is happening in Tallahassee. I don’t think the answer you get will be, “Why, yes, of course I know,” followed by a cogent recitation of the appalling legislation. More than likely, if you get any answer beyond a blank stare, it will involve catch phrases about stopping riots and vote fraud that they gleaned from a mention on television or a brief newspaper story.
Civic involvement, reading actual source material, critically listening to expert opinions—these are some of the steps needed to begin to combat the continued brazen assaults on democracy perpetrated under one-party rule. Sadly, few of our fellow citizens have taken that extra step to involve themselves in the legislative nightmare being pushed into law in a process that is purposefully obscured by those elected to represent us.
But a year or so from now that same person you spoke with will possibly be wondering:
• Why hasn’t my vote by mail ballot arrived?
• Why was my signature rejected?
• Why was I threatened by arrest for handing someone a bottle of water in line at a polling place?
• Why are the only amendments on the ballot wacky stuff proposed by the legislature?
• And why, of all crazy things, is Aunt Sally calling me to bail her out after spending the night in jail when she was only walking past some demonstrators on her way to the library and got swept up in a mass arrest because a Floriduh sheriff decided that those twelve people with picket signs constituted a riot?
The answer to those questions is the same basic answer to why a homeowner in Cape Canaveral didn’t have a clue about why a backhoe was in the field across from his house. During Lobby Day, our lobbyist, Jeff Sharkey, noted that lobbyists are the people you hire to protect you from the people you elect. If you don’t pay attention to government and what it’s doing, you own the results. It is usually too late to walk back those results without an inordinate amount of effort, time and money. That’s the impending situation in Florida. Despite the efforts of our Florida League, our lobbyists, local chapters, all 67 Supervisors of Elections and partner organizations one-party rule coupled with a largely oblivious citizenry means an enormous challenge is looming before us.
Our mission statement says: The League of Women Voters …. encourages informed and active participation in government, works to increase understanding of major public policy issues, and influences public policy through education and advocacy. Carrying out that mission in the coming year will be a major task, needing the active participation of every League member. We like to say that Voter Services is the very heart of the League, and all League members are part of the Voter Services team. My tenure in the League has been brief compared to many of you who have been members for decades. But I hope you will feel the same sense of urgency that I do in facing this unprecedented attack on basic rights.
Many of our members are highly motivated regarding specific issues, but only peripherally involved in “…the very heart of the League.” At the start of my tenure as President of the LWVSC I’m asking that each of you consider stepping outside your issue silo, and maybe your comfort zone, from time to time and join the Voter Services team as they take on the burden of voter education in a drastically changed and increasingly hostile civic landscape.
In League
Rob Grisar
LWVSC President |  | Now that the 2020 Presidential election is over you may think that nothing much is happening until the next general election. Not true. There is legislation in both the Florida Senate and House that contains major changes in voting accessibility and processes. It is likely that some form of this legislation will pass this legislative session. This means we will need to conduct a major outreach campaign to educate voters about the new legislative requirements.
There are elections in eight municipalities in Brevard in 2021. This means we will be conducting voter registration activities and candidate forums as well as voter education. Which means we need your help to support these efforts.
We need you to take the required quiz to become certified to register voters so you can help us when it is safe to conduct voter registration events. There is a link on the Voter Services page on the LWVSC website that will take you to this quiz. You can take it multiple times until you pass. We also plan to conduct another training session for members who become certified voter registrants who would like more in depth training on how to conduct voter registration.
These local elections are just as important as the national elections as they will select the elected officials who will determine and implement policies that determine the protection of equal rights, police procedures, and a myriad of actions that impact the quality of life in our local community.
You do not need to join the Voter Services Committee to help out in supporting voter registration or candidate forums but if you’d like to join our Committee, we meet the second Wednesday each month from 3:00 – 4:30 via Zoom. Please contact me for additional information if you are interested. We’d love to have you join us in carrying out the core mission of the LWV – voter registration, voter education, and voter advocacy.
Diane K. Collier
2nd Vice President |  | An Update from your LWVUS National Popular Vote Task Force
Submitted by Sharon Reynolds-Mixon
Since the early 1970’s your National League has been supportive of the direct popular vote method for electing the nation’s President and Vice President. Although the League still supports the elimination of the Electoral College, because such action requires the very cumbersome process of passing a constitutional amendment, your National League also supports the potentially more immediate passage of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). In keeping with this effort, several resources detailing the specifics of the NPVIC are now available on the National League website.
If you would like to learn more about the NPVIC effort, investigate these resources online at https://www.lwv.org/NPVtaskforce
The webpage includes background information, a PowerPoint for educational presentations, and a webinar of experienced League members around the nation who have worked toward the adoption of NPVIC for their respective states. Recognizing that the National Popular Vote could be adopted without support of all of the states, you may want to inform yourself about what this could mean should the 270 electoral votes needed to adopt NPVIC occur. Additional resources may be added to this webpage as the task force moves forward.
|  | | Susan Webb 1st Vice President
Susan has been involved with LWV since 1978 when she joined the Hillsborough County (Tampa), Florida League where she served as Membership Chair and as Chair of several committees. She was also active in League when she lived in Lexington, KY, and Charlotte, NC. Susan joined LWVSC in 2017 and has served as co-chair of the Health Care Committee and as 1st Vice President in 2018.
A native Floridian, Susan was born in Jacksonville and moved to Vero Beach in the late 1950’s. After college and marriage, she and her husband John Twitchell (also a LWV-SC member) lived in Jacksonville for a few years prior to moving to Tampa where they lived for 25 years. Professional opportunities for John led to stints in Altanta, GA, Princeton, NJ, Lexington, KY, and Charlotte, NC. Susan, a public health researcher, was the Assistant Dean for Administrative Services and Special Projects in the University of South Florida College of Public Health for several years, then worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and the University of Kentucky College of Public Health before retiring in 2011. Following John’s first retirement in 2015, they decided to return to Florida’s East Coast. John almost immediately went back to work as a full-time engineering consultant, but finally retired at the end of 2019. Now they enjoy a quiet life in Indian Harbour Beach interspersed with lively visits from their two adult children who live in Alexandria, VA, and Alameda, CA. In addition to indulging their interests in flying, boating, and shelling, Susan and John enjoy reading, cooking, and—these days—armchair travel. They are looking forward to being able to travel more frequently to see their children and to visit friends and relatives in the Northeast and West.
|  | Diane Callier 2nd Vice President
Diane was born and raised in Nebraska and graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1977 with a B.S. in Environmental Sciences. Diane worked for the Environmental Protection Agency for over twenty years in their Region 7 Office.
In February 2001 Diane moved to Cape Canaveral to take a job at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) as their Environmental Branch Chief responsible for regulatory compliance, recycling, energy conservation, cleanup of historical contamination, and natural resources. Her career was briefly interrupted by a bout with breast cancer and chemotherapy but she has now been cancer free for 19 years. Diane ended her career at KSC as the Chief of the Medical and Environmental Management Division in 2011 when she retired.
Since retirement she and her husband, Rob Grisar, currently president of LWVSC, have enjoyed traveling the U.S. and Europe. They live in Cape Canaveral with their two cats.
Diane's specific interests since joining the LWVSC include supporting voter registration and voter forums, and local government and the observer corps, believing that informed and active voters are critical to the survival and success of our government and society.
| | |
 | Phosphate Mining is a Homegrown Looming Disaster
by Maureen Rupe - Natural Resources Co-Chair
I’ve written about Phosphate mines in the past but I never realized how much of a problem they pose until I started researching. Piney Point is just the latest in a long line of disasters that will probably happen again. We need to find a better way of producing phosphate for fertilizer and dog food.
Florida supplies 25% of the world’s phosphate (the US ranks third in the world). Florida supplies 80% of all phosphate that is used here in the U.S., most of that goes into fertilizer. In order to produce the phosphate, the ore is strip mined from 60 – 80 feet below the surface, then sulfuric acid dissolves it into a “slurry.” The phosphate is separated from the slurry, leaving behind phosphogypsum. For every ton of the phosphoric acid produced for fertilizer, there are five tons of this phosphogypsum waste that is left to damage the environment.
Since phosphogypsum is radioactive, the phosphogypsum slurry goes into phosphogypsum stacks. The water pools on the top and solids settle to the bottom and are used to form the containment walls. These “stacks” grow into 200-foot mountains and can be as wide as 600 football fields. There are 26 phosphogypsum stacks across Florida. As most of Florida is built on porous rock, it is susceptible to sinkholes. I wrote about the one in 2016 that sent 215 million gallons of contaminated water and waste into a major drinking water aquifer and before that in 1994 there was a sinkhole at another phosphogypsum stack. In 1997 a phosphogypsum stack collapsed where 50 million gallons of contaminated water went into the Alafia River. Piney Point had a previous leak in 2011 where it spilled 170 million gallons of wastewater.
The Florida legislature has proposed spending $200 million to clean up and close the Piney Point phosphogypsum stack. Unfortunately, Manatee County Commission Chair Vanessa Baugh announced their county board of commissioners authorized the use of a deep injection well to store the remaining wastewater from Piney Point into the brackish area of the Florida Aquifer once it’s been treated. What guarantees this contaminated water will not move?
Florida has issues. What to do with the more than 1 billion tons of radioactive phosphogypsum waste? Can we really reclaim the land after the mining industry finishes with it? How do we protect Floridians from spills into our surface waters, ground water, and our aquifer? If we cannot stop phosphate mining, can we at least find the technology to produce phosphate without so much destruction?
Reference:
https://www.theverge.com/22371931/fertilizer-toxic-legacy-florida-wastewater-disaster-piney-point-ph
|  | What is Step Up for Students and Why Should We Care?
by Hilah Mercer, Chair of Education Committee
In March 2021, the League of Women Voters of Florida Education Task Force released its Step Up for Students Preliminary Investigative Report. The complete report is available at https://lwvfl.org/step-up-for-students-preliminary-investigative-report/ Step Up for Students is the organization that awards and manages tax credit scholarships for the state of Florida and Alabama. Step Up is a private organization that has been growing rapidly using direct and indirect public funds for the past 20 years. In 2019 Step Up and its subsidiaries had $697,363,075 in total assets.
The original mission of Step Up was to award vouchers, now called scholarships, to low-income students to attend private schools. The vouchers have grown to include students with special needs, students who are bullied, students who are homeschooled, and students with reading difficulties. While there is no income threshold for homeschooled or special needs students to qualify for a scholarship, the income threshold has been raised through the years to at least 300% of the poverty level for the remaining scholarships. Once a student qualifies for a scholarship, they keep it through 12th grade regardless of family income.
Corporations receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit on corporate and certain sales taxes owed to the state of Florida for “donations” made to Step Up. As the report clearly states, “Billions of dollars have been diverted to Step Up instead of having been deposited into General Revenue to operate state government, including public schools.”
The report provides evidence that Step Up is a money management/marketing firm operating as a charity with total net assets of over a half billion dollars. Step Up takes an administrative fee of 2.5-3% of contributions. With a cap on corporate contributions in 2020 of $874M, Step Up would receive nearly $21M to promote the tax credit scholarship programs to corporations and to market the program to parents.
Because of the complexity and size of the scholarship program the FL Department of Education’s (DOE) Dept. of School Choice cannot supervise the program. The DOE outsourced oversight functions to Step Up, the same private agency that has awarded over one million scholarships to date, providing evidence of the fox guarding the henhouse.
The LWVFL Education Task Force states they hope to bring the shadowy operations of Step Up for Students into the light through their investigative report. The report emphasizes the essential importance of an equitable and high-quality public education system to a democracy. It highlights the dangers of a growing and unaccountable privately controlled school system, ostensibly under the Dept. of Education, and provides a myriad of reasons why this should concern every Floridan. Again, the full report can be found at https://lwvfl.org/step-up-for-students-preliminary-investigative-report/
|  | Do you know how our Save Our Lagoon Sales Tax Dollars are spent?
Presently, the Brevard County Natural Resource Department is in the process of expanding their Septic-to-Sewer Conversion program by targeting about 5000 homeowners that live near the Lagoon and currently have septic systems but are within the reach of a municipal sewer program. Septic systems, especially older ones, have been identified as a major source of the polluting nitrogen that reaches the IRL via groundwater. During a recent survey of septic system owners, the major hurdle to making the change to a sewer system is the upfront cost. The Save Our Lagoon Citizen’s Oversight Committee is trying to overcome that obstacle with a variety of approaches. For one, they have preapproved several plumbers who can do the work and then be paid directly by the county. For another, they have a rebate program for homeowners who prefer to hire their own plumber and then be reimbursed by the county. For more information visit the SOIRL website here:
http://www.brevardfl.gov/SaveOurLagoon/septic.
They have also created a link to a story map which will help homeowners determine if a project is being planned for their area. The link to that is here:
https://brevardbocc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=4051c47af44f4667b27fe19825de9e2e
The information available at these links include many other projects that are in various stages of planning and implementation along with the costs of each. For citizens interested in how our tax money is spent, the SOIRL website is a great source.
Check it out and see how you, too, can help with the Lagoon restoration.
https://www.brevardfl.gov/SaveOurLagoon/
|  | Great Decisions Topic for May
Persian Gulf Security
We will have a Zoom Meeting on Tuesday, May 11th at 1 p.m. Chip Hines will be leading our discussion.
We invite you to join us and learn about this important topic. If you are not in our data base to receive the zoom link, please contact, Interntional Relations Committee Chair, Joyce Calese at calese37@gmail.com
|  | Celebrating Our First Year
by Terry Mott Co-Chair of Sustainability Committee
Since the LWVSC Sustainability Committee will celebrate its first year in June 2021, I wanted to highlight some of the programs we have created.
Our primary mission in creating the Committee was to educate our League members and the general public about the principles of the emerging field of Sustainability and to connect with the United Nations international sustainability program.
To accomplish this mission, we began by creating a Sustainability Book Club to review books of leading sustainability experts. Then we began an online webinar education program focusing on various sustainability-related topics. Both the Book Club and the online webinar events are free programs and open to the general public.
As we were developing the Committee’s programs, we learned that there are many residents in Brevard who would like to be more civically engaged within their respective communities, but that they simply could not find the time to volunteer. And so we established a theme to guide our recruiting efforts: That Committee members would never be asked or expected to volunteer more than one hour per week of their time.
And to further promote this concept, we’ve set up a series of Sustainability Action Teams--each focused on a specific United Nations Sustainable Development Goal--where Committee members can focus their time on specific aspects of the project of interest to them, without having to concentrate on administrative details associated with the program.
So if you are interested in getting more involved in civic activities related to any of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals listed below to help enhance the quality of life within the Brevard community, but feel you can only donate an hour a week of your time, we may have just the right volunteer opportunity for you. Please contact Susan Little at ergajn88@gmail.com and/or Terry Mott at terrymott93@gmail.com for further information.
Here’s a list of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:
1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
10. Reduce inequality within and among countries
11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
| May Zoom Meetings
Tuesday, May 4th LWVSC Board Meeting 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm
Tuesday, May 11th International Relations Meeting 1 pm to 2:30 pm
Wednesday, May 12th Voter Services Committee Meeting 3 pm to 4:30 pm
Monday, May 17th Social Justice Committee Meeting 6 pm to 7 pm
Wednesday, May 19th Education Committee Meeting 10 am to Noon | | We welcome our New Members:
Karen Greb
Karl Kiser
Ivonne Naranjo
Nadia Stratta
Thank you to all of our members who have renewed their League Memberships. Brochures were mailed to our members who have not renewed.
Payments can be made on line or the membership form can be filled out and mailed to our Post Office Box. The P.O. Box is 360823, Melbourne, FL 32936
| | |
It’s that time of year again…to begin thinking about our…
Fall Silent Auction Fundraiser
Do you have a Treasure you no longer use? Are you looking for just the right gift for a dear friend? Or maybe you need a little pampering after all this time indoors…with a manicure or dinner out (or carry out)?
Want more information? Interested in helping? Have a great idea to share? Contact Fran Baer at 321-543-2551 or fbaer@cfl.rr.com
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