Road Trip To Tallahassee

I know I've been slow at blogging with the holidays. Hopefully now that everything has calmed down more, I can catch up.

Back in December, Julie Townsend, Pam Childers, and myself went to Tallahassee to lobby at the Senate Transportation Committee on behalf of ourselves, our neighbors and Julie for Lakeland. By a stroke of luck we were in the hall in the Senate when one of the Representitives called from the House of Representatives to say that CSX and FDOT were at the House speaking.

That led to a flight of the bumble bee run to the House, which is across a large room into a different building, or it felt like a different part of the same building.

I won't say I'm here to tell you everything that went on, hopefully everyone read that in the newspapers, but I will say that if you have never spoken in a public forum before, you should.

Be it city, county or state level, get involved and go for it.

I had someone recently say to me that government is set up to intimidate, which I will agree. But he also said shame on me for being intimidated. I should stand on my own two feet and speak. I also agree.

I guess the lesson for the new year is go for it, you'll never know until you try and it is very empowering. Be it CSX, taxes, roads or schools, whatever your passion is, speak up. If you don't, you have no right to complain.

Have a great New Year!!!

FDOT Transportation Secretary at Lakeland Meeting

The secretary for transportation, Stephanie Kopelousos, was the guest speaker at the Lakeland CSX/FDOT meeting last Friday. And she was met with a less than warm and fuzzy crowd.
Lakeland was the main focus because their state senator Paula Dockery and representative Dennis Ross had arranged the meeting.

It was a passionate crownd starting with a presentation from Jim Studial of Lakeland. Jim had serious concerns with the project including the fact that an Environmental Impact Study was not being done on the site along with the DRI and that the DRI process was being fast tracked by the state.

Ron Weaver, the state wide well known land use attorney, who was hired to represent Lakeland spoke on the injustices to downtown Lakeland. He always makes excellent points!

I will say the most moving part of the day was when Julie Townsend asked the secretary 10 very hard questions. They were questions on everyone's mind and each one was met with a thunderous applause from the audience.
One such question was if the traffic from the Orlando intermodal site was harmful to Orlando and Orlando has tried to get rid of this thing for years, why does the state think it will be good for Polk County? (More thunderous applause!)

A few of us had time at the end to get up and speak on the impacts to us on the eastern side of the county.
Pam Childers, Johnny Guest, Eldon Tipper, Wayne Guest and others all had very good points and were well received.
My statement pointed out that by having this $500 million in hand and waiting to hand it over to CSX / Evansville railroad, at this point the state and federal governments would be just as liable and criminally negligent for the harmful impacts of this site to myself, my family, my neighbors and the thousands of unsuspecting Polk County residents who have had no representation and would be harmed by this.

I also want to point out that it's amazing that my own state senator, Senator JD Alexander when asked about this topic at last week's delegation meeting, thought it was the next best thing to sliced bread and didn't want to hear any different. Could it be that he would be one of those "fat cats" we hear about who stand to gain the most from this.
He needs the Heartland Parkway to go through so the state will buy all those glorious acres from he and his friends for the road, thus profiting him directly and secondly with a booming parkway in place his surrounding thousands of acres would be worth a fortune instead of just cattle land as it stands now. And what better way to ensure the future of the Heartland Parkway than to justify it's need with the thousands of semi trucks to an ILC site.
Where is Eastern Polk's representation when we need it? Do we not pay tax dollars also?

Any questions on that conspiracy theory?

Today is Pearl Harbor Day

Today is Pearl Harbor Day. Let's not forget this day as it is a reminder to all of us that freedom is not free. Let us not forget that today this great nation is in another struggle where our young men and women are picking up the tab for the rest of us.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1296093/posts

http://www.anysoldier.com/

McLaughlin Fine Arts Academy

This year in Lake Wales is the first year for the McLaughlin Fine Arts Academy on the campus of McLaughlin Middle School.

Today the 8th grade orchestra class played Christmas music at the Lake Wales Woman's Club. Their teacher is Mr. Monicelli, sorry for the spelling, and he works very hard with the kids to bring out their best. My daughter Kylie is in the class and enjoys it very much.

I've put pictures at the top of the performance, which lasted about 15 minutes.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Madalyn Walton, who is the fine arts coordinator and was at the performance today. I did forget to mention in the previous post about the Woman's Club, that Ms. Watson was presented a check from the Woman's Club to the school for whatever the school needed. It was very generous of them! Thank You Ladies!

Tomorrow the same group will be playing at the annual Lake Wales Chamber of Commerce Christmas Luncheon, and I'll make sure to have pictures from that event.

The Woman's Club of Lake Wales

My daughter and her classmates played at the Lake Wales Woman't Club luncheon today.

I wanted to post a little info for anyone who may like to get involved in this service club.

The yearly fee to be a member is $35 with a first time $5 start up fee.

The physical address is 275 East Park Ave in Lake Wales and the mailing address is

PO Box 1078, Lake Wales, FL 33859-1078.

Thank you to all the ladies for having the kids there and allowing us to be part of your day!

Polk's Legislators All Together

Once a year, all the Representatives and senators from the Polk County area get together to discuss, hear from organizations about funding needs and resident's issues.
This meeting was held this past Tues. 12/4/07 at the County Commission Building in Bartow.
Now if you've read my previous blog, I said Pam and I were at Citizen's Academy graduation. Well we were partially. We were at the legislative meeting in the afternoon just to get the feel of the process. Residents were supposed to speak starting at 7pm. The afternoon session got finished early, so they ushered in people to start speaking. Everyone was there to speak on a different subject. It is a long day, but very interesting to hear all the different concerns and issues of the county.
Pam and I were there to speak about the CSX ILC, of course. They took Pam right away and she did not make a good impression on Sen. JD Alexander. He is definitely in favor of the ILC and didn't really want to hear any different. Too bad for him, he did.
There was about an hour break and then the evening session began around 7pm.
Pam and I were at graduation upstairs, our family and neighbors were downstairs preparing to plead our case. She and I were up and down those elevators all day.
The chairman of the meeting decided when he finally saw how many people were there to speak about CSX that everyone couldn't. They asked that 4 people represent the group. Mike Chiavuzzi, Eldon Tipper, Johnny Guest and Wayne Guest went, with Wally Krouson sneaking up the rear and getting in. (Go Wally!)
All in all I think it was a good meeting, not only for my personal cause, but for most people who attended.

Citizen's Academy Graduation

Tuesday night was a momentous occassion for Pam and myself. We finally graduated. Ok, it was from Polk County's Citizen's Academy, and there was no cap and gown, but it was a great experience.

Spouses, significant others or a guest were allowed to come gone the last session. My husband, Mike did make it, or at least for awhile.

We had a brief class on our county library system, then on to graduation. At the actually graduation county manager Mike Herr attended and spoke, as well as the asst. county manager and County Commissioner Reed. (Commissioner Reed was in the first class when the program started!)

I am going to say shame on those of you who are native to Polk County. I found out most of the people in this class and others are new comers looking to get to know the area. I'm sure most natives will say they don't need the info, like I used to say, but they'd be wrong.

I do encourage everyone to contact the county to find out when the next class will be and attend. It was great!

County Commissioners In Ft. Meade Parade

The county commissioners recently decided to join local hometown Christmas parades, partly in honor of our status as "The All American County".

I have to say that I'm from Ft. Meade and my family still lives there (Go Miners!). I'm the only one who moved to the big city of Winter Haven. I do still miss the things that make a small town great and I go back weekly to visit and join in.

Last Saturday evening was Ft. Meade's Christmas parade. There are other parades in the county, I just go to this one. It was a blast. Local businesses, churches and charity organizations set up boothes and sold baked goods, cotton candy, black beans and rice, chicken and had a huge slide and bouncy for the kids. Not to mention elephant rides.

Then right through the middle of it all down Broadway was the parade. Kids ran after candy, motorcycles drove by, the Ft. Meade High School Band marched, the JV cheerleaders, floats and horses on parade! I always feel like a kid again!

There was the extra treat this year of the county commission having a float. I saw Bob English, who walked the entire parade carrying the banner, go Bob! Randy Wilkinson and Jean Reed rode the float. I didn't see Sam Johnson. Jack Myers had said at a commission meeting that he didn't want to go to Ft. Meade, he'd go to Frostproof's instead. Now, I take personal issue with someone picking Frostproof over Ft. Meade. Not that it's a bad little town, it's just not mine. Wonder if Jack knew I was from Ft. Meade? Probably not, but missing the chance to see me more than likely didn't hurt his feelings either!

Hope everyone gets a chance to visit one of the hometown parades!