Opinion Archive

This weekend is the extremely fun Navarre Fun Fest.  Friday evening kicks off the event with live entertainment, a children’s area, and many vendor booths.  Saturday is the 5K run followed by a full day of Fun Fest.  Please see the Fun Fest Guide “on” this paper – which you can’t miss because it is wrapping this week’s edition of the Navarre Press.

Our freshman county commissioner, Rob Williamson, flew to Washington, D.C., April 13 and returned April 16 with $2,745.11 in receipts.

As our lawmakers wrestle with the state budget and debate on critical legislation dealing with water policy and the implementation of Amendment 1 (Florida Water & Land Legacy), the importance of Florida’s working forests cannot be overlooked.

Navarre Garden Club is presents its annual Spring Fling Tasting Luncheon Friday, April 17, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Lunch will be served and visitors can participate in a Butterfly Garden in a Pot workshop.

National Public Health Week kicked off on April 6 and runs through April 12. Santa Rosa Health Department is promoting its Healthiest Weight and “5-2-1-0 Let’s Go Santa Rosa” campaigns.  See their ad for all of the details and all of the services they offer free to keep us healthy in Santa Rosa.

I am thankful Santa Rosa County decided to give our children Good Friday off. Contrary to James Hamel letter, it was not considered a religious holiday but simply a non-school day. Perhaps Mr. Hamel would also like to know that it was also a Jewish holiday, Passover.

Since 2006 there have been 110 accidents involving bicycles or pedestrians on U.S. 98 between Navarre and Gulf Breeze. Nineteen of those crashes were fatal.

Opening day for the Pensacola Blue Wahoos is April 9, so be sure to check out their ad for all the daily specials.

The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) is considering several potential new changes to ease traffic flows (east and west) through the historic City of Milton area. One FDOT plan I consider best overall for, functionality, historical preservation, hurricane evacuation, minimal residential disruption, minimal time to modify, and fiscal responsibility (lowest cost), is to build one new bridge across Blackwater River. The new bridge should be the same size as the current Highway 90 bridge, but connecting to Berryhill road.

It takes considerable initiative for citizens to respectfully yet boldly confront lawmakers. It takes courageous leadership for legislators to admit and correct costly blunders. But that’s what happened last week in Florida’s Senate Appropriations Committee. When lamenting the inauspicious beginning of the FSA (the newest iteration of high stakes testing in our schools) I heard senators use phrases like “this is a train wreck” and “we’ve got to get this under control; we’re losing credibility … ”