If the unnecessary election March 8 did not convince everyone that we may need a new slate of Sarasota County commissioners, Chris Anderson’s reporting March 10 should have made the case (“Sarasota Commission bumbles its way around Rumble vote”).
It was bad enough that the Board of Commissioners tried to reverse the overwhelming choice of voters on single-member districts and deny citizens in less affluent areas of the county representation on the commission.
Then March 10 we learned that the commissioners had voted to give over $800,000 of taxpayer money to a foreign online platform that streams Russian state television.
In an argument that seems hard to believe, Commissioner Christian Ziegler said no one had told him what he was voting on, even as he was saying the grant recipient wanted to stream its service into Sarasota Public Schools. (His wife sits on the School Board.)
We do not need commissioners who collaborate with out-of-county political action committees to overturn county elections. We also do not need taxpayers’ money to be spent on foreign propaganda to go into our schools.
We do need commissioners who pay attention to local issues and represent all county residents.
Mike Weddle, Venice
Comments