I moved here to Martin County six years ago. I literally was running away from Palm Beach County. The whole place was closing in on me. The people, the traffic, the constant building way, way out to the Everglades, the traffic.

I had driven up here for years for work. I even came up after one of the Hurricanes. I think it was Jeanne. I needed air conditioning. Everyone was so nice.

I drove up Dixie in Rio and always stopped to take a photo of Mrs Peters sign. I took video of the river and the sailboats.

I always felt special driving under the Jensen Arch.

I loved it because it never changed. It always felt like old Florida to me. A  place where the people who lived here knew how to keep it special.

It must be filled with special people and I was right about that!

Then I moved here. People had kayaks and paddle boards and it reminded me of Boulder, Colorado where people drive around with Kayaks on the roof of their cars. A funky downtown with so much potential. An entire area with so much potential to be funky and fun.

Downtown Stuart with all it fun shops was a great place to tell people to meet me for lunch.

It never changed.

I could live here. I can breath here. People smile here. They are polite. They care about where they live. No one was driving up your rear end and yelling and giving you the finger.

In the last few years we have been polluted, multiple trains are coming and we have 200 sober homes here. People are being court ordered here for treatment. People that can be kicked out any time of their sober home to the streets. People are driving up my rear end and giving the finger when I pull over to let them go.

And don’t even start with the NIMBY stuff. I’ll save that for another day. There is a big difference between being a NIMBY and not wanted polluted gross water and junkies. I think that both go together.

A month ago there was someone shooting up heroin at the corner store. Some guy was upset because he had to pay for his gas with his weed money.

Many motels have been sold and now they are treatment centers. Let’s not talk about this or deal with it. Let’s wait until it’s really bad.

These treatment center are not for our neighbors but for people up north. Come to Florida. You can be a junkie here. Live in Florida. You get nothing. If you are over 65 and need alcohol or drug treatment through Medicare there is one choice and that choice will probably put you on a psychiatric unit with  a general population and not with the program you need.

The people in charge say there is nothing that can be done. That these homes ( and let me remind you that all a sober home is is a place where people live sober. Anything else is a treatment center and must be governed under Florida Law.) We are learning now that many of these places are just scams run by drug addicts or other scam artists to make money.

A scam in Florida can you believe it?

These places are not Switzerland. If there is something illegal going on there has to be a way to investigate. I think people are not thinking hard enough and they are being snowed.

The water I moved here for is unswimable. So many people I know have gotten sick. I cannot take my grandson or my dog there.

There seems to be no answer or any one taking responsibility for what Martin County is becoming. No one.

The junkies keep coming , the dirty water keeps coming and the trains are on the way.

Last year both our Representatives Gayle Harrell and Mary Lynn Magar refused to lift a finger to do the one thing that would have helped us. Millions of dollars are spent that will never make a difference. Someone is getting rich while we are still getting polluted. US.

We have been taxed in Martin County 75 million dollars to water storage so we don’t have to have discharges. Well that didn’t work. We begged for a reservoir with the water going south as mother nature put it in the first place. That didn’t happen.

In the election in 2006 ” The Palm Beach Post, which criticized Harrell for “too obediently” voting the party line and for having “so little clout in Tallahassee that she can’t protect her well-intentioned legislation from harmful amendments.”Ultimately, however, the conservative nature of the district proved too much for Ramos to overcome, and Harrell won re-election over him, scoring 54% of the vote to her opponent’s 46%

In 2008, The Palm Beach Post endorsed Fetterman over Harrell, praising the incumbent for closing a loophole that allowed sexual predators to avoid prosecution, and once again criticizing Harrell for her record in the legislature, where “she wasn’t known for bucking the GOP leadership.”However, Harrell was able to dispatch Fetterman with relative ease, regaining her seat and earning 56% of the vote to Fetterman’s 44%.”

We know she doesn’t buck the leadership. That’s why she refused to help her own constituents. She is also been conferring with people up north about the voluntary legislation regarding sober homes encouraging people to open them up down here as long as they do a voluntary sign up.

She should be asking herself: Why is everyone sending their junkies to Martin County?

She is no friend of ours and certainly not a friend of the water. She just had some kind of event. Invited all the Republicans , left everyone else out so she has no interest in being inclusive and getting anything done. It’s like  all the people that have worked so hard for the water don’t exist.

She should be fighting for us instead of cow-towing to the leadership in Tallahassee.

On Mary Lynn Magars Wikapedia page there is nothing. She said the same thing last year. She couldn’t so anything. I can’t find anything she has actually done. I must be wrong. How can this be true? Someone please tell me she has done something.

I say this because of our ( The train is the train and we have to wait for that one) pollution we are loosing our tourist base. We certainly have more people but those people are going to requires services we just don’t have for our people that live here.

In the last election we picked our clean water candidates. They were bipartisan and they reflected the people who understand the water and have the smarts and the know all to get this stuff done. They certainly would not have destroyed the water of South Florida, continued to allow Salt Water Intrusion, discharges and everything else because of their party and because of their ego.

Last year we painted and sent solidarity fish to multiple representatives and senators. The only one that answered was Thad Altman. Not Gayle, or MaryLynn Magar or even the Democrats answered us.

 

Yesterday, I read an article about eviscerating our ability to get Florida Government Records.  No sunshine. Another bill was filed to override us saying we don’t want fracking. Who’s for  fracking raise your hands! Come on higher!

In the coming year we have some big decisions to make. I hope that one of them is not voting party lines but voting for keeping our Martin County a great place to live.

We don’t need vindictiveness, stupid games, egos, grandstanding, and more of the same BS. We need to work together or else we’re gonna have a dead river and people shooting up heroin in all our corner stores. We need people that not only understand the issues but understand how to work together with people and are willing to to stand up to get things done.