Letters to the Editor

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: To send in your Letters to the Editor, email them to Deputy Executive Editor Jessica Luck at [email protected]. Letters pertaining to local issues receive priority. Letters may be edited for grammar and space.

+ Buy your sand elsewhere
Dear Editor:
Who’s right about dredging Big Pass?

Siesta Key residents fear that dredging will affect Main and North Siesta Key beaches and properties.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers claims its computer model shows that dredging will not affect Siesta beaches and properties.

My computer model says it will.

The Army Corps of Engineers has nothing to lose. Like consultants without real responsibility, it will be paid whether Siesta loses sand or not.

That doesn’t sound like a fair deal.

Maybe the residents of Lido Key, who want sand for their beach, and the Army Corps of Engineers can offer a guarantee. They can take out an insurance policy with Siesta as the beneficiary. Should our beaches lose precious sand, the insurance would pay Siesta to replace the sand.

In addition, with Siesta Key and its number-one ranking beach as the main money attractions in Sarasota, a portion of the insurance benefit would supplement Siesta businesses and the tourist-development tax fund for the lost revenue.

Sure, city officials and Lido Key residents would all prefer shopping for sand sources nearby. But if your neighbor faces potential injury, why not go elsewhere?

Mother Nature created the Big Pass shoal. She must have her reasons. Why tempt fate? Lido, buy your sand elsewhere.

Jeffrey Weisman
Sarasota

+ Shelter should not be built
Dear Editor:
I’m tired of us pretending we don’t see it.

Calling a street criminal “homeless” is like calling a bank robber “low on cash” or calling a rapist  “a lonely man.”

Many good Americans, at some point in their life, have been in a position where they could not afford a home. For that reason they rent, or share rent, or move in with a parent, or grandparent, or uncle/aunt, or brother/sister, or cousin, or a coworker, or friend from school, or friend from church or friend from the neighborhood they grew up in ...

(No one just fell from the sky and landed on the street in Sarasota.)

Street criminals cannot access any of the above mentioned forms of housing, because they are disrespectful, untrustworthy and, most likely, have a drug and or alcohol addiction that they support by stealing and other lawless activity. We don’t need to build more “shelter” for them; we need to teach them to fear and respect the law.

Criminal behavior should not be rewarded — it should be punished.  We are not helping our fellow man/woman when we ignore or even reward them for being totally disrespectful of themselves, public property, private property and the other human beings that live around them.

Todd Nahrwold
Sarasota