In this election season, there is a LOT of talk about what candidates want to do. “Want to” is admirable. Each of us, with our own paradigms, has opinions about what “should” happen. Those paradigms are informed by experience, life events, as well as personal values.
The candidates challenging the incumbent commissioners have been sharing what they “want to “do for almost a year. Sometimes, what they say they want to do, the incumbents are already doing – like the audit of the county’s financials. I wrote about that yesterday – how Ann Taylor suggested an audit that had just been completed and released.
It is understandable that a candidate who has never been a commissioner has nothing of their own work to offer in their campaign, so apparently the only thing left for them to do is to trash the work and reputations of the incumbents.
That means that voters have to look deeper than the rhetoric. It doesn’t matter how much we voters “want” something different based on our own paradigm, the responsibility of the County elected officials is to make decisions in the best interest of the WHOLE county.
When “the Anns” scripted a letter to county firefighters and paramedics telling them they will take care of them where the current commissioners have not, they demonstrated that they are not in tune with the realities of the county Board of Commissioners’ work or the needs of the County.
Thankfully, the St Johns County Professional Firefighters and Paramedics Association has publicly endorsed three incumbent commissioners in their bid for re-election. In that letter of endorsement, [scroll down to read the letter in its entirety] they said, “We finally have commissioners who are combating the growth with infrastructure projects like building roads, fire stations and hiring firefighters.” They go on to enumerate seven accomplishments for public safety.
Let’s hope that voters take the time to see just how much the current Board of County Commissioners have accomplished and not follow Commissioner Josephs plea to “vote them out.” We need the incumbents.
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