FSU Foundation fails means testing

Ruth Chase

Tallahassee has a poverty rate of 27.1%, double the national average, down from 18.2% in 2000. The FSU boosters have no poverty rate. However, the Interstate Blueprint Agency stands ready to vote “yes” to fund the $ 6.5 million transfer of $ 20 million in blueprint funds to FSU Boosters to redesign Doak Campbell Stadium.

What is the justification for the FSU Foundation to proclaim $ 957 million worth of assets?

Blueprint funds come from everyone in Leon County. Every single purchase we make in Leon County has an additional 1% sales tax approved by our vote. The intention to tax ourselves has been widely portrayed and perceived as improving infrastructure and economic development.

We paved our streets, planted trees in the median and saw new bike paths. We saw how parks were created. We know that rainwater runoff and flooding have been mitigated. We have new clinics. We have amazon (s) coming to our little town.

But the “trickle down” did not reach the 27.1%. The food deserts remain. The underfunded schools remain. Unemployment remains. The lack of engagement persists in the houses on the streets where there are no obvious options, no transportation, not even fast food jobs.

The 27.1% were not explicitly named as recipients, but were also not listed as excluded. You did not benefit from the proportion of taxes paid. Consider the small businesses and the small neighborhoods that could be brought into slightly better proportions. Small and medium-sized local businesses and nonprofits are better recipients and can create better and lasting jobs. Trickle has always been a farce.

The “expert study” for the FSU stadium distracted us with projections of million dollar salaries for 128 construction jobs and another 110 “indirect jobs”. Nowhere in their document do the authors list a single permanent position. For $ 20 million plus $ 6.5 million in fees, Tallahassee and Leon County won’t get permanent jobs.

There is no entitlement to the construction work being carried out by a local construction company. As far as we know, these jobs are being given to Atlanta based companies. We will have 110 maids, bartenders and waitresses, “indirectly” and temporarily.

The FSU boosters fail the means test. With or without our $ 20 million, they’re going to make the stadium better – because they can. You have $ 850 million in charities and $ 160 million in cash. FSU football passes the means test that we require of all those in need.

The $ 20 million worth in Leon County and Tallahassee far exceeds the value for FSU et al. For the FSU, it’s a convenience, an amenity that won’t fund this county for the next 10 to 17 years.

On December 9th, the Blueprint board of directors will vote “yes” or “no” to $ 6.5 million in financial fees. The FSU can withdraw this request.

Ruth Chase, a Leon County resident for 47 years, founded Food Glorious Food in 1979. She retired from her landscaping business and remains an activist.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

Send letters to the editor (up to 200 words) or Your Turn columns (approx. 500 words) to letter@tallahassee.com. Please include your address for verification purposes only, and when submitting a Your Turn include a photo and 1-2 line bio of yourself. You can also submit anonymous Zing! S at Tallahassee.com/Zing. The submissions will be published depending on the space available. All submissions are editable for content, clarity, and length, and can also be published by any part of the USA TODAY NETWORK.

The post FSU Foundation fails means testing first appeared on Daily Florida Press.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Committee week in Florida’s Capitol: Welcome to the festival of ignorance

Image
Legislators came to town for the autumn ritual of political harlotry they call “committee week.” Tallahassee’s collective IQ dropped by a good 60 points. That’s bad, but what they propose doing to Florida is worse. Seems Sen. Joe Gruters, R-$ara$ota, who also is chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, was intimately involved with a plot to quash the Democratic vote. Remember that “ voting reform ” bill the governor signed on “Fox and Friends” last May? The one that restricts access to ballot drop-boxes, limits vote-by-mail applications, forbids giving people standing in long lines a bottle of water, and lets partisan poll watchers police canvassing boards? Even though Florida ran an immaculate election in 2020, Republicans goose-stepped in time with the Madman of Mar-a-Lago and claimed with straight faces they merely wanted to prevent election “fraud” — which is about as common as polar bears in Miami. (What fraud there was, was courtesy of the GOP .) Joe Gruters ...
Read more

U.S. House GOP would make it easier for feds to give public lands away to states

Image
U.S. House Republicans included in the new rules for the chamber they passed this month a provision meant to make it easier for Congress to give away public lands. The provision is a fairly technical piece of the 55-page  rules package . It affects internal House accounting and requires that anytime Congress were to give any federal lands to a state, municipality or tribe, it would not be counted as a loss to the federal budget. House Republicans had an identical rule when they controlled the chamber from 2017 to 2019. Advocates and critics agree the measure would be helpful to any effort by the House to transfer federal lands to states. But they disagree about the wisdom of such giveaways. Republicans and conservative groups see states as preferable stewards of most public lands. Those closest to the land are in a better position to make decisions on how to manage them than those in Washington bureaucracies, they say. Environmental groups and Democrats see federal divest...
Read more

Democratic governors press U.S. Senate to act on voting rights legislation

Image
WASHINGTON — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and 16 other Democratic governors are urging the U.S. Senate to pass two bills that aim to protect voting rights. Both measures need 60 votes to advance under Senate rules but have been stalled by Republican opposition in the evenly divided Senate. “Without decisive action by the federal government this year to protect voters’ access to the ballot and ensure the integrity and transparency of our elections, the voices of Americans across the country, especially Americans of color, will be suppressed,” the governors wrote in a Monday  letter  to U.S. Senate leadership. Governors who signed the letter include Jared Polis of Colorado, Tim Walz of Minnesota, Steve Sisolak of Nevada, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Kate Brown of Oregon, Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania and Tony Evers of Wisconsin, among others. One bill, known as the  John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2...
Read more