It appears that, beginning with the new school year, all meetings of the School Board of Martin County will now be televised and presented in a delayed broadcast on MC/Comcast channel 20 in a rotating loop with other public service programs. Your Martin County Taxpayers’ Association would like to thank all of those that have helped bring this about, especially the efforts by the School Superintendent and County Administrator. For years we have been requesting that both regular and special meetings of the Martin County School Board be televised in a manner similar to Commission and other County meetings.

The rationale of opponents of this effort cited the expense of modifying the School Board chambers for television, cost of sustained operations and the worry that the Board might occasionally discuss items concerning students that should not be made public. Our position is that the School Board administers a budget of nearly $300,000,000 per year, manages hundreds of millions of existing capital equipment and controls the basic education of our residents and future leaders. We commend the excellent job our School Board and Administration are doing meeting the established bench marks for the education of our children. We also believe that more can be done in this area, especially toward limiting the number of high school dropouts and that the public must continuously monitor any group exerting this much power and influence. Unfortunately, as indicated by the lack of public participation in the decisions made at their evening Board meetings, “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” seems to have been the rule in the past.

The opponents’ largest concern, cost, was overcome by the efforts of a number of local organizations and civic-minded individuals lead by the Indiantown Chamber of Commerce. To this point donors include a number of Indiantown businesses and residents as well as your MCTA. We are donating $1,000 toward setting up and beginning the first year’s operation. We urge residents and businesses from other Martin County communities to participate in this worthwhile effort. However, once the operation is successfully underway the new Superintendent and School Board should step up and fund the relatively minor recurring cost of sustaining this important service to our students, parents and taxpayers.

Exclusively using delayed replay mitigates the concern of some over the possibility that a personal situation involving students might be inadvertently broadcast. Videotape of the proceedings will be screened, closed captioning added for the hearing impaired and will be aired only on MC/Comcast channel 20. These steps will take care of any possible redaction issues. What will be broadcast, in addition to the Board’s deliberations, are the many awards being won by our students, teachers and athletic teams. These broadcasts should help bring deserved recognition to their many outstanding achievements.

We urge our members and readers of this column take the time to follow this issue and view what is being achieved with a large percentage of your tax dollars. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Every election year there seems to be a major controversy over the use and abuse of the candidates’ signs that are scattered about the county. This year is no exception with charges and counter charges over who is stealing or trashing who’s signs or even who nailed who’s signs to what trees. This situation has now entered the “you have got to be kidding me” category as a local group of concerned citizens is now offering a $2,500 reward for capturing these sign “culprits”.

We believe placing these signs in large overlapping groups does the candidate no good and it makes attractive road intersections and/or vacant land look like trash heaps. This can also be a safety issue. As this is being written tropical storm Fay is heading out into the Atlantic after bringing a tremendous amount of rain and storm force winds into our area. These turned most of these signs into litter and probably made many of their supporting sticks missiles.