Tag Archive | "Thetus Fleming"

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Letters to the Editor

Posted on 06 April 2012 by LeslieM

RE: Lighting up that intersection

Dear Editor:

How does one put a price on a human life?

Thetus Fleming, age 22, was killed in a hit-and-run accident  on Hillsboro Boulevard [east of MLK].

Anyone who travels that route will have to admit that the lighting in the evening hours is substandard at best. A left-turn signal was denied by FDOT. Why didn’t the city pursue the second alternative, which was to increase the lighting at that intersection? Lack of funding is not an acceptable response when someone has been killed.

When the CRA finished The Cove Shopping Center, they neglected to provide the outlets on the poles for lighting the complex for the holidays. They had to purchase a [circuit board] that has as its sole purpose lighting a Christmas tree. More important than a human life?

There are FPL light polls at the MLK intersection, and the requirement for additional lighting would be also adding transformers and lights. The cost for such a project would be anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000.

Where should the money come from for the transformers and lights at MLK?

The city is assessing users of electricity as a result of the passage of the utility tax. That tax should generate approximately $4.9 million by the end of the fiscal year. We heard that the public service [= utility] tax was to be used to reduce the millage by 1 mill. That would only have required $4,622,065, but the budget added $6,201,100 as the combined income from the water and electric assessments.

If it is necessary to maintain those figures in the budget, and the city is complaining about not getting the $1.2 million from the employees, then the next step would be to use the $2 million savings from the BSO merger. That money was never part of the adopted budget, but is supposed to come to the city by the end of this fiscal year.

Don’t tell the taxpayers that a human life in the city of Deerfield is not worth an expenditure of $3,000 to $5,000 to light up that intersection like a Christmas tree.

 

Jean Robb

Deerfield Beach

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