Re: Animal Services audit

Internal review has no credibility

What a joke. What a sad, sick joke. The saddest part is that the joke's on all of us who pay the high salaries of people in county government and rely on the help and protection that money is meant to buy.

We pay the person who runs this shelter and others to protect stray and abandoned animals, pets who feel pain and fear just as we do.

More than a year ago a review of our county's shelter was done by five expert veterinarians who do shelter reviews. The county hid the results for nearly a year, until a volunteer discovered them. That review found numerous cases of cruelty and neglect — an 80 percent kill rate and 90 to 95 percent of cats and kittens killed. Dogs were in severe pain and not treated or given pain medication. Cats routinely killed by a heart stick without proper anesthesia. Dogs left isolated for 60 days with no public access for adoption, then killed.

Nine months later, five volunteers find the same inhumane treatment. There is public outrage and the answer is an internal audit that takes four months and finds that none of the inhumane treatment, well-documented previously, really happened. Credible? Of course not.

The citizens get hoodwinked. The county spends our money hiding incompetence and cruelty. There is no real democracy in Hernando County, Florida; there is only deceit and cruelty by bureaucrats who think they are above the law and beyond the reach of their own citizens.

Laurie Boynton, Brooksville

Sixth-graders don't need iPads

School budget crunches, really? Yet they want to spend $90,000 for iPads for sixth-graders who are 11 and 12 years old.

The administrator cut crossing guards and changed school hours in the name of budget crunching and has now decided it's okay for iPads for sixth-graders. They can take them home for a $50 deposit for insurance costs. The picture is bizarre.

I am a taxpayer. I am all for technology. Tell me when the common sense button is installed in the administration for this unneeded cost. It's time the taxpayers get their needs met, not new toys for students who may not be responsible enough to handle such items. The School Board also needs a reality check for allowing this to happen.

Mary L. Scarff, Weeki Wachee

Re: Ethics complaint

Druzbick made an honest error

The ethics complaint is not Commissioner John Druzbick's problem, his opponent is. Druzbick apparently made an honest error (I hope, at least) and has taken steps to amend his paperwork.

A word of advice to him: Anything he or his wife own either jointly or separately, must be reported.

Any questions?

Paul Settle, Spring Hill