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The Baby, Too?

From: Fred Bergmann
Remote Name: 24.8.37.249
Remote User:
Date: Thursday, August 31, 2000
Time: 06:24:51 PM

Comments

We have been bombarded with flyers in our mailboxes – a very expensive operation – one of which deserves special comment. In his latest flyer, Bill Readdy paints himself as a moderate in the middle of the two other major opponents Jackie Burkett and Gaylan King. He points out some facts about Burkett that are factual and pertinent and have been brought out before by many others. But, his statements about Gaylan King’s position are far from factual and he has heard Gaylan state his position many times.

Mr. Readdy paints Gaylan’s approach as far too negative and harmful to Okaloosa County. He says King’s platform centers on eliminating the TDC as the only means of stopping the Conference Center and that is like ‘throwing out the baby with the bath water”. With all respect to Readdy’s vast and well-publicized experience as a father and a grandfather, the baby’s bath water metaphor doesn’t jibe with what Gaylan King and the Freedom Committee have been saying and doing for over a year. Although it is a familiar metaphor, it just happens to be the same one used by Jim Olin, an executive at Abbott resorts and a member of the TDC, in his appeal to put this issue before the voters (October 29, 1999 Daily News).

Gaylan is not against tourism or any legitimate role of a TDC. In fact, he worked to form a countywide TDC in 1986. The present TDC has just evolved into a political arm of the present BOCC majority with vast sums of tax money at their disposal and needs governmental control. As far as being the only way to stop the conference center, he must not have noticed all the appeals made by the Freedom Committee and many others to the BOCC to put this before the whole county that went rebuffed. In fact, ordnance 89-23 that set up the bed tax and allowed the BOCC to double it leaves no other recourse to the Freedom Committee except the repeal of the ordnance itself.

Readdy also credits Gaylan for creating a “federation of naysayers” who are “against progress and the development of ideas of any kind”. A federation of naysayers sounds very much like statements made some time ago by the power structure used to justify opposing any referendum on the conference center. In fact, Gaylan King and his Freedom Committee have many positive ideas and see the mess in Destin as the result of the power structure’s idea of progress and development. If Mr. Readdy thinks the Freedom Committee lacks ideas, he must not have read the 55 columns in the Gaylan's Corner archives or the many columns in the newspaper Gaylan and others have written in the past 2 ½ years.

Mr. Readdy also refers to the Freedom Committee as having mentalities of “leaving a dead horse lie” and “no changes under any circumstances”. His references to dead horses and no changes must mean somebody else, because Gaylan and the Freedom Committee have fought valiantly against the power structure funded by the tourism industry and bed tax money; and supported by the only local paper; and despite rebuff after rebuff, we are still in the fight to change the way things are done in this county.

If any reader wants to find the complete facts on this issue, they can go to the lead page for Freedom Committee data at:

"BED TAX/CONFERENCE CENTER HISTORY OF EVENTS 2000"

"BED TAX/CONFERENCE CENTER HISTORY OF EVENTS 1999"

"BED TAX/CONFERENCE CENTER HISTORY OF EVENTS 1998"

TDC has plans, foes

Two TDC members favor vote on center

When Pigs Fly

Fred Bergmann 
Fort Walton Beach, FL 32547 
fjberg@arc.net  
Tel/Fax: 850-862-5503

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Last changed: September 06, 2008