Opinion Archive

We spent Monday morning at various schools around Santa Rosa County, taking in the sights and sounds as students walked into classrooms for the first day of the 2024-2025 school year.

Dear Santa Rosa County School District, I saw some pictures of Pine Forest’s new track and it looks beautiful.
It’s a rubberized track that will be ready to go for the spring. I wish we could say the same for schools in this county when it comes to tracks in the area.

We don’t endorse people – but I don’t have a rule about non-endorsing. We’ve already written an editorial that James Calkins should resign back when he was calling out people that wanted to volunteer for our county and told them (and the world) that a person’s political party affiliation disqualified them for volunteer service. And, […]

It’s not a secret that I’m probably the biggest sports fanatic out there.

I know there are many people who would challenge me on that, and that’s fine. But I rarely can get enough sports talk, and I enjoy watching just about any athletic event, though nothing beats football on the weekends.

America has a recycling problem, and there’s no end in sight.

Unless you just fell off the proverbial turnip truck, you are aware of the controversy surrounding the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Thomas Jolly, the artistic director, presented a tableau of DaVinci’s Last Supper that featured drag queens and dancers in the role of the apostles, and DJ Barbara Butch, an LGBTQ+ icon, playing the Christ figure.

Congratulations to the Florida Department of Education (FDOE). It had its “useful as a lifeguard at the Olympics” moment a couple of weeks ago when it officially approved Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) for high school athletes.

We’re about to hit the campaign season stretch run, as things get a little extra crazy heading into the Aug. 20 primary in Santa Rosa County.

It’s almost over, and then we can all take a deep breath until November.

“If in doubt, sing louder!” I told the volunteer church choir at a rehearsal. The look on their faces said, “Oh, really? Why would I do that?” They knew that I had been a professional musician, but they also knew that I had zero choir-directing experience. I explained, “If in doubt, you hold back, even if you are singing your part correctly, it will sound wrong. So, if you are going to make a mistake, make it a good one, and we’ll fix it!”

Pretty simple concept, isn’t it?  The City of Milton plans to spray wastewater on 33-77 acres in the Santa Rosa County Wellfield Protection Area.  Not only Milton’s sewage; the plan is to pipe wastewater from NAS Whiting Field to the proposed new Milton wastewater treatment plant, via new sewer mains underneath the Blackwater River.