Back to Bite Me

I've been writing guest columns and letters to the editor for years, on a wide variety of topics. People might assume it has always been about the environment, so they'll be surprised to find pieces on the future of agriculture in Sarasota, bright ideas to improve Sarasota, and cars as the leading cause of death for children. I even submitted a design for the Florida quarter when the local paper asked for ideas.

Some enterprising soul who opposes my candidacy will no doubt comb through all my public pronouncements and find some passage that, taken out of context, sounds damning or radical or just plain silly. And then my efforts to communicate with the public will come back to bite me. 

So it only seems fair that I can reach back and take advantage of my earlier thoughts and words. Today a Tom Tryon Editorial in the Sarasota Herald Tribune credited me with a "what if" idea. 

He was referring to an idea I've been promoting lately that it may be cheaper to pay people to stop using so much water than to go out and develop new water supplies. (I'll write more on this intriguing concept in a later blog entry.)