With great pleasure and humility, I announce my candidacy for the Alachua County Soil and Water Conservation District, Seat 4. I look forward to serving you in this capacity, and striving to implement responsible, accountable measures to ensure the conservation of our precious county resources.

I am a first-year Law Student at the University of Florida. I graduated in May from UF with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Classical History. It is my intent in life to be a public servant. I would like to be a new breed of politician: an accountable, accessible, and responsible guardian of the citizens’ money. I believe in the importance of the free markets, the power of the individual, and the necessity of technological innovation.

I have worked as a Loaned Executive for the United Way of North Central Florida, and am a strong advocate of non-profit charity within the community. I own my own non-profit political newsmagazine, the Florida Frontier. My specialization in my work with United Way and the Florida Frontier is in grant applications.

I have attended every Soil and Water Conservation District meeting since I decided to run in March, and will continue to attend every meeting to acclimate myself to the required responsibilities of a Soil and Water Conservation District member.

The Alachua County Soil and Water Conservation District is currently predominantly funded by the sale of zoning maps. However, money exists from the state and federal level in the form of grants, a resource which we currently under-utilize. I intend to devote my abilities in applying for grants to improve the funding of our Conservation District to accomplish more within our county.

If you own land in Alachua County, this election is important to you. The State of Florida and large government entities are constantly adding large, blanket regulations to land and resource use without heeding local needs or concerns. If elected to be your conservation district representative, I would work to voice the district’s specialized needs to the state and amongst the countless agencies created to oversee resource usage in the county. I believe that the conservation district should be operated with a focus on localized, accountable programs; constantly striving to be as mindful of the will of the citizens as they are of the conservation of the county’s resources.

Please take a second to explore my website. I have included information about the Conservation District, the duties of those who hold the office, and some ideas I have to improve our operation.

I hope to have your vote in November. If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions, please email me at griffinswcd4@gmail.com. I thank you for your time and support.

Why You Should Care

It may be easy to assume that the Soil and Water conservation district has no effect on your life, but in reality it carries considerable significance in the operation and lifestyle of every Alachua county citizen.

If you own land in Alachua County, this election should be important to you.

The conservation districts were written into Florida Law in 1937, at a time when there was little or no effort to preserve or protect Florida’s natural resources.

For over sixty-five years, the conservation districts have worked to restore and conserve local resources, as well as address significant national problems in water quality, erosion issues, and flood and other natural disaster damage.

As a citizen of both Alachua County and the state of Florida, you are faced with a multitude of regulations and areas of government oversight in the use of your private land. The State has itself become a major land owner, and now has management responsibilities for over a million acres of land. The Conservation District is a board of individuals designed to communicate between the citizen and the government, and ensure the citizen retains a say in which regulations and practices are implemented to conserve soil, water, and other natural resources.

The state and local governments have commissioned a multitude of groups and entities to oversee resource conservation. Another important task of the conservation district member is to serve as a partner and liaison between the daunting number of agencies all designed to perform the same task.

Remember, vote Bryan GRIFFIN for Alachua County Soil and Water District 4

After the business coalition forum was over I was disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to bring up the issue of school uniforms especially after I witnessed the passion against new taxes from commission candidates and guests.  The school board recently mandated a uniform policy for all k-12 schools.  This policy is far worse than a tax though because not only is it putting an undue financial burden on families, it restricts freedom of speech and expression.

The policy was founded on misconceptions and false premises. The research (including studies from the Journal of Educational Research and a 4 year tracking study by the Miami-Dade school district) shows that uniforms do not lessen dress code violations, nor do they have a positive affect on attendance, behavior, performance, or substance use.  The main ‘issue’ as claimed by board members really comes down to enforcement of dress code standards already in place.

Some people say that uniforms aren’t that bad but for a public policy to be enacted that takes away rights, there has to be an overwhelming good to justify it.  In the case of uniforms there is none.  In fact there is no rational reason to have uniforms (and a million reasons against them but I’ll keep this post short).

In tough economic times parents will now have to buy a new wardrobe for their kids.  (Don’t believe the farce that uniforms save money, no student wears uniforms outside of school.  That means that the cost of uniforms is in addition to whatever regular clothes they buy.)

I couldn’t believe that the new policy was passed or that it was even brought up when there are pressing fundamental issues with education that actually affect performance in schools. (see my website)

There has been significant opposition to uniforms.  All 7 high school principals wrote a letter to the board urging them to not pass the policy and to let them continue to enforce the dress code already in place.  There have been a couple of protests already and a number of groups have been formed; legal action is anticipated.  Whether you have children or not we all need to fight injustice and I urge all of you to email the board, to join one of the groups via facebook, or to connect with parents and dissenters (you can email me at chris.smiley@gmx.com).

Elected or not I will continue to work to reverse this policy.

My website- Fleducationreform.com

Letter from principals-  http://notopolos.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/copy-of-the-letter-sent-to-school-board-from-alachua-county-school-principals/

This is just a simple web poll on the school board candidates. Please check out their web sites listed on the 2010 candidates’ page and then take the poll! Then pass it around to your friends! It’s almost like a real election…

This poll is over. Thanks to the few who participated…just like our real elections.

Why am I doing this? Because the issues will continue to be the same: rapacious utility rates and mismanagement of the city government. I have also had every encouragement from friends and strangers alike, and this has intensified since I filed. Whereas most conservatives who have lost have gone back to their business and gotten politics behind them, I have decided to build on the support that I have, and to start early. I need you to do the same. I need your financial support, and the sooner the better. If we lay the ground work now, everything will go much smoother later.

Please limit your contributions to $250 per person or business entity. Contributions over $100 must also list your occupation. Please make out your check and mail it to:

The Marsh Campaign
3904 NW 15 St.
Gainesville, FL 32605

As I near the deadline to qualify for the County Commission District 2 race , I , Walt Boyer, am left wondering if our Conservative voters are just going to sit back and watch as the Liberal majority maintain the stranglehold on our local governments that they have had for years. I am wondering how long will you sit back and allow your taxes to skyrocket just to fund projects that will only benifit the few. How long will you sit back and watch as businesses choose to become established in the surrounding counties instead of Alachua County because the regulations of our County are so unfreindly to business. How long will you sit back and do nothing knowing that your opinions or concerns are going unheeded.

It is time to make a stand and elect a person that has no special interest group affiliations and can openly and honestly represent the voice of the citizens of Alachua County. I encourage you to visit WWW.VOTEFORWALT.COM for more info on me or call 352-356-VOTE with any county concerns. I believe that in order to represent, you have to be in touch with how the citizens for whom you serve are feeling so I will always have an “open door” policy for anyone to voice concern or ideas on how to make our County better.  So are you ready to step up and invest in a candidate that will pick the current budget apart line by line and make those responsible for the wasteful spending accountable to you the voter, that will invite clean industries and manufacterers to our County to ease unemployment and bring in more revenue, that will ease the regulations for small businesses to help stimulate our economy.We only have till June 14 and I know with your help our voice can be heard again. I need campaign donations to qualify and then we can work on presence in our communities

Just remember to make it a point to vote in November. Many Americans have given their lives to assure you have the freedom to do just that . Dont let your friends stay home, push everyone you know to register and vote.

Circuit Judge Victor Hulslander started things off by asking if the plaintiffs were being represented by counsel. Mason Alley responded that they were represented by Sarah Rumpf, and that she would be participating telephonically, since she was in Orlando at the time.  The judge allowed Ray Washington to participate as a voter with an interest in the election. This turned out to be a big deal, since we scarcely heard from Lowe’s attorney, Cherie Fine, and Carpenter’s attorney, Daniel Nee. Indeed, it seems that Ray Washington was here to do all the heavy lifting, as he did all the questioning. But this only got started after a brief recess from 9:40 until 10:00 while Rumpf got up to speed with her clients in a private call.

This hearing did not focus on evidence, so much as procedure. The original complaint filed by Courson and Alley was flawed in many ways since they are not attorneys. They had copied and pasted from a similar filing and included me as a defendant. One of the first tasks was removing me as a defendant since I hadn’t actually done anything. Washington spent the bulk of his time challenging the plaintiffs for taking so long to get a challenge underway while Lowe is expected to be sworn in only six days from now. The disembodied voice of Alley’s attorney would periodically object to questioning on various grounds, like Alley was not qualified to offer a legal opinion.  Each of her objections were sustained, and this took a lot of steam out of Washington’s charge.

Alley’s most compelling response to the questions of timing was his testimony of how he was denied the voter history data he needed until after the deadline to file a suit contesting the election. He had been forced to use data from the March general election to see if there were irregularities there, so he could only hypothesize about the April data. Since then he has had a group of volunteers reviewing the voter history data he needed two weeks earlier than Pam Carpenter could give it to him. This is a very serious impediment to any investigation, and this is built into the system, whether it is intentional or not.

Pam Carpenter was questioned by the judge about voter data, and she said that this data was publicly available. She further explained that there was a difference between voter registration data, which is constantly in flux, and voter history data. Voter history data is each voter’s record of when and where they voted, but not how they voted. This was the data Alley needed, but could not get for 15 days. Someone (I don’t remember who) wanted to know if her office could not have found voter irregularities. She said that her office was, “not an investigative office, but an administrative office.” This leaves it up to plaintiffs to take the initiative of investigating.

Ray Washington questioned Alley about what he was trying to prove. Alley responded that anecdotal evidence about people coming from Tampa to vote lead him to want to examine the actual voter data to see if this was true. His initial investigation found that it was. When Washington asked for names, Alley said he was not prepared to give them up at this time. It was after this that Judge Hulslander adjourned the court. This hearing will likely turn to the evidence on Tuesday, when the next hearing is scheduled at 3:30 PM.

I appreciate the opportunity to be able to post on the Alachua Voter Guide.

I look forward to being able to revisit many of the residents I met when I ran as a candidate for the 2010 City of Gainesville Mayoral Elections.

I’m excited about being able to speak with my neighbors about ideas that will help us move in a positive direction forward.