TooFarTampa said:
The big problem that I and most other people have with Ro is that his company by all accounts dumped brown and/or unattractive, non-matching sand behind at least some of the seawalls that have been put up.
Here is a Smiling Joe post of 8/1/05, reporting from an emergency commission meeting that he attended:
"The Commissioners voted 3:1 (Ro Cutchens voted against) in favor of Comm. Jones' motion to remove all dirt dumped onto the Beaches that does not meet 6.2 or higher on the chart. Since the County approved the dirt dumping, the County will pay to have any dirt not meeting that lowered standard removed. My understanding is that this dirt includes any dirt used to sure-up home structures that does not meet the 6.2 > earlier requirement. "
And another from SJ:
"Many of these owners have already sured-up their falling properties with dirt that may have to be removed if it does not meet the 6.2 on the Munsell scale. Can't you just see Ro Cuchens, who according to several Gulf-front owners last night, is working several of the jobs at Blue Mtn, removing this dirt that does not meet the 6.2, causing the houses to fall."
That vote, and the way he conducted his business regarding the color of the sand, is a BIG issue.
If Ro happened to be one of the few people in the area with armoring expertise, and he recused himself from every seawall vote, and made sure the sand his company was dumping on the beach was consistent with the rest of the sand on his beach, I wouldn't have any problem with his making a profit on those homes that by law are allowed to construct seawalls. Capitalism is not the issue here. But it has come across as if he is more interested in making that profit than being a steward of Walton County's finest and most lucrative resource, which is without question part of what he was elected to do. That is poor representation in my book.
I am going to read the article and look at the photo presentation one more time later today before posting about them, but I just had to chime in on the Ro issue. Too bad I am not a voter, but I don't think the ones who can vote will forget in the next election.
TooFarTampa,
And Richard Fowlkes won't let us try to forget the dark brown sand debacle.... In his slide show, assuming it was suppose to be "news" as in "new", his reference to the brown sand is now over
8 months old. That looks somewhat like a vendetta to me.
Look, I made one of my "smartsss" replies to someone in another post on another thread way back.... something to the effect that we should stop "muddying" up the water with all the dark sand stuff just and stick to the (thread) topic which was "Seawalls". However, now, I think it's appropriate in this thread when you consider the news article and the slide show that we continue to address it.
Now the rest of the story:
ALL the commissioners failed us on this sand color issue. Sorry Mr. and Ms. Commissioner.
We've all heard about the microwave, wash and filter tests regarding this sand. I think they were somewhat hoodwinked (probably unintentional though).
If you attended the commissioner meetings in the beginning, you would swear that there was an absolute "shortage" of white sand in inland sand pits. I'm not sure who really propagated this. Therefore the commissioners (probably because some of the GF property owners were scrambling around to save their homes in a panic) voted unanimously to originally allow the dark colored sand you see in Richard's slide show.
Simple FACT, once more: If Cuchens had recused himself again from the
original sand vote, then 4 commissioners would have voted in favor ofthe "dark" sand. Let's not forget that. They all simply messed up. I think we all do from time to time. Perhaps the county engineer didn't speak up loud enough when he is suppose to guide them on technical issues. Maybe there was a reason for this? Conspiracy theories abound.
Eventually the commissioners admitted that they screwed up. They held another meeting and elevated the color requirements of the sand by a notch. I was at that meeting as well. However, I was also a little taken back by Cuchens' naye vote.
The dark sand, from what I understood, was suppose to be used only for "shoring up foundations". Well that requirement was applied very liberally, in my opinion.
Oh, by the way, after delivery and placement, the cost of the darker sand was NOT that much cheaper than white sand, maybe a 25% savings. But when you're talking $100,000 for sand, it would be nice to pocket the difference (financially speaking!!!). I would not consider it. I couldn't stand looking at it.
Just keep in mind, not everyone that is a GF property owner has infinite financial resources at their disposal.
After the commisssioners' voted to raise the sand color requirement, the question then is what do you do with the dark sand color already out there? Well "we" (county taxpayers) paid for the priviledge for hauling it off as you pointed out.
So, in the end, the entire board of commissioners is to blame, not just Mr. Cuchens. This is just my opinion. Once more, we all make mistakes. To their credit, they at least tried to correct their mistake (with the subsequent sand color vote) with the exception of one.
One other side issue you mentioned...
"But it has come across as if he is more interested in making that profit than being a steward of Walton County's finest and most lucrative resource, which is without question part of what he was elected to do."
Now you're touching on one of the "highlighted" points I made about the Gannett's article. That is
"The construction tore up the beach so thoroughly (10) ...."
The point to the above 2 paragraphs is that Walton County's main industry is tourism. If it can be implied that Mr. Cuchens is not a "steward" of our "finest and most lucrative resource", then may be you can understand what I felt when reading that (#10) reference I made to the Gannett article. That is they portrayed the beach as being absolutely horrible. Then they publish the article on a national level. Uninformed tourists see this, and decide (understandably so) on an alternative place to spend their money.
Maybe this is the "ulterior motive" of some of the negative comments?... That is, if one hates tourists and wants the beach to his or herself or simply wants to try to devalue GF property as a vendetta, what better way than to exclaim how terrible everything is. Just a thought.
TFT, I thank you for the post. It's nice to exhange information instead of emotion. I'm trying to leave the "emotion" part for my wife.
BMBV
