By Bill Husfelt, Superintendent, Bay District Schools

There’s never a good time to ask for a tax increase, I know that, but I also know that our students and employees deserve the very best we can give them and a one millage property tax increase is the only way we can accomplish some of our goals.

Earlier this year, the School Board voted to ask the Bay County Commission to place a referendum on the ballot on April 20th asking voters to approve a one millage increase in property tax. If approved, the funds from the one mill increase would be used to:

• Increase ALL employee salaries.
• Expand our current pre-kindergarten program by offering a free, full-day of pre-k for qualifying students
• Continue to provide mental health services for students in need
• Ensure we can maintain our current level of school security and safety

Again, a new tax is always disconcerting but I thought it might be helpful if I explained a few of the complexities of school finance and why we are where we are.

First, school funding is challenging to understand even for those who work with it every day. We get almost all of our funding in “buckets” and we have zero flexibility in how those buckets are spent for the most part. For example, funds set aside for construction can only be used for construction… even if we desperately need them for salaries or school buses.

The half-cent sales tax that voters approved years ago is just for capital expenditures like construction, technology upgrades and some security-related expenses (not salaries). It cannot ever be used for salaries.

The funding we get for salaries, however, comes from a pot called “Base Student Allocation” and those funds have only gone up 3.7 percent since 2009. In contrast, our required retirement contributions have gone up 100 percent since 2012 and our health insurance costs have increased 44 percent since 2008.

In the meantime, our beginning support employee salaries have only increased about 3 percent since 2009.

You may have heard recently that teachers got a HUGE raise. It’s true, some of them got a significant raise but to understand the challenges that created you must understand the Governor’s directive.

Determined to increase the beginning teacher pay to ensure a continual pipeline of trained, professional instructors, the Governor directed that the funds he set aside be used to bring up beginning teachers to a higher starting salary. In our county that meant that all classroom teachers making LESS than $43,500 were brought up to that level.

Everyone else received a small cost-of-living type adjustment.

But the Governor ONLY provided those funds for classroom teachers… not for school counselors or media specialists or classroom paraprofessionals or bus drivers or maintenance employees or the office staff who ALL do so much for our children.
I was extremely happy for our beginning teachers because they deserve so much more than they were being paid BUT the raise they received puts them on equal footing with teachers who have 12-14 years of experience.

And, again, those funds were only for classroom teachers and not for the myriad of other employees who are just as deserving.

I could write pages about the other resources the millage could fund but I don’t have the space AND you don’t have the time. Again, however, the main purpose of this referendum is to generate additional much-needed funding for employee salaries.

Let me briefly describe the need for additional money for pre-k, though, because that is VERY important to the long-term success of our students. Currently, only about 20 percent of the students in some of our elementary schools test as “kindergarten ready” and that impacts their ability to leave kindergarten ready for first grade and so on. A full day of free pre-kindergarten could be a game changer for those children and for many of our families struggling to find quality care for pre-school aged children.

Also, currently, the state provides only about 1/4 of the money we’re spending on mental health services in our post-hurricane/pandemic world. Our children still need services and we need to provide them. Additionally, the state funds only about 2/3 of what it costs to provide professional law enforcement officers and deputies at each of our schools and so we must make up the difference ourselves.

I hope you can now understand the “why” behind the millage and that you’ll consider those needs when going to the polls on April 20th. For more information about the millage proposal, you can visit our website at www.bay.k12.fl.us/millage-facts.

By Julie McConnell, UF/IFAS Extension Bay County

Over the last eight plus years as an extension agent I have answered thousands of calls about landscape issues, but the number one topic consistently includes lawn problems. Questions about weeds, disease, and suspected insects regularly top the homeowner list. Although these pests can all cause problems in lawns, many times they are secondary to the initial issue of incorrect maintenance practices. Here are a couple of maintenance practices that are easy to correct.

Mowing matters. There are four main warm season lawn grasses grown in the Florida Panhandle and they require different leaf blade lengths to thrive. Cutting leaf blades too short reduces surface area needed to capture sunlight for photosynthesis and scalping can cause damage to growing points leading to dead patches.

Recommended mowing height:
• Zoysiagrass: 2-2.5 inches
• Bermudagrass 1-1.5 inches
• St. Augustinegrass 3-4 inches
• Centipedegrass 1.5-2 inches

Always be sure mower blades are kept sharp. Ragged cuts can increase moisture loss and are more susceptible to insects and disease. Never remove more than 30% of leaf blade at one time. If you must skip mowing, take the grass down to the recommended height in stages rather than all at once. Change the direction of mowing to avoid creating ruts or compacted areas in your lawn. Keep mowers and other equipment clean so that you do not transfer weeds or infected clippings throughout your landscape. If you have a problem area in the lawn, cut that section last and clean the mower before storing.

Fertilize at the appropriate time. As winter weather wanes and the first hints of spring arrive, it is tempting to start fertilizing lawns to “speed up green up” but resist the urge. Turfgrass slows growth in the winter but may not be in a full dormancy due to fluctuating temperatures. As the grass begins to grow and turn green it taps into stored energy reserves to make the transition. Converting fertilizer to usable nutrients also takes energy reserves from plants, so if applied during green up this creates an additional cost to the lawn. If temperatures stay warm and water is available, the lawn will be able to create more carbohydrates to use for life functions and replace reserves. However, if the temperature drops (as it commonly does in the late winter/early spring in our area) the grass has a difficult time recovering since it has depleted stored carbohydrates using the early application of fertilizer. Some fungal diseases of turfgrass also benefit from nitrogen fertilization in the early spring. Warm season grasses should only be fertilized when actively growing which is from mid-April until October in our region. Only use fertilizer products labeled for use on lawns and do not exceed label rates.

For more information on lawns join us for our next Gardening in the Panhandle LIVE! free webinar on Thursday, April 8th at noon. Register for the Zoom webinar at ufl.zoom.us/webinar/register/5916165383851/WN_E-U17wk-QBekb-4UEetj7Q or on Facebook live at www.facebook.com/GardeningInThePanhandle.

An Equal Opportunity institution, Extension Service, University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences. Participation shall not be denied on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, marital or family status, or political beliefs.

By Jamie Zimchek, Editor

Thar be pirates here in Panama City Beach! You won’t find them raiding ships and pillaging booty though – these pirates are busy raising money for local charities and helping keep our beaches clean. In other words, these pirates give those other pirates a good name. But let’s not jump the black-powdered gun; first, the back story.

Del McRea, also known by his pirate name, Captain Ransom King Mayhem, wasn’t born a pirate. In fact, he’s of Irish and Scottish descent, with a long line of ancestors who lay claim to St. Augustine, Florida, as their home of record. It was when his daughter was a student at Parker Elementary School in Panama City that he fashioned himself a Captain Hook costume for a school event. It turned out to be such a hit that he became the school mascot and after that me hearties, there was no looking back. Eventually, he bought his first real pirate garb, and the rest is, well, a pirate’s life for McRea. “I fell in love with it,” says McRea. “I found out I could be a pirate and forget all my troubles.” McRea’s brother moved home to St. Augustine in 2008, and, won over to the pirate cause, helped start their first pirate event. This in turn led to many more swashbuckling pirate adventures, and it was also where he met his wife (who has her own authentic pirate garb of course).

It was clear to McRea that he needed his own local crew, which is how the Pirates of the White Sands (named for the region’s spectacular beaches) came to roam the ‘high seas’ of Panama City Beach. Starting with two crew members, Capt. Ransom has watched his ranks swell over the years to over 30 pirates. As new faces join the crew, they each acquire their own pirate name and authentic garb. McRea explains that their look is based off pirate apparel from the 1600s to late 1700s, and when they make an appearance around town, you can bet that their garb – down to historically accurate weapons – is as authentic as you can get all these centuries later. “I’ve got 18 swords,” says McRea. His number one sword was made by a top bladesmith on the tv show, “Forged in Fire,” with special attention to period appropriate details. Occasionally, they even put on a sword fight for lucky onlookers. “We do what’s called stage combat,” says McRea. “When we get together we do practices and stuff.” Should one worry about this swordplay? “It’s a little bit dangerous because we’re using real blades,” concedes McRea, “and there’s no formal training.” Nonetheless, these pirates always seem to emerge from their skirmishes with all limbs attached – and it makes for a very good show.

All this however, merely sets the stage for their real mission. For these modern pirates, community is the booty, the treasure for their figurative chests. “You want to give back to the community and you want to take care of others,” says McRea. These are the things he looks for in prospective pirates. “In order to be a member of Pirates of the White Sands, you have to have the same mentality,” he adds. McRea really found this focus the day he saw buses from Margaret K. Lewis School in Panama City – a school for children ages 3-22 with disabilities – pull up to Schooners, a popular beachfront restaurant. As he watched the students unload, McRea ran to ask his boss for a few hours off, grabbed his pirate garb, and dashed off to do what he loves to do: pirate. That day, he met a student who went on to join the crew – he’s still part of the ‘krewmily,’ aka crew that’s also family, to this day. And this was really the beginning of a special relationship between Capt. Ransom, his crew, and a host of nonprofits.

Nearest and dearest might be the Tim Tebow Foundation’s annual Night to Shine event, a prom night for people with special needs. In 2019, post Hurricane Michael, McRea and his crew stepped in to find a new location for the event, and then proceeded to raise the money for every bit of food, reaching out to local restaurants and even Arnold High School students in the culinary department for assistance (resourceful pirates, thesel). Additionally, they contribute to causes such as the Toys for Kids Foundation, and run the kids’ section for Panama City Beach’s annual Pirates of the High Seas Fest.

Though the pirates celebrated the Pirates of the High Seas Fest virtually this past October, they hope to be back this coming fall. In the meantime, you might sight a pirate or two around town when they do a business takeover (all in good fun), or head out on a Saturday to conduct one of their regular beach clean-ups. Just don’t expect full pirate garb – that weighs around 60 pounds and on soft sand in summer, offers a new and painful kind of pirate torture. Instead look for lightly garbed pirates and their mateys, then raise a glass of grog to these hard-working buccaneers: their generosity of spirit and community contributions makes our white sands a better place. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll get lucky and they’ll sing you a sea shanty like “The Wellerman” (sugar and tea and rum optional).