These following Letters to the Editor were submitted to The Palm Beach Post Opinion Page. The Palm Beach Post wants to hear your opinion − conservative, liberal and all points between. Letters must include the writer's name, address and daytime phone number. Letters are subject to editing for clarity and length, and become property of The Palm Beach Post. We ask that you limit your letters to 200 words. To send a letter, email to
letters@pbpost.com, or fax it to (561) 820-4728. You can also send it via snail mail to: The Palm Beach Post, 2751 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach, FL 33405. Whether the topic's growth and development, traffic, the environment, or government spending, we want to hear from you.Palm Beach County needs a new sheriff
I have voted for [Sheriff] Ric Bradshaw
in every election but have watched with concern as his budget requests haveballooned over the years. Now we learn that he is rehiring recent retirees at inflated salaries. This is unconscionable.Those retirees have generous public pensions and State of Florida DROP accounts with additional retirement funds in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. As Palm Beach County's elected sheriff, Bradshaw has a fiduciary duty to always act in the best interest of the county residents and to wisely and honestly administrate his office. Expending over $6 million tax payer dollars in this cronyism scheme is a gross dereliction of his duty. It's time for a new sheriff.
Jack Cook, North Palm Beach
Kudos for exposing reprehensible rehiring practice
Kudos to The Palm Beach Postfor exposing the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office practice of retiring employees and then rehiring them — sometimes at substantially higher salaries. The Post reports that 38 former PBSO employees have returned to the agency. This raises a simple question: Why was this allowed to happen in the first place?
If someone retires from a government job and then returns shortly afterward to essentially the same position at a higher salary, taxpayers have every right to question whether this is a responsible use of their money. Now that the practice has been exposed, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw says PBSO will no longer rehire employees who retire or resign, effective Oct. 15. Why did it take investigative reporting to bring this practice to an end? The Post deserves credit for asking the tough questions. PBSO deserves criticism for allowing this questionable practice to begin with. And taxpayers deserve transparency, accountability and responsible management of their money.
John Chesher, Wellington
All in a name
The president seems to be back to renaming things that don't represent White America. So no more New Mexico and Lake Ontario. State names derived from white men are OK. So, Pennsylvania and Washington are safe. As are those from European locations so New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire are just fine. But those states whose names are derived from indigenous people must be changed. So Illinois, Michigan, the Dakotas, etc., should start thinking about getting in front of the curve and come up with new names before the president decides to start naming them for himself.
John Gallagher, Boca Raton
'Presidential' golf just another grift
The Grifter-in-Chief is at it again. Now he wants to turn over Trump International Golf Club near West Palm Beach as a "presidential facility" to be used by former presidents whenever they are "in the neighborhood" and wanted to play golf. He gets the tax write-off and we get the bill for maintaining it, which can come close to several million dollars a year. Of course, when he's "in residence," he will then appropriate the club for himself and his minions for his entire stay. This way, he doesn't have to pay the upkeep and the maintenance on it, but he still gets unrestricted use of it.
Judi Stern Levine, Lake Worth
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Palm Beach County needs a new sheriff, Post reader says | Letters
