First downtown parking rates increased (thanks to the Orlando City Council’s vote) and now the Expressway Authority is considering a hike of their own. I think the toll road increase is even more aggravating, because they at least partially understand the economics of the issue. They cite “11 months of dwindling ridership” as the reason for revenues being down. What do they think will happen as a result of increased costs of using the roads? If you guessed further decreases in ridership, then YOU are more qualified than everyone on the Expressway Authority.

Every day I face a choice of either taking traditional roads such as highway 50 or state road 436 to get where I am going for free, or jump on the 417 or 408 and save myself somewhere between 10-20 minutes. Under the proposed rates the routes I would usually take that comes out to $3 one way, so each day I would be spending $6, or $30 per week, or $120 per month. Currently that same activity costs me $90 per month. I make that decision to save that 20 minutes about 50% of the time (just mornings), because $90 a month is pretty steep, so say I am worth $45 per month to them. Let’s say that instead of raising everything a quarter, you actually lower the 2 plazas I hit by 25 cents each (keeping the off ramps at 25 cents). Now 100% ridership for me only costs $70, or I am contributing $35 per month at my usual 50%. Say because of the lower prices I decide to take the toll roads just one more day per week than I used to. Now I am spending $49 per month instead of $45. That’s how it works guys, lower prices, keep tolls out from under my personal budget cutting pen, and actually pick up a little extra revenue in the process. People do it everyday selling stuff like cereal and beans, why can’t we put at least as much brain power into transportation issues?

At $120 a month, I will just set my alarm 20 minutes earlier and spend nothing on tolls anymore. How many more people are going to do the same?

For my family, the ability to convert your SeaWorld ticket into a year long pass for a little bit more still makes the price worthwhile for us, but we live here and can easily get the value out of that deal. I assume the bean counters at these organizations have run the numbers, but I would be curious to see how close the profit margin difference was for actually lowering prices to increase demand against this hike that may deter some locals. I think that’s where these price fluctuations have the biggest impact.

A family traveling here is not going to derail their plans for an extra $20 for the whole family. However, if you live here you may rethink that visit to the parks and go do something else more cost effective in the area. If you kid has a hankering to see sea life there’s a lot cheaper and even free ways to see a stingray, manatee or dolphin, that’s for sure. Add to that the hospitality house going the way of the do-do (I still think this is an unconfirmed rumor) and the “free beer” incentive is taken out of the value added column as well.

What do you think? Will these price increases keep you or any out of town relatives from checking out SeaWorld, or any other parks?

The bottom line is the state currently is dishing out $300 million dollars in retirement benefits to people who are still employed by the state and pulling a paycheck. This includes 211 elected officials (they thank you for your votes), 203 senior managers and more than 7,763 state employees. 300 million dollars. That’s 300… Million… Dollars.

Here we are discussing cutting back jobs for teachers, nixing after school sports and field trips, paying for 911 service calls, and who knows what next. Families are losing their jobs, going into foreclosure, facing dire economic times. And these people are robbing the state coffers of $300 millions dollars annually? This is probably the most outrageous thing I have heard in a long long time. This makes the Illinois Governor trying to turn a buck on an empty Senate seat look like a minor infraction.

Every paper should publish the list of these names and we should be picketing these people’s houses. According to the article, it is legal. This does not mean we have to stand by and be silent about the blatant unethical nature of it all. This loop hole should be closed and those who took advantage of it should be outed.

This event is described by the website as a “high energy, high profile event” that provides a “highly desirable platform where independent filmmakers from around the world can showcase their work to industry professionals and the entire Central Florida Community.”

Awards will be presented to the top films in several categories, selected by a committee of Orlando area entertainment professionals, with the exception of the Audience Award, which, you guessed it, is decided by audience kudos. The categories are:

• Best Feature
• Best Short Film
• Best Documentary Feature
• Best Short Documentary
• Best Screenplay
• Best Original Score
• Best Director
• Best Cinematography
• Best Short Animation
• Best Actor Male
• Best Actor Female
• Best Ensemble Cast

Cool stuff, looks like over 50 films will be screened, so should be something for everyone’s tastes.

LET THE CELEBRATION BEGIN: In a New York City ballroom on Sept. 18, 2008, Disney Parks and Resorts chairman Jay Rasulo (pictured) announced that Disney Parks will welcome guests in 2009 with free theme park admission on their birthday.

See the full press release here.

Meanwhile, back home on the ranch, educators are getting the axe and citizens are getting billed for 911 calls. You screwed us Chuck, you really did.

LAKELAND – A man’s body was found floating in a Polk County lake Saturday morning. Now, investigators are trying to figure out if the man was killed by an alligator.

Two fishermen spotted the body floating in a canal near Saddle Creek Lake just east of Lakeland, and noticed a 7-foot gator was swimming close to the body.

The fishermen were able to keep the gator away until authorities could pull the body out of the water.

Investigators said the man had no signs of trauma to his body and don’t believe foul play was involved.

A medical examiner will now determine if the man was attacked by the gator or if he died from other causes.

A trapper was called out to destroy the gator.

Can someone explain to me why the heck they just up and killed this alligator? If the gator killed the man, it would have been apparent I would think, what with the missing limbs and large chew marks. So this guy keels over or drowns or whatnot and the gator just swims up probably out of curiosity. So we just execute the animal for being on the scene? Maybe the fisherman killed him? We don’t know for sure they didn’t. We didn’t just shoot them in the head on the spot did we?

Did I miss something, did we declare war on these animals? We seem to respond to every crossing of paths with alligators with just instant destruction of the animal. Where is PETA on this? Do they only care about animals they think are cute and fuzzy?

A state song many said is racist could be in for an overhaul.
On Thursday, the state Senate voted unanimously to make Jan Hinton’s “Where The Sawgrass Meets The Sky” the official anthem.
It beat out a handful of other tunes in a public contest.
Lawmakers also decided to remove what some call racially insensitive lyrics from the state song “Suwannee River.”
Some senators had tried to do away with the song entirely. Gov. Crist said he’s disappointed.

So the lawmakers decided to not only remove the lyrics from the song, deciding to just change an artist’s music post mortem, and THEN dump it entirely? Why not at least just leave the song alone if you are ditching it.

Yeah, the song could be considered a little dated as it is written from the perspective of an Black American in the old south, but by a white man. It definitely uses some phrasing not acceptable in common parlance today, though it never seemed to bother Ray Charles, both a black man and a Florida native. All in all, the argument is there to change it for sure, but picking a state song for somewhere as awesome as Florida needs some better thought put into it.

I’m having a little issue with total suckitude of “Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky”. It sounds like an awful two bit song played while waiting in line for a ride at EPCOT. In all honesty Jan Hinton, your song blows… hard.

I’m a true son of Florida, born on Orange frickin Avenue, and this Florida native whole heartedly rejects and will never recognize that god awful travesty as my State’s song. Charlie Christ, your spray tan ass was born in Pennsylvania, so I gotta say your opinion has little value for those of us that have to live with the song after you move to DC (which you obviously are itching to do). Take another stab at picking a song, because that thing seriously is an embarrassment.

Everything is off to a great start! Smiling face of Lydia Gardner assuring you that “paying your traffic ticket is FAST and EASY!” Super, if there is one thing the internet is good at, it’s making things that usually require standing in line for, much more fast and easy! Super! But wait, there’s more! Just a few things you need to know before you get started, probably things that help you to make things even more FAST and EASY, I’m sure!

Great, we can use the system to do several things, excellent! Gotta have my citation number ready, sure thing! And they accept Visa and Mastercard, no Discover, though… hmm, well that happens. It’s handled through Link2Gov, um, okay… not sure who that is or if I should know… wait… what? Service fee of $3.99?!? Well that’s usual, I mean everytime I shop online they charge me even more than usual… oh, wait… that’s backwards, it’s usually cheaper to shop online… the whole less overhead thing…. Maybe I should send Lydia some info about Google Payments or PayPal or something. Apparently Link2Gov is so grossly expensive in their transaction fees that the city has to try and recoup that by passing off $4 to us! Seeing as how this fee does not appear at the windows, it’s not related to actual credit card processing, but purely from taking the order via the internet. Good job choosing an online payment service Lydia!

Okay, well, maybe Link2Gov’s premium cost is due to their superior service, I mean I’m sure I can securely and quickly make online paymnts with it… between the hours of 2am… and 10pm… WTF?!?! I’m sorry, does someone have to wind the computer back up from 10-2 in the middle of the night? Maybe the hamster in the wheel gets tired, needs a little sip from that plastic water bottle with the metal straw hanging out the bottom. Maybe Lydia is superstitious and doesn’t trust the internet’s series of tubes to handle credit cards during the “witching hours”.

So, maybe I’m thinking the system has downtime so that the day’s citiation can be put into the system. That might make sense, given that the database servers are running from Microsoft Access off of Ms. Gardner’s desktop. But if that downtime helps us to get to pay our tickets as quickly as good citizens should, it’s worth the sacrifice! What’s this… may take 15 days for your citation to appear… you mean the citations that we have to pay within 30 days or you issue a bench warrant? That’s kinda, I don’t know, incompetent.

And the final cherry on top of this primo example of government ineptitude? “Select Pay a Ticket at left to Continue”! Um… why not just make the word “Pay a Ticket” a link? I promise it won’t make the left side nav jealous.

And in the words of Columbo… oh, just one more thing… Why would I call the number at the bottom for information in English… if the page of information you just provided was… in English?

Make sure you get a big raise Lydia, and have the deputies deliver it to you in their tights and tutus.