Florida’s annual back-to-school sales tax holiday will be August 4th-6th, 2017. The Sun Sentinel reports that Floridians will save an estimated $33.4 million in taxes during the three-day shopping extravaganza.
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LifeSouth Community Blood Centers is facing an emergency need for all blood types and encourages the community to donate.
Summer is historically a slow time for blood donations due to travel and school breaks, while the need to help patients in local hospitals remains constant. This summer continues to be a challenge not only to LifeSouth, but also to blood centers across the country.
“Donations have decreased exceptionally this summer, and patients at our hospitals are depending on donors to give blood,” said LifeSouth District Director Ed Keith.
LifeSouth encourages donors to come in to one of their donor centers or find a blood drive location on their website, www.lifesouth.org. First-time donors are always welcome and encouraged to give blood donation a try.
LifeSouth only uses the word “emergency” when the reserve supply to restock area hospitals drops below a two-day level. All blood types are needed, especially negative blood types and O negative, which is the universal donor and can be used by all patients in an emergency. Platelet donations are also critically needed now.
“Patients at our hospitals depend on blood donors to survive. We need the help of our donors and new donors today,” Keith said.
All donors receive a thank-you gift, and a mini-physical, including blood pressure, temperature, iron level and cholesterol screen.
Donors must be at least 17 or 16 with parental permission, weigh a minimum of 110 pounds and be in good health. A photo ID is needed.
LifeSouth’s donor center in Lecanto is located at 1241 S Lecanto Hwy. LifeSouth’s bloodmobiles will also be out at many locations in coming days.
For additional information call LifeSouth toll-free at 888-795-2707 or visit www.lifesouth.org.
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Visiting our schools in the summer you always see and learn neat things. Today I saw two. One was a set of shoes pull-overs with scrubbers on the bottom the staff use when wax-stripping floors. I spent many a summer stripping and waxing floors as a teen and wished we had these to walk those slippery floors.
The other was I visited with Linda Boles, president of Find – M’ Friends, one of her youth volunteers, one of our Citrus County K9 deputies and his bloodhounds partner, as they visited Crystal River High School using the campus to train and perform search exercises.
Ms. Boles shared about the numerus successful identification exercises they had done on the CRHS campus that morning.
I am so pleased of the work Find – M’ Friends and our Citrus County Sheriff’s Office deputies are doing with the bloodhounds program, and I am pleased they our campuses offer an environment to help train these important resources.
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Get out the sunscreen… No doctor’s or parent’s note neededFor a number of years I have pushed for more common sense laws with regard to over-the-counter products use in our schools. Items like chapstick, cough drops, acetaminophen, and sunscreen should be items that students have easy access to have and use. Some relief came this year in House Bill 7069 regarding sunscreen.
HB 7069 include the following improvement to Florida law, “Sun-protective measures in school. A student may possess and use a topical sunscreen product while on school property or at a school physician’s note or prescription if the product is regulated by the United States Food and Drug Administration for over counter use to limit ultraviolet light-induced skin damage.”
This means the beginning this school year the school board will no longer be required to have students bring in a physician’s note, or require a Parent Permission for Sunscreen Authorization Form.
I am so excited about this issue and I am grateful that State Representative Ralph Massullo who is an M.D. and specialize in Dermatology, very much understood the importance of this issue.
It is my hope that more common sense improvements to over-the-counter products will be written into law in the future to further give students and parents choices on their students’ medical needs.
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FRS Petition system up 14 percent It was recently reported that Florida’s Retirement System is up 14.24 percent for the fiscal year. (see full story: http://www.chronicleonline.com/content/officials-expect-state-pension-fund-increase-fiscal-year)
I am pleased that FRS is healthy, but let us not forget that this was done on the backs of public education funding.
In 2011 the state of Florida changed in midstream retirement benefits for employees in FRS by then beginning having these employees contribute to the retirement plan. Common and expected in the private sector, where wages/salaries, pay scales and benefits are driven by profits and losses. This is not the case for those that chose noble professions in the public servant sector. Teachers, law enforcement officers, first responders, state and county workers in order to service where willing accept these lesser pay scale positions knowing that some of the offset of the retirement benefits. The public was told that FRS was in such bad financial shape that employees now had to contribute in order to keep FRS solvent.
Instead the state did not really add more to the coffers of FRS. They instead defunded areas like public education and then played a shell game with the funds and used the employee retirement contributes to supplant and fund back some of the losses.
Another better approach could have been to phase in a new contribution for new hires. This would have permitted those new employees to weight the pros and cons of public service over the private sector.
Now again this year district FRS contributes have been increased to further pad FRS. Citrus County’s FRS required contribution was increased by another $370,000. This means less to our students and schools so that the state can claim they saved taxpayers money. It is a shell game and is in the end costing taxpayers more.
Was FRS ever in the poor shape some claimed and said was necessary to make this change? Or was this further justification to reduce the value of those in these noble professions?
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STUFF THE BUS is now a CCEF project. Mark your calendar for July 29th, 2017 and bring your donated school supplies from 10:00am through 2:00pm. Let us thank CCEF’s STUFF THE BUS partners Winn-Dixie , Publix ,and Walmart!
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