Board of Osceola County Commissioners Sell off Public Jobs to Private Corporation SMG
Channel: Matthew Boggs
Date: 2017-06-14

This is a short video of the meeting of the Board of Osceola County Commissioners on June 12th, 2017. Under no pressure to do so, these 3 Democrats, and 1 Republican, unanimously voted 'aye' to dumping 15 good jobs maintaining the Baseball field at the Osceola Heritage Park from the county rolls and giving them to a private company. In less than 10 minutes the Board considered the proposal, gave no thought to the option of keeping them as county employees, and immediately voted to sell these jobs to an out-of-state corporation. 

This deal gives some lip-service to the notion that these employees can keep their current pay and benefits, but does nothing to guarantee SMG will not fire them in their 1st year simply so they can be replaced by a worker with no benefits for them to pay out. Here in Florida, an employer doesn’t even need to write down a reason for firing an employee.

In this video, you can see the 10+ employees who came in to watch as their jobs were sold off. None of them wanted this deal, and they were disappointed to see it happen. They told the board such in the public comments portion of the meeting and were ignored.

BACKGROUND:
In 2014, the Osceola County Commission became a majority of Democrats for the first since since 1988. This was due to the efforts of then-Congressman Alan Grayson and then candidate for Florida State Senate Darren Soto. Both men paid their canvassers, hitting more than 1000 doors a week for many months, to encourage citizens to vote for Mrs. Cheryl Grieb and Mrs. Viviana Janer in their respective races for seats on the Osceola County Commission. Both ladies won with less than 300-vote margins.

I was a part of this effort as a Deputy Field Director for Alan Grayson. I was walking doors for him before I was promoted to that position.

While a Democratic majority has seen some progress in Osceola County, there has still been no movement, whatsoever, on care for the thousands of homeless who live in the hotels and motels of 192. There is still no homeless shelter in Osceola County. There is still no movement on raising taxes so that the county can catch up on its infrastructure repair schedule. The Walt Disney Corporation, Darden Restaurants, and the Chamber of Commerce still get whatever they want from all 4 Democrats on the Board.

Some Democrats are no better than Republicans. This toxic, corrupted centrism is why Osceola will continue to be known for its homeless population and their wretched state for the foreseeable future. These people haven't figured out that we'll never be able to save our way out of poverty.