Editor, The Beacon:
When you voted for ECHO, did you intend for your ECHO tax dollars to be given away to colleges and private universities for adding buildings and amenities to their campuses to be mostly used for their private purposes? Colleges and private universities are exempt from paying property taxes, thus exempt from paying into ECHO? The Volusia County School System is not eligible to receive ECHO dollars and, rightfully so, so why should colleges and private universities?
Past ECHO funds going to or directly benefiting colleges and private universities:
Daytona State College has been the recipient of $3,376,030 of ECHO funds.
Bethune-Cookman has received $759,600.
Stetson University has received $1,032,500.
Stetson University was also the beneficiary of $1,400,000 of ECHO funds used to renovate Spec Martin Memorial Stadium in DeLand, in order for Stetson to restart their football program.
Stetson recently submitted another application for $600,000 more of our ECHO funds to expand amenities at their private aquatic center on Lake Beresford.
So I ask, should colleges and private universities still be allowed to receive funds through ECHO, a taxpayer-funded program, since their primary purpose is not to provide services to the general public, but rather address the needs of their school programs?
One should note, as with the Volusia County School System, colleges and private universities already receive our tax dollars through a variety of other federal and state taxpayer-funded programs and tuitions, some that taxpayers subsidize.
At the end of the day, are ECHO funds being used to pad the budgets of colleges and private universities? Would the projects at colleges and private universities still be completed without ECHO funds? Are ECHO funds being given to colleges and private universities really serving Volusia’s citizens as was intended?
Keith Chester
DeLand
prop·a·gan·da
/ˌpräpəˈɡandə/
noun
1.
information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
The writer of this letter to the editor, Melissa Lammers, is referring to my letter to the editor when she wrote “A Dec. 10 letter to the editor asked if the 72.4 percent of voters who reauthorized ECHO in 2020 intended for some of the grants to be awarded to local universities. All the examples cited took place before 2020 and complied with the rules of the program, including being a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, having money in hand for the ECHO grant to match, and remaining open to the public for their use and enjoyment.”.
As Mrs. Lammers has done time and time again while furthering a propaganda campaign favoring the ECHO and Forever programs, she has omitted and/or twisted the facts.
In Lammers’ letter to the editor she starts with “A Dec. 10 letter to the editor asked if the 72.4 percent of voters who reauthorized ECHO”. In my original letter I never mentioned the 72.4 percent figure, Lammers slipped that figure in to further the propaganda that favors ECHO. It is undeniable that 72.4 percent of the voters who voted did vote in favor of ECHO, however, they did so without having all of the facts about the ECHO program because many of the facts were withheld and the did so without knowing there were ECHO rule changes planned for the ECHO program that were purposely held back because it was feared if the rules for the program were changed prior to the renewal of ECHO going back before the voters the voters would not approve ECHO.
At a meeting in the early part of 2020, former County Council Member Deb Denys told all in attendance if they proceeded with the planned ECHO rule changes prior to the Nov. 7, 2000 ballot when ECHO was to go before the voters, THE VOTERS MAY NOT VOTE IN FAVOR OF ECHO. And the rule changes were held back as planned and later changed AFTER the voters voted in favor of ECHO, thus deceiving the voters as planned. Lammers knows this and she has been part of the group that has been less than honest, or should I say forthcoming, with the public. There has NOT been full transparency as Lammers would wish for all to believe and she knows it. Lammers and her group have also played around with the numbers using fuzzy math citing how much the average household would pay pertaining to ECHO and Forever until I called them out on it.
Furthermore, In my letter to the editor I asked, should Colleges and PRIVATE Universities receive ECHO funds and when Lammers cited my letter she omitted the word PRIVATE. Again referring to my letter to the editor where is list various Colleges and PRIVATE Universities that had previously received ECHO funding, Lammers goes on to say “All the examples cited took place before 2020 and complied with the rules of the program, including being a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, having money in hand for the ECHO grant to match, and remaining open to the public for their use and enjoyment.”. Lammers is WRONG on this and of course yet again she fails to provide all of the facts. The News Journal Center in Daytona did not start out as a project of Daytona State College and it only ended up in the hands of Daytona State College after the original ECHO grant recipients got in a bind. The rules were not followed and to date the original agreements still are not being fulfilled.
The history of ECHO and all of the ways the program has been manipulated and the ways the funds have been squandered and used to pad the budgets of various groups and governmental entities is very complex and Lammers and her group have not done the program and the taxpayers who are forced to pay for it any justice.
Here is an advertisement that was supported by Lammers’s PAC before ECHO went to be voted on in 2020…
The ECHO VOLUSIA FOREVER Alliance ….
You can protect our quality of life vote Yes for Volusia forever and echo to protect our water and our natural outdoor spaces vote Yes to protect places to enjoy the arts culture and recreation no new taxes and full accountability Volusia forever and echo help our economy and make Volusia County a great place to live work and play.
Who wouldn’t have wanted to vote for all of those great things? Sadly, the public has been deceived. Fact is, there was going to be a new tax because the old ECHO program was to sunset. One thing was going away and something NEW was beginning. The advertisement made it sound as if all of those wonderful things were going to be FREE.
Here is a link to the original letter I wrote to the Editor of the Beacon and the News Journal. https://beacononlinenews.com/2023/12/06/why-do-colleges-and-universities-receive-echo-funds/
The ‘illusion of truth’….“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”, is a law of propaganda.