editorials Archive

We listen to the residents who speak at the county commission meetings. Growth is an issue. Maybe growth is THE issue. We want the residents to be informed about development and how it works.

We reported in October 2023 that Okaloosa County Board of Commissioners approved spending up to $1 million for a “North Planning Study” to help guide growth in the unincorporated area north of the Eglin Air Force Base reservation. The bid for the project was awarded to Inspire Placemaking Collective out of Orlando. We hope the residents of north Okaloosa are inspiring Inspire to take a measured approach.

Easter is coming.  With a president of the United States who could hide his own Easter eggs and throw himself a surprise party, we deserve to know one simple thing: Who’s calling the shots in the White House? It is clearly under leftist Democrat rule.

We at Sandpaper Publishing have much to be thankful for, beginning with our members and readers. You fuel the passion we have for publishing three newspapers each week for three communities. We work hard to report and write the stories the matter most to you. We are your voice and are privileged to be in that role. Thank you for choosing us as your news and information source. We hope you stay tuned because we have so much more work to do for you.

It was a statement we heard at a national business conference and that wasn’t the only remark we heard about our industry. “Journalists go to journalism school to learn how to ask stupid questions.” This particular speaker had been the subject of “gotcha” journalism in the past. Every time an employee left his company it made the front page of the local newspaper. They referred to him as a cult leader and worse.

Our New Year’s wish for Crestview and Okaloosa County is simple: Civility.

Nobody expects citizens in a free society to agree on every, or even most, issues. Diversity of thought is vital to good government, the best solutions produced by critical analysis and healthy debate.

One year ago, Johnny Lee Akins of Crestview, Florida sought treatment for severe mental health issues at a hospital with a psychiatric receiving facility, and despite his wife’s desperate pleas, the facility released him because he apparently did not meet commitment criteria.[i] Two days later, he was charged with the murder of his friend and neighbor,[ii] a scenario that repeats itself more often than it should. Equally alarming, in November 2021, the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 100,306 overdose deaths occurred in America between April 2020 and April 2021—a nearly 29% increase from the prior year.[iii] These and many other similar stories illuminate how much we are systematically failing to assist people struggling with serious mental illnesses and drug addictions.

It’s almost impossible to understand it if you weren’t here then. One April morning in 2010 the Gulf of Mexico exploded. Hundreds of millions of gallons of oil roared up out of an undersea volcano and smeared across 70,000 miles of ocean. Destruction swept closer and closer to the world’s most beautiful and fragile beaches. The economy buckled. Governments panicked. For 80 days it got wider and worse. Then it stopped, sort of.

When Gov. Ron DeSantis put his signature on a bill authorizing three unnecessary, ridiculously expensive “toll roads to nowhere” that would plow across millions of acres of undisturbed land at Florid…

Do the right thing to reclaim some of the faith you’ve lost.