Editor's Note: Featured comments are the most thoughtful or eloquently stated comments from our Facebook page and crestviewbulletin.com and do not necessarily reflect the newspaper management's views.

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What is a hero's life worth?

Our first responders, police and firefighters' salaries should be commensurate with their duties. A starting salary of $40,000, with cost of living raises yearly, would be more in line with the type of responsibilities they shoulder. What is a life worth?

That is what these everyday heroes do: they put their lives on the line for us, the citizens.

Johna Esterberg

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Farming out police officers

We basically have a PD farm team. Bring them in, train them and they go to bigger teams with bigger pay. Paying a cop $28,000 a year is way too low for a first responder.

Ray Nelson

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How is a raise possible?

An 8 percent raise? How is that possible when they are fundraising for the acquisition of police dogs?

Jon Bell

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Pondering mixed-use zoning

Things are looking good downtown, but the housing issue should not be on the table. There is no new business development — and that is the building block of a city!

It will bring jobs, tax revenue, help to make downtown look like something that you want to get out in! … Fort Walton is smoking us in shopping, dining and business growth.

Business (first).

The rest will come! Think Uptown Station style!

Scott Howard

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Title IX column resonates

Thank you for this article. My son has been the victim of Title IX and it has affected his eighth-grade year at DMS. Very sad, especially since girls are free to join football. 30 kids just seems too few for football.

Erica K Bottom

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Noticing some school bus drivers speeding

Coming home from work, I go across the island. I do 55 (mph) every day and see high-school drivers going 70 and 80, but when (a bus) passed me also doing 70-plus, I thought, 'Why doesn't the sheriff's office monitor the speed across the island when school is let out?'

Have made the same commute for 10 years and the buses have always (gone) way too fast.

Scott Braden

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No results after reporting speeding bus

I have complained at least 12 times about the same bus going about 25 mph on my 15 mph street, to no avail.

Tina Louise

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Why do businesses fail?

Sometimes, I really wonder … Does the business fail due to the business itself? Or because too many people making too many rules and regulations makes it impossible for a business to survive?

John Luberto

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Distinguishing between cigarettes, e-cigarettes

Cigarettes contain acetone. Vapors have chemicals that are found in antifreeze. No matter what, they are all bad for you. I don't think (the e-cigarette) is a safe alternative to smoking. Not enough studies have been done to find out what all is used but I am pretty sure it will be bad.

Scott Zamorski

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About Crestview street sign name changes…

I sure hope they are coordinating this with 911 and County GIS systems.

Silvia Clem Womack

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This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: HUBBUB: Title IX column resonates, how is a raise possible?

Happy Labor Day, North Okaloosa County!

We have so much to be grateful for on this day, as we recall the deplorable working conditions of yesteryear while recognizing that there's still progress to be made.

Today on Editor's Notes, as we work toward our Labor Day off (this was recorded on Sunday), we offer a look at how columns are created. It's something a number of readers have asked about. 

Well, I don't write Editor's Desk until the night before press deadline. That's partly due to necessity (there's much to do beforehand) and partly due to what really determines the topic. If it's a column with a certain depth (issue-oriented), it could take three hours to write, including the necessary research.

If it's more of a preview to what's inside the midweek edition, it's pretty quick to get through.

Watch the video for a preview of this week's issue-oriented column, and enjoy your Labor Day!

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: EDITOR'S NOTES: The making of a column (VIDEO)

The average American is happy to have a paying job with the opportunity to make a little more money. Most Americans would like to work a few extra hours when they could. However, many Americans dream of retiring to fish, golf, garden, or relax. Others enjoy working so much that they never quit.

It all depends on the kind of work you do. If you are a coal miner, then retirement at 55 looks great. If the daily manual labor is not too overtaxing, then many enjoy staying on the job.

Some of my dearest friends are in their seventies and still work five days a week and sometimes more. A friend of mine who manages entertainers is 78 and has no current plans to retire. Another is 76 and is out every day working for a large corporation. Both agree that staying busy has been good for their mental and physical health.

On the flip side of this are people in their seventies who have to work. Often they have jobs they don't really enjoy but without working some they couldn't survive.

Life would be almost impossible without Social Security and Medicare for America's senior adults.  Most of our elderly would be starving or homeless without these two government programs.  These programs along with people working whatever jobs they can find, keep most of America's seniors off the streets. I only wish that the money collected from people would stay in these programs.

Every American deserves a break on Labor Day weekend, Sunday or someday during the week. A rest from the daily grind helps us to reflect and appreciate life a little more.

Unfortunately, millions of Americans would love the opportunity to work through Labor Day and the rest of the holidays if they could find a paying job. Without an income it's almost impossible to relax and enjoy any day.

On Labor Day or any day, count your blessings if life is going well for you.

Glenn Mollette is an American columnist and author.   

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: COMMENTARY: Labor Day, any day, count your blessings

In 2013, Forbes magazine published an article titled, “For Metros with Flourishing Economies, Tech Sector at Center of Job Growth."

The statement is as true then as it is now.  Technology jobs are poised to outnumber jobs in almost every other sector.  While this change holds benefits to some communities, it poses an economic barrier to others. 

“The job skills gap is increasingly widening, and if something does not change, many of our people (African-Americans) will remain obsolete in the new economy,” according to Jeremiah J. White Jr., president of iPraxis, a Philadelphia based nonprofit dedicated to expanding minority job employment and entrepreneurship in STEM: science, technology, engineering and math.

Women, African Americans, and Latinos are currently greatly underrepresented in the STEM fields, especially computer science and engineering jobs, which comprise eighty percent of all STEM jobs.  If this trend of under-representation continues, the lack of education and training in these fields will generate a lower class as much defined by income as by race and gender. 

Increasing the amount of minority and female representation in the STEM field is twofold; first, opportunities to train in STEM must be targeted towards these groups; second, the job market must be willing to accept non-traditional STEM applicants, i.e. neither Asian nor White and male.  While several initiatives have been proposed and are currently being executed to increase minority representation in the education department, little has been done to increase the likelihood of these groups finding STEM jobs afterwards. 

According to the US census, “Among science and engineering graduates, men are employed in a STEM occupation at twice the rate of women: 31 percent compared with 15 percent.  Nearly 1 in 5 female science and engineering graduates are out of the labor force, compared with less than 1 in 10 male science and engineering graduates.”  Growth in the amount of female STEM employees has stalled in recent decades, with the majority of currently working female STEM employees originally being recruited into the industry from the 1940’s to 1990’s. 

Proportionally, both blacks and Hispanics should compose twice as much of STEM employees as they currently do. 

While most corporate jobs are filled by human resources or business heads, the technology department tends to differ in this respect.  Technology departments typically grant hiring authority to senior engineers who then select the next generation of engineers for the company.  On one hand this can improve efficiency, as a group tailored to the individual engineers working styles can be selected. 

On the other hand, since those in the STEM field are more likely to be politically conservative, they are also more likely to select workers most like themselves who then go on to become senior employees and repeat the pattern. 

Minority employment in the STEM field will most likely not increase as much as projected until the position of employing new STEM staff is outsourced to human resources, who statistically are less apt than engineers to only select those who mirror themselves. Unfortunately, human resources staffs are unequipped to identify the existence and proficiency of skills needed to carry out STEM jobs. 

Consequently, companies must impose quotas or suggestions to senior STEM staff to diversify who they choose to work under them. 

Jeremy Bamidele is a nationally syndicated journalist. 

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: COMMENTARY: Minorities underrepresented in STEM fields

Labor Day is a great time to relax and hit the beach. But before you pack the towel and sunblock, take time to consider the origins of the holiday and the late 19th-century working conditions that inspired it.

Some examples:

• In the 1870s, “‘Breaker boys,’ sometimes as young as 7 or 8, sorted coal from rock for 10 to 12 hours per day in massive above-ground collieries,” notes the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission’s summary on child labor. “In the same decade, Pittsburgh’s glass industry provided employment to youngsters which exposed them to temperatures of 100 to 130 degrees.”

• In 1886 in Milwaukee, militias were called out against striking workers who had been demonstrating for an eight-hour workday. In the shooting that erupted, 15 people were fatally wounded.

• “Nowhere was the new work associated with the industrial revolution more dangerous than in America,” according to Mark Aldrich in an article on EH.net (a website of the Economic History Association). Mining and railroad jobs were notoriously risky.

“While workers injured on the job or their heirs might sue employers for damages, winning proved difficult… A number of surveys taken about 1900 showed that only about half of all workers fatally injured recovered anything and their average compensation only amounted to about half a year’s pay.”

• “Considering the fact that one out of every 120 trainmen — a railroad category that mostly included brakemen — died on the job each year, it is not surprising that the majority of trainmen considered the loss of a finger to be a ‘minor’ injury,” according to a 2010 project by Stanford University Spacial History Lab research assistant Evgenia Shnayder.

• “Health conditions in New York bakeries were exceptionally bad,” according to a report by the Department of Labor. “In an 1895 study the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics did in cooperation with the bakers’ union, it found that bakers worked inhumanly long hours… Over a thousand bake shops in New York City were in basements. Some of them were ‘cellars of the worst description …. damp, fetid, and devoid of proper ventilation and light.’ Many of them had very low ceilings, forcing workers to labor in a stooped-over position all day. Two-thirds of the bakeries inspected were classed as ‘totally unfit.’”

• Reports in the 1870s from the Massachusetts labor safety bureau noted various occupational health hazards, including the risk to textile workers of a shuttle method which exposed them to fatal lint and dust. “Most operatives became sick after 2 years of exposure to this ‘kiss of death’ shuttle, as it became known.”

• The Massachusetts safety bureau reported this in 1874: “No one who has investigated the history of those employed in the manufacture of matches can doubt that the terrible disorganization of the tissues of the body, which results from long employment therein, is worse than death.”

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Today in the United States, such dangerous working conditions are the exception, not the rule. The positive change is due in part to stronger regulations and efforts by the American labor movement — whose sacrifices and reforms are among the reasons for the holiday.

Economic needs have changed since the 1880s. In our current era, most jobs are sedentary and increasingly mechanized or computerized. Many workers still face safety issues — but their greatest overall risk tends to be financial rather than physical. Loss of full-time employment, wage stagnation, eroding benefits (or none at all), and growing income inequality have diminished hard-won progress.

Labor Day festivities took root in the 1880s’ Gilded Age, when enormous wealth and power accrued to the few, and shut-out workers rose up in anger.

There are eerie similarities today, when corporate wealth seems to control the levers of government and average workers just get by, not ahead.

Our “land of opportunity” remains graced as ever with freedom and resources — something to celebrate on this national holiday. But for average workers, life and the economy remain precarious. Can’t we find a more equitable way to grow together, and share America’s gifts?

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: COMMENTARY: The origins of the Labor Day holiday

Editor's Note: Featured comments are the most thoughtful or eloquently stated comments from our Facebook page and crestviewbulletin.com and do not necessarily reflect the newspaper management's views.

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Educate children, prevent kidnappings

No one has been successful (luring children) because parents are educating their kids. Keep up the education, because regardless of where you live these sick individuals will never give up.

They keep trying until they find that one weak soul with no education. Praying everyone's kids remain safe.

Renee Stone-Westmoreland

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Suggestion for officers' starting wage

These officers chose to protect and serve their community. They have families to support. They may even have student loans to pay off as well, for you have to have an education in criminal justice.

I believe that the starting wage should be no less than $20 an hour.

Thomas O'Donnell

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Increase pay, increase professionalism

Of course, low pay doesn't necessarily turn a cop bad, and good pay doesn't ensure good cops, but I believe it does dramatically increase the chances of getting good professional candidates and workers who will invest in the community and continue with the agency for many years, allowing their experience to pay dividends in the future.

Brian Cokonougher

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Police put up with problem people non-stop

If we want good-quality people on the force, we need to pay them a decent salary. Think about it: all workers of every kind have to deal with problem people at times, but the task of police officers is to deal with nothing but problem people!

Denise Wong

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Crestview cops' pay is too low

We basically have a (police department) farm team. Bring them in, train them and they go to bigger teams with bigger pay. Paying a cop $28,000 a year is way too low for a first responder.

Ray Nelson

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Target drunken drivers and these folks

I'd love to see more targeting of people with their toddlers running around in the car or the ones with babies in their laps as well!

Erin Leigh Henderson

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Sports editor should rethink law's implications

You're right. Equality doesn't mean equal numbers. That is why TIX offers three ways to comply with the requirement for provision of opportunities. But prong 3 — interests and abilities — cannot be proven based on your "understanding" that there is no girl with a burning desire to play sports. A school needs to collect data.

Scholarship dollars must be divided proportional to the number of male/female athletes. So in schools with football teams (which receive 85 scholarships) other men's sports might not receive the same number of scholarships as their so-called equivalent women's sport. This is not the fault of women's sports.

Wrestling may be on the upswing again but numbers decreased in the 80s — when TIX was not being enforced. The arms race in collegiate sports has limited the re-emergence of some men's sports. That being said, TIX does not mandate that schools cut any sports to comply or that they cut specific sports.

As someone who truly believes in equality — not the convenient (for men) equality you are espousing, I urge you to do your research before you write about Title IX and equality again.

Kris Newhall

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This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: HUBBUB: Suggestion for officers' starting wage, sports editor should rethink law's implications

Editor's Note: Featured comments are the most thoughtful or eloquently stated comments from our Facebook page and crestviewbulletin.com and do not necessarily reflect the newspaper management's views.

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Praise for Crestview murder case's investigators

Every time I drove by Ms. Melvin's home, seeing how Mother Nature was taking over the property, I wondered if the case would ever be solved.

Such a tragedy and waste of a life.

Thank goodness we had dedicated law enforcement determined to find the truth and solve the case.

Thank you for your hard work.

Shirley Perring

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Antioch Road's potholes have been an issue

Antioch Road is horrible. People are constantly swerving into other lanes trying to avoid hitting holes that are going to blow their axles out of place. This has been an issue. I drive with three small children and am terrified to get hit by a car that's swerving to avoid these holes every time I leave my house.

Amanda Emily Ann Ducharme

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What to do about road repairs

Everyone that wants change needs to flood the county roads supervisor with emails and letters stating their concern. I have emailed two times with no answer!

From storm damaged roads still not fixed — Oak Hill — to issues with Antioch — heavy traffic, pot holes — to S.R. 85 — inadequate turn lanes/lanes in general — we need changes!

Crestview keeps growing but no one is looking to upgrade the infrastructure.

Todd Lawrence

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All local football teams need EvoShields

Excellent news that the Haugen Foundation has provided the Shoal River football players with their own customized EvoShields.

I hope all of the Okaloosa and Walton County Schools' football teams will apply for the grants to get the EvoShields for all of their players, too!

Jean Mitchell

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Beyond campaign attack ads…

The sad thing, really, is there are real issues to be discussed. There are real decisions facing the county in the next few years that will have impact beyond our lifetimes. Our kids deserve better.

Loree Arrington

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Here's another campaign pet peeve

One for me is putting campaign signs up in illegal areas. If you can't be bothered to ask someone's permission or find out who owns the land then you don't deserve to be in office.

Keith Prestridge

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Proposed Hospital Drive service road needed

This has been needed for a long time. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't support it.

Silvia Clem Womack

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Solution for smoker debate

The solution is simple. Charge the business owner a couple hundred bucks a year rent ….

Paul Jensen

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Instead of focusing on the smoker…

I think the city should be focusing more of their efforts on other things with this city like improving roads and traffic issues. Also trying to get more businesses to set up in Crestview.

Scott Zamorski

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Why give unincorporated residents a tax increase?

Yep, stick it to the rural residents to pay for what will mostly benefit the urban ones. That makes sense.

David Hall

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Could current tax revenue fund repairs?

Why won't the current tax money supposedly saved pay for these road repairs? Why is the solution to always raise taxes? Where is the county reserve money?

What about state emergency funds everyone supposedly received to make repairs? I'm sorry but I don't agree with this one bit!

Melissa Kennedy-Shaffer

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Praise for estate's K9s for Crestview donation

Thank you for such a generous donation to a cause Diane Gilbert would have loved.

Jan Nichols

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This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: HUBBUB: Praise for Crestview murder case's investigators, beyond campaign attack ads

This week, we'll do something a little different for Editor's Notes!

Calvary United Pastor Charles Braneff tells us about Super Sunday, the follow-up to Friday's Back to School Bash, which provided more than 500 bookbags with school supplies to North Okaloosa children in need.

Attendees enjoyed free pizza and drinks, and participated in a "Fear Factor" style competition. Children ate all kinds of gross foods to determine who's the last one standing.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: EDITOR'S NOTES: Get ready for Super Sunday! (VIDEO)

We received the infamous out-of-town-PAC-funded campaign mailing a couple weeks ago.

And I think we also received a follow-up robocall, though we immediately hung up upon hearing those first few seconds of silence and returned to our supper.

The mailing and call were so helpful as we weighed the issues: We instantly eliminated that candidate from consideration.

So, candidates, do you also want to lose my vote? It’s easy! Just follow these three simple steps.

1. CALL ME AT HOME.

I’m on the National Do Not Call Registry. If I wanted you, your robocalls, your political action committees, Matt Gaetz’s PACs and your pollsters to interrupt dinner, movies, naps or reading time, I wouldn’t have bothered to register.

I know politicos have exempted themselves from laws they expect everyone else to follow, but abuse of the Do Not Call registry is subject to something even stronger than the law: manners.

If you can’t obey a simple request like “Do not call me,” what makes you think I’d trust you with more complex matters that face the office you seek?

2. TRASH YOUR OPPONENT.

I want to know what you’re planning to do for my community and how. Tell me about you, what you stand for and how you plan to approach the issues and solve the problems.

I am instantly unimpressed when you —  or your pal’s out-of-town PACs — misconstrue your opponents’ out-of-context quotes, or recycle ancient photos to make it look like your opponents hobnob with someone who, many years after the photo was taken, fell from grace.

Such shenanigans tell me you have no ideas of your own and therefore you must resort to bullying.

I appreciate that you need to contrast your stance against your opponents, but do it politely. If you can’t, then I sure don’t want you — and your crony’s out-of-town PACs — representing me.

3. DON’T SHARE MY VALUES.

This one should be self-explanatory. You can respect the Do Not Call Registry and run a clean campaign, but if we don't see eye to eye on the issues that matter, no amount of sweet talking will help.

I can't be bought.

There it is: Three things candidates do that turn off this voter. If you make any of these mistakes, especially the first one, I’ll vote for your opponent.

Email News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: BRIAN SAYS: 3 easy ways to lose my vote