Criticism of letter not warranted

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks” is a quotation from the 1602 play “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare. I think School Board Chairman. Charlie Kennedy doth protest too much also — and incorrectly in his response to my earlier letter regarding the benefits of keeping school board work local.

My experience is that when a person or an organization is faced with challenging questions about behavior or actions, they either admit it or try to justify it. He correctly cites Florida law about not giving preferential treatment based on location, which serves as a convenient opt out response, but then turns around and tries to justify that both firms that were selected are — in fact — local because they have branch offices in Sarasota.

Well, so do Wells Fargo and Bank of America; however, that hardly makes them local in any true sense of the word.

According to Google, Gilbane is headquartered in Rhode Island and Shenkel is headquartered in Orlando.

Also he misquotes me twice — unnecessarily trying to twist the meaning of what I was trying to convey about the importance of supporting local business and making it sound as if I were somehow demeaning the school district.

As to his last comment about “sour grapes” — one I found to be somewhat bizarre — I hardly think that expressing my opinion that supporting the community that supports the school district is important can somehow be viewed by Mr. Kennedy to be a bad thing. I certainly hope that the other school board members do not hold that view after all of the effort that went into getting the referendum through.

This story was originally published December 19, 2016 at 1:28 AM with the headline "Criticism of letter not warranted."