Below is an excerpt from the Tallahassee Democrat, which makes a strong point:

 

Urban planners and developers have an acronym, “NIMBY,” that describes important undertakings that everyone agrees are badly needed — but “not in my back yard.”

 

The nastiest NIMBY was sparked by the now-abandoned plan by the well-meaning director of a homeless transition ministry to house 16 men, most of them sex offenders, at the Good Samaritan Thrift Store in Woodville.
That’s about a quarter-mile from an elementary school.

Angry parents picketed last week, demanding that the men not be housed there. County Commissioner Bill Proctor, Sheriff Mike Wood and School Superintendent Jackie Pons tried to allay their fears — the offenders would be supervised, with restrictive curfews and monitoring with security cameras and GPS systems — but explanations were futile. The county told Glenn Burns, head of the Good Samaritan Network, not to use the shop as a residential facility.

The anger is understandable. Nobody wants sex offenders anywhere. But, according to state records, there are 43 registered sex offenders living within three miles of Good Samaritan. And they are far less supervised. Burns said a lot of the men will now “live in the woods somewhere,” which hardly solves the problem.

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