Top Three Takeaways – October 18th, 2021
- The militancy of our school districts continues. Not so fun fact. The Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach County School Districts continue not to follow them regarding their unlawful school mask mandate policies. The eight remaining school districts in Florida continuing to flout the law by imposing mask mandates without parental optouts are now seemingly doing it out of sheer militancy and the Palm Beach County school district is the case study for this militancy. Consider... 20,561 daily new COVID-19 cases. That’s the weekly statewide average for cases on August 10th - the first day of school for Palm Beach County when they allowed for parental optouts for mask mandates. 21,265, that’s the daily average for new cases when PBC’s school district mandated mask policy. 2,683, that’s the currently daily average for new COVID-19 cases. That’s right, cases have declined by 87% since the mandate went into effect - which is also about the time Broward and Miami-Dade's school years began as well. Specifically in each county the decline in cases since the start of the school year – Broward – 83%, Miami-Dade – 87% and Palm Beach County 85%. There’s never a time breaking the law is acceptable for South Florida’s school districts but the continued indignance to deny parental rights regarding the school mask issue is now clearly nothing more than lawless militancy.
- A staggering crisis. That’s the characterization used by one Florida CEO to describe what’s happening in the industry with which he operates. Any guesses as to which one it is? Here’s a hint. It’s something that 57% of Florida’s homeowners must have. By now you’re probably aware that tens of thousands of Floridians are being dropped by their property insurance companies upon renewal, fewer companies are choosing to underwrite polices in our state generally and those who do are seeking huge increases in policy premiums to offset reinsurance costs which have spiked in recent years along with natural disasters. All of that leads to Florida’s insurer of last resort. A staggering crisis is a staggering characterization and that exactly what Citizens CEO Barry Gilway had to say about the current state of Florida’s property insurance market. Over the past year over 200,000 homeowners have been pushed onto Citizens and the speed with which it’s happening is rapidly rising. Staggering wasn’t the only adjective offered up by Citizen’s CEO either. Others describing Florida’s property insurance market included, “dire” and “not sustainable”. I mention this for three reasons. First, if you carry property insurance you need to be aware of what’s happening and inform yourself as to what this may mean to you upon renewal. Double-digit premium increases are common, at a minimum – which you need to account for and there’s a chance that if you’re not on Citizens already you might be left with no other options. Especially if your home is a little older. Second, the good news is 43% of Florida homeowners don’t carry mortgages – that’s the tenth best rate in country. If you carry insurance but you home is paid off, are you potentially in a position to self-insure, or create your own investment fund with money that can grow but which could be used to pay for damages if they were to ever occur? The risk-reward spectrum for self-insuring is rapidly moving in favor of those who can. Related, if you do carry a mortgage, prioritizing paying it off as quickly as possible might be a good idea for you as you’d have the option to carry whatever level of insurance you want as opposed to what a mortgage company mandates. The third is that clearly more needs to be done legislatively to address the litigation issues which plague Florida’s market and are contributing significantly to all of these issues.
- He loves to criticize Florida. He loves to criticize me. Quoting Governor DeSantis Saturday night in Sarasota – he was referring to President Biden. Continuing... We are going to fight Biden on every single thing he’s doing that’s violating the Constitution, we’re not going to lay down and take it. That’s especially important to the greater than 700,000 Floridians in the workforce whose jobs might hang in the balance of how successful Governor DeSantis’s efforts are to reign in Biden’s mandates. Unlike Biden’s tactics in which he’s offered to take Trump out behind a barn and challenged his own supporter he referred to as fat to a pushup contest to prove mental acuity... DeSanits is most certainly a fighter but his battles will take place in the court room.