Divemedic

Cape Canaveral, the breakdown

So at reader request, we are going to take a closer look at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Let’s just consider it to be a great example of what is happening all over the state. I did a deep dive into budget and demographic information, and

2015

The city had a population 10,018 in 2015 and had 25 sworn police officers. The annual budget of the city was $22 million, with $18 million in general fund spending, and another $5 million or so for infrastructure projects.

2025

The city had a population of 9,987, or essentially the same population. The city had had 0 sworn police officers, none, nada, zip. The annual budget of the city was up to $40 million, with $22 million in general fund spending and another $15 million or so for infrastructure projects. That’s a 6.2% per year increase.

The claim is that roads, city buildings, and stormwater improvements were the majority of those costs.

The police department no longer exists, as the city is paying Brevard county $8 million a year to provide police, fire, code enforcement, and EMS services to the city. Sure, this saves money, but if I were a Cape Canaveral taxpayer, I would be asking if this was something I was willing to be taxed for. I am left to wonder why they even have a city, if the county is providing all of the services. After all, if there was no city, the county would still provide those services- and likely at a lower cost.

The median homeowner in the city pays $2,727/year in property taxes. Estimated breakdown of Cape Canaveral median property-tax bill:

RecipientEstimated Annual AmountShare of Bill
Brevard Public Schools~$1,30948.0%
Brevard County & countywide services~$74627.3%
City of Cape Canaveral~$67224.7%
Total$2,727100%

What the city’s ~$672 portion pays for

The city’s millage supports municipal services such as:

  • $6.8 million per year for police, fire, and EMS ($3.8 to the Sheriff, $3 million to the fire department)
  • $3.5 million Public works
  • $1.8 million Parks and recreation
  • $1 million Planning and code enforcement
  • $1.6 million General administration
  • $90,000 Library support

In other words, for a typical homeowner:

  • About $5/year supports library services.
  • About $219/year supports policing and related public-safety functions.
  • About $197/year supports roads, drainage, and other public-works activities.
  • About $104/year supports parks and recreation.
  • About $90/year supports city administration.
  • About $57/year supports planning and code enforcement.

2026

The 2026 budget for the city shows an increase in ad valorem taxes of 26% for the city. Now count the other ad valorem taxes. In all, the median tax bill is going to increase by $450 for each homeowner, if you include county and school taxes. That is an overall 16.5% tax increase.

So yeah, maybe essential services DO need themselves some budget cuts.

This is why we are trying to get rid of homestead property taxes. It’s a sham.

By Divemedic, ago

Cape Canaveral

The left is going nuts because Florida governor DeSantis is proposing to phase out property taxes on homestead property. They are claiming the counties and cities will need to cut essentials like police, fire, roads, and schools. They say that there isn’t enough waste, fraud, and abuse to be found, and those essentials will be forced to face cuts. Let me show you why they are wrong.

The city of Cape Canaveral in Brevard County has a population of about 10,000 people and encompasses about 2 square miles. In the year 2000, population in the city was about 8,900 people, and it was about 8,000 people in 1990. That’s a growth rate of 0.5% per year over the past 36 years. <—Important stat, so keep this in mind as we look at the rest of this.

The city hall was built in the 1960s, and was about 3200 square feet. It looked like this:

In 2015, construction was begun on a new, 18,000 square foot city hall at a cost of $5.5 million. That number was close to what the city spent that year in its entire budget.

Now explain to me why they needed to build this giant edifice that costs more to build and to maintain than the building it replaced? Population was only 25% larger than it was in 1980, but the city hall building needed to be five times larger to accommodate all of the extra bureaucratic employees that are now working there.

The city’s budget is now $70 million, despite the fact that the city contains the same number of residents as it did ten years ago when the budget was $5.5 million. They built a larger city hall, then filled that space with more employees. Five times the building at twelve times the cost.

Why are so many more employees needed? The cost of government was $3 million per year in 1980, or about $11 million in 2025 dollars. Why does government need to be 7 times larger than it was in 1980, even though population is only 25% larger?

This is the waste, fraud, and abuse I am talking about. Maybe essential services NEED to be cut. That’s an insane amount of growth.

By Divemedic, ago

Billions

The democratic protests are all being funded– with the protests in Newark taking in over $800 million a year. That’s just one set of protests in one city. Multiply those amounts times the number of cities where it’s happening, and you can see that we are looking at billions. More than a couple of billion. Every election year. That’s how we always get unrest every election year.

Now think about that for a moment. How much is money has been spent on these “protests” in the past six years? $20 billion? 40? More? That isn’t grassroots. It isn’t the Democrats- they raise less than $200 million most years, and couldn’t afford the billions that is being spent here. They couldn’t afford to fund the protests in Newark, let alone an entire nationwide movement. That isn’t even large private donors. There is only one class of donor that can sustain that level of funding.

A government. A large government.

In my opinion? Our own government.

Even as far back as 2017, I noted the CIA appeared to be pulling things off like the Las Vegas shooting. I mean, who else has the juice to swap tail numbers on aircraft?

The entire 2020 George Floyd protest playbook was nearly identical to the CIA insurgency manual. I wrote about that extensively during the 2020-2022 timeframe.

The US government is one of the few who could fund and organize this sort of operation. The list is short because a general campaign to do this is expensive, labor intensive, and has little benefit for the cost.

Unless you are trying to destabilize the US. Think about that, and what the implications of that are. It will keep you up at night.

By Divemedic, ago

Old School

A few of my readers have commented on how they enjoy practice pearls, so I thought I would go ahead and share a simple one. This particular pearl is not just for medical people, it will work quite well for those of you who are not in the medical profession. In the medical profession, a lot of time is spent training people in the latest, greatest technology- the newest medication, the latest technique, the wow factor, but sometimes, it is the old school method that works best. I recently had the chance to teach a young doctor this exact lesson.

Lacerations

We had a woman that entered the emergency room who had cut off the last quarter inch or so of the tip of her finger with a pair of scissors while attempting to cut open an Amazon package, of all things. In so doing, she had also managed to nick the artery, and blood was pulsing out of the end of her finger. She had the presence of mind to bring in what she thought was the tip of the finger (what she brought in wasn’t the finger) and she was attempting to control the bleeding herself, but wasn’t succeeding.

The doctor looked at it and suggested we perform a digital block and attempt to stitch off the artery and suture the wound closed. That was going to be a bear to do. Instead, I suggested that we try something a bit more old school. I took a large emesis basin, filled it with ice, a little water water, and a bottle of Providone. I told the woman to place her finger in the basin and keep it there until the cold became painful. This concoction does three things:

  • The ice numbs the area
  • the Providone cleans the wound (there is a risk of infection if you don’t)
  • the ice also constricts blood vessels and is great at controlling bleeding

She spent about 15 minutes with her hand in that basin, and this stopped about 80% of the bleeding. I pulled her hand out, cleaned the finger with a couple of gauze pads (4×4), then had her hold one against the tip of her finger using her thumb. After about 5 minutes of that, we still had some bleeding, so I soaked a gauze pad with tranexamic acid (TXA) and placed it against the wound. That stopped the rest of the bleeding. I dressed the wound, and we sent her home.

Esophageal Varices

Just as you can get varicose veins in your legs, you can get them in your esophagus as a result of cirrhosis of the liver and the resulting portal hypertension. I was working in the ED one night when a patient began vomiting large amounts of blood. I’m not talking about what most people would think are large amounts of blood, but what a nurse who works in the ED thinks are large amounts of blood. It looked like this:

We were under the gun: if this bleeding didn’t stop, we were looking at a dead patient. I inserted an NG tube to suction out the blood, and the doctor and I came up with a plan. Using a piston syringe, I would push about 100 ml of ice water into the tube, let it sit for about 30 seconds, then suction it back out. I repeated this about 5 or 6 times, and each time, the amount of blood that came out with it was less. I was forced to stop after that 5th or 6th time, because the cold must have been irritating to her heart, as evidenced by the fact that she began having short runs of ventricular tachycardia. For that reason, anyone trying this, I would recommend placing the patient on a cardiac monitor and keeping a close eye on on their heart rhythm while doing this.

Ice- it’s quite useful in emergency medicine, but it isn’t used much any more in emergency medicine because it doesn’t have the sexy feel of the latest, greatest advances in medical technology, but it is still damned effective. Sometimes old school is still the best way to go.

By Divemedic, ago

No Posting Today

My Father in law needed some help throwing sod in his yard today, so I wound up spending the day helping him with yard work. I have told the in-laws not to do that sort of work, but to call me instead. They fall quite often, and I don’t want them getting hurt.

I spent about 8 hours throwing sod and working in their yard. It was 95 degF today, so I am spent.

Family comes first. Let’s see what we can do tomorrow.

By Divemedic, ago

Kids Acting Like Kids?

The so- called “teen takeover” trend expanded this past weekend when a large group of “teens” headed to Clearwater Beach and immediately began attacking people before it ended with gunshots. The police chief had this to say:

Deputy Chief of the Clearwater Police Department, Michael Walek, held a press conference around 8:30 p.m., where he said the incident was organized through social media and that it happened because of a “bunch of kids acting like kids,” claiming that this kind of incident would not happen again. 

Kids shooting each other is actung like kids? That’s because it’s “teens”

By Divemedic, ago