As a Hallandale Beach resident, I find it very disappointing that the city eliminated its recycling program. I encourage the city to reinstate its recycling program — and to join the Solid Waste Authority of Broward County.

Broward has fallen from a 60% recycling rate in 2013 to about 38% today.

By contrast, Palm Beach County achieved a 91% recycling rate in 2025.

I guess Hallandale Beach must now be at zero other than what we can take to Publix, and I don’t even know where that material ends up.

We all see the problems with trash mountains and plastics in the ocean. Our goal as responsible citizens should be to leave the world a better place for our children, something at which we, as a nation, are failing at miserably.

— Tanya Miller, Hallandale Beach

The power to help, turned off

I was 11 when Hurricane Irma hit in 2017. My family loaded up on toilet paper, canned soup and flashlights.

At the height of the storm, our power went out. My sister and I were terrified, but our lights came back the next day, and I wondered what others were experiencing. Looking back, I know people beyond our borders experienced much worse.

USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development) had the power to help. This is no longer the case.

Growing up in South Florida, I know the pain a hurricane can bring. Many Floridians know this pain— the fear, grief and work needed to recover.

USAID has been a vital resource in hurricane preparedness and disaster relief, including through its Miami warehouse. Disasters do not stop at our borders. Cuts to USAID mean fewer resources for people facing disasters around our globe.

I urge Florida’s two senators, Rick Scott and Ashley Moody, to reinstate funding for lifesaving foreign assistance programs.

— Heather Breslaw, Fort Lauderdale

Why he’s glad to be 82

A federal agent shoots to death an unarmed civilian in Maine at a traffic stop who is innocent of any crime. Perhaps the shooter needed more training, and as a consequence, the practice of making traffic stops to arrest immigrants was temporarily suspended (and later reinstated).

This tells me that the officer’s training was inadequate. But I’m not surprised, because the test for hiring individuals is loyalty to the boss — not ability to do the job well. It tells me other things, too, especially when the individual responsible for ordering more training is contradicted by his boss who says in effect that a life lost is less important than his version of law enforcement.

Is this still the land of the free? What a joke.

For once I am glad to be 82, so I don’t have much more time to live in the fiasco that my country has become.

— Michael Peskoe, Fort Lauderdale

Not the same Marco Rubio

As a lifelong Democrat, I do not always agree with Republican policies.

That said, I can admire their integrity for what they believe. This was once true about Marco Rubio. I admired him for having the courage to talk about his viewpoints on gun control in front of a hostile audience after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting.

I’ve since lost all thought of him having any integrity because he has gone against everything that he believed in prior to working for Donald Trump. Rubio has probably removed every mirror from his house because he can’t look himself in the mirror anymore and still go to work.

History will only record your integrity. That’s you will be remembered.

— Hal Krantz, Coral Springs

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