Times Union: Kids eat free: City program provides lunches, snacks for children under 18

[Patricia M. McBride]

Calling all free loaders..............  Pay special note to the highlighted and under lined part of the commentary.  No oversight, no accountability and provided by YOUR federal, state, and local taxes to any and all who walk off the street and can prove they are under 18.  This is a training program for the dependency mentality and it allows parents to use their welfare and food stamp money on more important things like getting their hair or nails done (yes, they can get cash back, to use for other things, on the EBT cards).  You pay for garbage pickup (which is an actual city service), and your property tax money is in part (at least) used for programs like this with zero over sight!  Doesn't that just make your day?

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Beth Cravey on July 3, 2012

The Jacksonville Children's Commission is sponsoring the local summer lunch program offered by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

The program provides free nutritious lunches and snacks to children under age 18 Monday through Friday. More than 89,000 lunches and 74,000 snacks have been served at 172 locations throughout Jacksonville since June 11, according to a news release.

Meals will continue to be provided until Friday, Aug. 10.

Summer lunch sites are located in parks, housing complexes, recreation centers, churches, summer camps and 14 public libraries. A "Free Lunch Served Here" banner is posted at each site with the meal times indicated, according to the release,

Children do not need to be enrolled in other programs at the site to receive a lunch or snack; they just need to show up during meal times.

For a complete list of Summer Lunch Program sites, go to jaxkids.net, click on Nutrition Services, 2012 Summer Lunch Site List. For more information, call the commission at [phone].

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/400721/beth-cravey/2012-07-03/...

[amanda choate]

Patricia, where are these churches that are doing this now? Who is stopping them?

[amanda choate]

Ah Marie Antoinette, we do miss you so. Certainly they should rely on charity, begging if necessary, these children need to be accountable. I do have a suggestion, sell their organs. They are young and not obese, these afre good organs and they would get good money for them.
Until Medicare ends, which pays out over $400,000 more per person than they paid in, then after that, starve the little turds, they are not our problem.

[Patricia M. McBride]

Tamara, as Hank has said, churches and non profits would fill the needs of the community if the government would get out of the business of being a social services organization and little else it would appear at this time.  They give these chits to anyone as long as they are under 18, and I am sick of them training these young people to expect the government to take care of every one of their needs.  If they are not on a list for such a thing, the city has no business using tax money to feed someone's children so they can use their money for something else!   No oversight, and most of the people in this city are clueless how their tax money is used while we are being fleeced to pay separately for the city services you have a city government to provide.  If we have to pay private companies for your city services, then, why do we have a city government.............certainly it isn't to redistribute our money as they see fit for social programs!

[Hank Heinold]

It is not the taxpayers responsibility to raise these kids. They will not starve to death - get real. Churches and pure non-profit ( no taxpayer - local, state of federal) agencies would handle this if the GOVT would get out of the business of stealing our money and giving it away. We have an insane system with incentives that needs to be stopped now.

[tamara stephenson]

better they starve to death than we spend this money without oversight. 

[Patricia M. McBride]

You won't get an argument from me Hank. I agree. Right now, we are being forced to pay separately for our garbage, recycle, and yard waste pick up and the cost to us is going up at least once more and maybe twice more, but they have tons of our property tax money to give away in a manner that has zero over sight (as we have found a number of things our city government does have no over sight and millions of dollars have been lost due to poor management by the city). It is not our business to be subsidizing irresponsible parents, so they have more money to spend on themselves when they should be buying food and feeding their children themselves.

[Hank Heinold]

This is pure Welfare with no oversight and needs to be shut down. It is not the job of the taxpayer to "raise" others children.

This is so wrong on every level. This is just one program in JAX with one agency JAX Children's Commission (that needs to STOP these Welfare programs) that is out of control. I would like to know the total bill for Welfare of all kinds by the JAX govt. - County, JTA, JEA etc. It has to be huge and it needs to be cut substantially to be a Temporary safety net at most!