Mary Ruiz Quotations

We found it when we got up Saturday morning. We've never had anything like this happen.

I was surprised that we did as well as we did. Per capita spending for mental health has been going down for more than a decade. When per capita spending goes down, patients' access to mental health services suffers.

Panhandling can be very profitable. The quickest way to stop it is to quit giving them money.

This isn't a solution. It just makes it worse. If we are serious about addressing concerns of residents harassed by panhandlers and others, then we need to get serious about providing homeless services.

It's a terrible mixed message that we're sending to kids.

The No. 1 threat to kids in Manatee County is adults.

Education had the same issue a while back and Gov. Bush said we are going to pull up our ranking to the middle and we did. I am hoping the same happens for mental health.