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Officials lash out at critics
By DAVE SHELTON
Article published on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2007 |
LARGO – The usual crowd was at City Hall on Tuesday night, each taking his three minutes at the podium during the “Public Comments” portion of the City Commission’s Feb. 6 meeting.
There was John Atanacio who announced he wouldn’t pay a $200 fee as the city has wrongly classified the septic system for one of his strip malls as a “private” sewer collection system. The former elected official from New Jersey recently uncovered a multimillion-dollar error that could have cost the city millions in insurance premiums.
Ross Herman continued to rail against city spending and once again called it “Stantonville” claiming the elected officials were only rubber stamping the designs of City Manager Steve Stanton.
Curtis Holmes once again pressed for creation of an independent auditor with allegations that City Attorney Alan Zimmet’s law firm was too often dipping into the city coffers. He was gone three hours later when Zimmet responded to the allegations.
Conspicuously not present was anyone from the Forestbrook condominiums. In a flurry of long and confusing e-mails to city commissioners during the past several months, the homeowners have pleaded for the city to take over their private sewer system or pay for needed upgrades to the system.
But, it was another unsigned e-mail received by Stanton Feb. 6 that launched the commissioners’ anger.
In apparent reference to Zimmet, the missive from “Largo Watch” said “Do you feel things closing in, Al, ole boy? More to come tonight, I understand, at the commission meeting. I do think they are going to get you….”
“This is a very disturbing, cowardly e-mail,” Mayor Pat Gerard said. “Those who are complaining the loudest are not going to run this city. This makes me angry.”
Zimmet responded to Holmes’ continued attacks on his firm, saying the allegations were untrue. He ventured that a disgruntled former employee of the city was behind misinformation being used by Holmes.
Patrick Bennett wasn’t at the meeting. He was fired in October after raising questions about the city’s relationship with Zimmet’s firm. Bennett had been the city’s Risk Management Manager for about a year. Bennett alleged Zimmet had stepped into a legal case Bennett had supposedly resolved and, as a result, the proposed settlement rose by thousands of dollars.
“This is 100 percent untrue,” said Zimmet. “It simply did not happen.”
He added that the case Bennett had referred to took place before Bennett was hired.
“He has a grudge,” Zimmet said. “He just didn’t agree with the position taken by me or the city manager when he wasn’t even aware of the position I took.”
Zimmet revealed that Bennett had demanded a $20,000 payment from the city to keep him from taking his complaints public. After the city rejected the payment, Bennett contacted a local daily newspaper with his allegations and began appearing at city commission meetings to voice his charges.
Bennett couldn’t be reached after the meeting to respond to Zimmet’s claims.
Also of concern to city commissioners were the allegations by another anonymous writer.
“They keep referring to ‘sweet deals’,” said Commissioner Mary Gray Black in reference to a flurry of e-mails from “The Forestbrook Advisory Council.”
“I’d like to invite them to a meeting to make a presentation so we can hear what their problems are and discuss their request,” Black said.
Commissioners Rodney Woods and Gay Gentry added that they found the e-mails difficult to read and understand. The mayor asked if the missives actually reflected more than just the writer’s thoughts, noting they all appeared to have been written by one person. She said no one else from the condominiums has ever appeared before the city commission, nor written to the city.
“These sound very much like the same person writing the same things over and over again, very eloquently,” she said.
Gerard said the letters were full of “innuendo but no facts.” She reaffirmed that the city didn’t want to open the gates to similar requests from more than 200 private sewer systems to ask for city takeover at a time when the city faces up to $100 million in state-required updates to its own system.
Woods agreed, saying he wouldn’t support talks with just one of the private sewer system owners and he also criticized the letter writer.
“I would prefer you to come before us,” he said to the condo owners. “I just don’t get what you are telling me in these letters.”
Stanton said a dozen of the condo owners in Forestbrook once filled his office for two hours to plead for the city to take over their sewer system.
The condo owners’ most recent letter, dated Feb. 5, appeared to explain why none have appeared in public.
“Most of our residents are appalled by the way you consistently accede to crowds,” the unsigned letter said. “Even those trampling on facts and law (e.g. Serenity Gardens).
“Our preference has been for quiet reason. Sincerely, we are astonished, and embarrassed for you, to find this so unavailing, to date.”
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Article published on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2007
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