Underlying issue: Behind-the-scenes effort to get money restored to chambers stripped of funding for not fulfilling contracts
Headline Surfer photos and videos by Henry Frederick / Could Palmer Wilson be thrown off the Southeast Volusia Advertising Authority a second time? If County Councilwoman Deb Denys has her way, that could very well happen on Thursday. Denys makes accusations against Wilson in the video at left, but her claims don'tr even come close to what actually happened when Palmer Wilson returned to the SVAA and was voted in a second time by his colleagues as chair. His first accuser was County Council member Joshua Wagner of Daytona (shown at right in the inset photo) who was instrumental in getting him returned to the SVAA after Wilson confronted the council in person. Now Denys is teeing off on Wilson.
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- At the age of 71 and having undergone radiation treatment for prostate cancer the better part of the year, Palmer Wilson still gave his all to the Southeast Volusia Advertising Authority, through a grueling hiring process for a permanent director in the wake of the Nicole Carni scandal. He won unanimous support in April as chairman by his board colleagues, then marched in to the County Council chambers a month after he was fired two weeks earlier in a rush to judment by one of the elected officials.
Wilson, a retired lieutenant colonel in the US Army and a decorated Maryland police administrator confronted his accusers and won them with his intellect, reasoning and the truth.
He was re-instated to the SVAA in a unanimous vote that very same day with Dist. 3 County Councilwoman Deb Denys demonstrably reminding Council member Joshua Wagner of Daytona Beach he should have done his homework before pushing a 4-3 vote to dump Wilson simply because he "lost faith" in Wilson based on rumor and innuendo perpetuated by Mayor Adam Barringer and others opposed to a lawful $10,000 contract Headline Surfer inked in early July with then-Interim SVAA Director Renee Tallevast.
But on Aug. 7, the Daytona Beach News-Journal came out with a big front page story above the fold portraying Headline Surfer in a negative light with a second-day local front story that allowed Barringer, himself the target of a multiple state ethics investigations intensely reported by Headline Surfer, to openly criticize its smaller upstart online media competitor that had beaten the print paper to the punch with the contract.
Now a month later, it's Denys herself, casting aspersions on Wilson with her own demands that he be removed.
But unlike Wagner who merely saw Wilson as the fall guy in hopes of ending the media frenzy (12 News-Journal stories so far on the the SVAA contract) with Barringer and his friends engaged in a vicious letter writing campaign against Headline Surfer and Wilson, seen by them as enabling the internet newspaper to generate revenue, Denys made damning allegations from the dais at Thursday's County Council meeting against Wilson.
This, after he again was selected by his SVAA peers as chairman.