I've given this a lot of thought in the last few weeks since my wife and I moved here in September: I've given some thought about running for mayor of Lake Mary in 2014, but having seen the ups and downs of Barringer's five-year run, I'm not too eager to wade into politics.
Barringer may have his hands full next year as there's strong grassroots support in New Smyrna Beach for a run by Walter Allen, a man of the cloth who was the longtime chair of the Utilities Commission of Nrw Smyrna Beach, whom Barringer personally disliked and had replaced by chamber friends, Lee Griffith, and another insider appointee, Kenneth Bohannon, who represented some of the legal interests of former weekly Observer owners Robert and Michelle Lott. They sought and was granted federal bankruptcy protection from creditors.
I see where a Lake Mary gentleman has been in the lead elective office since 2008, and he's to be applauded for his tenure. I know nothing really of soon-to-be 67-year-old Mayor David J. Mealor, other than he also was a state representative..
In fact, I didn't even know who the mayor was until I went on the city's website just a few hours before this write-up. He may very well be the greatest thing since sliced bread and I may very well end up supporting his candidacy for re-election if that is what he chooses. Time will tell.
This is not about Mayor Mealor, good, bad or otherwise. It's about something hungering inside of me, going back to college and my BA degree and major studies in political science and public administration. Even, then, the college newspaper was every bit a part of the experience. And my life's journey since then, my first love as a newspaper reporter always foremost.
I had this romantic view of what public service is supposed to mean. I say "had" because from what I've experienced as an online publisher/journalist, it has been anything but that.
Though I've always been a step or two from the exposure to these insider-first politicians, my coverage expertise over the past three decades since college in the mid-1980s has always been as a daily metro breaking news and investigative reporting covering cops and courts: For close to a decade in suburban New York City for a big metro daily in West Nyack (Rockland County, Tappan Zee Bridge), The Westchester County-based Journal-News.
And for nearly a decade as well until the mid-2000s, the "former-metro" News-Journal in Daytona where I witnessed the execution of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the death chamber, covered appeals of then-death row inmate Virginia Larzelere and others like Daytona double-murderer Kosta Fotopoulos.
I also covered the legally convoluted Teresa Earnhardt civil trial where she convinced a circuit judge to seal the autopsy files of her NASCAR-legend husband, killed in the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.
One of my last assignments was covering Cox Enterprises vs. the Daytona Beach News-Journal, among the most unpleasant experiences for obvious reasons with the inner workings of the ownership battle and meddling (and now former General Counsel for the News-Journal Jon Kaney the apparent hired gun for the County Council in the Waverly park bench political advertising affair with continued politics at its root despite the phoniness of its backers).
I have no political experience other than as a faithful voter and keen observer of the BS in local politics. I have voted in every election since 1976. I have been a registered Democrat and last year switched to NPA after the elections primarily because of my publishing responsibilities in generating revenue and in covering the news, especially in moderating and hosting 15 public candidate debates last year.
I was hoping to write to Lake Mary Mayor Mealor directly overnight before publishing this column, but I could not find an individual municipal email address for him; only a standard form to either the mayor and commissioners or to the mayor, commissioners and city manager on the city website. So this will suffice for now.
At this point, I am simply expressing how I feel; what my gut is telling me. Lake Mary is a beautiful city, at least from my vantage point inside my car and the limited interaction I've had with my focus clearly on the news of Volusia County, centered on Daytona Beach and major breaking news throughout the Daytona-Orlando metropolitan region.
If I do decide, in fact, to run, I will have done my homework and make sure I am up on the issues. And if I run, I will do my best to challenge the incumbent or anyone else for that matter should he or others run. If I win, I will treat it as it is -- a part-time job with my continued focus on online news. And I will have done it on my own terms.
Really, what it comes down to is what community means to the person seeking the office; how he or she can effectuate meaningful change and true transparency. And I certainly will try to finance it on my own.
But Right now, I'm in the throws of my first book, "Creepy Ass Cracker," with serious deadlines looming. The title is an obvious reference to the Zimmerman trial, though the title may surprise you. And I'm in the process of re-orienting Headline Surfer®, to that of a true Central Florida "new media" source of breaking news, investigative reporting and in-depth analysis.
And I have secured publishing rights and a time commitment for a second book in June, called "Wrestling ReWind." Yes, as in professional wrestling. I have publishing rights for a third as yet untitled book secured for the following year.
While my wife, Serafina (whose family has called Lake Mary home for quite some time), and I were focused for five long years on building a credible source of news with New Smyrna Beach as the home base and Daytona Beach as the big city, that has changed drastically, thanks to the ill-will politics of municipal governance in New Smyrna where the mayor and city manager are both the subject of multiple investigations by the Florida Commission on Ethics.
We enjoyed covering every home Cudas football game, especially halftime with the marching band and the cheerleaders. We enjoyed covering the high school graduations and the family-oriented parades and festivals.
We covered the community and because if it, we enjoy a strong following to this day as New Smyrna Beach remains No. 1 in daily visits.
We fought the good fight until our integrity was attacked after we negotiated a lawful contract with the Southeast Volusia Advertising Authority.
At one point, I broke down while standing before the County Council, my voice cracking having to defend our reputation from a nasty letter-writing campaign led by Barringer and Pat Rice, the all too-willing News-Journal editor who cheerleads County Council members on Facebook.
Barringer used his connections as head of the Volusia Council of Governments to generate a big headline in the News-Journal back in August, the second of 14 stories written by the newspaper that portrayed us in a less than favorable light -- the same kind of piling on with the Waverly park bench investigation. Why? Advertising!
The Daytona Beach paper has seen its payroll trimmed by more than a dozen -- through layoffs and resignations.
Remember, when Michael Redding of Halifax Media and his rich business partners bought the News-Journal off the scrap heap of federal court-supervised sale after the News-Journal Center debacle? That was three short years ago. More than half the 800 employees were jettisoned and the bureaus closed.
The paper now is a chamber-friendly promoter where attendance figures are hyped and stories of nirvana for Daytona with the latest building project du jour strewn across the front page.
I will tell you this, as my loyal longtime readers have heard before. Volusia County is not immune from corruption and the News-Journal is right there in the thick of it with some its glad-handing editor, Rice, and his new breed of press release reporters cozied up to county government administrators.
It's all about taking care of insiders: Overpaid administrators and attorneys carrying out the wishes of part-time politicians willing to sell their souls to the highest bidder. It's sickening and it's all too real.
The advertising from the taxpayer's wallet is recycled back into the local "established" media, more than a million bucks annually in the News-Journal's coffers.
And the mainstream media is as much a part of the problem as the entrenched government itself, but then again they are all in bed together, aren't they? Try and get an answer about media advertising from County Manager Jim Dinneen or over-paid mouthpiece Dave Byron. Everything is done behind the scenes.
Whether NSB's Barringer and Brangaccio and their legal representatives manage to overcome the claims brought by citizen watchdog Bob Tolley who filed ethics complaints a year ago, is almost irrelevant at this point -- their tenure at the head of New Smyrna governance fraught with corruption.
Never mind for the moment that the Republican, Barringer, hosted a private party for his endorsed friend, Democrat and former longtime Commissioner Jim Hathaway, who gave up his 18-year tenure on the city commission to run for the district 3 seat on the County Council won by former School Board member Deborah Denys in the 2012 elections.
NSB CRA Conflicts Dec 5, 2011
Barringer had already benifitted financially in 2011 by getting fellow restauranteur Chad Schilsky appointed to the CRA three years ago and then piggybacked on a construction gig for Barringer Construction (he claims he's separate from the business yet he's been driving the same white Barringer Construction pick-up truck since running for mayor in 2008). The whole thing was determined to be not only improper, but against the law after the CRA and city commissions voted with Schilsky and Barringer abstaining.
Ironically, that didn't come from City Attorney Frank Gummey who makes in excess of $250,000 annually, but the then-CRA consulting attorney Mark Hall, who was making less than $20,000.
Schilsky and his colleagues bailed and the mayor and city commission became the CRA, but not before making sure former Mayor Sally Mackay would stay retired with two consecutive $50,000 CRA grants for her artist-Hub on Canal Street. leading to Barringer having no opponent last year.
So what did Mayor Barringer do next? He secured a $60,000 "giant facade grant" 13 months ago for boyhood friend, Dave Fernandez, and his Traders bar on Flagler.
Fernandez is well known to the cops and the courts. Some of you may recall the video we were trying to shoot that was actually favorable to Fernandez until he and his goons made idiots of themselves in front of our video camera back in September.
Some of you, of course, know what comes up next in our well-chronicled history of Barringer and company after his re-election without opposition: The mayor saw to it that another of his friends, Steve Sather, was appointed to the city's planning & zoning board.
Sather, of course, has the distinction of being a former drug dealer who pleaded "no contest" in open court 20 years ago to trying to purchase a large quantity of cocaine in an undercover sting. Yes, adjudication of guilt was withheld by a judge when sentencing guidelines weren't as strict. Imagine: A drug dealer on the planning board.
Two more points on Barringer: He worked behind the scenes with Brangaccio and Gummey to get rid of then-police Chief Ronald Pagano by giving him a $70,000 retirement he wasn't entitled to to leave at year's end, even continuing payments into the beginning of this year.
And this after City Manager Brangaccio learned of 940 missing or stolen items from the NSBPD evidence room, including $8,000 in cash, a cache of firearms, ammunition, jewelry, electronics and as many as 30 automobiles.
Brangaccio kept it under wraps for nearly six months until we broke the story in the Spring, even as the city was engaged in a nationwide search for Pagano's successor with the hiring of George Markert of upstate New York.
Markert wasted little time cracking down on drinking with several tickets issued open containers during the Flagler Avenue Halloween Creepy Crawl street festival. A Port Orange woman was killed in a DUI-related crash on the South Causeway after drinking in a bar on Flagler during the Cinco de Mayo street festival while the city was in between chiefs.
Since becoming mayor in 2009 and Brangaccio being given the full-time city manager position at $125,000, New Smyrna has spent upwards of $2 million on CRA-related funding for bars and restaurants that emphasize beer and wine, including the prior-mentioned Traders bar.
And just last month, Barringer stayed out of the limelight as the Ku Klux Klan did a flyer recruitment drop in the heart of the African-American Westside community.
Barringer, of course, is a member of the exclusive Anglers Club, established in 1913, during the height of the Jim Crow era, in a city where blacks were segregated as late as 1969-'70 in the Chisholm school.
A decade earlier, African Americans weren't allowed to enjoy New Smyrnas main beach nor that on Daytona's shoreline. They were relegated to Bethune Beach.
The Anglers enjoy a long-term lease with prime waterfront acreage on the Intracoastal Waterway, nestled between the two Causeway bridges, complete with a clubhouse, docking and 46 mini-yacht-sized boat slips -- all for a whopping $25 a year as the payment for 70 men, like Barringer, all white and most well off, by local standards at least
The News-Journal provided cover for Barringer during the KKK embarrassment, publishing its own story a day after Headline Surfer®, the Orlando Sentinel, the Central Florida TV stations and major papers across the country.
The News-Journal never demonstrated to its readers any effort to contact Barringer as to why he was so quiet, even as the Justice Department announced it was looking into the situation. And while the mayor gave a speech during the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. march in January, an annual event, he was nowhere to be seen after the KK incident in the Westside..
Oh, and as for those ethics complaints, Barringer hosted a private retirement party for his dead friend, Hathaway, who gave up his 18-year-reign on the city commission to run seat eventually won by Denys, who Barringer is now supporting, even hosting a campaign fundraiser for her just days after after the KKK ugliness.
And for the record, Denys, was quiet on the Klan situation as well, focusing instead on the George Clooney movie-scene shoot a week earlier where the star never showed his face in public.
Deny's been trying to lay low while amassing more campaign funds than any announced candidate in Volusia County (more than $11,000) since convincing her County Council colleagues in a split vote to dump Southeast Volusia Ad Authority Chairman Palmer Wilson at the request of chamber insiders who were cut off from funding after the Nicole Carni scandal that still remains up in the air as to criminal charges filed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement now two years in the making.
Denys may need every penny and then some if Wilson lays the smackdown on her by running against her. He's been very quiet in recent weeks. And there's Justin Kennedy, the former Edgewater councilman who was the third candidate in the Denys race last year. He, too, is trending, and she's feeling the heat from both. And there cdould be others.
With the KKK and Clooney blowing everyone off by showing up in the middle of the night and skipping out of town, embarrassed officials like Denys and Barringer had to cancel a planned George Clooney appreciation day in New Smyrna.
And who was the last to pay? None other than Mayor Adam Barringer.
As for the other ethics complaint against the mayor? The mayor was late for the Christmas parade last year and tried to cut through a closed side street. When he was waved off by city cop Ralph Hunnefeld, an Iraq War vet.
The mayor with the charming smile and pearly whites, jumped out of his "Barringer Construction" pick-up, walked up to the cop, sarcastically shook his hand and said to his face: "Thanks for being a prick!"
Then he stormed off, drove away and was all smiles aboard a bright red fire truck, Santa hat and all. This is the same Barringer (and mayor to boot), who has received more traffic warnings for speeding and running stop signs from the cops than his four commissioner-colleagues combined.
I don't think I want to wade into the shark-infested waters of politics.