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2nd in the series
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Though Steve Dennis was fired as director of the Southeast Volusia Chamber of Commerce back in August, he remains on the CRA board to this day through a legal loophole, thanks to his friends, Robert and Michele Lott of the weekly Observer.
And Adelle Alleti, another powerful Dennis supporter, let the new management of the chamber know she was not renewing her membership ecven as she asked for help in promoting the ice-skating rink on Flagler Avenue.
This is not the first time the Observer has proven a haven for a CRA member whose standing has been called into question looking for a way to stay out of a job, in an entwined local business sector where the lines of separation are blurred and millions of tax dollars up for grabs among a finite few.
At the center of this fraternity is Robert Lott, immediate past president of the chamber and former board member of the Southeast Volusia Hospital Taxing District for Bert Fish Medical Center, who voted in favor of tax increases while his wife's Observer benefited from full page hospital advertisements.
Robert and Michele Lott bought the Observer, which had closed months earlier, in 2008, and moved it from South Dixie to Canal Street and re-opened it under the auspices of Coronado Beach Publishing, with Michele Lott as its sole corporate officer. At that time, Robert Lott was president of the Chamber of Commerce and a member of the hospital board overseeing Bert Fish's public monies for indigent care.
Like Dennis, Doug Hodson, who had been director of News-Journal Corp.'s Pennysaver and let go two years ago, managed to hold onto his seat on the CRA, thanks to the Observer, which hired him as its advertising director.
Hodson also happened to be and still is a member of another local board, the Southeast Volusia Advertising, which receives several million annually in bed-tax money.
But Hodson's relationship with the Lotts soured and he quit, instead hanging his name plate on Realtor Linda DeBorde's shop on Canal Street. But DeBorde, then-chairwoman of the CRA, stepped down in October from the seven-member CRA for health reasons. Hodson hung a sign on DeBorde's office with his realty license as his new "job" until she retired from her business as well. He has since hung his realty license in the office of the Sealand Realty on Flagler Avenue.
In order to serve on the CRA board, a member must either live or work in the district or be a duly sworn officer of a business within the district. Property taxes that normally would go to the county, are redirected back to the district and used for the economic development or at least that's the premise.
Hodson freely acknowledges he isn't actively selling real estate and has no clients.
Dennis' situation is just as hazy. He was fired from the chamber on Aug. 24,
When the Observer was re-opened with Michelle Lott marketed as its new owner, it was Steve Dennis under then-Chamber president Bob Lott taking out large advertisements. And even as Bob Lott voted for huge tax increases for the hospital taxing district, Michelle Lott's Observer was the recipient of full- page advertisements.
Lott's terms on both boards ended last year. He was replaced as chamber president by Sue Williams, whose husband, Tom, is a member of the CRA, along with Dennis, Hodson, DeBorde,
The CRA, however, has been crippled recently by the City Commission on a 3-2 vote allowing Bert Fish to leave the CRA. The hospital had not received any funding in the past five years from the CRA, even though it was the largest generator of taxes.