A shining moment occurred during Tuesday night's overdrawn dis cussion on the Angler's Club lease. And that was the announcement of Althea Phillord as the city's new finance director and first African-American department head in the history of City Hall.
That alone puts in perspective what is the biggest artificial issue of New Smyrna Beach city politics over the last couple of years: Without a doubt, the Anglers Club lease. This is a shining example of government at its worst and the amount of money and time spent on it is an absolute disgrace.
It's last year's election-year hangover that just won't go away.
One outside lawyer's pockets were lined with $40,000, twice what he was supposed to be paid, in which the then 3-2 majority on the commission wanted to hear: Namely that the 99-year lease at $25 annum is invalid. But even that attorney, Scott Glass, cautioned the city not to seek redress from the courts for a case that would drag out for years and cost the taxpayers millions.
With New Smyrna Beach embroiled in financial crisis and municipal jobs on the line, the city could have used that $40,000 for a police officer's salary.
But our elected officials and the self-proclaimed community watchdogs love to put on a show on Tuesday nights to get a 10-inch write-up in Daytona's former Mighty Metro to make headlines. In the real world outside City Hall, people could care less about the Anglers lease and the masquerade put on by critics of caring about discrimination against blacks and other minorities.
For the first time Tuesday, Commissioner Lynne Plaskett finally put the "anti-discrimination" issue in true perspective. The 90-plus Anglers are predominantly white me, some affluent, some not. Among them are Oscar Zeller, a member of the Utilities Commission of New Smyrna Beach, and Mayor Adam Barringer. There's Walter Johnson, principal in Settle-Wilder Funeral Home and city firefighter Michael Coats.
Plaskett was adamant that the Anglers of today are not racists, though she wishes there was an anti-discrimination clause. "It was different back then," Plaskett said, referring to New Smyrna Beach's segregationist past. As a reminder is the Chisholm Elementary School in her predominantly African-American Westside district, which until the late 1960s was New Smyrna Beach's "separate, but equal" blacks-only high school.
So why wasn't Plaskett talking like this last year when she pushed the city to the brink of litigation against the anglers who have had their lease honored by the city since it was signed in 1946?
Plaskett even gave City Attorney Frank Gummey a back-handed compliment, saying in part "Tthat's why we pay you the big bucks," in reference to the options he presented to the commission regarding the anglers' offer to buy the property with the city holding the mortgage at 5 percent annually, which he said was fine, if that was the rote commissioners wanted to go.
Last year, Plaskett was among those last year saying it was Gummey who had to go because he said it was his legal opinion the lease was valid.
So why the change of heart from 2009?
Duh: Last year was election year and Mayor Sally Mackay and Commissioner Randy Richenberg needed to find something to propel them forward in the eyes of the voters.
Except, an Angler emerged in Barringer, who took the mayor on regarding issues that really matter: Overuse of reserves to artificially lower taxes and keep out of control salaries and pensions fueled. What emerged were questionable expenses such as thousands for an artificial Christmas tree and holiday lights on Canal Street, the $400,000-plus purchase of the former Dunn Lumber property that sits decaying to this day on top of arsenic-tainted soil and businesses on Canal, Flagler Avenue closing left and right despite millions pumped in through Community Redevelopment Agency funding over the last decade.
Dixie Freeway, aka U.S. 1 and our main thoroughfare, looks like a ghetto.
And on the day Barringer unveiled his new Economic Development Commission to help him find ways to generate such activity last month, it was revealed through NSBNEWS.net that the city's planning department sat on tens of millions off dollars in development projects, more than 70 in all, dating back five years.
But yet, the Anglers Club lease continues to resurface again and again. And while Sally Mackay was all smiles Tuesday as she should have been, the commission voted 4-0 with Barringer abstaining from the discussion and vote, not to entertain the Anglers' offer to buy the 1 acre-plus waterfront property on the North Causeway for $775,000. Instead, the lease will be honored for its remaing 33 years, at least as far as this commission is concerned.
Commissioner Judy Reiker, who crushed Richenberg in November's election, was on target when she said, "A deal is a deal is a deal."
Marilee Walters, the third candidate for mayor against the incumbent Mackay and the upstart Barringer, continues the manta of the anti-Anglers with her blog on NSBNEWS.net as does Palmer Wilson, also a regular blogger here who tried to unseat Grasty in last year's primary. Walters' blog is posted on the opinion page under her "Heart of the Matter" blog and Wilson's here on the Home page, the afternoon prior to the commission action and on the Opinion page as well under his blog, "Unfinished Business."
Just think: If Sally Mackay hadn't pushed the anti-Angler agenda that Richenberg and his campaign manager and North Beach resident Keith Gerhartz had lobbied so heavily for, she might be mayor today.
And speaking of lobbying, Bouchelle Island resident Bill Koleszar, the biggest critic of them all, was a no-show Tuesday. He has not returned calls for comment. Bully-Pulpit Bill was pushing for litigation or sale of the property, but when the appraisals came back showing the acreage was valued at several hundred thousand to a million at most with this weakened economy entrenched, he had little left to argue. His absence spoke volumes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
