IRBeHEARD CLOSES ITS DOORS

Going-Out-Of-Business Sale

This will be the last posting for IRBeHEARD.

I started this blog over a year ago because I was really bothered by the fact that citizens couldn’t express contrary views about our local government here in IRB without fear of retribution. I guess I was thinking that IRBeHEARD might be able to change that somewhat, but I was wrong. Maintaining this blog has taken quite a bit of personal time and I’ve tried to post only information that could be substantiated by facts and public records. The personal price for insisting on free speech has unfortunately been very high.

Running this blog has been a learning experience for me—about local government, new technologies and about life. I thank those of you who have applauded my efforts; the time served certainly wasn’t for naught. I do hope that someone else picks up where I am signing off but that individual should only do so knowing that what comes with the territory might not be worth it. It’s all yours now, Leo…take it away!

Nancy Obarski
Beach Trail/IRB

(Note: If you'd like to comment on this posting, simply click on the "Comments" link at the bottom of the article and follow the prompts. You may comment anonymously if you'd like. Or, you can always e-mail your comments to irbeheard@cmdinc.net and we'll post them for you!)

ELECTION POST MORTEM

What the Stats Say

The results of yesterday’s municipal election in Indian Rocks Beach welcome a new commissioner, Phil Hanna, to the board, and allow Terry Hamilton-Wollin to retain her seat for another two-year term. Although still unofficial, these results are expected to be certified by the Pinellas County Canvassing Board on Friday. Congratulations to both winning candidates.

Hopefully, the stats from yesterday’s election will send a clear message to the entire commission. The fact that a candidate who has not been all that involved in our city government was the top vote-getter speaks volumes. Hanna, who worked very hard and very smart to earn his seat, managed to grab nearly 38% of the vote. And when you add Hanna’s share to the percentage garnered by Don House, who also represented change but did not earn a seat on the commission, over 2/3 of the votes cast show that our residents are just not thrilled with their representation in general. And it's not just the "yowlers." House, who was in a dead heat with incumbent Wollin in the absentee/mail-in ballots, fell 47 votes shy of tying Wollin once the results from the polls were downloaded.

The statistic that is probably the most troubling is the voter turnout. This was by far the lowest number of ballots cast for a March municipal election in IRB in many, many years. When combining this fact with fewer and fewer folks attending commission meetings, finding ways to encourage, not discourage, more participation in our local government, is crucial to our city’s future. Whether you like IRBeHEARD or not, encouraging more involvement was, and still is, the goal. Please make it a point to attend a commission meeting now and then and let all five commissioners know what’s on your mind. It’s tough for them to represent us if they don’t know what we’re thinking.

EGG-ON-FACE RETRACTION: In the IRBeHEARD posting on March 9, I referred to one candidate’s political signs as being in violation of election laws. In terms of the specifications spelled out in the Florida Division of Elections Candidate and Campaign Treasurer Handbook, all the sign examples given include the word “elect” or “re-elect,” which is what I based my statement on. However, when election officials in Tallahassee were contacted for clarification, they referred to the Florida Statute where there is NO requirement for EITHER “elect” or “re-elect” to appear on the sign. Hopefully, the discrepancy between the handbook guidelines and the state statute will be rectified before the next election. I do, with a limited amount of time, try to do a responsible job of being accurate…but I clearly blew on this one...and will probably blow it again at some time in the future. Apologies to the candidate for making the assumption that the handbook was correct without checking further.

How is everyone else feeling about the results of yesterday's election?

Nancy Obarski
Beach Trail/IRB

(Note: If you'd like to comment on this posting, simply click on the "Comments" link at the bottom of the article and follow the prompts. You may comment anonymously if you'd like. Or, you can always e-mail your comments to irbeheard@cmdinc.net and we'll post them for you!)

SUN RISES ON ELECTION DAY IN IRB

Please Vote TODAY

While today isn’t a major national election, it is no less important to the future of IRB. Given our community’s uncertain financial status, it is crucial that each and every citizen get involved in our local government now. That participation starts with casting your ballot today, if you haven’t already voted by mail.

Of the 1,282 mail-in ballots sent to IRB voters, only 436 have been returned to date. That means that 846 mail-in ballots are still out there! If you’re one of the majority who hasn’t mailed yours back, you can still vote today at the polls by surrendering your mail-in ballot to a poll worker at City Hall between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. this evening.

By coloring in the little circles on your ballot today, you will decide if change is needed in IRB. Things to consider:

--The most important issue that IRB faces is our city’s financial health.

--The current fiscal year started in October and after five months, we, as citizens, still have no idea where we stand in relationship to the budget.

--Alluding to making cuts but giving no specifics isn’t a plan; it’s a stalling tactic until after the election.

--No appreciable budget cuts were made during the current administration even in view of a shrinking tax base and a million-dollar shortfall in our enterprise funds that surfaced over the last year.

--Instead of reducing expenses, this commission found it easier to jack up our sewer and garbage rates and raise the millage by such a high percentage that a unanimous vote of the commission was required.

When you cast your vote today, vote for the candidate or candidates who you think have the best financial background and the ability to make wise budget cuts—ones that aren’t politically motivated. And remember, if only one candidate fits the bill, there is no requirement that you vote for two.

I’m estimating that the mail-in ballots will be nearly half of the total turnout which may possibly be the lowest in IRB history. Polls close at 7 p.m. and we’ll know shortly afterwards if we’re facing two more years of the same or if change is what IRB voters want.

Nancy Obarski
Beach Trail/IRB

(Note: If you'd like to comment on this posting, simply click on the "Comments" link at the bottom of the article and follow the prompts. You may comment anonymously if you'd like. Or, you can always e-mail your comments to irbeheard@cmdinc.net and we'll post them for you!)

SIGNS OF THINGS TO COME

Election Law Violations

There are some fairly strict rules that apply to political advertising. Even though some seem a little nit-picky bordering on silly, the Florida Department of State Division of Elections sets these guidelines for all candidates seeking office and is in charge of enforcing them.

Is whether or not a candidate follows these rules an indication of how they will treat city matters? After all, interpreting and comprehending our city charter and building codes is a lot more complex than just following specs for election signs and other related printed collateral.

Let’s do a little where’s “KIRBY,” (IRB’s version of Waldo) before all the political signs come down later this week.

QUESTION: Which candidate’s signs are missing a very important required word: “ELECT”? [The word “VOTE” doesn’t cut the mustard!]

QUESTION: Which candidate let an e-mail blast out the door without the mandated disclaimer of “Political advertisement paid for and approved by [candidate’s name] for City Commissioner.”

During last March’s municipal election the violations were rampant. One currently seated official omitted the word “FOR” between his name and the office for which he was running. “FOR” is required on the signs of any candidate who is not an incumbent. If you think about it, if the sign reads “John Smith City Commissioner” missing the magical three-letter “FOR,” instead of “John Smith FOR City Commissioner,” it does indeed create the impression that this individual ALREADY occupies the office…which is misleading.

In the instance to which I refer, the omission of the required “FOR” was an even more serious error since this individual had previously served on the commission, although not in the office he was seeking. This infraction, in that instance, had an even stronger possibility of creating the impression that he was somehow the incumbent—and incumbents win most of the time.

This same individual personally cost me $10,000 in legal fees by his insistence that my property somehow violated a rule that turned out not to be in the code at all! He couldn't follow the rules for political advertising when he ran for office and he couldn’t read and interpret our city code either.

Nancy Obarski
Beach Trail/IRB

P.S. Don House’s sign are disappearing right and left. Will the person on Harbor Drive North with the Don House sign leaning against the east wall of his/her garage, which I personally saw over the weekend, please return the sign ASAP?

(Note: If you'd like to comment on this posting, simply click on the "Comments" link at the bottom of the article and follow the prompts. You may comment anonymously if you'd like. Or, you can always e-mail your comments to irbeheard@cmdinc.net and we'll post them for you!)

POLITICAL PIED PIPERS OF IRB

Follow the Leader Not the Facts

The town of Hamelin, Germany suffered from a rat infestation in 1284. A man who billed himself as a rat-catcher whistled a tune and successfully lured the rats to follow him into the river, where they all drowned. Indian Rocks Beach has an entire collection of Pied Pipers…political leaders who have so much clout that they could probably encourage those who amble along behind them to lay down on the centerline of Gulf Blvd. at rush hour.

Running for city commissioner in IRB, if you’re not supported by the political Pied Pipers who run this town can be a trying experience. Most of their “followers” rarely attend commission meetings but choose to operate instead well behind the scenes. These faceless folks don’t deal in facts—because they don’t know the facts. They only know the facts as filtered through the eyes of others who have set themselves up as the “town experts” and positioned anyone else who doesn’t agree with them as stupid and misinformed. These folks have been very successful at rounding up candidates they can “buddy up together” to form a quasi “ticket”—people who think exactly as they do. Whether safety in numbers will give way to guilt by association on Tuesday is anyone's guess.

How many good people don’t run for office in IRB for fear that this group will publicly trash them? These "leaders" stood by and watched as a former mayor was falsely accused of sexual harassment and then thought it perfectly okay for the commission not to investigate where the ugly rumor originated. Pied Pipers protect their own, I guess.

Phil Wrobel, not to be confused with the Phil who is running for the commission, would have been a great representative for our residents. But after the group Wrobel put his heart and soul into, the IRB Homeowners Association, was tagged as a group of drunks that migrate from bar to bar, why would he belly up for more of the same? Don House, within days of announcing his run for office, received a warning letter from a Tampa law firm taking issue with his nomenclature when referring to the USF Study. I wonder if others guilty of the same alleged faux pas were issued notices, too?

Win, lose or draw, we need to applaud the efforts of anyone who has the cohunes to take these folks on and run for a seat on our city commission--standing on his/her own two feet. Listen closely. You can almost hear the whistling as all the little lemmings fall obediently into step in route to the Kool-aid stand?

Nancy Obarski
Beach Trail/IRB

(Note: If you'd like to comment on this posting, simply click on the "Comments" link at the bottom of the article and follow the prompts. You may comment anonymously if you'd like. Or, you can always e-mail your comments to irbeheard@cmdinc.net and we'll post them for you!)

WELCOME BACK OLD BUDDY

Leo Endorses Wollin & Hanna

Incumbent City Commissioner Wollin’s latest e-mail circulating out there in IRB cyberspace is a glowing endorsement by the Clearwater Gazette of herself and Phil Hanna for the two open City Commissioner seats to be filled next Tuesday.

It’s interesting that in all the other e-mails where she has included articles written by various area newspapers, Wollin included the reporter’s byline. She also deceptively excerpted only those paragraphs of the articles that pertained to HER—making it look as if these publications are somehow endorsing her. Then, when you take time to read the entire article, you discover that is not true at all.

For instance, Melinda Greene, the reporter at the Barrier Islands Gazette, wrote what is probably the best expose of all three candidates published to date. What those on Wollin’s e-mail list saw, however, was just the section about HER without even so much as a disclaimer that the article had been in any way excerpted. It unfairly characterized Melinda Greene as having taken a stance on one candidate versus the others—something that this responsible reporter, who very discreetly and religiously attends our commission meetings, would never do. One e-mail was even missing the required political disclaimer.

Now, Wollin is circulating the Clearwater Gazette’s endorsement—which is FINALLY a true endorsement of her and Phil Hanna. This one however is noticeably missing the byline of the endorsing reporter. And guess who the endorser is folks: None other than LEO COUGHLIN! His endorsement alone speaks volumes but the fact the Wollin would hide the name of the endorser is an even bigger statement.

Pay close attention to how Wollin’s e-mails provide only selective information because this is precisely the way she’s has behaved as our elected city official over the last two years. Does anyone have any evidence that this leopard will change her spots over the next two years? Certainly not if the way she is running her campaign is any indication.

READ LEO’S GLOWING ENDORSEMENT OF WOLLIN & HANNA

Welcome back, Leo! I, as a committee of one, have missed you.

Nancy Obarski
Beach Trail/IRB

DEBUNKING THE BUNK

Juggling the Facts

I must take issue with an alleged “myth debunking” election e-mail circulated on Tuesday by City Commissioner Terry Wollin. In the e-mail, she states that the $1 million, which all of us are being forced to repay through increased sewer and garbage rates, are “transfers”--NOT loans. If they aren’t loans, then what are we repaying? If they were transfers, why do they need to be repaid? And why did this incumbent commissioner, who is juggling just as fast as she possibly can, refer to them as “loans” at "Meet the Candidates"?

In Wollin’s own cyber words, “Transfers do not need to be authorized as loans do.” One has to wonder what city’s charter she’s looking at because ours says that the city commission has the authority for transfers AND for loans:

Section 10.5. (b) Transfer of funds: The city commission shall have the authority, whenever it is deemed necessary, to increase or decrease any particular fund contained in said budget, other than the reserve established in section 10.5(a)(1) above.

Also, in an e-mail from former City Treasurer Marty Schless to Interim City Manager Danny Taylor dated June 11, 2008, Schless says the following: “Any transfers between departments or funds are requested by the City Manager and approved by the City Commission.”

And if that’s not evidence enough, here’s what the high-priced consultant Wollin brags about hiring had to say on the subject: “A transfer is also a budgetary transaction that normally requires a Budget Amendment if not approved in the Original Adopted Budget.” And, a budget amendment is something that--guess what--requires commission approval. NO APPROVAL HAS EVER BEEN GIVEN. Not then. Not now. Never...despite repeated requests by citizens for the commission do so. If Wollin retains her seat on the City Commission come Tuesday, I hope that each and every one of you shows up at the next commission meeting and demands that the commission take a vote to either approve the loans or reverse their decision that the amount be repaid since, according to Wollin, they weren't loans in the first place.

Wollin has all these facts right at her fingertips so why does she choose to ignore them even going to so far as to blatantly broadcast statements that the record clearly doesn't support? She must be counting on the fact that most IRB residents haven’t followed this financial fiasco as closely as some who attend commission meetings regularly, which is probably a good gamble.

Wollin, as our voice in our local government over the last two years, should have been standing up for US, demanding answers and insisting that something like this never happen again. Instead, she sends out an e-mail justifying the city’s irresponsible actions hoping for semantics to bail her out and make everything right. That’s not representation; that’s being sold down the river.

Nancy Obarski
Beach Trail/IRB

POLITICAL SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Rules Meant to be Broken

As I sat minding my own business at lunch today savoring my Panang Curry Chicken at Thai Pan Alley, I watched as a gentleman sauntered to the center of the county-owned lot between 23rd and 24th Avenues and firmly implanted a “Phil Hanna for City Commissioner” sign in the middle of it.

I thought you couldn’t put signs on public lands? Hmmm. And yet another of Hanna’s signs was removed from a vacant lot where it was also placed without the owner’s permission. Hmmm. And what about the one at Ocean’s Glen, the development at 7th Avenue and Gulf Blvd. that has stopped construction? Hmmm. Any bets whether permission was given for that sign?

According to a Pinellas County code enforcer, the county’s policy is that political signs are not permitted on properties they own. Code enforcement for such an issue, however, falls under the jurisdiction of the City of IRB.

Are Hanna’s campaign signs being placed in unauthorized locations out of ignorance or is it because there aren’t enough “true” Hanna fans willing to publicly support him? With only one week left until Election Day you can expect the IRB political scene to heat up like the pavers on my back deck in August!

Nancy Obarski
Beach Trail/IRB