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© St. Petersburg Times, published March 28, 2002
I have got to comment on the flurry of recent articles your paper has published in the North Pinellas Times about City Council members in Oldsmar.
What happened to Oldsmar?
It seems that every time I open the paper, there is some article about the city getting sued for millions or a city councilman demanding the city pay for his medical benefits or threatening his wife or calling journalists communists or angering the local Brazilian community.
I am of course talking about City Council member Marcelo Caruso. I have lived in Oldsmar for 10 years, and I have never seen anything like it. It seems that when there is some controversy happening here, Caruso is right there, staring like a wide-eyed deer in the headlights of the community.
Stuttering before the microphones and flashbulbs of the media, he defends himself by lashing out at his critics, passing blame to others and trying to no-comment his way out of the mess he finds himself in.
The mayor and other City Council members do nothing publicly about it. In fact, Mayor Jerry Beverland has stood behind him, supporting him when he proposed health insurance costs for council members be borne by the city.
Caruso's health benefit proposal violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the city charter.
Exactly one week goes by and Caruso finds himself in the press again, this time for threatening his soon-to-be ex-wife. The sordid tale includes guns, assault and conspiracy. The salacious details provide an unwelcome view into this man's personal life that has a sleazy sideshow quality about it. His attorney, played here by the city's attorney, Tom Trask, only worsens the taste of an already distasteful situation.
All that is left is for Beverland to make some public gesture of support to Caruso to complete this pathetic picture.
I long for quiet, reasonable government in Oldsmar. I would like nothing more than to not have my elected officials' personal lives plastered in the paper.
I think that the citizens of Oldsmar should have a City Council that makes the news for the work it does for the city, not for its conspiracies against it. They are the stewards for our city, not the sovereigns of it.
I can only hope that the citizens of Oldsmar will remember the reckless behavior of these officials when election time comes.
To quote Caruso, "I think that it is ridiculous to think that we don't deserve it."
-- Russell Kocurek, Oldsmar
I must say that the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office seems to take different sides/disciplinary actions on its employees, as exemplified in your story March 16. On one page a long-term deputy sheriff crashes her personally assigned vehicle that she keeps at home into a light pole while driving impaired, takes the pole down, apparently lies about the amount of drinks she had (some with her supervisor) because others testified about how much she really drank; and she gets off with a suspension and gets to keep her job. She could have killed somebody, including herself!
A few pages back, a 25-year-oldformer jail secretarygets charged with grand theft because she "stole" some hours from her allowed vacation/leave time. Am I missing something here?
Sheriff Everett Rice, you really must be grasping at straws to ruin a 25-year-old's life and just slap the wrist of a drunken deputy to protect your image.
-- Dorothy Wydnyk, Oldsmar
The advocates of a nude beach for Pinellas County say that such a facility will attract more of the kind of tourists who currently visit Miami (Bare naked ladies, and men, at beach? story, March 21). I suggest that the great majority of the residents of Pinellas County are more than happy if the kind of people, tourists or potential residents, who enjoy what Miami has to offer, whatever that is, will go there and stay there.
-- Palmer O. Hanson Jr., Largo