Citrus: Sound bites born of county's lively week

Inverness City Clerk Marilyn Jordan needed help with it Tuesday evening when Joe Ciaramitaro, the welding instructor at the Withlacoochee Technical Institute, began telling the City Council about the brackets his class would make for the flag program.

Jordan needed to get his name right for the record, so someone asked him to spell it.

C-I-A-R-A-M-I-T-A-R-O, he said.

"Just the way I would have spelled it," council President John Sullivan deadpanned.

* * *

BUMPER STICKERS WE LIKE: "Bluegrass -- Finger pickin' good!"

-- "Help! I'm having an out-of-money experience!"

-- "I pretend to work. They pretend to pay me."

-- Times staff writers Bridget Hall Grumet and Paulette Lash Ritchie contributed to this report.

It was a busy news week in Citrus County. Citrus Slices recaps some of the things people said.

"I don't want people to feel like I'm the consolation prize."

-- Lou Miele, who won a seat on the School Board when candidate Don Bates withdrew from the race.

"The only thing that kept me going back was to see what was going to happen next."

-- Bill Bentley, a former employee of the Crown Hotel in Inverness, on the unusual events at the landmark hotel. Creditors are asking a judge to foreclose on the property.

"I have seen you be disrespectful, rude, arrogant, to my husband."

-- Carol Lilly, wife of Crystal River City Manager Phil Lilly, scolding the City Council.

"This is without a doubt a more challenging job than when I was flying at 40,000 feet shooting hijackers."

-- Phil Lilly, assessing the problems of being Crystal River city manager.

'It's baseless, like so many allegations that get flung around here."

-- Crystal River police Chief Jim Farley, on a lawsuit filed against him and the city by a demoted police officer in the department.

"I'd like to wring their necks."

-- Berdine Banck of Homosassa Springs, on the health agencies whose tests have shown that well water in the Grover Cleveland Boulevard area contains high levels of lead but that the problem may be in the pipes and not the groundwater.

"He always got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time."

-- Kelly LaForest, on her fiance, Antonio Franklin, who was found dead inside the Citrus County jail.

"You're just trying to give veterans a hard time. We fought for this flag and I think it should be up."

-- Robert Prive, a Marine veteran of the Korean War, pressing the Inverness City Council to back a citizens' group's flag project.

"I'm focusing on what it's going to take to get the flags on the poles, period, case closed. It's going to get done."

-- Inverness City Manager Frank DiGiovanni, pledging to see that the flag project is completed.

"This was known as the Kool-Aid house."

-- Patti Bradshaw, on a house on Seminole Avenue in Inverness that was a magnet for neighborhood children for decades. The house is being torn down to make room for a parking lot for Citrus Memorial Hospital.

"I never saw it coming."

-- Bobbie Adams, who was sitting in her car with her two children Tuesday morning when another car clipped a curb on State Road 44, went airborne, then slammed onto the hood of her car. No one was injured.

"This is the only boat I have worked on salvaging that I didn't float."

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