Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Since Dade City Attorney Bill Brewton and I are retiring at about the same time, and since the City Commission thinks it would be a good idea to send him to a convention of city attorneys after he retires, I have a modest request.
I think the Times should send me somewhere similar, to the fairly posh Amelia Island Plantation where Brewton will be going at the expense of Dade City's financially strapped government and soon to be tapped - and tapped again - taxpayers.
Then while Brewton is rubbing elbows with his former professional colleagues and learning the tricks of his former trade, I can be doing the same. And, shortly thereafter, I will be uniquely prepared to come back to Dade City and not write about what he isn't doing for the city.
Don't get me wrong. Bill Brewton has served the city long and well. I sat with him through many hours of that service in his positions as city judge, city commissioner and city attorney. I saw him nearly fall out of his seat on the bench one night when a criminal with the street name of Gorilla answered a charge of public profanity with protestations that he never talked that way and was only goaded into it by two police officers - whom he described using a string of profanities. I saw him cut his pastor a break on a traffic charge once so he could look at him sternly and say, "Go and sin no more," and I watched him, with sad eyes, try to handle some suddenly inquisitive reporters after a prisoner who probably shouldn't have been in the city jail committed suicide minutes before his attorney arrived to secure his freedom.
But, come on.
This is the city too broke to buy holiday decorations which had to be paid for, at least in part, by private donations.
This is the city getting ready next week to propose assessments against property owners for things most governments pay for with their tax revenues - fire protection and street lights - and may soon reach out and touch everyone yet again, to pay for another service, stormwater runoff.
This is a city whose commissioners have actually talked about lowering the tax rate, despite all this, and a city that is still hemorrhaging cops to other departments because it can't pay them a decent wage.
This is a city that is seriously considering selling City Hall.
Sure, the cost of Brewton's junket, however well deserved, won't pay a cop's salary for more than about a week. And it won't bail the city out of its inability to pay for services without a fee system that, because of its flat rate, will hit the poor harder than the rich. (Fees totaling $32.47 equal a larger percentage of the value of a $10,000 home than of a $100,000 home.)
In general, I wonder why it is that professionals can't have their conventions at reasonably priced places. Can't anesthesiologists meet in Nebraska? Do personal injury lawyers ever converge on somewhere like Tyler, Texas, to commiserate with each other about the high price of Gulfstream jets these days?
I found a motel in Starke, not that far from Amelia Island, for only $49 per night, and I'll bet they would throw in a hospitality room and some Cheese Doodles for another five or six bucks a head.
For the record, I have only once in 36 years gone to a gathering of journalists where a newspaper was picking up the tab. I stayed at a Holiday Inn in Lincoln, Ill., that had broken vending machines.
Brewton sought an opinion from County Attorney Robert Sumner, who points out that Brewton will be involved in a transition as a new city attorney takes over, and may be called on to advise his replacement occasionally on city procedures.
It may work differently for lawyers, but the only training I might be offered in that respect would be on staying away from the office and not bothering the working reporters with stories about the old days.
If members of the Dade City Commission and the city's department heads want to chip in and send their friend and colleague to Amelia Island for a weekend, I think that would be keen and would happily dip into my own pocket to join them.
But spending tax dollars on it sends the wrong message at the wrong time.