Controversy over some parking tickets gets more scrambled as Port Richey officials review audio tapes of a code board meeting.
By ALEX LEARY
Published June 20, 2003
PORT RICHEY - Controversy over parking citations issued outside City Council member Dale Massad's house was certain to linger. But the issue, at least as it existed before the Code Enforcement Board, seemed dead Wednesday night.
Now this: City officials late Thursday were reviewing audio tapes of the meeting to determine if the vote to dismiss the three contested tickets was 3-1 as it appeared.
On Thursday, board member Robert Ecochardt insisted that he had voted against a motion to toss the tickets, which would have made the vote 2-2.
"Maybe they didn't understand me," Ecochardt told the Times. "It was a very confusing meeting."
In event of a tie, Phillip Franco's motion to dismiss the tickets would have died and the case would have had a full hearing.
But that never happened; the board was operating on the assumption that the vote went another way.
"I could swear I heard three people say, "Yes,' " said board member Joe Menicola, who voted against the motion because the panel had not heard from the police officer who issued the citations.
City Attorney Paul Marino also argued that a move against the citations, however valid, was premature until all sides were heard from.
Before the discussion began, Officer James Ruland approached the board secretary and said he wanted to amend the citations, presumably to reflect the code that had been violated and to correct the fines.
But Chairman Bob Leggiere had already asked the secretary to begin swearing in the half-dozen or so people who planned to come before the board and Ruland was asked to wait. He walked to the back of the room in obvious displeasure.
Leggiere recused himself on the issue due to prior involvement with Ruland, who had stopped him in late February on suspicion of drunken driving.
And Ruland's opportunity to speak vanished as Franco took charge, declaring the tickets invalid because the specific parking code was not indicated on the tickets.
He said he did not want to "embarrass" the Police Department and, moreover, officers did not have proper "tools" to do their job.
He was referring to inconsistencies in the parking regulations that surfaced after the tickets were written. Massad was not one of the recipients, but two of his friends were, raising speculation that the tickets were thrown out for political reasons.
Massad denied involvement. He said his friends simply called Leggiere, who contacted Marino, who cited the problems with the parking regulations.
Those rules are now being rewritten by the City Council and could be up for discussion at Tuesday night's meeting.
