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CLEARWATER - Not in 25 years of attending public meetings have I seen the government act with such a haughty hand as Wednesday evening, in a confrontation between Pinellas County and residents worried about airport expansion.
The residents of Feather Sound, Safety Harbor, Oldsmar and other communities were treated as ignorant, unruly children who needed to be shushed. They were even told what they were not supposed to ask about.
Two of the seven county commissioners, Karen Seel and John Morroni, stood and watched all this, as did County Administrator Steve Spratt. Most of the dealing with the riff-raff was done by a paid consultant.
The debacle started with the room itself. The Pinellas County government apparently swallowed its own spin, namely, that there really isn't that much public concern about growth at the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport. It is only the work of troublemakers and political grandstanders.
But the little room at the Holiday Inn Select on Ulmerton Road was swamped. Hundreds of citizens stood in a long line to sign in. The room quickly became shoulder-to-shoulder and sweltering.
Some residents started taunting Morroni by chanting, "What's the plan, John?" Morroni gamely made his way into the crowd.
"This meeting is for you," Morroni shouted. "This is not a done deal. Don't believe the newspapers or the press."
Yet the effect of Morroni's "not a done deal" pledge was somewhat diminished by the array of easels, charts and maps around the room, manned by bureaucrats who explained quite specifically how the land next to the airport was going to be divvied up.
The scene was chaotic. Citizens began yelling across the crowd. An Oldsmar man got up on the furniture and started making remarks. The government people got a microphone hooked up and tried to drown him out. The crowd shouted to let him finish.
Then the county's consultant, Richard Gehring, took over. And WHAT a consultant!
He shut down all attempts by the citizens to ask questions, announcing, "I'm trying to bring the meeting to some degree of control. . . . We will structure the issue."
Gehring and the other government speakers kept telling the citizens not to ask about runways. There had already been public hearings on that. Tough luck.
But even finding out about the county's plans for the adjacent land proved frustrating.
"Are there hangars on the Airco golf course?" a citizen called out. Gehring ignored the question.
(As for hangars, the county keeps saying, no, no, no. But the maps on the easels said, yes, yes, yes.)
Gehring droned through charts, using phrases such as "population centroid." Now it was after 6 p.m., more than an hour after the event began. Many people gave up and left.
An angry citizen shouted out a question.
"I am telling you the proposal, sir."
Another try. "I am not finished yet, sir."
Somebody asked whether there was an environmental impact study. Gehring ignored it. When there was murmuring after that, he turned back to the crowd and said: "Could you take the conversation down a notch?"
A woman called out, saying, let us talk to airport officials.
"Madam," Gehring said to her, "I'm not going to have you running the meeting." (Finally, the county relented and let the airport guys answer a few questions. They did well.)
Whoops, I am out of space, and I promised that I would try to be constructive. Okay, here goes. The county ought to give the neighbors at least two iron-clad, can't-be-violated restrictions. One would restrict hours of operation. The other would forbid certain maintenance or repair operations on the Airco side.
Beyond that, an apology would be nice. I asked Spratt on Thursday if he was going to fire this Gehring guy. Spratt said no.
It speaks very, very poorly for Morroni and Seel (she, especially, is better than this) that they would stand there and let citizens be abused by a man being paid with their own money to sneer at them.
But when you remember that this same County Commission voted, earlier this year, to forbid any citizen from addressing it "disrespectfully," you start to wonder whether there is a deeper disease spreading in Clearwater.