It's time to set aside the emotion and nostalgia about the mermaids and water slides at Weeki Wachee Springs. Those enterprises will rise or fall as the public's interest and the free market system dictate.
It's time to address a much broader issue that needs the immediate attention of state legislators, the attorney general and all taxpayers who still believe that governments exist for their advantage, not to take advantage of them.
It's time to dissolve the city of Weeki Wachee.
The city exists in name only. It is a business masquerading as a public trust and being run by people who benefit from perpetuating that pretense.
The reason for incorporating it 37 years ago - so that billboards could be erected on state highways to entice motorists to visit the attraction - was a matter of convenience and cunning. Today, those same methods are still being employed, but on a grander scale and less transparent motivations.
The City Commission is a joke. The mayor and her mother form two-thirds of the three-member board. The third commissioner is a contracted employee. The people who elected them - the remaining six residents of the city - either work for the business or are related to someone who does.
This incestuous, money-driven relationship was obscure and relatively harmless when a private company owned the business and the city existed only as a quaint landmark lending its name to a mythical kingdom. But now that the city of Weeki Wachee has assumed ownership, it is intolerable.
It is a clear conflict of interest for Mayor Robyn Anderson, who also manages the attraction, to receive a tangible benefit because of her position. But she did exactly that when she voted for the city to accept the donation of the park from her private employer, because it allows her and her family to live there rent-free.
Consider this equally absurd comparison: The Brooksville City Council votes to acquire Rogers Christmas House and the mayor moves his family into one of the buildings with the expectation that the revenue from the business will maintain his residence and pay the electricity bill.
Yet, such obvious conflicts, which have prompted several complaints to the state Ethics Commission, may not be the most fundamentally troubling aspect of Weeki Wachee's identity crisis.
The attraction's landlord, the Southwest Florida Water Management District, is asking Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist if Weeki Wachee's acceptance of the water park is unconstitutional. State law forbids cities from incurring debt, and the remaining 28 years of lease payments the city owes Swiftmud could be interpreted that way.
Adding to all this confusion is Weeki Wachee's $53-million bid to condemn Florida Water Services' utility. With a legal strategy that, depending on one's perspective, is either shrewd or silly, the city is competing with Hernando County to take over the aging water and sewer system.
Between the condemnation proceedings and its entanglements with Swiftmud, the city doesn't have enough money to pay all its lawyers, which include City Attorney Joe Mason, who appears to be the de facto mayor of Weeki Wachee. Every action the commission takes - and it has taken more far-reaching ones in the past year than in the previous 36 - has Mason's fingerprints on them. His legal advice equates to policy for this trio of go-along commissioners.
So, to satisfy its need for more money, the City Commission is poised to do what governments do best: Raise taxes.
At a meeting Monday, the three commissioners are expected to triple the property tax rate. But the people who are being asked to foot the bill aren't residents of the city. They are businesses across U.S. 19 that have quietly paid their taxes for many years, and who have no say about how the city spends its money, or any control over the people who do.
Enough is enough.
The businesses whose taxes are about to be tripled should be at Monday's meeting to protest the proposal. While they are there, they might ask the commissioners about how they've managed their money recently, buying tickets to football games and attending conventions in Las Vegas.
In the meantime, state Rep. David Russell Jr., R-Brooksville, and Sen. Mike Fasano, R-NewPort Richey, should appeal to the attorney general to expedite his staff's opinion about the constitutional issue. That process does not have to drag on for months, as some have predicted.
Weeki Wachee Springs is a viable enterprise that, if properly managed by qualified people, can remain a cultural, recreational and economic force in Hernando County. That would be to the benefit of all.
But that can happen without Weeki Wachee's being a city and continuing to hopscotch the line between the public and private sectors.
