Years after she wore a fish tail at Weeki Wachee Springs, Robyn Anderson is general manager of the park - and mayor of tiny Weeki Wachee. Most of all, she's at the center of a legal dispute that might decide the future of both.
By ROBERT KING
Published October 19, 2003
[Times photo: Ted McLaren]
General manager Robyn Anderson, right, jokes with mermaid Jessica Doucette before a show at Weeki Wachee Springs.
[Photo courtesy of Robyn Anderson]
Robyn Anderson performed as a mermaid until she was overcome by vertigo and the bends during a show.
WEEKI WACHEE - When she was a kid growing up in New Jersey, Robyn Anderson's family took a Florida vacation that included a stop at Weeki Wachee Springs, home of the famous mermaids.
Anderson remembers leaving the park that day with a song from the mermaid show stuck in her head. "We're not like other women," it goes, "leading lives that are a bore."
Although Anderson did not know she had a future in a fish tail, the anthem proved prophetic. These days, she is the most famous Weeki Wachee mermaid of all.
Not only does she manage the Florida landmark, but Anderson also is mayor of Weeki Wachee. The company town in Hernando County has a population of nine and is affectionately known as "the City of Live Mermaids."
For the 30-year-old Anderson, it is a life that has introduced her to both Pee Wee Herman and Vice President Dick Cheney.
It has put her - and her park's struggle for survival - on the front page of the New York Times and, come January, into the pages of Playboy. Without pictures.
Devotees of Weeki Wachee Springs see Anderson, a former mermaid who has held almost every job in the park, as the one person who can keep the mermaids afloat.
But her detractors - and there are many since she voted to double the city's property tax - say Anderson is part of the problem. In fact, they accuse her of setting up her own little mermaid fiefdom.
In either case, it is clear the future of Weeki Wachee Springs rests squarely in Anderson's hands.
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Shortly after her family moved from New Jersey to Pasco County, Anderson began working at Weeki Wachee Springs the same way a lot of local kids do: as a lifeguard. She was 18.
But it was her short stint as a mermaid that would forever mark her as the essential Weeki Wacheean. She was drafted for mermaid duty literally after she let her hair down.
Water park manager Kim Burich saw Anderson's long blond locks unfurled one day and decided she would make a good mermaid.
After Anderson learned how to breath underwater with an air hose and to perform the underwater acrobatics in a fish tail, she was cast as one of the Little Mermaid's sisters, mostly on a fill-in basis.
But her career in the sisterhood came to an abrupt end. She grew sick during a performance, felt a tingling in her legs and immediately swam to an air lock the mermaids use for costume changes.
In this hidden area, just below the great glass window that the audience peers through, Anderson passed out.
A helicopter took her to an Orlando hospital, where doctors determined she had a combination of vertigo and the bends, a product of swimming in deep water. After she spent 81/2 hours in a decompression chamber, they told her that her mermaid days were over.
Anderson went back to work on land. She cleaned toilets, ran the concession stand, trained lifeguards and sold admission tickets. As people came and went, she moved up the ladder. She took business classes; she is a semester short of a management degree. And last year, she was named general manager.
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Dave Hramika, who has worked alongside Anderson for more than a decade, says she was groomed for the park's top job.
"This is someone who started as a laborer in the trenches and worked her way to the top," said Hramika, operations manager. "Robyn has shed blood here."
That top-to-bottom knowledge of the place endears her to many employees. She knows the perils of dodging water moccasins in the river while cleaning algae from the pumps that bring water to the slides at the Buccaneer Bay water park. She knows how to drive the river cruise boat.
And Jill Roddis, who has worked in the park for 23 years, says Anderson is the first manager to ever ask to be shown how the confections are made in the gift shop's fudge factory.
Still, Anderson has her critics.
Dave Lowerre, who leases a canoe rental shop on park property, has called her incompetent.
Weeki Wachee hotel owner James DeMaria, who wants to buy Weeki Wachee Springs, says Anderson lacks the "brain power" to market the park and help it succeed. He says Anderson has been a part of the culture of waste that she has criticized the former owners for.
He points to her decision this summer to spend $2,705 on Tampa Bay Buccaneers tickets for herself and the park's top managers. Anderson says it was a reward for an underpaid staff that has worked hard to keep the park alive.
But it came after a year when the park lost $173,000 and was about to embark on a grass roots campaign to raise money for repairs needed to sustain the park.
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As a city, Weeki Wachee occupies 740 acres, basically the land at the crossroads of U.S. 19 and State Road 50. There is a strip shopping center, a few businesses and a hotel. But its most remarkable feature is the 27 acres that belong to the famous tourist attraction. The city was incorporated in 1966 as a way to get the attraction on road maps.
Anderson is not the first park manager to simultaneously serve as city mayor. But her tenure has been by far the most controversial.
Anderson lost her first run for City Commission by one vote. She said the town wasn't ready for someone in her mid 20s to hold office. She tried again in 1998 and won the mayor's seat. Then she was re-elected last year, earning a vote from each of the five voters who showed up.
Since then, Anderson has led the city through an unprecedented period of activism.
When the tourist attraction owners wanted out of the business, they decided to donate the park to the city and seek a tax credit for their generosity. Anderson and the other city commissioners - her mother, Angela Weiss, and her animal trainer, Julie Rivers - voted to accept the donation.
Ethicists and taxpayers say the donation was a conflict of interest. A flurry of complaints have been filed with the state Commission on Ethics.
Anderson and Rivers were, in effect, voting to assume control of the company for which they work. It also was a vote to take over the company that owns the rental cottages in which all nine residents, including Anderson and four family members, call home.
Beyond that, Anderson and her commission voted to forcibly take over a utility located outside the city's borders, Florida Water Services in Spring Hill. If their condemnation proceeding is successful, Anderson and the other city commissioners will set rates and water policy for 33,000 customers who can't vote them out of office.
To pay the attorney's fees for the condemnation, the commissioners voted recently to double the property tax rate. Especially galling to the city's small cadre of business owners is that the commissioners do not pay property taxes; they live in housing owned by the attraction.
Buoyed by the guidance of city attorney Joe Mason, Anderson has been unapologetic.
She said taking over Florida Water will give the city leverage to promote water use practices that will preserve the health of the Weeki Wachee spring. It also will generate revenue for the park, she said.
And taking over the tourist attraction had nothing to do with personal gain, she said, but with the park's survival. Under the city's ownership, profits will go back into the park and not be taken out, she said.
As for taxes, Anderson has said the businesses should be willing to pay their share of what is needed to preserve the attraction, along with the spring that is its lifeblood.
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The audacity of her actions has people questioning Anderson's motives.
Some, such as Hernando County political activist Janey Baldwin, say Anderson's vote on the park was one of the most blatant acts of self-interest she has ever seen.
Others, such as hotel owner DeMaria, say Anderson might be acting in her own interest or might be a pawn for others. He says Anderson never could have come up with the idea of condemning Florida Water on her own.
That speculation has been fueled by the fact that city attorney Mason has represented Florida Water. He acknowledges that he brought the city and utility to the table.
"I make mistakes, and we all make mistakes. I'm learning as I go," Anderson said. "Joe Mason may be the city attorney, but Joe Mason is not the mayor."
Anderson wonders whether some people are threatened by a strong young woman. She says DeMaria's ego was bruised when the park's owners decided they would rather give Weeki Wachee Springs to the city than sell to DeMaria.
"Some people out there are really bothered that I'm a female and that I've accomplished more at 30 than most of them have accomplished in their life," she said.
"I don't like to be bullied by anybody. I am a woman who stands up for her rights and fights for what I believe in. If he has a problem with that because I am a woman, then shame on him."
