Two Zephyrhills residents have started petitions to recall four council members for voting to rename Sixth Avenue.
By MOLLY MOORHEAD
Published October 29, 2003
ZEPHYRHILLS - The politics sound familiar: an unpopular vote followed by a recall petition.
By 6 p.m. Tuesday, 20 residents had signed a document seeking the removal of four City Council members. Their motivation: A 4-1 vote by the council to rename Sixth Avenue after slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Another 31 people signed a petition Tuesday to stop the name change.
Marcus and M.J. Price, who don't live on Sixth Avenue, started the petitions at their downtown shipping business after Monday's heated council meeting, where residents voiced strong opinions both for and against the proposal.
The recall petition seeks the removal of council members Cathi Compton, Elizabeth Geiger, Celia Graham and Lance Smith, all of whom voted for the name change. Only Clyde Bracknell opposed it.
The petition sites malfeasance - wrongdoing or corruption by a public official - as grounds for removal.
"The council members voted for a name change - the exact opposite of what their constituents requested of them," the petition says.
Most of the 20 people who spoke at Monday's meeting opposed the name change. With one exception, those who supported it were black, and those opposed were white. All the council members are white. Sixth Avenue runs the length of the city past the eastern boundary, from Chancey Road to First Street.
Geiger, who moved to approve the name change, was unswayed Tuesday.
"If there's a petition going around over this, so be it," she said. "I still think that what I did was okay."
Graham felt good about the vote.
"I think this is an important thing for our future as a city to teach our children that it is important that we recognize people in our society who have had the courage to go against the majority when they know that the majority is not right," she said. "And that's what Martin Luther King did."
Smith expressed disappointment at the tense, if subtle, underlying issue.
"I know that everybody said it wasn't racial, and I hope it wasn't that. But we've passed $28-million budgets and had nobody oppose it. Then we try to rename Sixth Avenue after a black civil rights leader, we have a ton of people come out to speak against it."
The speakers at Monday's meeting mainly cited the inconvenience and cost associated with a change of address. Others said disrupting the city's numbered street grid would cause confusion.
"We're talking about a street 23 blocks long on which every individual who lives there has to go through this exercise," said Jim Moore, a white resident of Sixth Avenue who recently moved to Zephyrhills from Michigan.
"We have a grid here," said Ben Youmans, another white resident. "It makes it very easy to get around this city."
Blanche Benford, one of the black residents who supported the change, said the city needs to honor King the way many other municipalities have done.
"There needs to be an MLK," she said. "What is the problem? What's so hard to understand?"
For the recall petition to succeed, it must contain the signatures of at least 10 percent of the city's registered voters. That's about 720 names.
If verified by the elections office, a second petition must be circulated and bear the names of 15 percent of registered voters.
"Recall was never intended to be easy," said Kurt Browning, Pasco County supervisor of elections. "It's a very cumbersome process."
City Manager Steve Spina, who favored the name change, doubted such an effort would succeed.
"They can't recall them. They have to have a legitimate reason," Spina said. "I don't think that they can say that (the council) didn't listen."
The other petition, attempting to block the name change, works differently. There's no minimum number of signatures. Once complete, the Prices, who are white, can simply add it to the next council meeting agenda.
From there, council members could choose to vote again or take no action. Spina said he thought such a petition would have the council's ear.
"I've never known them not to listen to somebody," he said.
But that's exactly what M.J. Price said the council did Monday.
"What got us so upset last night . . . was the council completely ignored what they had to say. Those people put them in office and they didn't listen to them," she said.
"We're tired of everybody just rolling over and doing what they're told because of political correctness," her husband, Marcus, said. "The council members . . . had no right to vote on changing the name of a street where they don't live."
Irene Dobson doesn't live on Sixth Avenue either. But Dobson, who is black, has long worked for African-American causes in Zephyrhills and started the drive last month to name the thoroughfare for King.
She passed her own petition around neighborhoods and churches, collecting the names of about 100 people who wanted the change. She acknowledged that some of them signed the sheets themselves, while others had Dobson add their names for them.
On Tuesday, she said resistance to change was hindering the effort.
"They're probably going to burn Zephyrhills up," Dobson said of opponents. "They don't want (anything) changed."
And in her view, race issues are at play: "You know there's still racist attitudes in Zephyrhills and all around. What other reason would they not want it?"
Spina said the matter is evidence the city still has a ways to go when it comes to racial issues.
"I don't think it's an issue of "I don't like it because he was black.' But there's a connotation of Martin Luther King streets not being in the best neighborhoods," he said.
Marcus Price said it goes beyond connotation.
"The economic impact is massive. It's unfortunate, but the impression that people get when they hear the name Martin Luther King in any city . . . the houses just aren't worth as much," he said.
Carol Austin, executive vice president of the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors, said her group and its national parent organization have no evidence of such an impact.
"I have personally not heard anything about that," Austin said.
Florida law allows 30 days for the recall petition drive to collect the necessary signatures.
Geiger, a 13-year veteran of the council, said she'll just watch and wait.
"I'm not going to be intimidated by a petition going around," she said. "If there's a petition going around and I'm recalled for that, that will be one of the better reasons that a person can be recalled."
