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MOLLY MOORHEADMany of Zephyrhills' advisory panels have members from outside the city, but nonresidents deserve no voice on streets, one official says.
ZEPHYRHILLS - During the current controversy over the renaming of Sixth Avenue, much has been made of whether people involved in the fight live within city limits.
Irene Dobson, who started the original petition to have the street renamed for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., lives just outside the city in the Otis Moody neighborhood.
Dozens more people, both residents and nonresidents, have addressed the City Council about the matter.
Yet numerous city boards, whose members are appointed by council members, are served by people who don't live in Zephyrhills.
All but one member of the Economic Development Committee live outside the city. And the Airport Authority, which makes recommendations to the City Council about the municipal airport, has no Zephyrhills residents.
Its newest member, Larry Lynch, lives in Tampa.
Lynch was appointed recently by Gina King, the newly elected council member who moved to restore Sixth Avenue to its original name and who criticized the previous council for bowing to the wishes of nonresidents in renaming it.
King said Wednesday she doesn't think the two issues are related.
"You're kind of comparing apples with oranges," she said. "It's hard to even draw any similarity. . . . When you have somebody from Wesley Chapel wanting to change the name of a street that they don't live on, that's absurd."
But Blanche Benford, a Wesley Chapel resident who supports the Dr. King street name, called Gina King's action hypocritical.
"If she can't see the (similarity) in it, she seriously has a problem," Benford said. "I don't see how you can appoint someone from Tampa to the aviation board and to make decisions about things going on in Zephyrhills when you don't agree that we who live near it and spend our money on Gall Boulevard can have a say in the naming of the street."
The City Charter makes no reference to where board members should live. A 1994 ordinance says only that appointees to citizen boards and committees be confirmed by vote of the City Council in a public meeting.
City Manager Steve Spina said the city has long had nonresidents serving on boards.
"As long as I've been around, we've had to look at people outside the city. We're pretty small," he said. "Sometimes you didn't have anybody who lived in (the city) volunteer."
Members of city boards are unpaid and serve terms of differing lengths.
Spina, who opposed King's effort to restore the name of Sixth Avenue, said he thinks having nonresidents serve on city boards is a positive.
"We're not Jericho. You can't just build a wall around us and ignore what happens outside," he said.
King, elected April 13, has not made appointments to any other boards. She said she would lean toward appointing city residents to serve, but the Airport Authority is different because it requires its members have some aviation expertise.
"I would definitely want to have citizens of Zephyrhills represented on these boards. I think that is key," she said. "Only in the event that we can't find qualified people who want to serve should we deviate from that."
And she sticks by her belief that in the case of Sixth Avenue, city residents are the ones who deserve to hold sway.
"When it's serving on a board, it's a little bit different," she said. "When it's trying to change the name of a street that people live on, the property owners on the street should be able to voice either approval or disapproval. It's kind of a no-brainer."