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Commissioner quits; chairwoman irked

The Planning and Zoning Commission leader is unhappy with the abruptness.

By DAN DeWITT
Published September 14, 2005

BROOKSVILLE - Nick Nicholson has resigned from the county Planning and Zoning Commission to concentrate on his engineering business, but the abruptness of his decision angered some fellow board members.

Replacing Nicholson will take at least two months, said commission Chairwoman Anna Liisa Covell, and the two alternate commissioners have sometimes been unavailable for service.

"Nick knows the process to replace a commissioner," Covell said. "It was inconsiderate."

Though Nicholson sent a letter of resignation to the county Monday, Covell and other commissioners were unaware of his decision when that day's commission meeting took a strange turn, she said.

After an unexpectedly contentious discussion about the Hernando Oaks development, Commissioner Bob DeWitt - who had previously said he would be leaving the meeting because of his wife's hospitalization - excused himself, Covell said; Nicholson followed almost immediately.

"Nick mumbled something about being ill, and he got up and walked out," Covell said.

At the end of the meeting, the remaining commissioners voted to reprimand Nicholson for his sudden departure.

"I lost my temper," Covell said. "I told them it was very inconsiderate for Mr. Nicholson to leave in the middle of the meeting. I was really not happy with his actions."

Nicholson, a board member for seven years, said he left because he was genuinely ill. In the last two years, he has been prone to near blackouts, he said, attacks related to an illness he contracted as a young man that has left him with a lifelong limp.

The condition can be controlled with medication, he said, but the medicine can only be taken with food.

"I hadn't eaten," Nicholson said. "I was feeling really bad at the end of the meeting, and I felt that I could either get up and leave or someone would be calling 911."

His decision to resign, he said, stemmed from a discussion last month with Assistant County Attorney Kent Weissinger. Weissinger had noticed that Nicholson had recused himself from three recent votes on rezoning requests from clients Nicholson represented.

Though certainly preferable to going ahead and voting, Weissinger told him, repeated recusals can also be grounds for a complaint with the Florida Commission on Ethics.

Officials "need to focus their attention on their public duties," Weissinger said, explaining the justification for the rule. "If you are going to have frequently occurring conflicts, then you can't focus on your public duties."

Nicholson said he had to make a decision quickly because he plans to present two more rezoning requests to the commission next month.

"I think Kent Weissinger did an excellent job in giving me advice. I'm essentially listening to my attorney," said Nicholson, whose wife, Sandra, is a longtime Hernando School Board member.

Nicholson ran as a Republican for state representative in 2000, when his campaign was undermined in part by a Florida Board of Professional Engineers charge that he had negligently approved two home designs. He was eventually ordered, in 2004, to pay $8,140 in fines and other costs for providing inadequate engineering plans.

Both Covell and Commissioner Anthony Palmieri also said Nicholson had seemed prone to heated comments at recent meetings.

"I think we've all noticed the outbursts," Covell said.

"It's no big loss," Palmieri said of Nicholson's resignation. "Some people grow up and some people grow older, I'll put it that way. Ever since he's been on the board, all he's ever done is promote his own business and his own profession."

Nicholson said he mentions his engineering background only because he wants to establish his qualifications to comment on technical matters. But the observation about his quick temper might be accurate, he said, because of what he called illness-related "spasms."

"Sandy said in the past two years I haven't been myself," Nicholson said.

Dan DeWitt can be reached at dewitt@sptimes.com or 352 754-6116.

[Last modified September 14, 2005, 02:15:34]