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Opponents argue that Mayor Fred Held is finishing his third term, the legal limit. The City Commission disagrees.
By ANDREW MEACHAM
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 18, 2001
SOUTH PASADENA -- For two hours on Tuesday, a public meeting on Mayor Fred Held's legitimacy as a candidate wavered between pitched battle and tedium. At the end, a 4-0 decision by commissioners cleared Held to run again in the March 6 election. The ruling was met with loud grumbles.
Bickering is nothing new to this tiny town, which, in its 1 square mile, stocks enough familiar political characters to compete with The West Wing.
Tuesday's episode starred one-time pal and current Held nemesis Alan Friend, who argued that re-election would constitute an illegal fourth consecutive term for Held. Held already has served terms from 1995 to 1998 and from 1998 to the present.
But the city attorney ruled that another term would make three -- not four -- unless one counts the year Held served from 1994 to 1995, after then-Mayor Barbara Gilberg resigned two years into her term.
Before the meeting, Friend sent a letter to Vice Mayor Chris Burgess seeking reassurance that "no time limits or other restrictions will be placed on my testimony, presentation and explanation of law, facts and evidence."
Friend suffered no such limitations, dominating about an hour of a two-hour meeting. He brought out cases from the Florida Supreme Court and later grilled City Attorney Linda Hallas on whether she was acquainted with the cases he had cited.
He cited language in the city's charter limiting mayors to "three consecutive full or partial elected terms." He said that because fellow commissioners had voted for Held to serve the remainder of Gilberg's term, his first year in office had been a partial elected term.
Hallas responded that the passage Friend cited had been amended in 1995 to include the word "elected."
"Why did the committee bother to add the word "elected' if not to distinguish between "elected' and "appointed'?" she asked.
An hour into the meeting, and before at least nine residents got to speak, Friend had City Clerk Diane Orloff read several of his letters to city officials aloud, as the charter allowed him to do.
Even Friend's allies appeared to lose patience.
"No more," groaned Held critic Dan Calabria as another letter was read into the record.
Friend and Held parted ways in 1995 after Friend publicly criticized Held. The two had served on the City Commission together, often voting the same.
In a 1994 meeting, Hallas pointed out Tuesday, Friend had lobbied the commission on Held's behalf, saying, "You folks would be making the best selection you could possibly make in terms of an appointment."
Friend told Hallas, who offered to produce tapes of those comments, that if he had ever confused the concepts of elections versus appointments, the city's charter had not.
"The clear words of the charter say that Fred Held (will have) fulfilled his term March 6. That's the end of it," he said.
Mayoral candidate and former commissioner Lou Ippolito also spoke against Held's candidacy. After Tuesday's meeting, he said he wouldn't be showing up at any candidates' forums. In a fax to the St. Petersburg Times, Ippolito stated, "I refuse to debate with anyone whom I believe is violating his own city's charter and our law."
Billie Declerq, a 35-year resident, left Tuesday's meeting angry. She said an election is an election, whether it is four people or the general public.
"Politics has ruined this town," she said.
Held, who recused himself from the meeting, noted that both Friend and Ippolito are former commissioners who were voted out of office.
"The fact is that these are the same dissidents who have been here for many years," he said. "They are a small but vocal minority."
Former Commissioner Dottie Wade, who resigned in May to move to New Port Richey, was among the few Held supporters who spoke at the meeting.
Her voice a low croak, Wade told commissioners she had made the drive despite having bronchial pneumonia because she thought it was important that the challenge to Held's candidacy be defeated.
When she was finished, someone in the back hissed, "So why are you bringing your germs here?"
The unanimous vote to strike down the challenge and allow Held to run on March 6 drew loud exclamations from several in the crowd.
"Fix!" one man cried.
"I resent that remark," Commissioner Joan Runyon said. "You don't know me."
Strife over the charter's wording could provide grist for a charter review committee, which meets a week after the election for the first time since it was formed in 1995. Its members will consist of current and past members of the City Commission, a city department head and six registered voters.