North Shore chief ousted

The new president calls it a "sad day" after breaking a tie and voting to remove the association's chief in the midst of a development controversy.

By ANDREW MEACHAM

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 5, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- Acting on the request of its membership, board members of the North Shore Neighborhood Association voted Monday night to remove president Steve Lange after only a month in office.

Greg Burton, the association's vice president who led most of the meeting, broke a 5-5 tie on the motion to remove Lange. Burton will be North Shore's new president. Lange will continue as a board member.

The decision was not automatic.

Several board members in the 90-minute meeting argued for another general meeting so that more of the membership -- particularly Lange's supporters -- could weigh in, but that proposal failed. The motion to remove cited a Florida statute that allows boards of non-profit organizations to remove their leaders with or without cause.

"I'm disappointed," Lange said after the vote that ended the meeting. "I think it's an embarrassment for North Shore."

Lange, an architect, had served as president in 1991 and led numerous neighborhood projects since then, including landscaping along Fourth Street and founding North Shore's Historic District Committee in 1997. But within two weeks after assuming leadership because Joyce Frey resigned at the end of May, Lange was coming under fire from residents who accused the new president of having divided loyalties.

Lange supported the controversial development of a new CVS drugstore at 845 Fourth St. N, the current site of Watson's Foodtown. At an emotional membership meeting June 19, residents produced a postcard from Lange to City Council members, one of many such cards distributed throughout the neighborhood by CVS proponents. Lange had also spoken as a citizen on behalf of the development before the City Council, which voted 5-0 to approve rezoning the project needed. That meeting ended with a 31-9 vote to ask the board to seek Lange's resignation.

The board meeting focused more on Lange's personality and pugnacious leadership style. In a brief statement to open the meeting, Lange said he was being punished for backing CVS, a development North Shore residents had packed the City Council meeting to oppose.

But even he acknowledged some "loss of control" in the membership meeting he chaired, which he attributed to the antagonistic mood of the meeting.

Donna Fudge, Lange's attorney -- and wife of real estate broker Felix Fudge, who engineered the CVS sale -- told the board that ousting Lange would not end the controversy. More than 50 North Shore members, including six past presidents and several former board members, had signed a petition calling for another membership meeting in the event the board removed Lange, she said.

"What happened tonight is like firing your star quarterback after he's led you to the Super Bowl, just because he threw an interception in the third quarter," Fudge said.

In breaking the tie vote, Burton called the petition by Lange supporters a tactic to intimidate the board. Such a move, he said, was evidence that "we need someone else at the helm, and I wish it weren't me."

"It's an extremely sad day," he added.

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