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Plantation subdivision faces voting dispute
By TIM GRANT © St. Petersburg Times, published November 19, 2000 CARROLLWOOD -- While the nation was enduring Florida's excruciating recounts in the presidential election, a local subdivision was experiencing a voting nightmare of its own. After a vote on whether to let the Boys & Girls Club build a facility in their neighborhood, homeowners in the Plantation of Carrollwood subdivision find themselves in a dispute similar to the big one in Palm Beach County. There are allegations of improper vote counting, ballot stuffing and lax voter verification. There are even people who say they weren't exactly sure what they voted for. The measure passed 222-63, but now one group is pressuring the homeowners association board to overturn the Nov. 8 vote. Another resident says he will challenge the board if the vote is thrown out. Board members have asked their attorney for guidance. Resident Mary-Jo Kail, a real estate agent who sells homes in the subdivision, has asked Plantation's attorney to urge board members to redo the vote. In a letter to the Meirose & Friscia law firm, she said the referendum "was handled very unprofessionally and in a fraudulent way." She said children from the Boys & Girls Club went house to house collecting proxies from residents, and that club employees solicited more proxies outside Plantation polls during the Nov. 7 general election. The next day, Kail alleges, Plantation poll workers handed out as many as five proxies per voter and asked voters to check "yes." Poll workers did not require voters to show identification, she said. She said the big problem is that the ballot gave no clue as to where the facility would be built. Some residents want to rescind their votes, she said, after learning the center might go up across the parking lot from the subdivision's own clubhouse. "The retention pond is right there," Kail said. "The liability of the lake being so close is enormous because of the open-door policy at the Boys & Girls Club, which allows kids to come and go as they please." Kail also noted the building would be within 100 feet of the main entrance at Plantation Boulevard, far from the playground and within 1,000 feet of Goodfellas Bar. "Imagine 175 kids wanting to go to the playground. They don't have enough staff for that," Kail said. The Boys & Girls Club has operated a program in Plantation for more than three years. Its facilities consist of a large, portable building in another area of the subdivision. The recent vote would allow the club to build a 4,000-square-foot center on Plantation's common grounds. "We believe a permanent facility would be better for the kids and cheaper to operate," said Roy Opher, president of the Boys & Girls Club. He acknowledged that the Plantation program is not a licensed child care facility, but is run more like a supervised recreation program where kids have more freedom to come and go. Plantation property manager Tom Jones administered the referendum and counted the votes. He said in seven years of handling all of Plantation's elections, "my integrity has never been questioned. "Up until now I've had no help on any of these elections," he said. "Even with all this rhetoric, I believe it was a fair election." Still, he supports a vote the board took Wednesday night to give their attorney a box full of proxies, certification of the mailing, the minutes of the special meeting held before the vote and voter verification records. They've asked for an opinion on the validity of the vote and guidelines on conducting future ones. "I've had a lot of people approach me. This is all some people are talking about," Joe Thompson told fellow board members Wednesday. "If this was a fair election, I don't think we'd have this type of outcry." Board member Corrina Santiago said she would support a revote. "I just want to make sure that everyone who voted knew what they were voting for," Santiago said. "I don't know that I can honestly say that everyone who voted knew they were voting on a location. "I can't say we were fair in the way we presented this. In doing that, we took away their right to make an informed vote on this." Jones said some of the disgruntled residents' concerns are because they are misinterpreting bylaws. For example, critics say the vote was illegal because less than one-third of the 1,832 homes voted. But Jones said that for capital improvements, only 10 percent of homes are needed for a quorum. He said a lack of community involvement was the reason referendum organizers asked children to collect proxies from residents who probably would not have voted otherwise. Jones said he and volunteers didn't ask voters for identification because he knows most of them. Another central figure in the dispute is board president Bill Sanders, whom residents have accused of being rude and of lying at the special meeting before the vote. Sanders denied both charges. "The misunderstanding resulted from my using the words "concept' and "ideas' while they felt like the building is a concrete object," Sanders said. From his point of view, "we don't have the building. We don't have approval to put it in that spot. It would still have to go through the zoning process." Further complicating matters, former board member Jim Frissell has promised a legal fight if the vote is reversed. "That building is worth a million dollars to this community," he said. "If we screw around . . . we could lose it. It would be a major disservice to the homeowners and the children's club to put this to another test. It passed and it passed fairly." - To reach Tim Grant call 226-3471, or e-mail him at grant@sptimes.com.
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