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Cities surge, stumble forward
By ALEX LEARY and BRIDGET HALL GRUMET © St. Petersburg Times, published December 26, 2000 Inverness and Crystal River marched into the new century this year, embracing growth and the trappings of modern life, while at the same time trying to preserve the past. But the journey took each city down vastly different paths, one relatively straightforward and without surprise, the other winding and weird. Despite various accomplishments inside and outside City Hall, including the restoration of downtown and millions in grants for central sewer lines, sour politics once again dominated the news in Crystal River. Three days after Thanksgiving, the City Council voted 3-2 not to renew the contract of City Manager David Sallee, a move that surprised no one given the city's volatile history with its top manager. Sallee is the seventh city manager in 10 years. Outraged with the dismissal of Sallee, who has been credited with securing millions of dollars in grants and bringing professionalism to the office, citizens took to the streets with a petition to save his job. Likening the city manager's plight to that of Sisyphus, Sallee predicted the administration he helped build would begin to crumble, throwing any sense of progress off track. As if on cue, building inspector Walter Brown quit days after the vote, saying he could no longer work in a city with such divisive politics. His resignation may not be the last, city staff members said. In the November elections, Sallee's chief supporters on the council, Alex Ilnyckyj and Paula Wheeler, lost to Bonnie Taylor and Russ Kreager. The two incumbents often clashed with their tightly aligned colleagues, Joe Chrietzberg, Mike Gudis and Ray Wallace, and the political establishment worked hard to oust the dissenters. Ilnyckyj was censured in July for what his critics said was disruptive behavior. The hard-charging Ilnyckyj, who was docked $435 in pay, said he was simply defending Sallee from partisan attacks. Some saw the censure as a payback for Ilnyckyj's determination to get to the bottom of alleged Sunshine Law violations involving Chrietzberg, Gudis and Wallace and former council member Ed Tolle. Tolle had arranged a meeting at his house with the men and former finance director George Zoettlein to discuss the city's finances. The council members said they never met together, a violation of the open meeting law, and no charges were ever brought. During the election, Ilnyckyj's brashness got him in trouble again when he allegedly showered a city employee with profanity after the Public Works Department removed some of his campaign signs thought to be in the public right of way. Given the Animal House behavior at City Hall, it only seemed appropriate to bring in the real thing. First, the Police Department established a horse patrol and then, a canine unit. The Police Department also established a citizen radar team to crack down on speeding in residential areas. For as much fighting and finger-pointing as it saw, Crystal River had a relatively successful year. In October, Home Depot opened, drawing about 2,000 customers the first day. Earlier in the year, the city received word that the new owners of the nuclear power plant were not planning wholesale job cuts. Businesses in the city's historic downtown got a facelift thanks to a federal grant. The Community Redevelopment Agency oversaw the work and is planning more work in the area, including new sidewalks and lights along NE Third Street and NE First Street and a pier and boardwalk along Kings Bay. The city received a huge boost for its infrastructure in June when the state Department of Environmental Protection approved a $4.3-million grant to replace more than 500 septic tanks with central sewer lines. A separate grant, totaling $600,000, was also awarded from the state and will go toward constructing central sewer lines on U.S. 19 south of the city limits. The grant was largely aimed at Home Depot, but officials said they hope all businesses in the area will be able to connect and agree to be annexed by the city, which would then benefit from new property tax revenue. Thanks in part to Ilnyckyj, the city was able to persuade the state to install a traffic signal at U.S. 19 and Turkey Oak Drive, the site of several serious accidents, one fatal. Ilnyckyj also help lead the charge against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's plan to expand its refuge on Kings Bay Drive. Residents protested the expansion, which they said would bring more traffic to their neighborhood, by posting signs in their yards calling the agency a bad neighbor and a liar. The service had at one time made statements that some thought meant it planned no expansions. Inverness had its share of disputes this year, tame as they were by Crystal River standards. Several downtown merchants butted heads with Inverness City Manager Frank DiGiovanni in October over a proposal that would have made it easier for the city to enforce its ban on sidewalk sales, especially during downtown events. The proposal would have changed the way an existing ban is enforced -- specifically, by allowing city officials to give warnings and fines instead of immediately calling the police -- but the debate centered on whether the ban should exist at all. In the end, after hearing impassioned pleas from downtown merchants who sometimes put their goods outside their stores, a divided City Council left the ban the way it is: still on the books, but likely to go unenforced. Most of this year's news out of downtown centered on efforts to rebuild the historic district. The jewel of the downtown area, the fully refurbished 1912 Courthouse, reopened in October after a restoration that took six years, $2.4-million and countless volunteer hours. The Citrus County Historical Society led the effort to return the building to its original glory -- marble wall panels, terrazzo floors and all -- and use it as a museum and archive depository. City officials are exploring ways to repair the 1910 B-type London bus replica and station the old Crown Hotel bus somewhere downtown. They are also looking for grants to restore the ailing building north of the old courthouse, the 1926 Valerie Theater that has sat empty for more than a decade. "We're dealing with a lot of investment in the downtown area," DiGiovanni said. "It's getting far more difficult to look at that sitting there in a dilapidated, debilitated state." Those investments include a $825,000 downtown "streetscaping" project, tentatively set to start in May 2001, that will add old-fashioned street lamps, benches and trash cans along Main Street. Inverness is also piecing together a linear park along Cooter Pond and part of Big Lake Henderson, which will eventually include picnic spots, walking trails and outlooks. And plans are in the early stages for a new City Hall, possibly a two-story structure, to replace the 40-year-old City Hall building at Main Street and Seminole Avenue. Construction is several years away. Beyond the downtown area, Inverness welcomed a veterans medical clinic in July and continued to lobby the Social Security Administration to establish a local office. National business chains trickled into Inverness, with the opening of Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar in March and Beef O'Brady's pub in December. The Home Depot and Wal-Mart supercenter announced their plans to build mega-stores west of town, and other restaurant franchises are looking at sites in the city, DiGiovanni said. But officials are quick to add that Red Lobster is not among the interested restaurants, despite this year's widespread rumors to the contrary. "(The Red Lobster rumor) spread like wildfire. . . . I guess that's a small town for you," Inverness Development Services director Bill Wiley said in May.
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