By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Commentary
Chiefland City Commissioner Norman Weaver famously said at a board meeting that the city commission is a “do-nothing” board.
The city commission is living up to its reputation.
City Manager Laura Cain is the perfect fit for a do-nothing city commission. She stays busy but avoids any projects that she personally doesn’t feel are worth pursuing.
Cain has been pressed by Spotlight to urge city commissioners to replace the City Seal that mysteriously disappeared from the old Chiefland City Hall when the city moved to the current location years ago.
She wasn’t working for the city in those days and doesn’t remember the seal and apparently doesn’t care if City Hall has one. Nor does the Chiefland City Commission.
A City Seal is an emblem of pride for most city-elected boards and represents all that is good in that city. City seals are generally hung on the wall behind the desk (dais) where elected officials sit for meetings. The City Seal is hung in a place of honor.
Williston has a City Seal and proudly displays it on the wall behind the City Council’s dais, but Williston is a much better-run city government than Chiefland. It’s not perfect, but it’s way better than Chiefland.
The old Chiefland City Seal that once hung on the wall behind the Chiefland City Commission in what is now the John Fisher Building apparently grew legs and walked away when the move was made to the current City Hall. It’s probably hanging in someone’s living room now. Or it was trashed by someone who thought it was a piece of junk. We’ll probably never know what happened to it.
For the old-timers who remember the City Seal that vanished, it was small and showed a setting sun over the Suwannee River Valley, with the river winding toward the west and a watermelon field growing below the river. The city’s name, Chiefland, was written across the top, and Gem of the Suwannee River Valley was written across the bottom. It was a source of municipal pride back in the days when pride mattered to the city’s elected officials.
Commissioners have been asked repeatedly if they want to have a new City Seal constructed, carved, or manufactured to hang on the bare wall behind the dais in the board chambers. They generally shrug and look at each other with a grin on their faces like they don’t know why a City Seal is important, much less what it actually is. They think it’s humorous that questions are being asked about it.
Cain was asked Wednesday if any progress was being made toward getting a City Seal designed and manufactured for City Hall. She said a City Seal was low on her priority list and she wasn’t working on it.
She was also asked if she was working on getting NW 11th Drive paved. At one time, she said $300,000 had been set aside in the current budget for engineering and designing the project. She said Mittauer and Associates, the city’s engineering consultant, had visited the street to assess it. But on Tuesday she said the $300,000 was set aside for paving a different street at the top of her paving priority list and had never been allocated for NW 11th Drive.
Cain determines the order in which streets are paved or resurfaced in Chiefland rather than her five bosses on the city commission. Cain said the former City Manager Mary Ellzey also set road paving priorities. The do-nothing city commission toddles along behind their city manager like obedient little puppies, questioning nothing, and drawing their paychecks every month.
NW 11th Drive is the unpaved street that passes behind NAPA, ABC Pizza and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and connects to a couple of short paved streets that empty onto U.S. 129 in front of Chiefland Farm Supply. It’s a cut-through street that connects Wal-Mart to U.S. 129. With U.S. 19 getting busier and busier with traffic, one would think a shortcut street to get local traffic off U.S. 19 would be a high priority for the city commission. It isn’t.
Commissioners just shrug off questions about the street as though it’s not one of their top priorities. And it’s really not. They let Cain set the paving priorities for them, as well as other priorities, and they go blissfully along as though nothing’s wrong. Cain said NW 11th Drive isn’t on the street paving priority list. She said there are many other streets she has designated for paving that are a higher priority in her view.
City Commissioner Rollin Hudson, the longest-serving board member, tried several times to get Cain to do something with NW 11th Drive, but she brushed him off every time he brought it up. Hudson never got much support from his fellow commissioners for paving the street, including Mayor Chris Jones, the second longest-serving member of the board. Hudson eventually gave up. He should have continued bringing it up at every meeting. He should have made a motion for the city commission to set street paving priorities and make NW 11th Drive the top paving priority, but he did nothing.
The Chiefland City Commission remains infamous for several things – doing nothing, having short meeting agendas, and being too stubborn to change the status quo.
The last time this reporter covered a city commission meeting, Jones was pressing for economic development in south Chiefland, but once again, his motivations were good, but his plan for helping south Chiefland lacked substance. For whatever reason, Jones and the city commission are wary of creating a Community Development Agency (CRA) to set aside city and county funds to redevelop the old business district in south Chiefland. The city commission instructed Cain to contact Levy County Business Development Director Scott Osteen to find out the city’s options. But Osteen hasn’t been an effective economic development director for the Levy County Commission. Why would he do a better job for Chiefland?
Williston and Cedar Key both have CRA’s and both cities have used them to great advantage. Levy County Commissioners have groused about having to give the two cities county tax funds for two CRAs. but to no effect. State law forces the county to give a percentage of their tax revenue growth every year to cities with a CRA. Williston and Cedar Key apparently love their CRAs and have shown no willingness to close them down.
Chiefland doesn’t want a CRA.
——————-
City of Chiefland Posted July 26, 2023
