By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

            Sparks flew Monday night at the Chiefland City Commission meeting when the mayor and the founders of a year-old start-up youth athletic league clashed over the question of whether a convicted sex offender is being allowed around children while the league is using a city park.

            When the dust settled, the commission voted 4-1, with Mayor Chris Jones opposed, to giving the Tri-County Athletic Commission a one-year contract to operate the league in Chiefland and requiring the league to give the city the results of background checks on its volunteers.

            Chiefland Area Athletic Association, a competing athletic league, must meet the same requirement to provide results of background checks of volunteers working in the athletic league.

            Jones lit the flame of controversy when he said he knows of one man who hangs out at Eddie Buie Park where TCAC practices that has a criminal sexual abuse conviction and isn’t being forced to stay away from children. He didn’t name the individual.

            TCAC co-founder Victoria Larkin insisted TCAC has no one within the organization that has a sex offender background but she said she can’t control everyone who comes to the city park when its teams are there.

            “Anyone who doesn’t have clearance is asked to leave,” she said.

            “I personally have seen someone at the park with a sexual abuse background,” Jones said.

            Larkin denied knowing anyone hanging at the park with a sexual abuse background.

            Jones said he knows the man very well and later said Larkin knows him too.

            “There’s no one from our group that has that kind of background,” Larkin said.

            Larkin asked why Jones had a problem with their league.

            Jones responded that he knows the backgrounds of Larkin and her husband.

            City Manager Laura Cain said currently neither league submits the results of their background checks to the city although contracts require both leagues to provide that information.

            Larkin and her husband Aaron Larkin said Pop Warner, the national organization they operate under, does thorough background checks on all their coaches and league officials and notifies the Larkins if they pass or fail.

            City Attorney Norm Fugate and TCAC and CAAA are required to submit the pass/fail results of the background checks on volunteers to Cain.

            One woman in the audience who said she has a daughter in TCAC cheerleading began crying when she heard the mayor say someone with a sex offender conviction might be present at Buie Park when her daughter is there.

            Commissioner Norm Weaver made the motion to approve a one-year contract for the league.

            “I don’t see any reason at this point not to renew it,” he said.

            The contract with the city gives TCAC and CAAA the right to use the athletic facilities at Eddie Buie Park in the south part of town and Charles Strickland Park in the northern part of town.

            CAAA has operated for more than a decade and has traditionally used Strickland Park, which has more fields and better facilities as its base of operations, but TCAC has a right to use the Strickland Park facilities under its contract. TCAC is based at Buie Park.

            Weaver said TCAC plays most of its games in other cities.

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City of Chiefland Regular Meeting June 27, 2022; Posted June 27, 2022