Clearwater Mayor “frustrated” by comments supporting
1st Amendment rights of local tackle shop owners!
***Blames Glenn Beck as flood of complaints source***
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EXCLUSIVE
Posted March 6, 2009
© 2009 www.keepthefish.com
The mayor and city council of Clearwater are "frustrated" that so many Americans are practicing their own 1st Amendment rights – by voicing their support of the 1st Amendment rights of local residents Herb and Lori Quintero, who are now suing the city for violating those rights.
At last night’s city council meeting, Mayor Frank Hibbard blamed callers and viewers of Glenn Beck’s radio and television shows and website for generating many of the complaints the city has received. The mayor and other council members defended the en masse characterization made by City Manager Bill Horne of the comments. “They’re very abusive, profane, insulting emails,” Mr. Horne had stated.
The Quinteros were initially cited and fined by Clearwater for violating the city’s sign code by having a mural of game fish painted on the side of The Complete Angler, a bait and tackle store they own. After being ordered to remove the paintings of fish, Mr. Quintero protested by proudly hanging a banner, containing the text of the 1st Amendment, to cover the paintings of fish in dispute. Attorneys for the ACLU now represent the Quinteros and were in federal court in Tampa on Wednesday asking a judge to grant an injunction to prevent the city of Clearwater from forcibly removing the 1st Amendment banner, as well as the fish mural underneath.
The case has received national exposure in the media for over a week, and Clearwater city offices have since that time been “bombarded” by a barrage of online form submissions, emails, faxes and telephone calls.
Referring to comments from citizens, Mayor Frank Hibbard said he gets “a little frustrated when we get emails from people, especially anonymous ones.” He then elaborated on the source of the many citizen complaints, stating, “The interesting thing is that a lot of emails have come from the Glenn Beck show and we hosted the Glenn Beck show.” Apparently, he was trying to defuse the City Manager’s derogatory statement about the flood of comments, many of which come from Americans serving in the military, by pointing out that Clearwater’s Coachman Park was the venue for a Glenn Beck’s Rally for America event held April of 2003. The rally was held in support of US troops.
Hibbard was speaking in response to questions posed by Dru Jeanis, editor of keepthefish.com, who had appeared to dispute the characterization of the emails made by Horne. Mr. Jeanis stated that, as the editor of a website devoted to the case, he was in possession of many such emails, including one from a veteran military officer serving in Iraq, which had been placed into evidence at the federal trial the day before. Mr. Jeanis said that many emails to city employees were “thoughtful” and “well-mannered.”
Ironically, neither Mr. Hibbard nor the rest of the city council seemed to understand that they themselves were not speaking about the emails Mr. Jeanis had referenced at all. The city of Clearwater's website does not provide email addresses to the city manager and council members, but links to online forms which the public can anonymously fill out. The city's online system, known as C-TRACS, does not require valid names and other information, such as a working email address, for submissions. Once the online C-TRACS form is submitted through the city's main website, city computers generate an email containing the content of the form. Mr. Jeanis had specifically referred to "emails" he had seen which were copied to keepthefish.com, making no mention of "comment forms" submitted online. Due to the rules of procedure at the city council meeting, Mr. Jeanis was not allowed any follow-up commentary to correct the misstatements of council members, or point out that all of the emails sent to keepthefish.com contain contact information.
In a further irony, the elected officials speaking seemed upset that many of the comments received were “anonymously” sent. Mr. Jeanis was representing a website and coalition of concerned business owners and citizens which has, as the first in a list of recommended changes for the city, the abandonment of the process of investigating potential sign and other code violations "solely on the basis of anonymous phone calls, letters, emails or messages." The keepthefish.com website states that the “current policy" of acting on such anonymous complaints "is ripe for abuse, allowing personal vendettas to be waged by city employees unknowingly acting as proxies for hidden antagonists."
After Mr. Jeanis posed his questions, none of the elected officials present offered any support for the display of the 1st Amendment. Mr. Hibbard summed up his feelings about Clearwater's fining of the Quinteros for the fish mural and then ordering the 1st Amendment banner taken down by saying, "I don't think we are impinging upon free speech." Both city attorney Pam Akin and Vice-Mayor George Cretekos referred to the displayed text of the iconic document as a common "sign" or as being part of the "signs" displayed at the business.
Ms. Akin responded to a question asked by Mr. Cretekos, concerning tackle shop owner Herb Quintero by saying, “He has been cited and it has to do, not with the content of the signs, but with the size of the signs.”
Her statement seemed to contradict testimony given under oath by a Clearwater city executive just the day before in federal court in Tampa. Under cross-examination by an ACLU attorney trying the case on behalf of the Quinteros, the city's lone witness– Planning Director Michael Delk, was forced to admit that if the business had posted a U.S. flag of the exact same size and material instead of the text of the 1st Amendment, it's likely the Quinteros would not have been cited for violating the sign code.
Dru Jeanis may be reached at editor@keepthefish.com
