Where Civil Blood Makes Civil Hands Unclean.

Mayor Charlene Glancy























My trip to the Casselberry City Commission meeting this past Monday March 22 went about as expected. It ran a little more than three hours and consisted mostly of readings regarding proposed redistricting, increased development and zoning amendments. Most of which went right over my head.

The council members were seemingly kind, generally energetic and concerned with the well being of their city. An energy that was perhaps only matched by their garrulousness.

However, that all changed when Mr. James Fraleigh took to the podium during the citizens' comments section of the meeting. "What's the matter with you? Are you stupid? Are you morons? You're ignorant and you're wasting the tax payers money!"

In what turned out to be a three minute verbal assault on the council's intelligence and integrity, Mr. Fraleigh managed to jump-start the council who did not take very kindly to words.

After Mr. Farleigh's time was up (citizen speakers are allowed three minutes)the meeting got back underway.

Mayor Charlene Glancy proclaimed April to be water conservation month in the City of Casselberry.

Mayor Glancy then recognized the 60th anniversary of the Woman's Club of Casselberry.

Adam Reichbach, a Special Projects Coordinator, working for the U.S. Census did a presentation about why the census was important. Perhaps the most important thing to take away was that for every 18 people who do not fill out the survey it costs the U.S. government 80-90 million dollars to send out agents to collect the information.

Then began the public hearings which took up the majority of the time. There was a second reading of Ordinance 10-1315 - Annual Capital Improvement Schedule 2009/10 - 2013/14 (LPA 09-08) which adopted the city's 5-year capital improvement schedule to meet growth management plan requirement for cities and counties to submit an annual capital improvement schedule to the Department of Community Affairs. This passed unanimously.

Then there was a first reading of a series of several ordinances which all how to do with increasing development around major roads that pass through Casselberry. So I thought the excitement for the most part was over. I was wrong.

During the citizens' comments section of Ordinance 10-1321 Mr. Fraleigh made his triumphant return to that podium and returned to his venomous rhetoric. Only this time he had been warned and this time it resulted in him being removed from the premises by two large security guards.

I could hear Mr. Fraleigh protest after he had been removed from the council room, but had no idea until the next day that due to his comments and resulting struggle leaving the premises Mr. Fraleigh was arrested for trespassing.

After Mr. Fraleigh's second disturbance the rest of the meeting went smoothly with the rest of the ordinances also carrying unanimously in their first reads.

One final interesting note from the meeting was that city attorney
Catherine D. Reischmann reitterated the importance of public records and constant compliance with Florida Sunshine Law. According to Reischmann, Walton County, Florida was recently hit with $155,000 in attorney fees for sending work related e-mails on personal e-mail accounts. Reischmann sought to remind the council that the city of Casselberry could not financially afford to be so careless and that anytime business e-mails were being exchanged from personal e-mail accounts to just forward them to their own work e-mails which would in return be sent directly to the office computers and placed in public record.