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Serving Pasco since 1981/Serving Lutz since 1964

Ray Davis

It’s official: Lake Jovita leaves St. Leo

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Years of conflict between some homeowners in the Lake Jovita subdivision of eastern Pasco County and the Town of St. Leo ended Monday with the stroke of the governor’s pen.

Rick Scott signed into law H.B. 1401, which officially de-annexes a portion of Lake Jovita from one of the county’s oldest municipalities.

The signing took place with no fanfare, and was in fact one of 55 bills that became law Monday.

The law was introduced by state Rep. Amanda Murphy, D-New Port Richey, designed to allow more than 80 homes in Lake Jovita join the rest of its neighborhood in unincorporated Pasco.

It goes into effect immediately, which means two commissioners in the town government who live in Lake Jovita are no longer on the commission. That includes Ray Davis, who beat longtime commissioner Donna DeWitt in the April municipal election, who will actually be removed before he officially becomes a commissioner.

The remaining commissioners will now appoint people to fill the vacancies. It’s not clear, however, if DeWitt will return.

The Tallahassee action was required because a town cannot de-annex an area that meets all the conditions that would’ve allowed the town to annex it otherwise. To make such a change, it requires both the Legislature and governor to undo it.

The new St. Leo will see see its population drop from 1,369 to 1,173, according to a House committee report. The expected financial impact of the move would decrease the town’s revenue by $50,000, or 15 percent. It also would reduce the number of rooftops by 85.

Lake Jovita is a planned 871-home development that broke ground in the late 1990s, and is located primarily in unincorporated Pasco County.

Lake Jovita de-annexation passes House, Senate

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The fate of Lake Jovita and St. Leo is now on its way to Gov. Rick Scott’s desk.

The Florida Senate today passed H.B. 1401 by a 40-0 vote, after it was withdrawn from the Rules Committee there. That votes comes just days after the Florida House approved it 118-1, with only state Rep. Daphne Campbell, D-Miami, voting against it.

H.B. 1401 was filed by state Rep. Amanda Murphy, D-New Port Richey, on March 1, which would separate a portion of the Lake Jovita subdivision from the Town of St. Leo. The community and the town have been at odds for years, with Lake Jovita homeowners affected by the town complaining about high taxes and low level of services.

Those homeowners have worked to get their way onto the town board, the latest being Ray Davis who beat longtime commissioner Donna DeWitt in April to help maintain the Lake Jovita majority. Davis is expected to take his seat in May, unless Gov. Scott signs H.B. 1401, which would move the affected part of Lake Jovita into unincorporated Pasco County like the rest of the subdivision.

The St. Leo commission is set to meet May 5, according to town attorney Patricia Petruff, to discuss what happens next based on how H.B. 1401 moves forward. It’s not clear when Scott will sign the bill, but it would take immediate effect upon his signature, or within 15 days of his receiving the bill if he chooses not to sign or veto.

H.B. 1401 becoming law would create three immediate openings on the St. Leo commission, and new members of the commission would have to be appointed. That could mean DeWitt could remain on the commission, despite losing her election, if she is appointed to return.

The new St. Leo without Lake Jovita will see its population drop from 1,369 to 1,173, according to a House committee report. The town itself would lose $50,000 each year, or 15 percent of its total revenue, and would reduce the number of rooftops by 85.

Lake Jovita is a planned 871-home development that broke ground in the late 1990s. By chance, a small portion of the subdivision landed inside St. Leo. The town itself could not de-annex the Lake Jovita homes, because state law prohibits a municipality from de-annexing areas that, if it wasn’t part of the town already, it could have legally annexed. That meant only state lawmakers could allow the divorce.

De-annexing Lake Jovita could create mess on St. Leo commission

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The results of a recent election in the town of Saint Leo and a bill making its way through the Legislature could be on a collision course that may result in a town commissioner resigning, a special election or an appointment to the commission by Gov. Rick Scott.

All of these scenarios are possible.

Patricia Petruff
Patricia Petruff

It all boils down to the fact that the town’s commission may soon lack a quorum.

The purpose of a quorum is to ensure elected representatives are actually representing the people who elected them by typically requiring more than half of those representatives to be present at a meeting.

It’s a concept nearly as old as organized meetings themselves, and prevents a leader from having more power than he should. Without a quorum, decisions can’t be made, governing virtually comes to a complete halt, and nothing gets done.

St. Leo’s government requires three of its five commissioners to be present to create a quorum.

However, a bill making its way through Tallahassee is expected to pass and once it gets the governor’s signature, three of those five St. Leo commissioners will be removed from office. Thus, there won’t be a quorum available with the remaining two to fix it.

It’s something that could keep attorneys up at night, but not St. Leo town attorney Patricia Petruff. That’s because she has a plan.

“We’re going to have three commissioners (from Lake Jovita) as of May, and if one of them does not resign, we’ll have a little bit of a pickle on our hands,” Petruff said.

With the Florida House back in session this week, work once again begins on H.B. 1401, introduced by Rep. Amanda Murphy, D-New Port Richey, that would remove part of the Lake Jovita subdivision from the St. Leo town limits, and have it join the rest of that community in unincorporated Pasco County.

When there’s a vacancy on the commission, the mayor — with the consent of his fellow commissioners — can appoint a replacement. In fact, that happened in 2005 when Commissioner John Fantone decided not to seek re-election, and no one ran to replace him. Then-mayor James Hallett appointed Bill Hamilton, the son of a former St. Leo mayor, to the seat.

That couldn’t happen this time, because in order for the commission to consent to an appointment, there has to be an actual commission, which doesn’t exist without the three-member quorum.

The battle to de-annex has been ongoing for years, especially as Lake Jovita residents have slowly moved into commission seats. Right now, commissioners James Wells and Robert Inslee as well as Mayor John Gardner hail from Lake Jovita. Gardner chose not to seek re-election, but Ray Davis defeated longtime commissioner Donna DeWitt on April 8, and with that, kept the Lake Jovita majority on the commission.

Whether H.B. 1401 is signed into law before the new commission is seated in mid-May or after, an immediate de-annexation of St. Leo is going to leave three empty seats and a complicated process to fill it. In fact, it could be up to Gov. Rick Scott to appoint at least one member to the commission so that they can order a special election. But Petruff hopes it doesn’t get that far.

In fact, there’s an even easier solution: resign.

“If we have only two members who are from the area impacted by (H.B.) 1401, then after the new commission is seated in May, we would only lose two members, and the mayor could appoint to fill the spots,” Petruff said.

That would mean some trust on behalf of the Lake Jovita residents on the commission, as the mayor would need to appoint someone outside that subdivision to fill the seat, giving non-Lake Jovita residents the majority.

The commission has scheduled meetings already for April 28 and May 5, depending on how far H.B. 1401 has moved in the House.

“I think the plan is that one of them will resign, but nobody has told me that for sure,” Petruff said. “And none of them have come up and said that.”

One person who probably won’t hand in his resignation if this situation continues past mid-May is Davis, who beat DeWitt by just four votes to win her seat. Davis told The Laker/Lutz News after the election his goal was to be insurance in case H.B. 1401 failed.

“They call me ‘Plan B,’” he said. “You never know what’s going to happen.”

Davis himself said he didn’t want to speculate, but DeWitt feared they could keep a move to dissolve the 123-year-old town in their back pocket just in case.

Petruff, however, isn’t focused on that. She is expecting H.B. 1401 to clear both the House and Senate, and find itself under Scott’s pen in the near future. But just in case no one resigns, and there are just two commissioners in the St. Leo Town Hall once that happens? Petruff said she wants the current commission to give her and Town Clerk Joan Miller the power right now to organize and conduct a special election and get the empty seats filled. The two would also run the town until a quorum once again exists.

“We talked a little bit about whether or not the sitting commission could give direction in the event that this happens,” Petruff said, noting no final decision has been made yet.

But those decisions will have to be made soon.

“Timing is critical,” she said. “That’s why we’re watching this very closely.”

Published April 23, 2014

All on-the-job training for Zephyrhills’ newest councilman

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Zephyrhills doesn’t waste time when it comes to elections.

Jodi Wilkeson
Jodi Wilkeson

Last Monday, less than a week after the election, Alan Knight was installed as the new city councilman following his victory over one-time council president Jodi Wilkeson. And there isn’t even time for Knight to catch his breath.

Moments after the swearing in, Knight was asked to consider two board appointments, donating vehicles to a local college, who should build a new skate park, and, according to the agenda, decide the fate of City Manager Jim Drumm.

Being a council member is not as easy as some make it look, and there’s a steep learning curve that Knight, a former high school principal and football coach, will have to endure, Wilkeson said after the election.

“I know that he’ll do a fine job,” she said. “But there’s still so much to learn once he gets up there.”

Wilkeson was first elected to the council in 2008, and described her loss last week as disappointing.

“I worked as hard as I could, and I can’t imagine another thing I could’ve done to garner more votes,” she said. “I do think I was hurt a little bit by Mr. Knight’s name recognition. He’s impacted the lives of just a tremendous amount of people.”

Yet, it’s the Drumm situation that may be affected the most from the election. Wilkeson essentially delayed the council’s attempt to remove Drumm from the city manager position last month by asking for a third legal opinion on whether the council can do that without a supermajority.

Her perceived support of the embattled city manager may have cost her votes as well, Wilkeson conceded.

“I just feel that it’s imperative that we treat him fairly,” she said. “He didn’t make any really egregious missteps, and he helped get us out of a million-dollar deficit. He had exactly the skills we needed at the time.”

Drumm “did a fine job,” Wilkeson said, but is a bit introverted, which may have worked against him in terms of relationships.

As for Wilkeson’s political future, she’s not sure what might happen next, but she isn’t ruling anything out.

“I never say never,” Wilkeson said. “If a group of concerned citizens came to me and said they wanted me to run again and they would support me, I would consider it. I enjoy being involved in the community and bringing my training and education to the table for the benefit of the city. But I don’t have any aspirations right now.”

Incoming St. Leo commissioner says there’s no interest to dissolve town

Ray Davis says the rumor mill in St. Leo has it all wrong.

Donna DeWitt
Donna DeWitt

Although he’s the third Lake Jovita resident to be elected to the small town’s commission — ousting longtime commissioner Donna DeWitt — he’s focused on making sure his neighborhood is no longer a part of St. Leo, one way or the other. However, Davis says he has no intention of dissolving the Town of St. Leo itself to make that happen.

Yet, how he can help de-annexation along as a commissioner is unclear. The town attorney has cited past legal opinions she says forbids St. Leo from de-annexing the small portion of the Lake Jovita subdivision inside its town limits. Any area that can be annexed by a municipality, based typically on population, cannot be de-annexed, according to the state attorney general’s interpretation of the law.

Because of that, the decision to allow Lake Jovita to de-annex lies with the legislature, in a bill introduced last March by state Rep. Amanda Murphy, D-New Port Richey. It passed its final committee on Friday, and should soon be heading to the House floor.

“They call me ‘Plan B,’” Davis said following the election. “You never know what’s going to happen.”

Davis did not want to speculate on what would happen if the state didn’t open the door for de-annexation. When asked if he would vote to dissolve the town itself in that instance, Davis was non-committal.

“I think it’s wise not to make a statement based on speculation, and I don’t think that’s the smart thing to do,” Davis said.

DeWitt, who expects to get her job back when Lake Jovita is de-annexed and three positions suddenly open on the commission, prays there’s a town to come back to.

“Hopefully, they won’t do anything drastic until they can get de-annexed out of the town,” she said.

Many projects have been put on hold while the Lake Jovita issue has remained hot in recent months, including a request by the Iafrates family to annex 179 acres of land on St. Leo’s south side. Although it’s not directly related to the Lake Jovita issue, commissioners decided to delay that prospect until the de-annexation question is resolved.

Despite the legal opinion, Davis maintains the commission still has the power to vote a de-annexation. The only reason why it didn’t happen before, he said, was because Lake Jovita didn’t have a majority on the commission until this past election.

DeWitt’s support of the de-annexation did not become known until after he had filed to run, Davis added.

“We didn’t know that, and we had only heard that through hearsay,” he said. “Now we’re just waiting to see what happens.”

Published April 16, 2014

Black wins in landslide while DeWitt, Wilkeson ousted

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Being a woman in politics was not easy in East Pasco County Tuesday night.

It was man against woman in races in Dade City, St. Leo and Zephyrhills, and in each case, every woman — including two incumbents — lost.

Scott Black easily retained his city commission seat against challenger Angelica Herrera in Dade City, according to unofficial results from the Pasco County elections office. He won 570 votes — a little more than 80 percent — to make easy work of Herrera.

Black out-raised Herrera more than 3-to-1 leading up to Tuesday’s election, and was forced to defend his record on a variety of issues, including the expansion of a sewage treatment plant into a residential neighborhood.

The vote was much, much closer in St. Leo, where longtime commissioner Donna DeWitt lost her seat to Lake Jovita resident Raphael “Ray” Davis by just four votes — 59-55. However, Davis’ overall win was by 3.5 percent, as residents in part of Lake Jovita inside the town’s limits create more assurances they can separate from St. Leo if a bill in Tallahassee doesn’t go through.

DeWitt, who has served on the town commission since 1997, chose not to do any fundraising in her re-election bid.

In Zephyrhills, Councilwoman Jodi Wilkeson lost her seat to former Zephyrhills High School principal Alan Knight. Although the fundraising between the two was neck-and-neck throughout the short race, Knight’s victory was not as close, winning 57 percent of the vote, or 481 ballots cast in his favor.

Election results won’t be finalized until Thursday, according to a spokeswoman with elections supervisor Brian Corley’s office.

St. Leo secession may save Lake Jovita residents $600 annually

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As voters look to insert yet another Lake Jovita resident onto the St. Leo town commission, analysis of a bill in Tallahassee that would effectively break away the community completely from the town says homeowners leaving the jurisdiction could see an annual tax savings of $600.

The report was prepared just after H.B. 1401 — which would shrink St. Leo’s boundaries — passed the state House’s Local & Federal Affairs Committee unanimously.

If the contraction were to move forward, St. Leo’s population would drop from 1,369 to 1,173, the report said. The town itself would lose $50,000 each year, or 15 percent of its total revenue, and would reduce the number of rooftops by 85.

Even with the town shrinking, it will still be much larger than it was just 14 years ago when the town had just under 600 residents. That changed soon after nearby Saint Leo University upgraded from college status, allowing it to expand its population and bring more people into the town.

Lake Jovita, a planned 871-home development, also broke ground around the same time, with a small chunk of the development ending up inside the town boundaries of St. Leo.

Passage of the bill is essential to the survival of St. Leo, some town leaders say. Otherwise, Lake Jovita residents will continue making their way to the commission in an effort to dissolve the 123-year-old town.

State Rep. Amanda Murphy, D-New Port Richey, filed the bill last month, and it’s quickly made its way through committee, now on its last stop with the State Affairs Committee, where State Rep. Jim Grant, R-Tampa, is vice chair.

Lake Jovita resident Raphael “Ray” Davis has challenged longtime commissioner Donna DeWitt for her seat at St. Leo town hall. That election will be decided tonight. Bookmark LakerLutzNews.com for results.