When it comes to politics or statecraft, we seem to believe that anyone who can collect the necessary votes is able to rule" - Plato

We're still here covering the Real news in Daytona Beach and reporting what the News-Journal won't.

Please feel free to comment or question what areas of concern you have about Daytona Beach in our Public Forum.

In the meantime, we'll be watching!

Monday, July 1st, 2009
STAND To Sue City...
We spoke to the boys from Striving Towards A New Daytona (STAND) and got current on where they are.  City Attorney Hartman admitted in a letter that Daytona’s city charter is illegal and can’t require 20% of registered voters to sign petitions.  Doesn’t matter to STAND because they collected just short of 10,000 registered voters or 24.5%.  Hartman claimed the need for a certified affidavit from the signature gatherer and 5% of registered voters from each zone is still constitutional.  STAND’s attorney said it’s against state law and they will be moving forward with a lawsuit.  All through the petition collection process city management and elected officials have never addressed STAND’s claims regarding their spending of $100 million more than other cities of similar size or having 300 more city employees than similar municipalities.
While the Mayor and two city commissioners have signed the STAND amendments, the majority of have refused, ignoring ten thousand residents who want to vote on the amendments implementation.  This should be remembered when these fools come up for reelection.  They’re self-serving, ignoring resident’s needs, totally trusting of city management, and easily bought and paid for by developers and other special interest groups.  The STAND boys won’t quit and change is coming to the ‘Red-Neck Riviera.’

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
Neighborhood Leaders Meeting A Waste of Time...
This was supposed to be a meeting that promoted the chance for City Commissioners and Neighborhood Leaders to talk and ask questions of city employees.  Instead, Grand Puba Jim Chisolm gave a 40 minute presentation of staff accomplishments, which have been previously stated over and over again.
Chisolm mentioned that five new parks were created.  He neglected to mention that Lenox Park was actually less usable than before the renovations were done.  Perhaps if plans were discussed with the City Commission before the renovation, the results would have been better.
It was mentioned that Daytona will enter into discussions with Holly Hill, South Daytona and Port Orange to find solutions to the flooding problems.  No concrete time line was given.
Approximately 80 residents commented on lack of street lighting, request of more police officers on the street, increased use of public schools for city led recreation programs, burying electric lines, prostitution, panhandling and homeless issues. 
The only city employee that seemed to have real positive results was police Chief Chitwood.  Department arrests have increased from 6,000 in 2006 to over 14,000 in 2009.
It seems City Manager Chisolm’s strategy to have numerous meetings at inconvenient times, conveying the same useless information over and over again is working.  In the meantime he’s having almost no budget meetings to discuss the $220,000 million waste of taxpayers money.
Some things never change in the ‘Red-Neck Riviera.’

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
City Commission Meeting...
Daytona’s Police Athletic League basketball team won the state championship again this year and are traveling to Ft. Wayne, Indiana for the national title game.  We salute their achievement
and decry the fact that City Commissioners gave them $7,500 of our tax dollars to cover traveling expenses.  This is a perfect example of what not to do with taxpayers money.  The police should get off their butts and do fund raising to pay for this which is what happens in most other cities.
During the Consent Agenda, where no discussion by Commissioners or residents is permitted,
city commissioners spent money from their ‘slush funds’ on favorite charities.  Another waste of our tax money that shouldn’t happen.
The Catholic Charities issue was postponed to the July 1st meeting.  This issue should be killed off by the Commission due strictly to the verified high crime and panhandling statics that surround these types of ‘charitable’ situations.
Past waste of space Mayor Bud Asher was reappointed to the Racing and Recreational Board by Commmission vote.
In the May 20th Commission meeting the Gateway Village planned unit development was extended to 2014, or five years. 
This means we have no way to force development which would increase our property tax revenue, while sitting with a large piece of undeveloped land.  As usual developers that contribute large sums to Commissioners campaigns get what they want.

Monday, June 29th, 2009
Commissioner Shiver Campaigns For Mayor...
Rumor has it that Daytona Beach Mayor Glenn Ritchie is considering resigning his position so he can concentrate on running his automobile dealerships.  City Commissioner Rick Shiver wasted no time in speaking with Daytona’s power brokers International Speedway Corporation and Brown & Brown Insurance, to get their permission for him to assume the position if Ritchie leaves.  Only in Daytona Beach would a half-way decent mayor with years of business experience get replaced by an arrogant ‘pot-head’ city commissioner who accepted hundreds of thousands of taxpayer’s money to buy his house, a vacation home in Costa Rica, a beach concession and membership to a local hunt club.
Shiver’s voted for ever property tax and spending increase and bad zoning change suggested by City Manager Chisolm.  In fact, he’s crawled so far up Chisolm’s behind you might as well change the City Managers title to Mayor.
Hopefully, voters will object to our city commission promoting ‘pot-head’ Shiver and insist on a special election so they can actually select their mayor, rather than have our puppet city commission just appoint anyone.  ‘Red-Neck Riviera’ politics...the needs of the many don’t matter to the few with the money.

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
Daytona’s New Deputy Manager Of Public Works, It Just Gets Better and Better...
The following is a press release from the Opelika-Auburn News in 2003 describing the horrible experience Winter Springs had with our new Deputy Utilities Manager, Ronnie McLemore when he was their City Manager:
Here he is praised for controlling growth --- just look about you at all the high rise, high density, ill planned condos/apartments going up to merely support the city's home grown farce called "Tiny Town" by residents, and mislabeled as the TOWN CENTER by those responsible for the phony concept. The mayor and ALL the commissioners are behind these ill planned projects.
Remember the NAME that McLemore brought in to combat the charter change that had signatures enough gathered that would have put the City government back in control by the People, for the People, and of the People. It was "Dr. Watson" alias Auburn city manager Doug Watson. McLemore not only had his commission pay him handsomely, but at times even used the City's police as a chauffer service to and from the airport at the expense of the taxpayers.
The below press release tells of the extraordinary number of jobs, not all by title, or locations that "Ronnie" McLemore has held, but it doesn't tell of WHY he changed jobs so much. We know, and have documents plus personal research in Stuart Florida that indicates he was FIRED from that position BEFORE he became city manager of Winter Springs. Current Mayor Bush and at least TWO of the current commissioners were in on that deceitful hiring without even a background check!
One of those commissioners is commissioner Blake who is now running for County Commissioner since his time has run out in Winter Springs. Of course the mayor Bush is running again for his current office, as is that McGinnis gal. Must be the wonderful high salary raises they gave themselves.
Oh yes we forgot to mention in the the opening regarding the changes in the charter that was to be put on the ballot in November of 2001 was a fact that city manager "Ronnie" McLemore got city attorney Garganese to claim that the paper used in obtaining the required signatures for the charter change was on the WRONG COLOR PAPER -- it was white! He wanted PASTEL colors --- preferably pink! Something's wrong with that guy.
We know what's wrong with McLemore --- he's money hungry. The people will really never know how many jobs, like the one above, he used city time. and money trying to gain employment elsewhere. We know of at least a half a dozen. He should take one --- whoops --- forgot he tried !
Looks like McLemore is the ‘mini-me’ to Chisolm.  He hates residents input and has apparently attempted to deny them their right to petition their government.  Meanwhile the City Commission continues in it’s blissful ignorance, spending more and more of our money on employees we don’t need or want.                                                                                        

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009   
Developers’ Win...Residents Lose Thanks To Crist...
Governor ‘Gimme Campaign Contributions’ Crist signed a new growth management law which gives the Daytona Beach City Commission the ability to change our Land Use and Zoning regulations at will, without any state review and no consideration for the lack of roads and infrastructure already in desperate need of repair.  Now all those really bad developer plans gathering dust on City Manager Chisolm’s desk can be rubber-stamped by the morons on our City Commission.
They’ll get rid of more public schools and destroy more neighborhoods after spending over $400,000 on two different Vision Plans that they now don’t have to use.  Some foolish residents actually believed their input in the Vision Plans had some meaning.
Local development mouthpiece Greg Blose from the the Volusia Homebuilders Association continues to cry poor for Developers, demanding the School Board drop impact fees because of this recession.  Maybe if they hadn’t bribed so many state and local politicians for land use changes, they’d have more money to follow the contracts we gave them and actually build something for once instead of flipping properties for profit after receiving land use changes granted by politicians they bribed with campaign contributions.
Blose neglects to address what will happen when demand returns.  After Florida Hometown Democracy passes, residents will see a stabilization, then increase in their property values.  That is until we run out of water due to over-development.
Which leads us to congratulation to ICI President Mori Housseni.  Looks like all those contributions to the Republican Party finally paid off.  Governor Crist appointed Mori’s sister to the St. John’s Water Management Board and simultaneously signed a new law which gutted the board’s power to stop new water withdrawals, giving almost all the Board’s power to ‘staff.’  Now Housseni’s sister and municipalities ‘Staff’ can make sure Mori’s additional requests for ‘new’ water for development use is always granted.
With Crist’s most recent decisions Daytona will continue to have a Beirut style ocean front, major roads in disrepair, flooding, development based on campaign contributions, highest property taxes in the county and the dumbest politicians Developers’ money can buy.  It’s a beeyootiful day in the Red-Neck Riviera!

Monday, June 1st, 2009
City Manager Chisolm Continues To Build His Kingdom And Spend Our Money Needlessly...
City Manager Jim Chisolm continues to spit in the face of residents begging for less city spending by hiring a ‘Deputy Manager’ of Public Works.  Chisolm stated this was to free up
Paul McKetrick who was doing the job of Public Works Director and assisting Chisolm as a Deputy City Manager.  The new Deputy Manager of Public Works will run the department and also assist Chisolm with city management duties as well.  Bottom line, Chisolm added another senior staff Director to assist him, when he already has eight people working directly for him.  They include:Deputy City Manager-Paul McKetrick, Deputy Public Works Manager-Ron McLeMore, Betty Goodman-Assistant City Manager, Hardy Smith-Government Liasion, Susan Cerbone-Public Information Officer, Bobbie Yarborough-Personal Secretary, Pam Fearn-Office Secretary andCarol Walton-newest Office Secretary.
Before Chisolm was hired, there were only four people in his office, one Deputy City Manager and three secretaries all earning approximately $220,000 plus $127,00 for the City Manager.  At that time three secretaries were considered to be too much.  Now Chisolm has doubled  personnel in his office to eight.  These people earn in excess of $650,000 plus outstanding pension and medical benefits. 
Since Daytona’s population remained the same for the past ten years, it’s logical to assume the amount of services the city needs to provide resident remains the same as well.  Yet, Chisolm has hired hundreds of additional city employees and doubled the budget to over $220,000 million dollars.  Meanwhile the majority of our retarded City Commission can’t seem to understand what the problem is.  Chisolm continues to spend without regard to what it cost residents and our City Commission does nothing.  We’ll make sure to remind voters of that during the next election.

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
Where Is Daytona’s ‘Storm Water’ Money?...
Water, water everywhere.  Flooded streets.  Flooded housing projects in the ‘hood’ at Nova and Bellevue and the $45 million collected over the last five years for storm water sewer repairs and expansion, is no where to be found.  The city of Daytona Beach has been collecting over $9 million annually for storm water repairs for years.  It’s even in a little category by itself on your water bill.  But, they never spend it for what it’s intended.  Like much of the funds in the city budget, it’s transferred and eventually lost, misspent in a never ending ‘shell game.’  You’ve gotta love city management’s creative accounting and the City Commission’s utter stupidity or lack of caring where voters money is actually spent.  Guess City Manager Chisolm believes it’s more important to give the Firemens’ pension fund a cost of living increase, buy and knock down City Commissioner Shriver’s home after he got some poop in it, for $100,000 more
than it’s worth or spend 95% of the police overtime budget on Speed Weeks and not charge the France family for it.  Guess we should get him a little plaque that says ‘God put the water here and God will take it away.’  Be prepared for an increase in your water bill after this little storm.  After all, when opportunity strikes your city management will always get in your pocket to pay for it.  Yee-Haa!

Monday, May 11th, 2009
Business As Usual In The Red-Neck Riviera...
The majority of morons in our city commission continue their tradition of taking direction from
‘King’ Jim Chisolm.  A budget amendment was passed to spend $10,000 from the Halifax Marina Enterprise fund to subsidize the money losing Halifax Marina real estate rental project.
By city ordinance, Enterprise funds such as the Marina and City Golf course are supposed to pay for themselves and not be subsidized from other funds.  You might remember Chisolm convinced the commission to allow Public Works employees to have offices in the Marina building last year.  So instead of rental property that generates income, we continue to subsidize a losing enterprise and allow city employees to work out of prime waterfront real estate owned by taxpayer.
They voted to change the building density at the old police station property from 21 units per acre to 35 units per acre.  This means more crappy apartments can be build on the site, inviting ‘new’ HUD construction for the black minority living in that part of our city.  Guess the commission thinks it good to keep our black resident packed in like rats in their part of town.
The Commissions’ Strategic Planning Meetings have continued with no actual planning taking place.  Now they’re working towards 2010.  No budget meeting have been scheduled and the budget is due to be voted on by August.  Compare that to Ormond Beach that’s had six budget meetings already and is planning a road show style meeting with their residents in every zone before August.  Chisolm continues his absolute control of the city commission wasting their time in numerous meeting where nothing gets accomplished and limiting their input on the way our tax dollars are spent.  Yee Haa!  Some things never change.