Keep city alive -- we really need the laughs

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By JAN GLIDEWELL

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 7, 2001

Even if it only was mentioned in passing, many of us on the North Suncoast felt a cold chill earlier this week when the prospect of shutting down Crystal River city government came up in a review of that city's efforts to find a viable city manager candidate not dressed in big floppy shoes and wearing a red nose.

Take Port Richey for instance, which has, or should have, a major investment in billboards saying "Port Richey -- We're Not Crystal River."

Or the Citrus County School Board which, once it reaches unanimous decision on a deity to which it will pray, might then well direct said prayers toward the salvation of Crystal River government which, at least sometimes, takes some heat off the School Board.

Or columnists and editorial writers throughout the North Suncoast who would lose a major vein of high-content satire ore and would, if the city dissolves, be forced to find real jobs.

The current debacle in Crystal River is the city's inability, for the past 11 years, to have anything even vaguely resembling continuity in the office that it has euphemistically named city manager.

Managing Crystal River government is like trying to empty the Gulf of Mexico with a teaspoon -- with a hole in it.

And the truth is, that the people involved in the ongoing fracas (except for the ones losing their jobs) probably are having so much fun that they don't want it to end.

With city politicos spying on each other and one's unforgettable appearance waving a banana he asked his fellow council members to see as a .357-magnum, the cable airings of the City Council meetings are funnier than anything you'll see on commercial television, and can appeal equally to fans of professional wrestling, Jerry Springer and the Three Stooges.

As detailed by my colleague Alex Leary in a review of the city's difficulties in finding and keeping a city manager, one manager just stayed in a motel until he was fired rather than buy a house, and a recent candidate set the bar for his hiring so high that even those used to the political extremes of the pretty little city by Kings Bay laughed at his request for, a country club membership, a $190,000 home loan and 80 days per year (That's 11 weeks and then some, sports fans) off right out of the council chambers.

Of course if you ask anyone sane, he or she is going to make some kind of outrageous demand in order to justify relocating self and family for a stress-filled job that will probably last two years at the most.

Maybe it's high time for Florida to put together an assigned risk managerial pool, much as it has done with auto insurance to allow those who keep running into things to retain their licenses. County administrators and city managers who work, or have even applied for work in Florida, could be forced to agree, in return for cushy jobs like West Palm Beach and Key West, to be willing to serve three years of public service time, like being in the Peace Corps, at designated cities unable to retain managers and administrators.

It could be turned into a spectator sport, sort of like on the medical shows when all the med students gather around the bulletin boards to see where they have been accepted for internships. Job hopefuls could display the thrill of victory, being handed Boca Raton for instance, or given the choice of experiencing the agony of defeat by either recreating the horrible fall taken by Yugoslavian skier Vinko Bogotaj and used for years in the opening of ABC's Wide World of Sports -- or managing Crystal River for two years.

Because only those who have read local newspapers would be likely to opt for spinning crazily off of a ski lift in Germany, someone would, eventually, take another crack at the city job.

Take heart, Crystal River. Port Richey found a city manager (although they yell at him a lot), and you can also.

But no more talk about shutting down the city.

We need you guys.

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