The new trouble: Poop hits the propeller
Newly re-elected Mayor Dean Calamaras is finding himself at the epicenter of several controversies, ones that may dog him for the remainder of his final three-year term.

Indeed, the allegations are serious enough that Calamaras may be unable to finish his term.

Back in 2002, Calamaras and then-City Manager George Hunt were given a presentation by utils supervisor Troy Evans. Evans had already gone to the EPA with several complaints about the city's handling of wastewater and sewage. His complaints to the EPA reportedly included unlawful spills of treated effluent water into Curry Creek and other places, unlawful sewage spills and an unwritten policy that tried to force licensed operators to falsify EPA and DEP reports.

The totality of Evans' presentation to Hunt and Calamaras is still unknown. What we do know: the presentation took place sometime prior to August 27, 2002 and the purposeful illegal dumping of raw sewage at the Venice Municipal Airport was definitely one of the topics.

Evans also passed on much of the same information to then-Councilwoman Martha Hanneman and then-Councilman David Farley in two separate meetings.

The deliberate spills on airport property, it has been recently learned, were approved of by John Lane and Pat Wilson, former directors of the city's utilities department. While utils supervisor John Newburn indicated as much in his recent communications with Venice Florida! dot com, we have been able to independently confirm through other sources that Lane and Wilson did have direct knowledge of the activities.

Evans had evidence of all of this and he took this info one notch above Lane and Wilson on the chain of command -- to Hunt, Calamaras, Farley and Hanneman. For that, Evans was very publicly slammed at the August 27, 2002 city council meeting by Hunt, Calamaras and council for violating the chain of command. According to Hunt, Evans should have taken his complaints to Lane and Wilson.

Evans was eventually given a 10-day unpaid suspension and he was later ordered by Hunt and then-Assistant City Manager Jane O'Connor to get a psychological evaluation. This, in turn, led to Evans joining up with two other employees in filing suits against the city for violations of the Federal Whistleblowers Act.

With all of this new information recently coming to light, a clearer picture is emerging of the machinations within city hall during this critical time in 2002. While Evans lawsuit has been commonly attributed to being caused by actions on the part of Hunt, Lane and Wilson, it is now becoming clear that Calamaras and Farley were at fault to an even greater degree: they were Hunt's bosses, they knew what Hunt was doing and why, and they tacitly approved of Hunt's actions at the city council meeting of August 27, 2002.

Make no mistake: What Hunt did that day was wrong, way, way, way, way wrong. It is now known that Farley and Calamaras knew what Hunt was doing was wrong. Instead of trying to stop Hunt, the pair backed Hunt's play. In the process of doing that, the cover-up of the sewage spills at the airport went into hyperspeed.

Consider the following: if the mayor had stayed Hunt's hand in punishing Evans and had instead called for a full investigation of the allegations, Evans would never have been placed in a situation that would have allowed him to subsequently file suit against the city. The deliberate illegal spills would have become public knowledge with an outraged mayor shaking his fist at a utilities department that was clearly out of control. Calamaras would have come out as a hero.

Other likely outcomes would have included the city cooperating with the EPA in their criminal investigation, which at the time had the appearance of a Mexican standoff between the city and the Federal agency. Lane and Wilson would probably have been suspended with pay pending an internal investigation, which in turn would have revealed then much of the mess that we are now just learning about. The city might never have had to privatize the utilities department, the Bloody Tuesday purge of August, 2004 would, in all likelihood, never have happened.

But Calamaras didn't do the right thing then. Instead, he chose to cast his lot with Hunt in penalizing Evans for opening his mouth, all in the apparent hope that Lane and Wilson would be protected and that none of this story would ever reach the public eye.

The buck never stops
The bottom line is that the buck stops somewhere, usually at the top. The buck didn't stop anywhere in the Evans affair. It eventually came to rest in an agreement between Evans' attorney, Tommy Meyer, and City Attorney Bob Anderson in an out-of-court settlement that netted Evans a $25,000 check along with attorney fees for both Anderson and Meyer.

Thus, it is anything but a great leap of logic to state that the mayor's lack of due diligence in the Evans affair was an action that inevitably led to Evans filing suit against the city. There was a critical moment in that council meeting of August 27, 2002 when just a few words from the mayor could have altered the city's history dramatically. A call for a proper investigation would have led to the public knowledge that Lane and Wilson were mismanaging the utilities department to an incredible degree, something that Calamaras, Hunt, Farley and Hanneman clearly had knowledge of from Evans' presentation.

Or, to be more blunt: Calamaras, by his failure to take action to prevent the punishment of Troy Evans, violated Evans' civil rights as a whistleblower just as surely as Hunt, Lane, Wilson and O'Connor did.

As Venice Taxpayers League prez Herb Levine noted recently, "The taxpayers ended up footing the bill to the tune of around $80,000 just so the mayor, Farley and Hunt wouldn't be severely embarrassed and possibly go to jail for violating the Federal Whistleblowers Act. Since when do the taxpayers bail out officials for wrongdoing? Nice, very nice. The mayor is right, Venice is very unique."

Levine was referring to the total payout that the city made in the recent out-of-court settlements with three whistleblowers and their attorney, as well as a comment Calamaras made to defend a half-million dollar purchase of trees by referring to Venice as 'unique.'

Martha Hanneman, for her part, tried to raise a ruckus and do the right thing, and she was the only voice of sanity and reason on the entire council, the rest were caught up in the mob mentality. She was angry. She was shocked. She was ignored.

History repeats itself
Almost a year later, this web site reported that residents living near Mundy Park (map) were stating that sewage had been spilled repeatedly and deliberately into the park by wastewater workers and that the residents themselves had seen it happen on numerous occasions (story). Without looking into the charges, Calamaras publicly stated that allegations were totally without merit. Venice Florida! dot com privately asked Calamaras to come to the neighborhood to hear the neighbors' complaints for himself -- Calamaras refused and stated that there was nothing that was being said by the neighborhood residents that was worth hearing. To this day nobody from the city itself has yet to interview the neighbors to get an on-the-record account of what the neighbors claimed they had witnessed taking place in Mundy Park.

The old trouble: the 2002 city fireworks
Then there's the Ethics Commission ruling of a few weeks back, a ruling that cleared the Mayor of any wrongdoing in the negotiations over the fireworks show of July 4, 2002.

While running against John Simmonds for a seat on council in 2003, then-council candidate Gary Anderson filed a complaint with the Ethics Commission against Calamaras due to the fact that the mayor had taken over the fireworks negotiations and had bumped the contract up by $5,000. The mayor's son, Dean C. Calamaras, was acting as pickup labor for the fireworks company during the Venice show (full story can be found here, scroll about halfway down the page).

In July of 2002, after Venice Taxpayer's League prez Herb Levine raised the issue at a city council meeting, the mayor made a few comments on the record:

"My son did a show for Garden State, he is friends with Henry, and I don't know his last name, who is the family member down here that runs Garden State Fireworks, known each other for years. He's what you would call pickup labor when they need help to load trucks and unload trucks, he's done it once or twice, three times before, he'll probably do it after. He's not a member of Garden State Fireworks, he's not an employee of Garden State Fireworks, he owns his own business. When Henry needs help and he calls him down to load a truck or unload a truck or to help out on a display, he's done it once or twice before at a regular fireworks..."
-- Mayor Dean Calamaras, from audio recording of the July 9, 2002 city council meeting (full MP3 audio, 1:25, 1MB)

That's not quite the same story that the two Deans gave in sworn testimony before the state's Ethics Commission. In fact, two different and conflicting stories came out of the testimonies of the mayor and his son. According to the mayor's testimony, he had no clue his son had ever worked for Garden State until one week before the 2002 fireworks show:

(9) Mayor Calamaras acknowledged that his son worked as a day laborer for Garden State Fireworks for the first time during the July 4, 2002 fireworks show. However, he maintains that his son's employment with the fireworks provider had no influence on his involvement in increasing the amount that the city paid for the fireworks show and that there was no quid pro quo concerning his son's employment. He related that his son... met Mr. Jakimer through friends prior to the July 4, 2002 fireworks show. ...Mayor Calamaras recalled that at some point within the week prior to the July 4, 2002 show, his son informed him that he planned to work for Garden State as a laborer loading and unloading trucks. ...Subsequent to learning of his son's plans to work for Garden State, [Calamaras] contacted Venice City Attorney Robert C. Anderson to ask if his son's employment would create a problem.
-- Report of Investigation, Florida Commission on Ethics, released December 2, 2004 (full text available here)

Also in sworn testimony, the mayor's son ended up telling yet a third version of events, entirely different from either of the mayor's two versions:

(12) Mr. Dean C. Calamaras, the son of [Mayor Calamaras], related that he began working for Garden State Fireworks soon after he met Mr. Jakimer through a friend at a party in late 2001 or early 2002. He stated that he initially volunteered helping to load and unload the trucks for the company and that the first time that he actually received pay for working for the company was when he worked for three full days, July 3 through July 5, 2002, in preparation for the July 4, 2002 fireworks celebration held in the City of Venice. ...He recalled that he did not even tell [his father] about his plans to work for Garden State until approximately one week prior to the July 4 show.
-- Report of Investigation, Florida Commission on Ethics, released December 2, 2004

How much would you pay for all this? But wait, there's more...
Moreover, some additional discrepancies showed up in the 2003 fireworks. Again, the mayor negotiated with Garden State Fireworks. Again, his son ended up working for Garden State. While information about the 2003 discrepancies was provided to the commission by Anderson, the commission never looked at the evidence presented -- indeed, it's not even mentioned in the report of investigation.

Venice Florida! dot com has since contacted the commission to point out the discrepancies and to inquire about a review process once such discrepancies are found. What we were told was that while the discrepancies are significant and that they certainly warrant review, there is no procedural mechanism to allow for such a review automatically within the Ethics Commission. In order for the commission to take another look, someone has to file a new complaint specifically citing the discrepancies.

Which, if history is any indicator, the commission will go to great lengths to sweep under the rug after making a big show about checking into the allegations.

Gary Anderson, who filed the original complaint, stated that he just might refile the complaint against Calamaras anyway: "I'm going to wait and see how they handle the complaints against [former utils Assistant Director Pat] Wilson and [city computer department head Steve] Randall. Those two cases are slam dunks, but the way the commission handled Hunt and Calamaras, it wouldn't surprise me if they let Wilson and Randall take a walk."

John Patten is the editor and publisher of Venice Florida! dot com and had previously worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.