I'm back, I'm angry and I'm sharing the moment
The mayor is shilling for corporate pals, Councilman Tacy has managed to alienate the city's youth and their parents, the city's utilities department is imploding under the weight of its own stupidity and the city's personnel department can't figure out how to obey the state's Sunshine Law without getting testy -- other than that, I'm fine, thanks for asking
-- John Patten, 07/04/05, revised 07/05/05
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

Sharek reportedly stated to union reps that Black had given the directive to issue the disciplinary action. When I asked Black about that, he stopped just short of stating that he had approved the disciplinary action, stating instead that he told Sharek to take care of the matter. Black stated that, in his opinion, Rodriguez went outside the parameters of acceptable union behavior by sending a letter directly to OMI instead of the city as the union has no direct contractual relationship with OMI.

While that may be true from Black's perspective, the plain fact is that the union can write a letter of protest to anyone it wants on any subject it wants and there isn't a damned thing that the city can do about it (or at least there isn't a damned thing that the city is supposed to be allowed to do about it). It is not the city's job to police the union through the disciplinary process. When Rodriguez wrote the letter, he did so in the capacity of a union representative, not as a city employee. The disciplinary action, however, addresses Rodriguez as an employee.

Thus, Black's justification of Sharek's action is lame at best. It is also extremely short-sighted. Moreover, it is a hypocritical and one-sided line of thought -- while the union and employees cannot directly address OMI, OMI is still apparently free to give directives and verbal disciplinary warnings to city employees, this in spite of the fact that (using Black's logic) OMI has no direct contractual relationship with the employees or the union.

Rodriguez has filed a grievance in the matter and union officials in Tampa and Tallahassee are reportedly watching this one closely and with good reason -- again, you can't discipline someone for union activity, that's a big-time no-no that can very easily be cause for a big-time union busting lawsuit and, unless I'm mistaken, possible civil rights criminal charges.

Asbestos issues surface again
Then there's more on the asbestos. After this web site exposed the city's failings in safety (asbestos being stored in the open behind the plant, the lack of legally required training and legally required safety equipment, etc., -- see above sidebar articles), the city and Sharek went on a haphazard safety crusade. Hazmat suits were ordered, legally required training was begrudgingly applied for, health testing was done. Presently there are still employees who have not received fitted masks as required by law and you are gonna love the story about the health testing.

On November 30, 2004, Sharek penned a letter to all city council members. The subject was asbestos health screening. In that letter, Sharek described the wonderful way in which the utilities department was responding to criticism by health screening employees that had been exposed to asbestos. In a related letter dated November 23, 2004, this one addressed to Rollie Reynolds in the city's personnel department, Sharek wrote the following: "Further, all personnel who are still employed with the city that may have ever been involved with an AC [asbestos-concrete] operation were subject to a thorough physical, medical screening and chest X-ray. Based on the results of this strenuous testing, a medical professional determined that all employees that had ever been exposed to AC pipe operations had no signs of asbestosis or related health problems."

Read that again.

"...all employees that had ever been exposed to AC pipe operations had no signs of asbestosis or related health problems."

Sharek lied
Which sounds great. Would have been even better if it were true.

But it isn't.

Sharek lied.

This time, though, he lied on paper and workers' lives were very much at stake. This is normally considered falsification of city documents, but what the hell, this is Venice.

Here's what really happened:

13 city employees were signed up for the mandatory screening. 12 attended, as one employee had departed from the city's payroll in between the time of the sign-up and the testing. So there's one that was never tested right there. Then, the city only tested current employees whose current job descriptions put them in contact with asbestos concrete with one notable exception -- an employee in his mid-40s, a non-smoker, who was out on medical leave at the time for... you guessed it... lung cancer. The city never did get around to testing him for either asbestos exposure or asbestosis.

In the meantime, I have discovered yet another two current city employees who had been heavily exposed to asbestos concrete cutting in the past but have since moved on to other jobs within the city. I'm told there are more in this category (exposed employees that have since transferred but are still employed by the city). Employees like Lance Heiss, the city's interim top computer geek. Heiss started working for the city with a concrete cutoff saw in his hand and no face mask. Heiss stated he was never approached for testing and didn't even know it had happened until I asked him.

And that doesn't even count all of the employees who have retired, quit or been fired over the last 15 to 20 years during which time the city has knowingly put these employees at risk.

I asked Brenda Digges, head of the city's personnel department, what steps had been taken to reach out to other current and former employees about the asbestos health screening. After giving me a flustered performance that centered around the fact that she felt she and her department were too busy to deal with such nonsense, she stormed off, stating she would refuse to answer any more of my questions.

To date, no memo has gone out to city employees, present or former, asking them to come forward if they have been exposed to on-the-job asbestos.

One more time for the slow kids in the class
And while I'm talking about Digges, I might as well include an earlier conversation I had with her that contributed to her anger at me. I was in personnel doing some background on Sharek and going through his personnel file. I had noted with some humor that he had listed Shane and John Saputo as references in his initial application, this in answer to a question inquiring if he had any personal friends that were then-currently employed by the city. This answer would have been provided right around the time that the Saputo brothers were fighting a disciplinary action for alleged abusive conduct towards city employees that they were supervising.

Sharek states in his application that he has a Bachelor's and a Master's degree from the University of Central Florida. So then I started looking for copies of school transcripts, diplomas, etc., just to verify the statement. I couldn't find them. I tried verifying his schooling with UCF to no avail. Then I went to Brenda Digges to ask her.

Digges gave me a very peculiar answer, to the effect that the city doesn't require educational verification as it is too much work to get all of those records for all of the city's employees.

To which I replied, "No, you make the employees provide them, see, that's what they are supposed to do when they are applying for a job."

Again, Digges said it would be overwhelming and that her department already had too much to do. "Some governments require transcripts, some don't," she told me.

"You're the only one I've ever heard of that doesn't require it. I've never heard of such a thing."

Digges shrugged.

I was incredulous that the city's pre-hire background checks did not include requesting educational verification. "Tell you what, can I fill out an app saying I have a law degree so that I can become the city attorney? Cuz you're probably not going to check to see if I have been accepted at the Bar and I know you won't ever check my transcripts."

"Our department doesn't hire the city attorney, council does."

I should have seen that one coming. Damn, she's good.

Digges continued: "If someone is falsifying their education, that's cause for dismissal."

"Good point. But how would you ever find out? You're too busy to ask for the paperwork."

"Why do you want to see Sharek's transcripts, anyway?" she then asked.

That got my attention. "Ummmm. While it should be fairly obvious, I should remind you that you are not allowed to ask that question."

"I know but I'm just curious -- why do you want to see them?"

I stopped dead. Maybe she doesn't speak English.  Maybe she took a couple of hits on the head when she was a kid and she was just having a mental fart. Then again, maybe she's another bureaucrat who gives not a rat's rip. Two or three responses immediately came to mind, all of which were immediately rejected by my don't-say-something-stupid-that-you'll-regret-or-that-will-get-you-arrested filter.

This, then, left me only one acceptable response, one that had the effect of making me sound like a repeating parrot: "You're not allowed to ask that question."

"Yeah, I know that, but I'm just wondering, that's all -- why do you want to see them?"

The filtering mechanism inside my head grabbed a can of gasoline and a match and immediately committed suicide by immolation. Smoke was pouring out of my ears and I'm surprised I didn't set off the smoke alarms. I went straight into high-gear smartass mode.

"OK, one more time for the slow kids and the thinking impaired." I lifted my arm as though I was pointing to words on a chart and I started to speak slowly and very condescendingly: "You're... not... allowed... to... ask... that... ques... tion."

If the sewers keep failing, you won't have any roads to skateboard on
That Marty Black has lost control of the city is a given. Unnecessary and expensive battles with the city's unions and support of dangerously incompetent (and sometimes outright dishonest) supervisory employees in order to keep their job slots filled have, in my opinion, deflected him from the job at hand. Meanwhile, city council has appeared to be totally oblivious. One member is out huckstering for a large health care corporation, another is eyeing reelection and focusing on trivial issues like skateboarding in order to get some sympathetic press (and wow, did that backfire or what?). The other five seem totally oblivious. Apparently unnoticed is a civil war that is bubbling and getting meaner by the day. Cops are angry at constantly shifting contractual offers from the city, other city workers have pretty much given up any hope in due process through the city's personnel department. The word "accountability" that Marty Black has tossed around in his employee meet-and-greets has lost any semblance of meaning and has become a bit of a running joke among workers. You'd think all that would get media and citizen attention, but you would be thinking wrong. Instead, the whole town seems to be engrossed in an idiotic war of words over skateboards.

Folks, I hate to tell you this, but we have an aging and decrepit sewage infrastructure that is falling apart right under our feet and our houses and all of you are worried about skateboards? I have a sinkhole in the road in front of my house that grows every time it rains, this due to a likely underground sewer line break as the sinkhole is directly in between two stormwater manhole covers. The city came out about ten days ago and put a barricade over the hole. Since then, they've been out several times to refill the hole with shells, but the hole grows wider with every rain. Presently the hole still exists with a barricade over it right in the middle of the road. We're thinking of giving it a name, as it looks like it'll be around for a while.

Hell, the single pipe that transports all sewage off of the island collapsed this weekend after the city suddenly noticed a sinkhole that (I am told) has been around for a month or two.

If the sewers keep failing, you won't have any roads to skateboard on. And now we're talking about annexing more new housing that will require more new sewage infrastructure, plus Mike Miller wants to build a huge mixed-use complex on the island where the infrastructure is arguably at its worst. Meanwhile, plans to replace the existing failing infrastructure are bogged down because of a mix of lack of funds and Sharek's inability to figure out how to put a bid package together.

Criminy, Venice, and I'm talking to the whole town here: get some perspective!!!

To be continued
Coming up: a continuation along these lines, this time involving the city' manager's ongoing and unnecessarily expensive war against AFSCME and the FOP, plus Sharek's no-bid fiasco in the Tarpon Center Drive sewer replacement project and a couple of other surprises. You may now go to the front of this site and hit the PayPal button with your credit card in hand.

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.