Nate Stout

When the matter seemed settled about allowing an empty seat on the East County Water Control District go unfilled until the November election of 2012, commissioners have now decided to move ahead and take a request to ask the governor to make an appointment to fill the seat vacated by Desmond Barrett, who left three months ago to become a minister of a church in Virginia.

With his departure, that has left the board with only four members. If there was a tie vote on any important business decision that required the board’s vote, there would be no way to break it and it would be considered a negative vote.

Some on the board believe it can cause stagnation with the seat going unfilled.

The matter came up again last week on Nov. 21 at the regular meeting of the East County Water Control District when David Lindsay, the water district’s executive director, said there were three options the commissioners may want to decide on at the meeting concerning the empty seat.

One option was to ask the local legislative delegation to move forward with a bill, requesting Gov. Rick Scott to name Barrett’s replacement later in the year if the bill had bedome law. That person would have served only to Nov. of 2012 when he or she or someone else would have to file to fill the seat. But because of the split vote by the board, no such legislation is forthcoming this year.

Mike Welch

A second option was to allow the board to appoint someone to fill the seat and after 60 days if the seat is not filled, then the governor whould be asked to fill the vacancy. A third option was to do nothing, and let it remain as is.

Nate Stout, chairman of the board of the ECWCD, said that with all the news in the media about special districts and the problems in Tallahassee, he thinks there may be an awful lot of scrutiny over special districts during this coming session and that the “Do Nothing Option” might be a better one.

“Let things settle down in Tallahassee,” Stout suggested to his fellow ECWCD members.

“A lot of the legislators don’t have a lot of knowledge about how special district operate anyway,” Stout said. “We may want to stay under the radar.”

“I think we should just wait until November of 2012 and let the people in Lehigh decide when they vote,” Stout said.

However, Commissioner Mike Bonacolta said something should be done now asking what would happen over the next year if another board member had to quit or resign for some unexpected reason, leaving only three members to represent all of Lehigh.

“I have a different tact on this,” said Mike Welch, a fellow commissioner.

He said he and others had talked to Sen. Mike Bennett and Rep. Page Kregel and “we can have an up and down vote. Bennett said it would not be a problem.”

“I suggest the appointment option by the governor, but we have to act tonight to take this to the local legislative delegation meeting on Nov. 8,” Welch said.

He said this problem has come up since 2009 and there needs to be some type of legislation to settle it.

“And if Sen. Bennett is correct, it should not be a problem,” Welch said a second time.

If the board had asked for a special election to be held this fall, it could have cost as much as $200,000 of taxpayers’ money. That was not a popular option at last month’s regular scheduled meeting.

“I think we should vote on the options tonight,” Welch said.

Commissioner David Deetscreek said he felt strongly about making a decision at the meeting than not doing anything.

And Bonacolta agreed that the group take it to the legislative delegation and “if they don’t think we should move forward this time, then we will just listen to them.”

But Chairman Stout said in the past, he thought filling a vacancy on the board was easy and the proper thing to do.

“We asked people in Lehigh to apply for a vacancy and they came before us and we interviewed them and then we voted and it worked well,” Stout said. Welch was not on the board when there were previous vacancies.

Welch didn’t want to continue the discussion and said he would make a motion to take the matter to the local legislative delegation and then local lawmakers would take it to Sen. Bennett and Rep. Kreegel.

“Again, Bennett said there should not be a problem,” Welch said.

But Stout jumped in again and said he thought that Lehigh residents knew better than the governor.

“He is not inclined to make appointments there is a vacancy he has not filled in Immokalee yet.”

Welch’s motion was to accept the option to go to the legislative delegation to get the governor to fill the present vacancy before the election a year from now.

The four commissioners voted and the final decision was 3-1 to move forward to the local legislative delegation and up the channels to the legislature and the governor. Stout voted against the measure.

Before the vote, Welch told the three remaining fellow commissioners he thought they were “dragging this out,” and we need to act on it now.”

Later after the meeting, Commissioner Stout told The Citizen he was still against the plan to go to the governor to ask him to fill a vacancy.

“Who does he know in Lehigh? Nobody it smells of cronyism. The governor doesn’t know the people of Lehigh. I just don’t think we should not have gone that way.”