TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Highlands Today

Sun 'N Lake Landowner Election

PROXY VOTES STILL BEING COUNTED

ADVERTISEMENT

By Joe  Seelig | Highlands Today

Published: January 23, 2009

SEBRING - The proxy votes were still being validated, counted and finalized at press time Friday at the Sun 'n Lake of Sebring Improvement District's Community Center for its landowner election.

Incumbent Frank Guglielmi ran for his district supervisor position, opposed by Sun 'n Lake resident, Dick Miller. No other nominees were named from the floor.

At the landholder election, resident Dick Diotte was voted elections chairman and Valerie Charapata was voted secretary.

Charapata said she believed about 225 landowners turned out Friday morning to cast their proxy votes.
Diotte said the district's election process doesn't make sense and wants to try and change it.

What he suggested sounded simple: Have the district set a date for candidates to declare that they want to run. He suggested they have a date to mail out ballots and a time to get them back. He said then all that would be left is to count them and make an announcement who won.

As it stands now, candidates are nominated from the floor on election day, but in reality have been campaigning and collecting proxy votes from across the district, the state, the country and foreign lands, for months ahead. On election day, they turn them in. People also come to the community center to personally cast their proxy votes.

All of those proxy votes not received at the district office ahead of time are then validated and counted.

Guglielmi said Friday he's lived in Sun 'n Lake of Sebring for 15 years.

"So I'm not a Johnny-come-lately," he said.

Guglielmi waxed philosophically Friday, when he said he's a winner any way the vote goes. If he wins he wins and if he loses he wins because he loses four years of aggravation, he joked.

"If I lose my wife wins," he said.

"As a representative of all property owners, regardless of where they live, I will do my best to protect everyone's right to be heard and be a part of the decision making process at Sun 'n Lake," he wrote in a campaign letter.

Miller said he moved to Sun 'n Lake in 2000.

In Sun 'n Lake the five board of supervisor members are elected by two methods, a landholder election and a popular vote. Presently the board is composed of three landowner seats and two popular vote seats.

Gugliemi contended that as of Oct. 16, 2008, there were 9,161 properties current on their 2007 assessments.

Fifty percent of those were part-time residents and absentee landowners. Twenty-three percent were tax sale lots still held by National Recreational Properties Inc. Nearly 16 percent were year-round residents. Tanglewood represented 3 percent and Florida Hospital had slightly more than 1 percent.

"Can we afford to alienate the non-resident and part-time resident landowners by eliminating their ability to vote for the supervisor seats when they contribute more than 50 percent of the operating and maintenance assessments?" he asked.

Sun 'n Lake has a total of 14,621 building lots not counting Tanglewood and 3,313 housing units counting Tanglewood, he said. He said that's 22.67 percent of the lots with houses on them.

He said his numbers questioned his oppositions' contention that the district has enough urbanization to warrant a third popular vote seat.

Miller hoped to change the composition of the board to at least three or four popular seats and one or two landholder seats.

"I'm really grateful for the great support I've gotten," he said Friday morning. "It's come from all sections of the community. It's come from mail-in-proxies to me, from across the country and I've gotten a lot of support from Canada. The mail-in-support has been tremendous."

People in working families are upset and angry, Miller said, over the way the district has increased its assessments on them – 14 percent each year.

"They don't understand what services they're getting for their 14 percent increases in their assessments," he said. "There are working families with kids concerned about the lack of recreational facilities for themselves, particularly a swimming pool and children's playground."

Most of them are not golfers, he said.

"They don't understand why all they hear about is the golf clubhouse and the golf course," he said. "I'm a golfer myself, but I am concerned all of our people receive services they can relate to."

The way the landowner election worked is one property, one vote.

In order to be eligible to vote a landowner had to be paid up on his or her 2007 assessments, said District Secretary Ann Mitchell.

"The 2008 assessments are not due until March," she said.

However there were mega-landholders like National Recreational Properties Inc., based in California, with more than 2,000 votes and Maronda Homes with 205 votes that could carry the election and usurp any popular voter turnout.

Tanglewood's owner John Graytak threw his 311 votes behind Miller, according to Mitchell.

As was previously reported, on Jan. 20, Circuit Judge Olin Shinholser denied a proposed injunction filed on Jan. 16 by the New Property Owner's Association to halt Friday's election.

The group claimed NRPI should not be allowed to cast its votes because the homeowners would suffer permanent harm if NRPI was allowed to vote.

"This is not the end of it," said Larry Stange, with the New Property Owner's Association. "I feel the people should be able to have a say-so."

Stange said they have filed papers asking for the issue to be decided by a jury.

Highlands Today reporter Joe Seelig can be reached at 863-386-5834 or jseelig@highlandstoday.com

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT