BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Telegraph Staff Writer
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— During the city council’s March 6 meeting, Mayor Karen Lake accused Keystone Heights Airport Board members of bullying the city council during previous meetings.
Lake’s comments were in response to airport board members’ efforts to get past board member Chad Rischard reappointed.
In January, the council chose Rex Siemer to replace Rischar on the board, turning away the incumbent’s application for reappointment.
The following month, Airport Board Chair David Kirkland, Vice-chair Scott Fryar and Manager Maria Searcy protested Richsar’s treatment by the council. They said that contrary to past appointments, council members did not consult with airport management before appointing Siemer. They also emphasized Rischar’s efforts on the board to manage the facility’s timber resources. Finally, they accused council members of snubbing Rischar in retaliation for the former board member leaving the city’s engineering firm.
“I’m puzzled as to why you would punish someone for accepting the job of a lifetime to better take care of his family,” Kirkland said. “A couple of you shared that you got a call from our county commissioner recommending Mr. Seimer, and apparently, that swayed your vote. Sadly, none of these are even related to the seat and its responsibilities.”
Kirkland added that Rischar has managed the airport’s timber resources and conservation efforts. “For unrelated reasons previously mentioned, you appointed someone else with no silvicultural experience,” he said.
During the council’s March 6 meeting, city leaders considered an appointment to a different seat on the airport board, noting that Rischar had applied for the seat in addition to firefighter Bobby Ludwig.
Kirkland endorsed the former board member during the meeting’s public comment section.
“I have concluded Mr. Chad Rischar is the more qualified applicant,” Kirkland told council members. “Mr. Rischar has served with distinction on the airport authority board and will continue if appointed to further develop the silviculture assets of the airport. I emphasize experience and qualifications because I think those should be the major items to be considered.”
Like ripping the band-aid off
However, when the council took up the appointment for discussion, Lake interpreted Rischar’s application as an affront to the council’s January action.
“How can I go back and allow this person on, when we took him off, and then we were bullied on top of that, and then you apply for another position?” she asked.
While the mayor acknowledged Rischar’s right to reapply, she characterized his action, and the airport board’s support of his second application as a rebuke to the council’s January appointment of Siemer.
“For me, it’s kind of like ripping the band-aid off,” she said, adding that she was fine with board members discussing the appointments with council members one-on-one in private, but objected to the public criticism of the council by board members.
“I mean, we’ve been bullied,” she told Fryar when he asked to respond to Lake’s charges. “You met with us independently; that’s what I’d like to see. You came up, and you spoke against us last meeting, and you’re here again tonight in mass, so it feels like bullying. I’m just gonna say to you, it feels like bullying.”
‘We are the bosses’
Councilman Tony Brown had even harsher words for the airport’s governing panel.
“I’ve been here a long time…and there’s a lot of decisions that I’ve been a part of, but I have never, never had a board stand up in front of this council and basically tell us we didn’t do a good job,” he said.
“We are the bosses,” he added. “I hate to put it that way, but we are. We are your bosses.”
Brown added that if the board’s public criticisms of the council had occurred in a private employment environment, they would have been terminated.
“I would have fired every dadgum one of you,” he said. “That ticked me off.”
“This is America, and you’ve got a right to say what you want to say,” he added, “but I was always taught that you respect your bosses and that you, in a public meeting, to do what some of you did to us, that boils my blood.”
Fryar told Lake that his comments, and those of his fellow board members, were not bullying but merely an expression of their passion for the airport and how seriously they take their roles as board members.
He added that the board’s emotional response to Rischar’s denied reappointment was partly because it was unexpected.
“It kind of shocked all of us,” he said.
Vice-mayor Steve Hart moved to place Rischar back on the airport board. His motion failed 4-1. The panel then voted to appoint Ludwig to the seat, and the measure passed by the same 4-1 vote.
In other news from the March 6 meeting of the Keystone Heights City Council:
Baker given key to the city
Lake awarded Tina Baker, the director of the community partnership school at Keystone Heights Junior-Senior High School, with a key to the city.
“She works very quietly behind the scenes,” the mayor said of Baker. “You don’t see her. She’s not flashy about the way she goes about her business, but she’s very impactful.”
Lake described the community partnership school as a cooperative effort between the Children’s Home Society of Florida, the University of Central Florida and the state.
She said that the partnership provides social and healthcare services students lack access to, adding that through those services, one-in-four KHHS students receive comprehensive medical care, including dental and vision care.
The partnership also provides clothing, access to laundry facilities, food and personal hygiene products.
“Thirty-five students attended Camp Boost,” Lake said of an opportunity provided by the partnership school, “which stands for building on opportunities to strengthen teens.”
She added that students gained life skills and substance abuse education during the week-long overnight camp.
“Tina baker has done an outstanding job establishing and building the community partnership school with her core partners since 2018,” Lake said. “Tina Baker is a champion and fierce advocate for the most traumatized members of our community and…is a master collaborator with all of the human service providers in our community.”
Lake also read a letter from high school principal Laurie Burke. The principal said Baker’s efforts make it possible for students to concentrate on academics and succeed on the Orchid Avenue campus.
Baker said she and her team had observed a large increase in the number of traumatized children in the Lake Region.
“When we connect them with a caring adult, the relationships and the attendance and the grades and the discipline referrals (improve),” she said. “We have three young students that are on the A-B honor roll. Last year they were failing. Three is such a small number but just think: that’s three students on their way to graduation, and they’re not going to be relying on taxpayer dollars to support them. That is what drives me: to get families out of the system and to be productive citizens.”
Spelling bee winner recognized
Lake pointed out Clay County Spelling Bee champion Rena Reddish in the audience.
The mayor read a letter from the Keystone Heights Junior High School student’s family that described her spelling bee accomplishments.
“Rena’s spelling bee journey began in first grade at Hope Christian Academy,” Lake said. “She won her classroom spelling bee, then proceeded to win the first through third-grade spelling bee.”
Lake said the experience increased Reddish’s love for reading and her appetite for words.
“In fifth grade, Rena won her classroom spelling bee,” Lake said, adding that Reddish also won the Keystone Heights Elementary School title that same year, placing sixth in the county bee.
“We did not know the county spelling bee was for fifth to eighth grade; it was a little intimidating when we arrived and saw how tall some of the spellers were in sixth grade,” Lake said, reading from the family’s letter.
In 2021, Reddish spelled her way back into the county bee and placed third.
“These first two years really helped her understand how to prepare,” Lake said, “so in seventh grade, she won her classroom spelling bee and the Keystone Junior High School spelling bee. There was a little more pressure and (higher) expectations of winning the county spelling bee. The words were difficult, and it came down to words the spellers had not prepared for.”
Reddish won the 2022 county bee and placed fifth in the regional competition.
Lake said that Reddish successfully defended her 2022 county title this year and is returning to the regional meet in Jacksonville on March 31.
Denies permit for Easter Extravaganza
After approving a road closure for the Our Country Day Parade and a food truck event, blood drive and sunrise service at the city-owned beach park, the council turned away an application to hold an Easter Extravaganza at the Lake Geneva Park.
Hart criticized the event because it was to be led by a profit-making entity.
“I have nothing against business ventures,” he said, “but is this really a suitable thing for the park, especially since their application indicates they’re going to be selling some items?”
City Manager Lynn Rutkowski said a local handyman business recently produced an event at the park. However, during the event, the for-profit entity did not promote its services or sell items.
“It was just a fun day for kids to come out,” she said. “Cricket Wireless is the applicant (for this event), and they did express that they would be selling items at this event.”
Tony Brown moved that the council deny the event application, which the panel approved unanimously.
New Heritage Commission member
The council appointed Elise Moore, who lives on County Road 352, to its Heritage Commission.
Moore is a former teacher and has owned and operated Locker Room Athletics since 1981. Her community service includes membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Moore told council members that she has always had an interest in preserving history, adding that she was a political science and history major in college.
She said she wants to preserve historic buildings in the city and added that the demolition of the Historic Keystone Inn was a black mark in the city’s history.
“I think that was the biggest shame, when the hotel was removed because that was the one thing that kind of was the symbol of Keystone,” she said.
Hart told Moore that the destruction of the historic inn was the reason behind the creation of the Heritage Commission.
“The Heritage Commission was formed so that something like that wouldn’t happen again,” he said.
Karen Nagle of Brooklyn Bay Road also applied for the voluntary position. Nagle has worked as a procurement specialist with the St. Johns River Water Management District and as the assistant chief information officer for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Her community service includes Save Our Lakes, Mission of the Dirt Road and St. William Catholic Church.
