LARGO - Among the raft of problems besetting Largo is one that virtually blocks the average citizen from being able to access key information on the city's web site.
The city has traditionally included information on meeting agendas on the web site.
Until recently, this data was broken down into its component parts - i.e., the upcoming agenda and the various documents giving information on specific items on the agenda.
These were all listed and available separately and could be downloaded very simply by any citizen even if he or she was not a sophisticated computer user.
However, in recent weeks this information has been made virtually unobtainable.
The reason for this is that all the information has been piled up in one PDF file - recently page counts have shown up to 199 pages and 110 pages on a single file.
That can amount to as many as 40,000 words or more on a single file including graphs and other illustrative material.
The average citizen trying to access this information through a dial-up process would literally have to spend a half-hour or more waiting for the material.
And the interested person would have to wait for the whole mass of material to become available when only a small portion of it might be of interest.
Before, in the old format, the user could pick and choose because all the components of the agenda were separate items.
In short, the present system is unusable to the ordinary citizen. The question is why? It is one of many questions being asked.
Included among them is why City Manager Steve Stanton proceeded with a fence adjoining the residential area of a former commissioner and close friend of Stanton after the manager was expressly and implicitly forbidden by the City Commission from spending funds on the fence.
Another issue on the minds of those who closely observe city affairs is why the city's lawyer, Alan Zimmet, was paid more than $18,000 for sitting in last year with the Charter Review Committee.
This was never authorized by the commission, notwithstanding Stanton's assertions that the matter was discussed and okayed by the commission. Members of the commission have positively said with no hesitation that it never was discussed or authorized.
This week, observers were watching the discussion of whether the Moss-Feaster funeral parlor would be allowed to put a crematory, usually thought of as an industrial use, immediately adjacent to a residential neighborhood.
The wrinkle in that was whether Commissioner Harriet Crozier, who worked for Moss-Feaster until mere days ago, would participate in the discussion and voting on the issue.
Of course, any such participation would have the appearance of a conflict of interest.
But given Largo's history of nepotism, cronyism and conflict of interest (Mayor Pat Gerard's activity last year being a blatant example) the speculation was that Crozier would be involved.