It's about time some responsible person - say, an elected official - cried out for an investigation to find out what is going on in Indian Rocks Beach city.
Substitute the name of Indian Rocks Beach in Shakespeare's words from Hamlet - "There is something rotten in Denmark" - and you have the picture.
There is something rotten in Largo, too, but it is not of the magnitude (as far as is known at this point) of what is occurring in IRB.
Something is very wrong in Indian Rocks Beach, from many indications. And not light, inconsequential stuff.
With what is known - and it cannot all be revealed that this time - it could result in action from Tallahassee with a brand new governor, Charlie Crist, a Pinellas County fellow, removing people.
The latest is the questions surrounding the dealings between the city and the departing city manager in what appears to be a blatant disregard of the provisions of his employment contract.
What has taken place is clearly wrong, it would seem, and through connecting dots the path seems to lead to an inevitable conclusion.
Questions are also being raised - if nowhere else, right here - about the IRB city lawyer.
Understand this - a lawyer has two principle loyalties. The first is to the law itself. As an officer of the court, a lawyer is, in effect, part of the third branch of government and as such cannot countenance or participate in the breaking of the law.
The second loyalty is to a client. A lawyer does not serve as an arbiter between competing parties unless that lawyer is a mediator or a judge. A lawyer is basically an advocate.
Keep in mind, too, the sanctity of contracts. By that, both parties to a contract are bound without exception to its provisions and no extraneous matter can be inserted or extrapolated from the plain meaning of the words of the contract itself.
These elements are explored elsewhere in this edition of the Clearwater Gazette and others have been recounted in the two previous editions of the Gazette.
Item - The IRB Charter requires a city manager to be a member of the International City Managers Association. Al Grieshaber, hired officially last February after being around for six months, is not an ICMA member. His hiring was vetted by Andy Salzman, the city lawyer. Salzman presumably knows, or should know, the Charter.
Item - Salzman is on the board of directors of a Pasco County bank that contemplated doing business with the city of Indian Rocks Beach.
Item - Salzman, as the city's lawyer, is involved in the bogus predication that there is confusion over the city's boundary with Indian Shores and concomitant with that must have reviewed the three-party agreement proferred by a lawyer for a builder; said lawyer having an unsavory history himself.
Item - Salzman was copied in on a message sent by Grieshaber last August seeking money in violation of the specific terms of his contract and Salzman took no action, such as pointing out the plain fact that under the contract's terms, Grieshaber was not entitled to any money at all.
Item - Reports are that in some 17 months or so of employment with Indian Rocks Beach Grieshaber has taken not one single vacation day. But he has compiled a monstrously huge number of "compensatory time" hours. One report avers that part of the compensatory time includes lunches that were, incidentally, paid for by the city. With Grieshaber's departure from the city imminent, he will be paid, supposedly, all that vacation time he never took.
Item - (Speculatively) Would these items have taken place, particularly Grieshaber's shenanigans, if he felt he didn't have some protection, some green light, so to speak, somewhere?
And why should an elected official speak out and ask for a thorough and total investigation? Because every one of the five sitting up there on the dais has a fiduciary duty to do so.
And that means a duty to the taxpayers and residents of IRB and it is a duty, I believe, with strict liability - know or held to know what is going on.