Port Richey: Little City, Big Rift

by: Christian M. Wade

PORT RICHEY - Frances Clark Mallett’s fondest hometown memories are from decades past: visiting the fish market, walking barefoot along the Pithlachascotee River, watching sunsets from the seaside park that now bears her grandfather’s name.

Over her 86 years, Mallett, whose grandfather Henry Robert Nicks was a founding father, has seen myriad changes come to this small coastal community where her family has lived for more than seven generations.

These days, Mallett is one of many residents questioning the need for a municipal government.

They cite a rising tax burden, ineffective leadership and city hall scandals.

“The cost of running it has become too much,” Mallett says. “It costs more to live inside the city than it does outside it, and we don’t get any better services.”

Amid the growing discontent, a grass-roots movement to dissolve this city of 3,200 - founded nearly a century ago by frontiersmen, citrus growers and land speculators - is gathering steam.

Fed up with being taxed twice, by the county and the city, a citizens group is leading the charge to become an unincorporated part of Pasco County.

If Port Richey is disbanded, it will join just a handful of Florida cities to do away with their governments in recent decades.

City officials are dismissive of the dissolution campaign and accuse the group of using scare tactics and misinformation to win support.

Taxing People ‘To Death’

When Pat Guttman left city hall two years ago, she cited a growing resentment among residents as one reason she wouldn’t seek re-election to the city council.

“I don’t think we can afford to be a city anymore,” Guttman told a Tampa Tribune reporter at the time. “We just can’t tax people to death.”

Her decision, which came on the heels of several scandals involving current and former city officials, shocked many longtime observers. After all, the vice mayor was suggesting dissolving the city she had served for 14 years.

Meanwhile, dentist Robert Goluba and physician Steve Johnston were joining with like-minded neighbors to renew the decades-old debate.

Their group, Port Richey Citizens for Lower Taxes, argues that city residents pay more in property taxes, and more for for water, sewer, cable and electric service, than do people in unincorporated Pasco.

Two years ago, the group gathered 300-plus signatures on a petition asking the council to dismantle the government via an ordinance and also put the issue to voters.

To do that, the council first would have to change the city charter, which has no provision for dissolution.

The Florida Legislature also can disband a municipality, with the approval of voters and that city’s board.

But Port Richey city attorneys, finding fault with the petition, have rejected the group’s call for a referendum three times.

Goluba accuses council members of trying to keep voters from having their say.

“We’re trying to make people understand that you’re still going to live in a place called Port Richey; you’re just not going to get taxed double,” Goluba said.

In October, the group registered with the city as a political action committee and began soliciting contributions from registered voters.

So far, the committee has collected more than $8,200, which Goluba said will be spent to spread the group’s message to taxpayers.

And with several council incumbents up for re-election April 11, the group is backing three challengers, all of whom signed the referendum petition.

Incumbents Jim Priest, Fred Miller and Vice Mayor Bill Bennett are vocal opponents of dissolving the government.

“This election is going to be a referendum,” said former state Sen. Jack Latvala, a consultant for the citizens group. “There’s three candidates who believe people have a right to vote on the issue, and there’s three who don’t.”

Small Town, Small Start

The “Little City By the River” was chartered in 1925, but its origins date to the late 1800s, when Aaron McLaughlin Richey built a small wooden house and a post office near the mouth of the Pithlachascotee River.

Settlers flocked to the area during the Florida land boom in the early 1920s, carving roads from the wilderness and building schools, churches and homes along the river.

They were citrus farmers and ranchers, bankers and store owners - some of the oldest family names in west Pasco - who came together to give birth to a new city.

But over the years, Port Richey has been eclipsed by New Port Richey - its larger, and more prosperous, sister city on the river’s east side.

Port Richey is an eclectic mix of old and new. The landscape ranges from strip malls and mobile home parks packed along congested U.S. 19 to million-dollar waterfront mansions.

It’s a place where people are more likely to run into each other at Wal-Mart or Hooters than at a downtown square or city park.

Critics of Port Richey’s government point to polluted waterways and crumbling roads, parks and boat docks as examples of the city’s ineffective leadership.

They argue that other communities, such as Gulf Harbors south of New Port Richey and Beacon Woods in Hudson, are much larger than Port Richey and still unincorporated.

While many Florida cities have considered dissolution, few have succeeded.

“It’s very uncommon,” said Lynn Tipton of the Florida League of Cities. “There were a handful in the 1980s in Miami-Dade County, but few have occurred since then.”

In Hillsborough County, Ruskin residents are headed in the opposite direction, trying to break away from the county government to charter a new city.

In Pasco, the trend is toward cities annexing county land to expand their borders and their municipal tax base, which pays for more services.

Polishing The Image

While the dissolution campaign has chugged along for two years, Port Richey officials have been slow to mount a defense. That’s something that bothers Councilman Priest.

“There are so many untruths that have been put out there by these people,” he said. “They’re telling everyone this is about saving money. But I just don’t buy that.”

Priest fears sharing the county’s umbrella would ruin Port Richey’s small-town feel, turning it into a stepchild of a larger, more bureaucratic government.

“We’re less than 1 percent of the county’s population,” he said. “If you have an issue, how much attention do you think you’re going to get from the county government?”

City officials say they’re working hard to overcome Port Richey’s negative image and they cite projects - adopting a land development code, dredging miles of canals, tapping new water wells - as examples of how they’re getting their house in order.

Mayor Mark Abbott won’t say where he stands on dissolution but said he understands many residents are unhappy.

“If a vote were taken today, I think the city would be dissolved,” he said.

But ask Vice Mayor Bennett how he feels and his face gets red and his tone sharpens.

“If you don’t like paying city taxes, then move,” he said. “But don’t come in here and try to change it for the rest of us. Move a mile away and you’re in the county.”

Residents might have to dig even deeper - through a special taxing district - to repay the city’s debt if it’s disbanded, Bennett said. Port Richey owes $1.5 million for the new city hall and just took out a $3.3 million bond to add water wells and transmission lines.

“It’s extremely hard to figure out how much less people would be paying in taxes if the city government was dissolved,” Bennett said.

Scandals Past And Present

Port Richey has a long, well-documented history of political scandals and allegations of unethical behavior and fraud. That was one reason two Pasco legislators filed a 1997 bill that could have led to New Port Richey absorbing its smaller neighbor.

Latvala and Debra Prewitt withdrew their bill after Port Richey voters, in a referendum, rejected a merger.

“Port Richey has always been a problem,” Latvala said. “You can go back 40 years and find headlines about fired city managers and fired building inspectors.”

A Pasco grand jury investigated city government in 2001 and returned no indictments. But grand jurors found questionable practices in the building department and recommended it be dismantled if the operation didn’t improve.

More recently, the Florida Elections Commission has charged the current mayor with a 10-count complaint alleging he violated state laws in last year’s election.

And in October, the Florida Commission on Ethics wrapped up a four-year investigation of former Councilman Robert Leggiere, accused of using his authority to secure building permits for his friends and for patrons of his door and window business.

Abbott’s case is pending, and Leggiere settled his by paying a fine.

An easy target for critics, the city’s government has survived citizen dissatisfaction before. But Goluba and other leaders of the dissolution drive are intent on succeeding where others have failed.

“If we don’t do something now, nothing will ever change,” Goluba said.