COMMENTARY

MILT THOMAS

I just couldn’t resist commenting on a letter to the editor in the Treasure Coast daily by anti-Seven50 spokesperson, Phyllis Frey, under the heading “Message for Sebastian.” In it, she was scolding the Sebastian City Council for “bullying” her fellow red-shirted, anti-Seven50 complainants.  It so happened that I was in attendance at the two City Council meetings she referred to, and as I have written previously, it was the angry somber-faced redshirts who seemed to do all the bullying.

Yes, Phyllis, you are correct in quoting a Council member as saying your fellow redshirts were just trying to scare the old people. Let’s face it, coming into a meeting all wearing red shirts and sour expressions scared me, too. As a history buff, I remember seeing footage of Hitler’s brown shirts bullying people into supporting the Nazi point of view.

Just to set the record straight, the two meetings you referred to were not the only times you attended a Sebastian City Council meeting. You forgot to mention the first time, you were allowed 27 and a half minutes for a parade of your followers to address the Council, trying to humiliate them into dropping their participation in Seven50. At the very next meeting, you and your group were prepared to speak yet again, but were cautioned that public input is reserved for new information relative to the City’s business at that meeting. Since Council had already decided to continue participating in Seven50 by a unanimous vote, your second presentation was not new information and did not pertain to that day’s meeting. So, the City Council moved public input to the end of the meeting to allow time for City business to be conducted first.

When your first speaker stormed up to the dais waving a stopwatch demanding as much time as the previous speaker, he did little to endear himself or your group. Telling the mayor that moving public input to the end of the meeting was a “de facto attempt to silence most of the people who came to this session who pay your salary” didn’t win any grace points either. Incidentally, their salary is $300 a month, except the mayor, who earns a whopping $450.

Then you came up to speak, Ms. Frey, claiming the Seven50 consortium partnership agreement commits Sebastian to modify local codes and accept HUD grants to build ten story buildings. City Attorney Ginsburg then advised Council that this agreement does not subvert home rule and Councilwoman Coy added there will be no ten story buildings because of Sebastian’s 35-foot building height limitation.

Your next speaker further insulted the Council be telling them to read the fine print of their contract.

The meeting ended soon after that because it was ten o’clock and continuing the meeting required a Council vote. No one voted to extend the meeting.

In your letter to the editor, you also say you were denied the right to speak at the subsequent City Council meeting, your third in a row. Your group was, in fact, allowed to speak during public input even though everyone in the room knew what you were going to say. Your first speaker told the Council “We don’t trust you…we’re not going to let things fly by like you have.”

Okay, insult noted. The next speaker demanded all five Council members sign a piece of paper that they would have nothing to do with Seven50. When the mayor asked what would be the point, the man was stumped, glancing back at his redshirt supporters. And when the mayor then asked him if has read the entire Seven50 document, he said no.

So, Ms. Frey, the last sentence in your letter to the editor, that going along with Seven50 the City Council will find out what bullying is all about, is also incorrect. They already know.