Dirty little secrets: Oak Hill has a lot of them. Shhh. Be very, very quiet because you don't want to upset rookie Commissioner Ron Engele. He has a bad temper.
Your's truly did that earlier tonight and he ordered me escorted from the meeting room by none other than his new lackey, embattled Police Chief Diane Young. Our video camera got a little too close for comfort for Engele, who screamed at Sera, my lovely wife and videographer, who was aiming not at him, mind you, but at City Clerk/Administrator Laura Goodearly on the other side, hiding behind her desktop computer screen, which she doesn't turn on, but uses as a shield.
Goodearly was seeking a 10 percent raise, even though the commissioners agreed she had a lot of shortcomings, without mentioning her DUI conviction or her behavior at the last meeting when she tried to conceal her face from our video camera with a sheet of paper.
Commissioners agreed tonight that she speaks in double negatives and her grammar in public memos and signs leave a lot to be desired. She's got a bad temper and has had issues with employees and the public alike.
In the end, Goodearly's probation was continued for six months, with most of the commissioners saying she's better suited as deputy city clerk. Ironically, the commissioners earlier this month gave Police Chief Young six months to get the police department turned around.
Just think: Oak Hill's police chief is a former cocaine and marijuana user and its clerk/administrator is a convicted drunken driver. That alone speaks volumes as to why there are so many problems.
Dirty little secrets: She was convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol, which NSBNews.net reported on the eve of the City Commission meeting two weeks ago, during which she covered her face with a piece of paper and tried to shoo away our camera, to which your's truly tersely responded: "It's a public meeting."
She wanted that 10 percent raise so bad tonight, literally pouting and acting like a spoiled teenager who got the keys taken away because she was grounded. There was no mention of her DUI conviction, which Mayor Mary Lee Cook, defiantly said after the last meeting was not a crime.
And Besides, Goodearly has had the privilege -- or chore -- of driving the 84-year-old Cook back and forth from the meetings in recent months.
Dirty little secrets: Because NSBNews.net exposed Cook's "ride" two weeks ago in reporting Goodearly's DUI, she gave a confession at tonight's meeting, aptly titled "Driving Miss Daisy," essentially laughing off the reporting of lack of separation between policy maker and employee as being akin to being the sweet little old lady. But tonight, Cook had another driver, her son, David R. Brown.
Speaking of Cook's attitude toward drunken driving, her son went to prison for a DUI manslaughter. Next month, he is slated to stand trial on multiple charges of video voyeurism of teen girls tanning naked in a back-yard shed who were unaware they were being videotaped.
Dirty little secrets: Sera and I were trying to be friendly to Commissioner Engele prior to the start of tonight's meeting, but he just ignored us so we just went about our business. Earlier in the day, we published a story on yet another Oak Hill police sergeant, suspended on corruption charges. Engele is the "department head" for the police department and he has done his best to cover for the police chief over the last several months.
After Engele tore into Sera, a few minutes later, he jumped all over me. He made a point of trying to discredit me, saying in part that we were interfering with their business with our cameras.
Translation: The city clerk/administrator made a fool of herself at the last meeting, covering herself up like she's a celebrity along the magnitude of Casey Anthony, trying to shield her ruddy face from us. Goodearly actually tried to hide behind her desktop computer, which, of course, wasn't turned on, but Sera had a strong zoom and that is what irked Engele, even though he doesn't have the guts to admit it.
Dirty little secret: At tonight's meeting, Engele said he was incensed we were getting too close for comfort for the officials. It was laughable how he tried to make his point that we were so intrusive that he wouldn't tolerate us standing behind the city attorney. Mr. Engele, hello! City Attorney Scott Simpson wasn't even at the meeting tonight. He was on the phone because Goodearly couldn't get him connected through Skype, an Internet phone connection. This was the first of what from now on will be Simpson's M.O., offering legal advice by phone or Internet connection from his home in Ormond Beach.
Dirty little secret: What irked Engele at the last meeting was Goodearly protesting to being videotaped as she continued to conceal her face. Mayor Darla Lauer, who quit last week, said Goodearly had caused embarrassment to herself and the city with her diva-like behavior.
Engele was particularly irked that the meeting before that one in early March, he was in possession of a letter from an Oak Hill cop asking why Police Chief Young was sitting on evidence alleging criminal wrongdoing by Sgt. Perez, three months after not one but two cops on the force alerted her to the situation.
By the way, the letter Engele was looking at was and is a public record, which he quickly flipped over when we aimed our camera at it.
Of course, at that meeting, Perez' name was never mentioned by Engele or any of the commissioners and the sergeant, suspended since March 30, with full pay, wasn't mentioned at tonight's meeting, even after NSBNews.net posted Oak Hill's continuing troubles with corrupt cops led by a police chief whom former Mayor Lauer twice demanded step down, but didn't have the votes. As our story pointed out, Perez' suspension came just two days after the commission finally fired demoted Sgt. Mike Ihnken.
Dirty little secret: After taking out his wrath on Sera, Commissioner Engele then stood up and demanded former Oak Hill/Clerk Administrator Virginia Haas be removed when she began talking when the issue of Goodearly's status as her permanent replacement was brought up by Mayor Cook.
Haas appeared to be intoxicated, but she wasn't loud and sat slumped in her seat. Commissioner Engele demanded: "I want her ejected!"
Police Chief Young then grabbed her by the arm and escorted her out of the building.
Dirty little secret: Ironically again, last month, our camera caught Goodearly laughing out loud when commissioners were informed that Haas' request for unemployment was denied because she quit after being reprimanded for having a little too much to drink at a city function. Goodearly went on and on yucking it up about Haas as she sat in judgment with a big smirk on her red face.
At the next meeting, NSBNews.net had its video camera aimed at Goodearly after we reported earlier that day that she was adjudicated "guilty" in a criminal court for driving under the influence.
In fact, at that meeting, the commission, at the urging of Commissioner Engele "tabled" Goodearly's request for a whopping 10-percent raise to $44,000, after her childish behavior as a martyr to our video camera.
Dirty little secret: Commissioner Linda Hyatt had raised the issue of the media and where it should be located, suggesting we be placed in the back of the room.
Goodearly claimed she had called around to Volusia County's other cities and that all of them have the reporters in the back. A woman who sits on the Volusia League of Cities, whose name I didn't get, shouted out that Goodearly was wrong. The woman said the media sits either up front or on the side at a table.
Even attorney Simpson piped in on the telephone loud speaker that media representatives sit up front in Holly Hill meetings. Dirty little secret: Hyatt claimed she had received complaints from a couple of residents that the media was causing too much of a distraction. Of course, she was not specific.
Here's yet another ironic twist. I received a whining complaint from Oak Hill resident Dana Thompson on Facebook. Here is what she posted 9:37 p.m. April 11: "Why is it you only spotlight the negative about Oak Hill when so many good things happen here? Haven't seen anything on the new Burns Sci-Tech Charter School, opening in August, or the many volunteers who are working together to bring something good in the lives of people/children in this community."
Fair point, but we don't write fluff or PR, Ms. Thompson. That is what you do as a blogger for the weekly Observer newspaper, which has a few dirty secrets of its own, like where it is really conducting business as a business. We cover real news, hard and fast every day.
Dana Thompson has an axe to grind with real media. Her former husband, then-Mayor Mike Thompson got into a fight a couple years back with another former commissioner, Jeff Bracey, during which they bumped bellies in the parking lot of City Hall.
Dirty little secret: Did the commissioners discuss outside of the Sunshine what to do with the media? Our spies tipped us off earlier in the day that this might happen at tonight's meeting.
So I placed calls to attorneys with the Florida Press Association, the First Amendment Foundation and Daytona Beach attorney Jon Kaney Jr., one of Florida's foremost experts on the Sunshine laws, access to public facilities and rules for the media. They all understood this was about NSBNews.net getting too close for comfort for the commissioners and administrators of Oak Hill; too close to the truth.
Commissioner Engele spoke the loudest tonight and ran his mouth. Those who speak the loudest usually have dirty secrets, don't they Commissioner Engele?
It cracked me up that after I was "escorted" from the room, Engele had the audacity to instruct Goodearly to call me and find out my thoughts on how best the situation with the media in the public meeting should be handled.
Are you kidding me?
Goodearly denied me access to public records for a week when I first broke the story on corruption in the Oak Hill police force. This is the same city clerk/administrator who tried to run NSBNews.net off the front lawn of City Hall when we were interviewing an off-duty cop.
Dirty little secret: Police Chief Young didn't just snort cocaine 100 times and smoke marijuana before she became a police officer. Oh, you know, Commissioner Engele: There's a third illegal drug and where did Young get her drugs from. The public will be incensed when we report that.
Dirty little secret: Brandy Sutherlin, put on the street with a gun and a badge by Chief Young despite failing a drug test and acting like a lunatic in a high-speed off-duty chase while shooting his gun at another vehicle with his wife behind the wheel and their three small kids in the back the extent of cops.
Dirty little secret: Where's the commission's reprimand written by former mayor Lauer for Chief Young for not reporting his failed drug test for seven months.
Dirty little secret: Where's the written reprimand for Chief Young for not being on top of fired officer Ihnken, also written by Lauer and sent to the city attorney?
Dirty little secret: Another of Chief Young's hires and promotions has an even uglier past than all of the other cops under her command, again involving drugs.
Dirty little secret: We have the Duval County Sheriff's report on Goodearly's DUI arrest and it isn't pretty.
Dirty little secret: How about that meeting you had Commissioner Engele with City Clerk Administrator Goodearly and Chief Young to try and nail the cop who turned in Perez?
Dirty little secret: You were silent, Commissioner Engele, when a citizen last month addressed the commissioners and informed them that you used the "F-word" at her.
Commissioner Engele, let me clue you in on who you are dealing with. I am not a glad-hander like the editor of the Observer who sleeps at meetings. I do not skip meetings in favor of going to the clerk the next day like the assigned beat reporter for the Daytona Beach News-Journal, who reports the news from a DVD while giving the public the impression he was at the meeting.
While Goodearly was giving out false information tonight that the city governments place media outlets in the back of the meeting room, I've covered news in all 16 Volusia County municipalities as well as county government. She's full of it.
I've always either sat up front or at an assigned table for "media only" near the front. I've also sat in the front rows of county and circuit courts; in the front row of the 5th District Court of Appeal and the Florida and Supreme Court.
I sat front and center in the execution chamber witness room for serial killer Aileen Wuornos' execution. I've stood on Pit Road for the Daytona 500. I've covered fires, car crashes, murders, you name it, all front and center in Volusia County as a reporter since 1996, and have more journalism-industry awards than any other media representative currently working. I also covered breaking news and enterprise in New York and Massachusetts.
Never in 25 years as a reporter have I ever been removed from a meeting. That is until tonight when you went off on me Commissioner Engele because I've begun to uncover a lot of your dirty little secrets.
You can have me tossed from every meeting from this point forward, though I don't think the State Attorney's Office or the Florida Ethics Commission are going to take too kindly to your antics. I doubt the courts will either, if it comes to that.
But here is where it gets real for you, Commissioner Engele: You can place me in the back of the room or the back of the bus for that matter. Or as you did tonight, out the door. But let's see how much you run your mouth like you did tonight when more of your dirty little secrets are revealed to the public by the media outlet you fear, NSBNews.net.
Dirty little secrets: indeed.