What is normally a fairly straight-forward process descended into chaos at Monday night's Safety Harbor City Commission meeting, when a personal feud between Mayor Joe Ayoub and resident Shelly Schellenberg dominated Commission's discussion about which outside agencies to fund this year.
Each year, the city budgets an amount of money to divvy up between registered non-profit organizations that serve Safety Harbor residents and apply for funding. This year, $120,000 was budgeted and 10 organizations requested a total of $128,700. Most years, the debate is focusing solely on where to trim requests to match the budgeted amount.
Monday started out that way, with Commission seemingly in agreement with Commissioner Carlos Diaz's suggestion to trim the amounts of two first-time requesters - Freedom Sailing Camp ($10,000) and Ready For Life ($5,000) to $2,000 each to get under the $120,000 budget. But then Ayoub said he did not want to fund another first-time requester, CATS of Safety Harbor ($1,200), saying he did not want to give taxpayer dollars to an organization led by a resident who criticizes other residents.
Earlier this year, a cat owned by Ayoub and his wife was run over by a car and died. The next day, in a post on the CATS of Safety Harbor Facebook page, Shellenberg criticized Ayoub and his wife for letting their cat run outside, which generated several angry comments. Ayoub said he asked Shellenberg at the time to remove the post, and repeated his request Monday night. Schellnberg refused both times.
Ayoub then said he'd agree to the funding if the ctiy also required non-profit organization leaders to sign something similar to the code of contact form the city requires voluntary advisory board to sign, something that came out of a former public argument between Ayoub and Shellenberg. City Attorney Isabella Sobel cautioned Commission that she had concerns about such a document and, at the very least, she would need some time to research it.
Commissioner Nancy Besore made a motion to approve funding with Diaz's recommended amounts and also a directive to city staff to research a code of conduct. Ayoub then suggested part of all of CATS of Safety Harbor's money to held back until the code of conduct was ready, but did not get any support.
Commission then voted 5-0 to approve the funding. The next morning, however, Shellenberg posted on the CATS of Safety Harbor Facebook page that she had emailed City Commission refusing her $1,200, saying she doesn't want her speech to restrained.