Logo spat spurs claim of racism
St Petersburg Times Letter to the Editor
-- by George Shaughnessy

In a wonderful spirit of generosity the magnanimous City Council of Pinellas Park has created a legacy for themselves in the creation of their Angel Fund.

“The fund is patterned after Pennies from Heaven, created by the Sumter (County) Electric Cooperative. Customers who want to participate round their monthly electric bills up to the next dollar and the extra money is put into the SECO Angel (sic) Fund. It's then used for humanitarian purposes.” (SPT 7/28/04)

SECO is a for profit utility company that overcharges willing customers on their monthly utility bill in order to pay for other customers who can’t make their own payments. Their employees recognized it as "Pennies from Heaven" not "the Angel Fund."

“Council members were so impressed by a SECO fundraising idea that they may copy it to help financially strapped children's programs in Pinellas Park.” (SPT 5/29/04) But the only similarity is that funding comes from overcharging utility customers—estimated by Pinellas Park employees to start out at $7,800 a year before reaching a potential $52,000 or more yearly.

The Pinellas Park City Council has managed to misappropriate the value of the labor of city employees and attorneys to create a city owned and operated 501(c)3 agency within the city government without the counsel of City Voters.

They compounded their misappropriation of City funds when they agreed to allow “Boulder Venture to deposit the fee that Pinellas Park charges to remove dirt - which Sabow estimated at $28,000 in this case - into the city's Angel fund, which is for residents who need one-time help.”(SPT 5/16/04)

Please notice that a plan “to help financially strapped children's programs in Pinellas Park.” is now intended to be a welfare agency giving handouts to “residents who need one-time help.”

Who is paying the cost to maintain this City owned Non Profit agency? My calls to the City of Pinellas Park seem to indicate that City employees are being paid to do the work of this public welfare agency without a separate accounting for the value of their time.

When Randy Heine showed me a City of Pinellas Park water utility newsletter with the picture of a perfect and beautiful, blindingly white child I asked him if this was the child to whom Council members were giving their one time handout. How appropriate for this group!

And how appropriate too that when Ms. Snook was fishing for a response she chose an image from a New York ghetto sometime in the last century where a child who showed an aptitude for playing piano was given a one time handout for a violin lesson.