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Forecast is tropical for Saturday’s Brooksville Christmas Parade. Page 10

Friday, December 11, 2015 HER

DAN DEWITTddewitt@tampabay.com

Monumentmust shuncounty’s racist past

T he plan is as vague as it ambitious, as under-funded as it is well-

intentioned.At the request of Paul

Douglas, president of the Her-nando County branch of the

NAACP, the County Commis-sion on Tuesday set aside land at the Hernando County Govern-ment Cen-ter for a monument to African-Americans.

What will it look like? Douglas can only say he intends to hold a design con-test.

How is he going to pay for it? He has commitments from businesses and individu-als, he said. But he didn’t say which ones or how much they are willing to give.

Who will raise this money and put up the monument? It won’t be the NAACP, Doug-las said, but a group formed strictly for this project. For now, though, he doesn’t know who will be included or what it will be called.

Finally, what’s the monu-ment supposed to say to the community and visitors about the history of African-Ameri-cans in Hernando? What is its message?

That’s not really clear, either, even though it is the main question Douglas needs to answer.

Remember, this all started nearly six months ago, after Dylann Roof allegedly shot and killed nine innocent con-gregants at a historic African-American church in Charles-ton, S.C.

Even in that hidebound state, it was an easy call to remove the Confederate bat-tle flag from the lawn of the statehouse.

Hernando, on the other hand, faced a weightier issue. Really weighty. Its flag is etched in the base of another, larger, granite-and-marble monument to racial oppres-sion — the statue of a Confed-erate soldier on the lawn of the Hernando County Court-house.

Douglas wanted it gone. So did Commissioner Diane Rowden. Cart it away, she said. Take it to a museum. Don’t leave it where it is — a place that, along with the lir-iope planted lovingly at its base and the floodlight that reverently shines on it at night, implies public endorse-ment.

But then, Rowden said, she talked to community lead-ers, including the pastors . See DEWITT, 8

Paul Douglas has questions to resolve about the monument.

BY BARBARA BEHRENDTTimes Staff Writer

BROOKSVILLE — Faced with a room of angry residents and recommendations of denial from both their staff and the Planning and Zoning Commission, Her-nando County commissioners on Tuesday voted down a rezon-ing for an outdoor gun range and training center north of Weeki

Wachee.The perplexed applicant, Chris-

topher Russo, told commission-ers that the permitting process was unfair and that the county shouldn’t have taken his applica-tion fee if it wasn’t going to give him the specifics he needed to get the rezoning approved, espe-cially when he planned a facility with even more safeguards than

other local ranges.His initial pitch to the com-

mission was that, with all of the recent gun incidents around the nation, he wanted to provide proper training for gun owners.

That prompted one Wood-land Waters resident to express concern that Russo was plan-ning a “commando camp” on his 3.75-acre parcel west of U.S. 19,

just north of Long Lake Avenue and south of Glen Lakes.

Residents of Glen Lakes and surrounding communities filed to the microphone to voice concerns about noise, stray bullets, pollu-tion of groundwater and falling property values; Russo countered that he had a right to use his prop-erty to run a business and feed his family and that the fear of stray

bullets “is fantasy land.’’Not to Gary Eckenroth.With a copy of a police report

in hand, Eckenroth spoke about a 9mm shell that pierced the wall of his Auction House business on Nov. 14, narrowly missing his teenage daughter. He called 911, and deputies came to take his statement. Another call that day

County rejects gun rangeResidents said the facility would be unsafe, noisy and environmentally harmful.

. See GUN RANGE, 2

BY DAN DEWITTTimes Staff Writer

SPRING HILL

The assignment was to sift through written clues — that this place is the home of fish, that the water is salty, that peo-ple like to swim here — and come up with the main idea.

Six first-graders, huddled around a table in a classroom at Spring Hill Ele-mentary School, quickly arrived at the answer, “the ocean,” which Lilyana Noguez was assigned to get on paper.

“Can I draw it?” Lilyana, 6, asked her teacher, Toni Berlinger.

“No, I want you to write words, my friend,” Berlinger said. “Write words.”

It’s a timeless goal: teaching children to read and write. But at Spring Hill Ele-mentary and the district’s three other D-rated schools — and, to a lesser extent, its several C schools — this goal is inter-twined with another, more politically charged aim: engineering a turnaround.

These schools are under pressure to

Photos by BRENDAN FITTERER | Times

Spring Hill Elementary School students, from left, Bailey Smuz, Jayden Gunadasa, Lilyana Noguez and Kaden Johnston participate in a lesson on main ideas and details within a story being retaught by first-grade teacher Toni Berlinger.

Spring Hill Elementary School teacher Toni Berlinger works with students Cameron Flood, left, and Ashton Curtis on reading comprehension on Dec. 3.

RETEACHING FOR A TURNAROUND

At D-rated Spring Hill Elementary, the state pressure is on.

. See SCHOOLS, 17

BY BARBARA BEHRENDTTimes Staff Writer

HERNANDO BEACH — On the day before Thanksgiving, Hernando Beach resident Diane Martinez visited the community fire station with a gift of food for the volunteers.

While there, Martinez leaned down to pet the station’s 70-pound, 1 ½-year-old brown and white pit bull mix, Sam, and the dog severely bit her in the face.

But instead of calling an ambu-lance, the volunteers called the woman’s husband and had him take her to Oak Hill Hospital.

About four hours later, officials said, Martinez was transferred by county ambulance to the trauma center at the Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point because of the severity of the wound.

That decision and the fact that no calls came from the volunteer fire department to Hernando County Fire Rescue, the Sheriff ’s Office Animal Services officer or the Health Department, which handles dog bites, has raised questions with county officials and stirred outrage among Her-nando Beach residents aware of the incident.

This week, after county com-missioners were questioned about the dog attack, they decided it is time to formally ask residents of Hernando Beach, Aripeka and Forest Glenn, the areas served by the volunteer fire department, whether they want to continue that service, join Hernando County Fire Service or choose some other option.

By consensus, the commis-sioners asked county staff-ers to research the options for a poll or a vote and return at a future meeting to formalize the action.

The Hernando Beach Volun-teer Fire Department recently has come under scrutiny for mis-use of a gasoline card, allega-tions of alcohol consumption at the station and a scolding by the county attorney’s office about insurance certificates, written protocols and a lease agreement.

Officials queried after dog biteThe county will ask if residents want to keep the Hernando Beach volunteer fire service.

. See AGENCY, 17