VERO BEACH — Dick Winger will retain his seat as mayor of the Vero Beach City Council following the reorganization meeting held Monday morning.
Jay Kramer, the top vote-getter in the municipal election, will serve as vice mayor.
Saying he has important unfinished business, Winger made a long speech during the voting on a nomination of him for Mayor, pleading for another six months in the job.
Newcomer Randy Old nominated Winger. Pilar Turner and Amelia Graves had already voted against Winger and Kramer had been called to cast a yea or nay as the swing vote.
Kramer asked that Winger be called first, which opened the door to the speech by Winger.
Winger said he saw Kramer as his natural successor and would welcome another organizational meeting to elect Kramer as mayor in six months.
Kramer was subsequently elected Vice Mayor by a unanimous vote.
Nov. 17 5 a.m.
VERO BEACH — The Vero Beach City Council will reorganize itself Monday morning after the three winners of the recent municipal election are sworn in – Jay Kramer, Pilar Turner and newcomer Randy Old.
The one expected to be chosen to serve as mayor is top vote-getter Kramer, who served one year previously in that post.
If Kramer’s peers nominate him to occupy the center seat, Vero will likely see the return of the “crystal gavel” and a more patient and tolerant attitude toward public comment from the podium.
Under both former mayor Craig Fletcher and current mayor Dick Winger, members of the public were told who they could and couldn’t address directly. Winger earlier this year re-instituted the three-minute rule and even fired up a warning light to let people know when they were running out of time.
Winger also added a half-page of rules and regulations to the City Council agendas – rules that have been largely ignored and have provoked more displays of civil disobedience among the city’s gadflies than they have prevented.
When he was mayor once before just after being elected to the council the first time, Kramer generally tossed out the three-minute rule. When asked if he would enforce all the new provisions set forth by Winger, telling members of the public how long they could speak or what they were not permitted to say, Kramer answered with a rhetorical question: “You mean the people I work for?”
When asked if he would deliver position papers or speeches, as he has done this past year under Winger’s term as mayor, Kramer said, “When you’re mayor, your opinions don’t really count. Your opinion is or should be the opinion of the whole City Council.”
Right on Kramer’s heels in this November’s election was Randy Old, but he’s brand-new to public office and may not seek the limelight his first year out.
Rounding out the three winners was Pilar Turner, who did a respectable job in her year as mayor in 2011-12, but who clearly does not have enough friends on the dais now to be selected.
The title of Vero Beach Mayor doesn’t bring with it a lot of actual power, but the Mayor occasionally does have greater access to the action than the other council members.
Florida’s Sunshine Law allows only one member of the council to be present in closed-door meetings and negotiations. The person City Manager Jim O’Connor typically invites first is the Mayor.