VOLUME 1 ISSUE 43
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April is National Gardening Month
APRIL 23- APRIL 29, 2021
Battle over the sexes City council backpedals on gender-neutral charter change after wave of opposition.
By Ainslie Lee ainslie@ocalagazette.com
T
uesday’s Ocala City Council meeting drew an overflow crowd, most of whom were there to speak against a proposal to remove masculine pronouns from the city charter. More than 100 people - spread out due to social distancing in the council chambers, the chambers’ anteroom and the first-floor lobby attended the meeting. After nearly two hours of denouncements, including from the group which originally proposed the change, the proposal was scrapped altogether. The intention of the revision was to adjust language in the city’s charter, dating from the 1970s, so it reflected the expanded roles of women in certain male-dominated positions. The proposed amendment would have changed “councilman” to “council member” and “policeman” to “police officer.” In the current charter document, all officials are referred to as “he,” including the city manager, who is currently a woman. It would have also removed the pronouns he and his. But the proposal quickly drew backlash
with some worried it was a backdoor attempt to move toward the use of non-gender pronouns, which have gained momentum among advocates and some linguists. The backlash spurred Councilman Matthew Wardell to appear on a local radio station to try and explain the proposal’s intent. “I can’t choose what’s a hot-button issue. I can’t choose what someone’s going to misappropriate as something it’s not,” Wardell said during the show. “I think the idea of insisting on calling our city manager, who’s a woman, a ‘he’ is weird.” But many still questioned the intentions behind the proposal on Tuesday night. Gerald Bustin, the first to speak against the proposal, encompassed the overall theme of the 30-plus speakers who followed. “I am concerned about this gender problem,” Bustin said “It seems to me that we’re catering to the LGBT community and not to God… This is not necessary at all to move away from he or she, because that’s all we are.” Others feared the move would create a “slippery slope” where non-traditional pronouns used by those who identify as See Charter Change, page A2
City sued over panhandling ordinance By Ainslie Lee ainslie@ocalagazette.com The city is facing a federal lawsuit challenging its panhandling ordinances. The suit, filed on Monday by the Southern Legal Counsel and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), contends the city’s panhandling ordinances are unconstitutional. It is the second lawsuit filed by the two entities against the city since 2019. The first suit, which also included Ocala lawyer Andy Pozzuto, argued the city’s “open lodging” ordinance was unconstitutional. In February, U.S. District Judge James Moody ordered the city to stop arresting homeless people for sleeping in public. He also ordered the city to stop issuing trespass warnings without due process. The city responded by amending the ordinance to remove the mention of homeless people and updated its trespass warning policy. In Monday’s lawsuit, the groups argue the panhandling ordinances infringe on people’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights and criminalizes people asking for help. The groups are representing Roger Luebke, Kimberly Burnham, Williams Taylor, Victor Hoyt Cox, Dustin Damico and Patrick McArdle. All were previously arrested under the ordinances, according to the complaint. The plaintiffs have spent a total of 209 days in the Marion County Jail and have been assessed more than $7,750 in fines due to the panhandling ordinances. The city first adopted its Roadway Solicitation ordinance on Feb. 5, 2008, making it unlawful for any person to stand in the street, highway, median or bicycle path and solicit or attempt to solicit from See Panhandling, page A10
Move to preserve thoroughbred history at Winding Oaks By Ainslie Lee ainslie@ocalagazette.com On Tuesday, the Ocala City Council approved an amendment to the planned 960-acre development at Winding Oaks farm that will ensure the protection of a historic horse cemetery and the home of a famed Ocala thoroughbred trainer. The move, approved unanimously by the council, also shifted some of the planned uses for the property, including designating 20 acres of the property as the future site of an elementary school and keeping about 225 acres as a working thoroughbred training center for the time being, according to
David Boston, Ocala’s planning and zoning manager. The plan would leave approximately 735 acres ready to develop more than 3,100 residential units, including more than 2,000 single-family homes and more than 1,000 multifamily units, according to Boston. While the path is clear for development, there has been no application to start building. Given the time frame for approval of such an application, the first homes are at least a couple of years away, said Boston in an email. But the move to preserve the cemetery and the home on the former thoroughbred farm is See Winding Oaks, page A2
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The Winding Oaks property is shown in this ariel photograph on Tuesday. More than 3,000 homes are planned for the site. [Dave Miller/Special to the Ocala Gazette]
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