Mosquito Control study questioned

Mosquito Control study questioned



By PETER GUINTA
peter.guinta@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 03/27/09


ST. AUGUSTINE BEACH -- Two long-time mosquito control experts -- with a combined 78 years of experience -- offered a verbal preview of their recent analysis of Anastasia Mosquito Control District operations Thursday, but not everyone on the district's board welcomed the information.

David Dame and John Beidler of Entomological Services praised the administration and staff of the district. They said the staff works at "150 percent" and that consolidating the four stations is a good idea.

They recommended the district write a procedure manual and said it needs to hire eight more inspector-sprayers.

They also recommended that the district look into buying or contracting with a helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft company to perform aerial spraying of difficult-to-reach areas.

Board member Jeanne Moeller said, "What our staff is hearing is, 'Job well done!'"

Retired board member Mary Tarver Willis supported consolidation, saying, "There's a lot of duplication. You'd save on insurance, utilities and maintenance."

Board member Col. Ron Radford said the public's health is the district's number one concern.

"Everything else is secondary," he said.

But less positively, the two consultants recommended that the district switch from using organo-phosphate chemicals to ones used by most other Florida counties but banned in Europe.

The two consultants also reported that the Ponte Vedra Beach station facility, now closed, was not repairable due to rust, and that staff morale was down due to press reports of board infighting.

Activist Ed Slavin of St. Augustine attacked the report, saying Dame and Beidler had performed "an exercise in good-old-boy issues" and were practicing "junk science" because they had avoided taking on developers by not addressing vacant land that contains ponds or other waterways.

Slavin said he was denied a copy of the report, which the board said has not been printed yet.

Board member John Sundeman also attacked the report's recommendation to hire more sprayers, saying that last year, there were 6,000 hours of idle time billed by district staffers.

"One of the morale problems here is the excess idle time problem," he said.

Dane said the study was not a fiscal study, just a look by experienced consultants at the district's operations, "what you need and how it's being done to meet your needs."

District chairwoman Janice Bequette said there have been a "few system failures. I'm not getting a sense from the study that we are meeting our needs as well as we could.

"(But) I do believe we need some hard numbers."



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