THE ARTICLE BELOW WAS IN THE CITRUS TIMES YESTERDAY, REGRETABLLY, ANZEL PASSED TODAY, WE GOT THE WORD AT WORK ABOUT 4:45 P.M.
A fighting spirit clashes with new foe
The activist steps into another arena after appearing often on ballots and at meetings.
By BARBARA BEHRENDT, Times Staff Writer
Published September 25, 2006
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[Times photo: M. N. Golden] |
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Ansel Briggs, 67, reads a get well card at Seven Rivers Regional Medical Center. In July he was diagnosed with stage-4 sqamous cell cancer. He and his wife of six years, Harriett, have been battling not only Ansel’s cancer, but insurance companies and doctors. |
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Here’s a summary of the many battles of Ansel Briggs:
Public service
Briggs ran for school superintendent three times.
- In 1996 he earned 468 votes running as a write-in candidate.
During that race he adopted an eye-catching campaign slogan.
Briggs learned that the law didn’t allow voters to bring anything with them into the voting booth.
Thus the slogan: Vote Naked.
- Four years later, Briggs ran as an independent and earned 5,491 votes, or 9.85 percent of the total. Some speculated that Briggs cost incumbent Pete Kelly a second term.
- In 2004, Briggs again ran with no party affiliation earning 6.19 percent of the vote, a total of 4,074 ballots.
He said that was his last run.
Briggs said the “bully pulpit” that candidates enjoy allowed him to “point out things that other people didn’t want to talk about.”
- In 2001, as Crystal River sought a replacement for City Manager David Sallee, Briggs applied. He didn’t make the short list.
Education
- A longtime critic of the School Board on a myriad of issues, Briggs fought for several years to save the old Lakeview School in Hernando from the wrecking ball.
In 1999, the school district gave the building to the county. Now it’s a community center.
- Briggs wanted the school district to offer meaningful alternative programs for students who did not succeed in the regular classroom setting.
He has said that a vandalism of his property in 1995 sparked his strong interest in turning around the lives of at-risk youths. He researched the vandals and found out that, despite their past bad behavior, they had gotten no special help.
Briggs also floated the idea that the school district move its alternative school, the Renaissance Center, to the old Brown Schools site in Lecanto rather than buying land and building a new school.
The Brown Schools site, off County Road 491, eventually became the county’s center for community and veteran services; the new Renaissance Center was built at the Lecanto school complex.
- Briggs criticized school officials for their use of a technique called “timeout,” primarily because the space allocated in the old Lakeview school for a timeout’ area was a tiny cubicle tucked inside a classroom.
“This is deprivation. … We use this to deprive people of their dignity,” he complained.
- Briggs spoke out against the practice of paddling students for discipline purposes, argued that the public should have more opportunities to address the School Board on critical issues, advocated for support workers in the school district in discipline cases, criticized a district official for banning a well-known poem, and pushed for critical district policies to be posted on the district’s computer Web site so everyone could have access.
- During the contentious discussions in 2001 over the format of the opening prayer at School Board meetings, Briggs said he would like to lead a prayer in the tradition of his faith, the Indian traditions of the Toltec.
He was not invited to do that.
County, consumer and social issues
* Briggs spoke against the need for the extension of the Suncoast Parkway.
* After his mother was involuntarily committed for psychological evaluation in 1994, Briggs fought for changes in the Baker Act.
His mother had been in a daytime program for Alzheimer’s patients when officials decided she needed an evaluation. Briggs, her caregiver, was not immediately notified.
-Briggs questioned state damage disclosure laws after he purchased a mobile home that he learned – too late – had been flooded in the 1993 no-name storm.
He complained about the county’s lime rock road paving and code enforcement procedures, and fought for a business owner whose pawnshop was negatively affected by delayed county construction for months longer than planned.
- Briggs also advocated for residents about planned developments in their community and spoke out in favor of preservation of historic structures.
- In keeping with his concerns for young people, Briggs wrote to the governor and the Judicial Qualifications Commission protesting what he considered a harsh sentence for Adam Bollenback. The teen was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a theft of a six-pack of beer.
“I think it’s unethical for a judge to “break the spirit” of anybody,” he said.
Barbara Behrendt can be reached at Behrendt@sptimes.com or 564-3621.
