CITRUS CRUSADER

By John Labriola - The Citrus County Commission approved its 2025-26 budget at its final budget hearing last week. The general fund budget, which pays for the county’s day-to-day operations, is based on the rollback rate of 6.7382 mills, which is down from this year’s 6.9898 mills. A mill is $1 in property taxes for every $1,000 of taxable value. The rollback rate is the rate that would generate the same amount of property tax revenue as the previous year, excluding revenue from new construction.  Commissioners also adopted the rollback rate for the library budget and the health department, while keeping the tax rate the same as the previous year for fire rescue and transportation. As a result, the aggregate tax rate of 8.6085 is .58 percent above the aggregate rollback rate of 8.5591. The final budget includes $12.6 million in road improvements, which includes $1.6 million in administrative cuts that were made after commissioners decided to adopt the rollback rate in July.  C...

By John Labriola - Citrus County will join a number of other communities in Florida in proclaiming Oct. 14 as the Charlie Kirk Day of Remembrance in honor of his birthday.  The decision to honor the slain Christian conservative icon came at the Citrus County Commission's Sept. 8 meeting, nearly a year after Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10, 2025.  The anniversary prompted several residents to urge the commission to approve a library display for Kirk following an 8-1 vote last month by the Library Advisory Board (LAB) to reject one . The LAB's vote came two days after the commission adopted a library display policy that banned political displays but that Commission Chairwoman Diana Finegan said would allow a display of books by Charlie Kirk as a "historical" figure. "The man deserves something in the library," said Ray Kalavsky of Inverness, noting that while rejecting a Charlie Kirk display, the LAB also supported continuing a Martin Luther King display, wh...

By John Labriola - Prospects this year for a library book display on slain Christian conservative icon Charlie Kirk went from dim to virtually nonexistent last week as the Citrus County Library Advisory Board (LAB) voted 8-1 to reject a motion to recommend a Kirk display during the week of his birthday on Oct. 14.  The vote came just two days after the Citrus County Commission unanimously approved a library display policy stating that "displays will not feature political, religious, or sexual content." It had been over eight months since commissioners voted to ask staff to finalize the policy, but the vote took place during a lame duck meeting after two commissioners – Diana Finegan and Rebecca Bays – lost their reelection bids, and after the library system had already planned its displays for October, which are determined a few months in advance.  Before voting for the policy, Finegan said it would still allow book displays of both Martin Luther King and Charlie Kirk bec...

By John Labriola - A lot of people are asking what happened in Tuesday's election to make Citrus County Commissioners Rebecca Bays and Diana Finegan both lose their reelection bids. While some are attributing their losses to voters' weariness with overdevelopment, that explanation doesn't make sense given the fact that one of the candidates who lost was seen as pro-development and the other was seen as anti-development. The same is true for the winners, with one having the reputation of opposing developers and the other of supporting them.  So what was it then?  Since Bays lost by 9 points to educator Holli Herndon (36 to 45 percent), and Finegan barely lost to Stacey Worthington, it would probably be easiest to start with Bays. It's a maxim in politics that leaders should reflect the values of the people they represent if they wish to remain in power, but Bays repeatedly betrayed the conservative citizens who make up the vast majority of Citrus County voters.  In 20...

By John Labriola - The Citrus County Chronicle ran a "clarification" notice in its local section on Saturday about a front-page hit piece published a week earlier that falsely accused District 4 County Commission candidate Jennifer Grogan of lying about reporting a death threat to police on July 27. The tiny notice states that the Chronicle's Aug. 8 article "should have stated that after Jennifer Grogan reported a phone scam incident to a deputy, she told the deputy the caller made a threat at the end of the call." It then states that readers who are interested can read the "updated" article online. No apology from the newspaper, which mischaracterized the police video it had posted on its own website, in which Grogan clearly says she received a death threat from an unidentified phone number. No mention that the "threat at the end of the call" was actually a threat to kill her. No online correction of sleazy editor Jim Gouvellis' Aug. 12...

By John Labriola - The fallout from Citrus County Commission candidate Jennifer Grogan's report of a death threat to the sheriff's office last month spilled over into Tuesday's commission meeting, with commissioners saying they may ask Sheriff David Vincent to publicly address the issue after Grogan and other residents brought it up at the meeting. Grogan, who owns a small business and helps run a Christian ministry, received a call from an unidentifed number on July 27 from someone claiming to be the police. She was told she had to come to the sheriff's office to pay a $5,000 fine or go to jail, but when she arrived, the caller made a death threat. Grogan immediately asked to speak with a sheriff's deputy. She sat down with Deputy Daylon Rogers, who took her report. In the video of their interaction, which can be found HERE , Grogan tells the deputy that the caller told her "we just got you out of the house to kill you," to which Rogers responds, "T...

By John Labriola - You may have heard I will not be a candidate for Inverness City Council this November. I filed my paperwork last week when I learned that nobody else was running. Although I knew I would not have much time to devote to a campaign, I felt that one of the incumbents deserved a challenger. I gave the city a check for the qualifying fee but asked that it not be deposited until the Friday qualifying deadline when there would be enough money in my account. Instead, the check was immediately deposited without my knowledge, and it bounced. I was informed about this after the deadline and was told I was disqualified. For residents who were looking forward to a race, I'm sorry that there won't be one, but the truth is that even if I had won, I would not have been able to give the position the attention it deserves. My job takes me out of town several months out of the year, and I would have had to miss many meetings, which isn't fair to the public. Residents deser...