Eustis drops questions on Sabatini residency
EUSTIS — After a raucous meeting that lasted more than three hours, city commissioners voted 4-0 late Thursday to drop further discussion of whether fellow commissioner Anthony Sabatini met the residency requirements to run for office last year.
The decision came after contentious exchanges as more than 30 residents spoke — most in favor of Sabatini — in the crowded commission chambers.
“I think it’s a really, really shameful thing that you’re spending all this money if you’re going to figure out if someone had a residency requirement — he’s been in this town a long time,” Eustis resident Russ Bragg said.
Commissioner Marie Aliberti — who taught at Eustis High School while Sabatini was a student — brought up documents from a “concerned citizen” early last month showing that Sabatini listed a Gainesville address, which he used to vote and is on his drivers license, before he ran for office last year.
According to Eustis’ charter, candidates must be city residents for two years before they can run for office.
“That’s kind of the whole funny undercurrent of this thing, is that the person who is questioning my residency” knew him as a student, Sabatini said Friday.
To determine if he met the residency requirement, commissioners voted 3-2 last month to hire a Jacksonville law firm — which charged rates from $240 to $450 an hour — to look into the matter.
The firm spelled out its findings on seven pages but didn’t make a recommendation.
“After an examination of all the evidence … the Commission must then make a determination of Mr. Sabatini’s residency at the time of his application for candidacy,” it said.
Sabatini acknowledged he voted in Gainesville six months before his election, but said his parents “also have a house in Gainesville,” which is where he would stay when he commuted to University of Florida law classes while his home was in Eustis.
Eustis City Attorney Derek Schroth said case law shows that even the city’s own two-year residency requirement would likely get invalidated in court.
Only Gov. Rick Scott or a Circuit Court judge could remove Sabatini from office, he said, or “voters can remove a commissioner through a recall petition.”
At the meeting, residents talked of doing just that — but for commissioners who questioned Sabatini’s residency. He was elected to a partial two-year term in November, replacing a commissioner who resigned because he moved into a new home just outside the city limits.
Resident after resident spoke in Thursday in support of Sabatini, criticizing what some called a “witch hunt” by other commissioners. Commissioner Linda Durham Bob has supported Sabatini throughout the issue.
Lake County Property Ap-
praiser Carey Baker, who made more than 7,000 residency determinations last year, told commissioners his decisions are based of a “preponderance of evidence” and made case by case.
“When a college student, he [Sabatini] put down a few addresses like many of them do here and there, but that does not take away that Eustis is still his hometown,” he said.
Speaking before the meeting, Baker said he believes that questioning the eligibility of the “whippersnapper” commissioner, 28, is politically motivated, something many in the crowd echoed Thursday.
Sabatini was the lone commissioner defending a gun seller’s right to be a vendor at a city event this summer, and Thursday night Second Amendment advocates came to support him.
In May, Sabatini created a stir when he said a Christian invocation at a commission meeting following a secular invocation. He said the group’s representative giving the secular invocation has “a particular scorn for Christianity,” while the group’s director called Sabatini’s action an insult.
Eustis Mayor Robert Morin had said the investigation into Sabatini is about following the city’s charter and making sure his votes are legally defensible.
“All of that is part of the process and it’s part of our charter,” he said. “We have to make sure [his votes] are duly-constituted actions.”
But that changed after residents protested and attorneys laid out how tangled determining residency was.
Commissioners Morin, Aliberti and Carla Gnann-Thompson walked back their position and voted to drop the matter.
When it was all over, Morin said it was good to have young people involved in city government and that it was nothing personal. He also had kind words for Sabatini.
“He is really great for our city,” he said.