Workers erected a permanent chain-link fence along the north edge of a public alley in Nelmar Terrace Friday, just a few hours after The Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind's Board of Trustees approved the action at an emergency meeting.


Attorney Sid Ansbacher, representing FSDB, said, "An enclosure is better than what we've had. It makes it clear what is public and what is private property."

The 50 people attending, mostly Nelmar Terrace residents, generally wanted to protect their alley's public status.

Melinda Rakoncay, president of Nelmar Terrace Neighborhood Association, said later, "The security issue is a problem of their own making. It's kind of comical. After all they went through (Friday), (the new fence) doesn't protect the women in Collins House."

The 12 young disabled women living in the Collins House on Nelmar Avenue, a two-story house built in 1924, moved there to "develop skills necessary to deal with the transition to the outside world," board member Dr. Thomas Zavelson said.

He said he loves the neighborhoods around the school but said, "We've got innocent children and put them in harm's way. Please don't use them as pawns!"
That accusation brought anger and outrage from many in the audience.

Someone yelled, "You're the one using them as pawns." Another said, "You put them there. We didn't."

Ansbacher said the fence was an "intermedial goal" and that the board wanted to hold the discussion in public.

"It's not ideal," he said. "But it was less than ideal before."

The fence installed Friday doesn't block access to the back of the Collins House. Vision into the lower floor windows, however, will be inhibited by reflective screens.

But the fence does block access to the President's House next door.


Bottom line: The school wants the alley.

But Nelmar residents want the alley to stay public and don't care what FSDB offers in return. They are also concerned what FSDB will do with the expected passage of state Rep. Bill Proctor's House Bill 1037, which would give the school eminent domain powers.



That is what the board agreed to do.


But Rakconcay said she'd read FSDB police incident reports and said the sexual offender was a fisherman who had been a passenger in a car that had made a wrong turn.

"All of the other offenders are my neighbors. I'm in a report. There's a city commissioner on one," she said.

Nearby resident Robert Hodge said he's lived 100 feet from the Collins House over the last 20 years.

"I have a sensor light outside my house. The only suspicious people I've seen in the alley are campus police," he said. "Any dangers there are hypothetical. I don't see the need for any further enlargement of security."


Rakoncay said security had never been a problem there.

"If the neighborhood is so unsafe, I'd like to see the letters sent to parents telling them how unsafe the neighborhood is," she said. "Fear is being whipped up."