Have you wondered what embattled Deltona City Manager Jane Shang does on the weekends?
Wonder no longer. She is volunteering in the Lake Helen City Hall records room.
Shang is working off the community-service hours required by her plea agreement with the State Attorney’s Office. After it was discovered in late 2018 that Shang had registered to vote using Deltona City Hall as her residence address, she was found guilty of six instances of felonious voter fraud, and she negotiated a deal with prosecutors.
Lake Helen Mayor Daisy Raisler was surprised and uncomfortable, she said, to find Shang scanning documents in City Hall on a recent weekend.
“Oh, it was Saturday and Sunday she was doing this?” Commissioner Jim Connell said. “How come we’re doing it on Satur — oh, because she’s working, isn’t she?”
Despite the urgings of vocal critics in Deltona, Shang remains Deltona’s city manager, twice surviving votes by the Deltona City Commission on motions to remove her. Each time, only two of the city’s seven commissioners favored her ouster.
Lake Helen City Administrator Becky Witte reassured commissioners about the propriety of Shang working without constant supervision in the records room, doing things like scanning old documents.
“It’s nothing she wouldn’t have ready access to,” Witte said. “It is stuff we would have never gotten done. … I see a lot of benefits for this, and I don’t see a lot of negatives.”
“There’s been no evidence that this party has done anything wrong, misappropriated or copied something she shouldn’t have, and until such time as that evidence comes forward, I’ll stand squarely behind our city administrator, and that’s how I feel about it,” Commissioner Tom Wilson said.
“Well, I guess you can wait until someone gets hit at an intersection before you put up a stoplight, too,” Commissioner Rick Basso responded.
Witte, Police Chief Mike Walker, and City Attorney Scott Simpson had all OK’d the somewhat unusual arrangement.
Shang is serving her hours under the supervision of the Lake Helen Police Department, one of the agencies approved for community service.
On the day Raisler saw Shang, Witte said, Shang was scanning in old meeting minutes, all of which are public record.
“Trust me on my decision,” Witte said.
“My level of experience with records is totally different, but I want to thank the commissioners for listening to me,” Raisler said, after bringing up the Shang topic at the City Commission’s marathon five-hour meeting July 11.
Raisler continued, “And that was my last thing, so let’s move on.”
