Bucket brigade

Your donation may be just a drop in the bucket, but where is the money going?

The signs on their buckets read Save the Children or Help the Homeless. They solicit donations by the roadside, ostensibly for charity. And if you've ever stopped at an intersection where they're working, you may have been tempted to drop some loose change for their causes.

At a busy intersection those drops can quickly turn into buckets full of cash. Such was the case last month at the intersection of Florida 13 and Race Track Road. During one 10-minute period, more than 20 people dropped money into the bucket of a man soliciting donations from the median of the roadway.

When asked what the money is collected for, some of the men responded it's for churches or helping hurricane victims. But a closer look into the group's activities shows there are many unanswered questions from donors, St. Johns County commissioners and the Sheriff's Office about where and how these men have collected and where the money has gone for the past several years.

In addition, a proposed new county ordinance could soon require permits for solicitors, and a new understanding of existing rules may mean the bucket brigade is getting the boot.

questions, but few answers

The men soliciting Jan. 26 in Fruit Cove were not interested in talking to a reporter. One ran across an intersection, dodging oncoming traffic, to avoid being interviewed. A second refused to identify himself or answer any questions, although he wore a badge with the name "Sawetka Scott" typed above the words "New Life Ministries." When asked why his group was collecting donations and what they planned to do with the money collected, he simply pointed across the street to a third man. The second man's answer remained the same when asked where the group was from, and why they had chosen to seek donations in St. Johns County.

The third man identified himself as Pastor K. Burton.

"We're not interested in any stories," Burton said, making clear he didn't want to speak to a reporter.

Although his badge read New Life Ministries, he called the group "New Life Christian Ministries," which he said had 36 churches located all over the United States. Burton said the churches helped the homeless by buying them houses.

Burton answered "everywhere" when asked where they had purchased homes and where they provided services. He did not provide a physical address for any of the houses his group had bought, or for even one of the 36 churches, even though he claimed branches existed in both Jacksonville and Tallahassee.

Burton would not say where he and his colleagues planned to take the money in their buckets at the end of the day, or where they had reported to work prior to driving to St. Johns County that morning.

Minutes later, all three men ran to a waiting mini-van and drove away.

Commissioner Cyndi Stevenson, who represents the northwest, said earlier that day she stopped to make a donation and asked about the group's mission. The man who accepted her donation said they were from the "House of David," but seemed unsure where it was located, Stevenson said. Eventually, she says, he told her it was in Dundee, Fla.

Longtime area resident Ellen Whitmer also said she had donated to the group, and was told her donation was headed to New Orleans to benefit Hurricane Katrina victims.

Whitmer says road-side solicitors in northwest St. Johns County are a relatively new phenomenon, but predicted more will arrive in the wake of St. Augustine's new panhandling ban.

No listing was found for New Life Ministries or New Life Christian Ministries in Tallahassee or Jacksonville, or for the House of David in Dundee. There is a New Life Christian Ministries in Niceville, Fla., near Pensacola, but the pastor there, Bishop T.P. Johnson Sr., said the solicitors were not from his church. A spokesperson for New Life Christian Fellowship in Jacksonville said they had received similar inquiries in the past, but that the church has never used road-side solicitors to raise funds.

Paperwork the group's members gave St. Johns County Sheriff's deputies identified them as the New Life Church of Florida Inc. It listed an address on 22nd Street in Tampa. No listing was found for that address and when it was researched through the Web-based satellite image program Google Earth, the address appeared to be a vacant lot in an industrial district. Someone at another Tampa church with the same name, but a different address, had no knowledge of the solicitors or the church on 22nd Street. A Texas attorney listed on the paperwork did not respond to a message left with his secretary. A spokesperson for a Texas-based nationwide Christian radio broadcast titled New Life Ministries denied any knowledge of the solicitors.

permit problems

Sgt. Chuck Mulligan, spokesman for the Sheriff's Office, said his department received several calls from residents concerned about the solicitors, with many asking if the men were legitimate. Others, he said, called to complain they were impeding traffic.

Mulligan said deputies are limited in what they can do about solicitors - legitimate or not - working area roadsides. No county law governs who may solicit on county roads. Only if the solicitors violate traffic laws can they be cited, but an officer must witness the violation, Mulligan said.

Deputies questioned the men soliciting along Florida 13, and Mulligan says the officers were shown a permit from the Florida Department of Transportation and articles of incorporation identifying their group as a 501C3, non-profit organization. Deputies did not witness any traffic violations, so the men were allowed to continue soliciting, Mulligan said.

FDOT Spokeswoman Gina Busscher said the Transportation Department does not issue permits to allow soliciting along state roadways. It does issue permits that allow non-profit groups to solicit at welcome centers and rest areas, but, Busscher said, "I checked with the FDOT District Permits office and none of the [groups named] have registered to collect at a welcome center."

When told FDOT did not issue permits to the group, Mulligan began investigating and said if the men had shown officers a fraudulent permit, they may have broken the law.

"If the permit they showed us was a fraud, that's a pretty serious offense," Mulligan said.

Later, he said confusion caused by several overlapping, cross-referenced statutes had caused officers to believe the solicitors were behaving lawfully.

Mulligan said one statute indicated their behavior was legal if they had a permit, and the qualifications for it were referenced in another statute. The deputies took no action because the permits looked legitimate, and were similar to permits the same group of solicitors had provided at various times since 2004.

Mulligan said he later discovered the state permits had to be issued by the county, and because St. Johns County doesn't issue permits, the men could not have been acting legally. Even if the county had issued permits, Mulligan says, they would not be valid on state-maintained roadways.

Mulligan said the solicitors working Florida 13, and others from the same group who have solicited along U.S. 1 in St. Augustine, may have committed second-degree misdemeanors and would be subject to arrest. So far, they have not returned to either area.

panhandler laws

St. Johns County may soon require roadside solicitors to carry a county permit. Assistant County Attorney Paris Desai said he is working with county staffers, including senior officers from the Sheriff's Office, to draft an ordinance governing panhandling and road-side solicitations of all kinds.

Unlike St. Augustine's recently approved panhandling ban, which was designed to stop panhandlers from annoying visitors to the city's historic district and possibly damaging the tourist trade, the county's ordinance is meant to protect residents from both traffic dangers and fraud. Although the St. Augustine ban bars everyone, including legitimate charities, from soliciting in restricted areas, the county hopes to allow local charitable efforts to continue provided they are willing to abide by the rules, including wearing reflective vests and posting bonds. Stevenson said drafting an effective ordinance that also allowed for legitimate solicitors was difficult.

"The problem is, every proposed ordinance effects the firemen, and we don't want to do that," Stevenson said.

Every year St. Johns County firemen participate in the Muscular Dystrophy Association's Fill the Boot Campaign. Fire Rescue spokesman Jeremy Robshaw refused to comment on the proposed ordinance without seeing it, but said the MDA would feel the pinch if the firemen were forced off of right-of-ways. Robshaw said the firemen place public safety number one on their list of priorities, and would continue to work within whatever framework the county provides.

Desai is seeking input from several county agencies, and plans to have a first draft of the ordinance ready to present to the commission prior to its Feb. 20 meeting.