Frog Fest city loathe to leap into 21st Century : Sleepy Florida burg is divided over a new mayor’s warnings to evolve or die. Step 1 is a water system.

In this no-stoplight town, some people are dizzy just thinking about the changes taking place. Only a couple of years ago, for example, the town council banned mules and horses from the two main streets.

“They were a nuisance,” said former Mayor Joseph P. Brooks, 81. “People were bringing horses right up on the sidewalk (and) galloping down the streets like the speed laws didn’t apply to them.”

For most of its 82 years, Fellsmere got along fine as an outpost of quiet country living. Then two years ago, the Army Corps of Engineers dammed the St. John’s River, and suddenly Fellsmere became a mecca for fishing and frogs. The first annual Fellsmere Frog Festival in 1992 drew thousands of tourists to eat fried frog thighs, drink beer and buy souvenir T-shirts.

About the same time, an energetic young woman was elected mayor, and the town found itself debating a controversial plan to build a municipal water system.

“Absolutely necessary,” said Mayor Renee Herrera. “Because we are such an old city, and the elevation is so low, the septic systems back up in heavy rains. I know people want things to stay the same way they’ve always been. But we have no tax base, and if we want to make the area buildable and bring in some new business, change is inevitable.”

There’s the rub. There are people in Fellsmere who cringe at words such as “buildable” and “new business.” “Change” is a word they want to hear only when they hand the clerk at the Fellsmere Cash Grocery a dollar for a pack of Doublemint gum.

Former Councilman Frank Clavelin is one such citizen. “We want to stay out of the mainstream,” said Clavelin, a resident for all but two of his 76 years. “But they’ve found us out here in the boondocks, and now they’re going to louse us up.”

If this sounds like small-town stuff, it is. Fellsmere is an oak-shaded agricultural community not five miles west of Interstate 95, one of the nation’s busiest highways. The white-sand beaches and Florida’s best surf are less than an hour’s drive to the east, as is shopping at a modern mall in Melbourne, Fla., to the north.

Yet time has long bypassed this town, and many of the 2,500 residents like it that way. “It’s so peaceful and quiet here,” said Ruby Korman, Fellsmere’s vice mayor. “When you come home, you feel like you’re in your own little world. It’s next to heaven.”

Now, however, change appears to be rolling into Fellsmere like a locomotive, with Herrera, 28, at the throttle.

“People tell me all the time that the reason they moved here is because Fellsmere is a quaint little town,” she said. “They don’t want Ft. Lauderdale here. I know that. If it were financially feasible not to change it, I probably wouldn’t. I grew up here; I’m raising my children here. But the problem is, the town can’t stay the same. We have to have growth.”

Growth, says Herrera, means money. The town has a bare-bones operating budget of $502,000 a year but can’t meet it. Fellsmere has no funds to pay a city manager and, until a local retiree was hired recently, had not even had a police chief for more than a year. Before he left, the former chief complained that the town council wouldn’t spend $200 to buy him a bulletproof vest.

One of Fellsmere’s problems is that it suffers from property values so low that after a $25,000 homestead exemption is subtracted, there’s not much left to tax. Clavelin, who runs a trailer park and owns considerable property, complains that he is virtually bankrolling the town himself. But he says he is willing to do that if only Herrera would just abandon the water system plan.

But Herrera says she is convinced that a city water and sewer system will solve the money crunch by attracting builders who will put up more expensive homes. It may even lure small industry, she says. To pay for the system, the city has secured a $4-million loan-and-grant package from the federal Farmers Home Administration.

Korman says she supports the mayor. “We’re going to have to have water,” she said. But she also worries that the debt being incurred to pay for the water system could bankrupt Fellsmere.

“We have 780 houses in town, and about 600 signed up for water,” said Korman, who estimates that the average monthly bill could run more than $25. “But many of our people are on food stamps, and they might not be able to pay. We’re going to have to hire somebody to read the meters too.”

Herrera says she knows that yanking Fellsmere into the 21st Century involves some risk.

“This town has so much potential,” says the Fellsmere native and single mother of three. “But we’ve had bad financial problems in the last few years, and I just felt like if I could get in here, I could turn it around.

“I haven’t lost sight of the character of the town. I don’t want it to boom overnight, but it’s going to grow. I just want to get prepared.”