'Heil Hitler' salute at Florida board meeting draws criticism

A citizen board member in Florida is being criticized after she made a miscalculation about what would be deemed as funny and gave the one-armed “Heil Hitler” salute during a town meeting.

Marcia Radosevich was directing the gesture at the Village of Wellington’s planning and development services director, Tim Stillings, in an attempt to compare the power he had to the control Adolf Hitler had over the Nazis.

Radosevich mainly “did not understand” why Stillings or members of his staff would be able to look at project applications independent of input from Wellington’s Development Review Committee under a new proposal that was introduced at the Planning, Zoning & Adjustment Board meeting.

In a video of the meeting, Stillings can be heard saying, “Wow. Wow. That might be a bit over the top, I think.”

“It becomes uncomfortable when you’re dealing with an issue whether it’s a board member or the public and they make it personal,” Stillings told the Palm Beach Post. “There’s an attachment of you as a person to the discussion. That’s all that bothered me -- that it became personal and not about the issue.”

Other meeting attendees were not impressed.

“It was extremely inappropriate,” said Laurie Cohen. “I understand that she felt strongly about the point that she was trying to make, but I think the words she chose and the gesture she made were really inappropriate.”

There are two more meetings before Radosevich’s two-year appointment to the board ends May 31.

[Palm Beach Post]