Federal Heights Mayor Dale Sparks no longer works at the Bare Essence nude dancing club. He quit the day after police raided the place on prostitution and improper-fondling charges.
Federal Heights resident Ted May wishes it were the other way around.
“I wish Dale had stepped down as mayor and kept working at Bare Essence,” said May, a former planning and zoning commissioner, now leading a fledgling effort to recall Sparks from office.
The drama in the city north of Denver is X-rated not just for nudity. It’s X-rated for extreme stupidity. It began in April 2005 with Sparks taking a job collecting cover charges and checking IDs in a nudie club. He still finds the decision OK.
“I don’t want a whorehouse in my city any more than anybody else,” he said. But, he added, “I was not arrested or named as a suspect” in the club’s alleged prostitution. Furthermore, the mayor, who’s been elected twice and loses his job to term limits in November 2007, sees nothing wrong with a private citizen working in a place making money off full-frontal titillation while serving as a public official. Bare Essence, he said, was the only job he could get to pay for health insurance. He doesn’t think he has embarrassed Federal Heights. He believes most city residents see it the same way.
May plans to test this theory.
“People are willing to sign (the recall petition),” he said. The Committee to Recall Dale Sparks has more than half the 379 signatures it needs to get an election and intends to have the balance soon.
May discovered Spark’s involvement in the skin trade in June 2005, when the mayor came to the Planning and Zoning Commission for permission to run a flea market in the Bare Essence parking lot. May cast the only dissenting vote against the flea-market permit, then quit the planning board in disgust. He claims Federal Heights code required the mayor to file a written notice of his Bare Essence job because of conflicts of interest.
Sparks admits he didn’t do that. He also admits that while he was mayor, Bare Essence successfully sued the city to let 18-year-old girls dance naked. But Sparks insists that he’s recused himself in every public matter related to the club.
Still, when the cops raided the club April 15, May could stand it no longer.
“This gives Federal Heights another black eye,” May said.
As reputations for scandal go, Federal Heights already has a fat lip and a cauliflower ear. A recent city manager left quickly for as-yet-unspecified “bad behavior.” A TV reporter once taped the then-police and fire chiefs drinking on city time.
Maybe this history explains why not a single member of the Federal Heights council responded to my requests to talk about recalling Sparks.
The folks at Bare Essence didn’t have much to say, either. Dancers outnumbered customers when I arrived at the club Wednesday night. The air was not erotic; it was desperate. As I sat at a stage where a young woman undulated 3 feet away in nothing but a pair of high heels, three other scantily-clad lovelies chatted me up. They hoped I’d pay them $30 for a “private dance” in the back of the club. I hoped they’d tell me about the mayor. We all left disappointed.
The police raid “killed business,” club owner Leo Tsodikov told me bitterly. But none of it had to do with Dale Sparks.
“I ate at his barbecue place,” Tsodikov said. “He told me he was going out of business. He needed to pay for health insurance. Dale’s a nice guy. So I gave him a job at the door. He didn’t ask for it. Now, I’m sorry I offered him the job. He doesn’t deserve any of this.”
Yeah, he does.
Even Ted May finds Dale Sparks pleasant. Most folks in Federal Heights know Sparks shuffles on a bad hip that needs to be replaced. But this recall effort isn’t about Sparks’ good personality or his bad health. It’s about his judgment and his ethics. Sparks is not supposed to represent vice lords or women thrusting bare hips at customers in a strip club. He is supposed to represent the citizens of Federal Heights.
It should now be up to those citizens to decide if he served them responsibly.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
