Six maintenance workers for the St. Augustine Shores Service Corp. were fired by the board president Monday after they refused to chop down cedar hedges.

In Shores politics, where lawn-based outrage and secret back-stabbing have become the norm, a new brawl took root this week.

Now it's between the president, Terry Brannon, and the maintenance team.

Each side gave a different cause for the Monday deed. The maintenance men blame it on their confusion, their reluctance, and the president's problems with certain homeowners. Brannon said it's about property rights, maintenance, and "mutiny."

Among the men who lost their jobs was Bill Henion, former maintenance supervisor and Shores employee for 1 year and 3 months. He was supervisor until Brannon demoted him a month ago.

Henion said he and five others were fired because they refused to remove a woman's trees from a greenbelt that bordered her property.

But Brannon said the trees were on Service Corp. property -- a conservation tract, not a greenbelt -- and that other homeowners had asked for them to be torn down.

Greenbelts are strips of land owned by the Service Corp. that are supposed to be left wild. They have been a source of tense, bitter interest in the Shores for several months, since an argument over them led to police presence at a public meeting. Recently, a lawsuit was filed by the Service Corp. that charged 19 Shores residents with trespassing and reducing property values by maintaining the greenbelts.

"They expect us to get involved in their litigations, and we don't have a clue what's going on," Henion said.

He added that the team told Brannon that they wanted the litigation to be finalized before they cut down cedars that the woman said were hers. The cedars are between 6-feet and 8-feet tall, he said. They were also referred to as shrubs, plants and bushes.

Brannon said the men were fired for insubordination with cause.

"It has absolutely nothing to do with any litigation. It has absolutely nothing to do with any greenbelt," Brannon said.

"We were clearing growth that had overgrown the sidewalk -- at homeowners' request," Brannon said.

But Joseph Appler, one of the fired workers, said the plants were at least a foot away from the sidewalk.

"It looked good as far as I've seen," Appler said.

Adding to the confusion, Appler said the cedars were actually on a "swale," yet another type of property maintained by the Service Corp.

The "swale" is the grass between the road and the sidewalk.

Gary Bradley, of the fired workers, said the homeowner might not own the land in question, but Brannon is antagonizing her and others. The workers were caught in the middle, he said.

Bradley said that after being fired, he told the woman that the president wanted the cedars removed.

Bradley said the woman strongly objected.

Brannon said the woman was misled. He said the maintenance men were supposed to trim the cedars on the Service Corp. property, and they weren't going to touch the woman's personal hedges.

He said there will be a meeting today at 1:30 p.m., but it will be about the budget and maintenance contracts, not about the fired workers.