Iorio Now In The Mix: A Fourth For Bridge?

The metaphor was perfect: downtown Tampa’s protean skyline and cultural-arts-district-to-be as seen from the Hillsborough River.

A bank of the Hillsborough was an ideal spot for Pam Iorio to officially launch her mayoral campaign. In her formal announcement, she pretty much covered the waterfront of all the good things we all want to happen, no matter who is elected mayor. No one is against progress or in favor of leaving anyone behind. No one is for more garages on the river. No one wants an ethics-challenged City Hall. No one doesn’t want a “can-do” mayor. Everyone wants a mayor who sounds this positive and this good, even with laryngitis.

But more pointedly, the site behind the University of Tampa was reinforcing to a major theme of her candidacy. She is not, she avowed in a still raspy voice, about pitting downtown interests against neighborhoods. Hers is a Pam glossian scenario — the best of all possible Tampas.

“Residents sometimes feel that big ticket items take away from an investment in everyday needs — sidewalks, drainage, roads, parks, public safety,” stated Iorio. “I believe we can have both

GOP: Going, Going, Gone to Gotham

In the aftermath of the GOP’s selection of New York City for the 2004 Republican Convention, these thoughts:

*Would Gov. Jeb Bush have tried harder for the GOP convention had it been Miami vying for it? Yes, that’s a rhetorical question.

*You don’t have to be a cheerleader or chamber of commerce mole to resent some of the local punditry that passed for analysis of the selection decision. NYC is America’s pre-eminent city and worthy of a national political convention, even, presumably, a Republican one. Finishing runner-up, however, doesn’t relegate Tampa to comparative “dump” status, as one sour-butt columnist sarDANically noted.

*Let’s see how the “War on Terrorism” plays out over the next two years. There’s a chance that bin Laden will still have Judge Crater status, and that we haven’t seen the last of high-profile, terrorist atrocities on our own soil. Graphic “Ground Zero” reminders and drumbeat retrospectives might not play as well in 2004 as Karl Rove anticipates.

*The GOP going to NYC is like the Dixiecrats going to Harlem.

*The GOP last won New York state in 1984. Regardless of Karl Rove’s recent track record, this gambit is a windmill tilt. We knew Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush is no Ronald Reagan. Rove should know that too.

*NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg put up big bucks and will still be in office in ’04. Dick Greco couldn’t write a big check and won’t be around to see this through. It mattered.

What’s In A Name? Not This Body Part

By almost any other name, a streetcar station is a streetcar station. Except if that name were “Mons Venus.” Thus, did Tampa Historical Streetcar turn down the station-naming request of adult entertainment gadfly Joe Redner — and the much-needed $150,000 fee that would have accompanied it.

According to THS, female body parts were well within the erroneous zone of impropriety. The streetcars’ policy was taken directly from that of HARTline, the system’s operator, which reserves the right to reject ads based on its own sense of taste.

HARTline spokesman Ed Crawford — presumably with a straight face — elaborated by noting that “Turgid Erect Member Station” would similarly have been rejected. Thanks, Ed. Now we really get it. Presumably, “Velvet Cave” wouldn’t have passed muster either. Ditto for a Streetcar Station Named (Triangle of) Desire.

The controversial Redner feigned incredulity over the banned-body-part provision. “I don’t know how they distinguish that from eye, foot, nose or ear,” he deadpanned.

Unless Redner wants to push “Foot Fetish,” he may want to consider going co-op to get his way and retool some old Mons’ signage. Remember “Talk About Your Bush Gardens”?

Stormwater Status No Longer Quo

Across too many years, through too many administrations, for all kinds of reasons, stormwater has been the stepchild issue of Tampa. Schools, police, fire, parks, playgrounds, garages, a stadium and downtown development dominated budgets. Priorities and politics.

That toad-strangler on New Year’s Eve was the most recent reminder that no-wake zones aren’t limited to the Hillsborough River and that too many canals have morphed into run-off ditches. Would that kayaks at certain South Tampa intersections were always exercises in hyperbole.

Finally, however, stormwater has standing.

Recently City Council served notice to the county tax collector of plans to impose a stormwater fee this year. This election year. The proposal, at the behest of lame duck Mayor Dick Greco, will come before the Council next month. A “yes” vote would result in single-family homeowners being charged $12 a year. Multi-family residences would ante up $6 a year per unit. Businesses would be billed based on the size of their buildings.

It’s not a perfect solution. That would have had to occur years ago — as Tampa’s pipes grew ancient and filters became all the rage. But it is reasonable and long overdue. The tax would raise about $4 million a year toward city drainage projects. Tampa’s current — and manifestly inadequate — stormwater budget is $9.4 million per year. The additional funding would also make the city eligible for numerous federal grants. It could help leverage more loan dollars as well.

The most formidable obstacle standing in the way of doing what should have been done a generation ago is potential political posturing and parochialism. This is not the time to re-fight the Community Investment Tax allocations or question the timing of the mayor’s forget-me-not fee on the way out of office. Nor is it proper to foster scenarios that pit neighborhoods against each other because not all residential areas are equally vulnerable to stormwater surges.

For example, South Tampa, where elevation is low and density high, will require a sizable share of the stormwater funding. On balance, however, flooding is a citywide issue. Tampa is an increasingly crowded, waterfront city that is finally addressing this chronic growing pain that has drained patience and quality of life for too long.

City Council Chairman Charlie Miranda, a mayoral candidate who will vote for the fee, put it best. “Say there’s no flooding problem where I live (in West Tampa), but I also drive on Kennedy Boulevard,” noted Miranda. “You have an enormous problem there.”

And that’s everybody’s enormous problem, including the next mayor’s.

Stetson Racially Retro?

So will Stetson, the private, 102-year-old law school that will be setting up shop in Tampa Heights, be some racially retro neighbor? According to one of its tenured, constitutional law professors, yes. Stetson University College of Law Professor Mark Brown says the school does an awful job of recruiting minority students. He cites a relatively stagnant black enrollment of about 5 to 7 percent for almost a decade, a figure that is lower than other law schools in this state.

Brown may or may not have valid points when it comes to Stetson’s aggressiveness in minority recruiting. He also may or may not be getting picked on for his racial critique of Stetson (“Affirmative Inaction: Stories From A Small Southern School”) that he published in Temple University’s Law Review and e-mailed to the entire student body during finals week.

But he’s definitely off base on one facet. He apparently thinks it’s Stetson’s responsibility to produce a black enrollment that’s reflective of this state’s black population, which is approximately 15 percent.

Stetson is a private law school, not a social experiment in diversity — which is typically defined in higher education circles by ethnicity and color. It is not the University of Michigan. Stetson shouldn’t be burdened with having to reflect the dubious presumption that abilities, aptitudes and attitudes — to cite just three factors — are proportionately parceled out in the population. Any population.

If that were the case, then obviously certain groups are disproportionately over-represented. Anyone want to tell Jewish Americans, for example, that their numbers are inordinately high for law and medical schools? Anyone want to make the case that venerating family, education and achievement is not a good enough reason for disproportionate representation?

“I’m embarrassed for my generation,” Brown told the Associated Press. So be it. So likely is the entire American Civil Liberties Union.

That, Stetson should be able to live with.

Plunder Blunder: Krewe’s Skewed View

Next year marks the centennial celebration of the Gasparilla parade. If Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla has its way — and it almost always does — 2004 will also commemorate something else: the Krewe’s own culture of self importance. That would be underscored if YMK follows through on its mandate to ban all other krewes who deign to dress as pirates for this quintessentially pirate-themed event.

As parade founders, organizers and longtime benefactors, YMK deserves its share of civic thanks for what has become Tampa’s signature event. An appropriate response would be “You’re welcome” not “cease and desist.”

Proofreading 101

We all know by now that incoming U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was instrumental in giving critical care at the scene of a fatal car crash on Alligator Alley in South Florida.

The (page-1 story and accompanying) headline in the Metro section of Friday’s Tampa Tribune (“Family That Frist Aided After Crash Lives In Tampa”) further informed us of the hometown of the crash victims.

The (page-5 story and accompanying) headline in the City & State section of that day’s St. Petersburg Times attempted to do the same thing. However, “Family treated on highway by senator from Tampa” doesn’t quite say that. Bill Nelson isn’t from Tampa, is he?

Maybe it was the holidays and a skeleton staff stretched thin. Maybe it was interns playing grown-up editors. Something was obviously misplaced besides modifiers.

Analyze This (List)

It’s tantamount to rubbernecking at a traffic accident. It’s those incessant, insipid lists that are end-of-year media staples. From the practical “Top Uses for Duct Tape” and the pretentious “Most Outrageous Sauvignon Blancs” to the pointless “Best ‘Reality TV’ Moments” and the pederastic “Worst Priests of ’02.” Whether out of simple curiosity or sheer voyeurism, we seemingly can’t help ourselves.

Exhibit A: the recent Gallup poll ostensibly determining America’s “most admired” woman.

The predictable winner: Hillary Rodham Clinton, who might not have been her husband’s first choice. Predictable first and second runners-up: First Hostess Oprah Winfrey and First Lady Laura Bush.

But here’s what rewards the voyeur in us all. Jennifer Lopez, who ranked sixth, finished ahead of Elizabeth Dole and Condoleeza Rice.

But it could have been worse, as it were. The late Mother Teresa is no longer eligible to finish behind J-Lo.

Absence Of Sense In Exam-Exemption Policy

Among the social experiments and policies in our schools that I don’t pretend to understand is the one on absences. I won’t even get into how many more religious holidays and related excused-absence days surely loom.

The case in point here is prompted by Eid al-Ftr, the Muslim celebration that marks the end of Ramadan. Students who have missed this day have regularly received excused absences. Nothing new in that. The real news is that such students will no longer have that absence count against their attendance record. That’s important because students with exemplary, especially perfect, attendance records can avail themselves of a major perk. They can be exempted from semester exams.

The exam-exemption policy, implemented in 1999-2000, was designed to improve attendance. And it’s been of some help. Average high school attendance, for example, exceeded 93 percent last year. That’s an increase of about 2.5 percentage points from the pre-exemption era. And it’s a factor in figuring a school’s grade on the state report card.

Arguably, however, it’s also a factor in the hefty hike — 74 percent from 1998-99 to 2001-02 — in school clinic visits by students showing up sick. Encouraging students to put in a cameo when ill is not a healthy — or pedagogically sound — policy.

I know I’m na

Good Samaritans Take No Holiday

In answer to a query about why the media seem so obsessed with bad news, Walter Cronkite once responded that it was “Because most people aren’t interested in all the cats that did not get stuck in trees today.” That’s true in that the unexpected and unusual is more the nature of “news.” The unbribed judge, for example, is not normally news. Cronkite’s glib response, however, doesn’t address pandering, sensationalism and ratings, but that’s another issue.

What’s been heartening, as always, is that the holiday season is accompanied by accounts of those who do for others. While we’re still reminded that the economy is dicey, terrorism palpable and storm water pervasive, we’re also mindful of the good that people do. Good for its own goodness. And it’s not just such societal stalwarts as the Salvation Army, Metropolitan Ministries or The Spring. It’s also individuals just doing the right thing because it needed doing immediately.

The twin towers of heroic, Good Samaritanism are Army Staff Sgt. Scott Gellin and University of South Florida basketball player-high jumper Jimmy Baxter. Gellin saved a drowning 12-year-old girl who had fallen into Tampa Bay, and Baxter pulled out two men trapped in a submerged car in a drainage ditch along I-275.

Whether “Heroism Happens” becomes a bumper sticker staple or not, the point is that there has never been a better time to focus on the good in a world increasingly impacted by evil and cynicism. Thanks, Scott and Jimmy, we needed that.

Also answering needs were numerous individuals, organizations and companies across the Tampa Bay region. They range from Tampa’s Hawkins Electric making sure that the Interbay Boys & Girls Club had a heated pool to the Bucs’ Keenan McCardell playing Santa to needy kids to the gardening efforts of students at Philip Shore Elementary School, who donated produce to the homeless.

There are a lot of good stories out there because there are a lot of good people out there. It’s not always “news.” But always important. Now more than ever.