Category: Tampa Bay

Dick Greco has left the building. The one on East Jackson. Now he’s in an office complex up on North Florida. Closer to Avila than Harbour Island. Troubleshooting for Eddie DeBartolo.

The trappings are as different as City Hall and the Magdalene Center.

His office is smaller. Less memorabilia. There’s room for a couple of footballs. And the walls are bedecked with several recent awards.

And a few favorite photos. Dick and Linda Greco. Dick and Jeb Bush. Dick and George W. Bush. Dick and Bill Clinton. Dick and Tommy Franks. Dick and George Steinbrenner. Dick and Linda and Fidel Castro. Dick and the other two-thirds of “Los Tres Amigos”: Jim Palermo and Fernando Noriega. Reminders of long-term loyalty and the circles Greco travels in.

His effusive, tactile manner, of course, is the same. “You look great. Working out? How’s that pretty wife of yours?”

Something else hasn’t changed.

He still notices stuff. In fact, if you see a guy in a black Pontiac rubbernecking down Channelside Drive staring at the trolley, go easy and lay off the horn. It may be a curious tourist, but it’s probably Greco.

“I still look to see how many are riding the trolley,” he says.

Earlier this month he called TECO to report street lights out near the Davis Islands bridge and Bayshore Boulevard. And he doesn’t always exit I-275 at Bearss Avenue on the way to work. He likes to vary the route to see more. He notices details such as overgrown weeds. He’s having lunch with a DOT acquaintance this week and he plans to present a short list of landscaping eyesores.

“I can’t stop looking,” explains Greco. “I will always do that. Just because I’m not mayor doesn’t mean I’m no longer interested. This is my home.”

He says he’s happy with his post-mayoral life, even if his biweekly columns in the Tampa Tribune are proving more challenging and time-consuming than anticipated.

After all, Edward J. DeBartolo Jr. is a close friend; he has history with the company; and the DeBartolo Property Group is not exactly a cloister. And the erstwhile “developer-mayor” is there to help do deals. He can talk the talk of zoning and DRI’s or just go on schmooze control. He knows government and has friends in notably high places.

Greco reminisces briefly on a quintessential day at the City Hall office. He could get as many as 200 calls. He remembers as many as 17 appointments.

And he misses it. To call Greco a “people person” is like calling Sam Rashid a “political activist.” Greco doesn’t suffer strangers.

He doesn’t, however, miss the mayor’s role in the grave new world of terrorism and municipal security.

“September 11 changed everyone’s life,” notes Greco. “Especially anyone responsible for public safety. I’ve seen all sorts of awful things over the years from accidents to shootings. You get those calls — and they can come at any hour — and you’re almost relieved if it’s ‘only’ a shooting and not someone blowing up an ammonia tank.

“I’ve been to too many ‘what-if’ briefings,” adds Greco. “But that’s the way it is now. And it’ll never be the same.”

It doesn’t take much for the 69-year-old senior vice president to reflect further. The photos are an easy prompt.

President George W. Bush: “I like the guy; he’s genuine. Very relaxed. It’s uncanny how a president can still give a sense of ‘being one of the guys.’ You really do feel like you’re with a friend. The generals at MacDill love him.”

Former President Bill Clinton: “His way with people is as good as I’ve ever seen. He can capture a crowd, and he can put you personally at ease. He talked to me like he knew me for 50 years. We rode together from the airport to Hillsborough High School. He asked me about the CIT. I told him what it would pay for, including the stadium and schools. At the high school, he had the crowd in 10 seconds. It was dead quiet. Then it flowed. He quoted everything I told him about keeping the Bucs and keeping students off double sessions. Didn’t miss a detail.”

Gen. Tommy Franks: “Very humble, very gracious. Very good sense of humor. He sees something good in everybody. Has a profound affection for his troops. Personally feels any loss. Will admit to crying in private. A great general, but an even greater man. He doesn’t just delegate authority. He delegates credit. You go to his place for dinner, and he introduces the cook and credits him for a great meal.”

George Steinbrenner: “A good, loyal friend. He’s there when the chips are down. Does so many good things that people never hear about. And he does it all the time. Kind of man who doesn’t want to give the impression that he has a soft side. Fiercely proud and always plays to win. I even know that from tennis. He runs everything down and dives if he has to. I don’t.”

Fidel Castro: “I don’t admire him, but he has a presence. As smooth as you’ll find. He seemed humble and respectful. Said all the right things. No lectures. He’s 76 and didn’t appear to be slipping — and we met for nearly five hours. Even sounded like a man who might want to change. People say he’s a ‘master showman.’ If it was a show, he was certainly the star.”

Castro’s recent crackdown on dissidents, however, hasn’t dashed all hope for the habitually optimistic Greco.

“Yes, it’s disappointing and discouraging,” acknowledges Greco, “but I still believe in talking to anybody. If I thought I could make a difference, I’d do it again.”

One thing Greco won’t do — at least not yet — is criticize or “assess” how his successor, Pam Iorio, is doing. He leaves it at: “Pam is younger and vigorous and will make some changes. That’s good.”

But he does want to set the record straight on term limits. Had they been repealed, he insists, he would not have run for another term.

“Committing to another four years would have taken me well into my 70’s,” he points out. “That wasn’t fair to Linda or me.

“Frankly, 18 years is enough. I’m happy with what I’m doing now. In fact, there are some things the company can do for the city.”

And he didn’t mean lighting on Bayshore or landscaping along I-275.

Earlier this week former Tampa Bay area priest Robert Schaeufele was found not guilty of capital sexual battery in an emotion-and-controversy-charged trial. The jurors all looked shaken after the verdict and none were immediately available for comment. Schaeufele now awaits trials on three more capital sexual battery charges.

The wrenching verdict underscores one aspect of our criminal justice system that we must never confuse. Too often jury verdicts of “not guilty” are interchanged and interpreted as “innocent.”

“Not guilty” is a qualified legal term. It means an absence of provable guilt based on a legal threshold and rules of evidence. Innocence isn’t a technicality. It’s a state, as in sinless, untainted, pure.

In his first trial, Schaeufele was found “not guilty.” But make no mistake; there is nothing “innocent” about a priest administering an enema to a young boy.

* Look who’s moving into the neighborhood — a bunch of lawyers — and the neighbors couldn’t be happier.

It’s what happens when the Solomon Tropp Law Group replaces Club Atlanta at the corner of Kennedy and Fremont. It’s what happens when North Hyde Park neighbors are no longer held hostage to early morning noise, public urination and the occasional murder.

Once City Council scissors some zoning red tape, the Solomon Tropp Law Group should begin renovations this summer.

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Planning Organization has accepted a plan to spiff up Kennedy with landscaping, ornamental lights and benches. Not everything will happen to everyone’s satisfaction because scarce tax dollars are involved. But at least one Kennedy corridor neighborhood already feels beautified.

* In fits and starts, the Channelside entertainment complex has been making incremental progress in realizing its considerable potential. It certainly hasn’t lacked for key pieces of the puzzle. But the commercial mix, a constant exercise in tinkering and market chemistry, keeps falling shy of its mark.

What the $45-million complex isn’t missing are cruise ships, a trolley line, restaurants or an Imax theater.

But what has been missing is the one obvious element Channelside has long needed to bring in that critical mass of visitor-customers: a Hooters.

Now one is finally on the way.

* High-end retail. A world acclaimed airport. Luxury cruise liners. A Super Bowl champion. Plans for a new art museum. What additional signs are there that Tampa just may have “arrived”? Well, there’s now the $4-million tear-down.

That’s approximately what billionaire Mitchell Rales paid for that eye-catching, waterfront, Italian villa mansion on Davis Islands. Plus nearly $2 million for an adjacent property. Both will be bulldozed to make room for a more modern manse.

Not everyone, presumably, is pleased. Ironically, Rales is the co-founder of Danaher Corp., a hostile takeover specialist.

Much has been justifiably made of how some schools have spent their Florida School Recognition Program reward dollars. More than $300 million has been ladled out since 1999 to reward schools for good FCAT results.

A lot of it has gone where it was intended — for teacher bonuses and traditional educational purchases. But some of it hasn’t. FCAT cash, as we now know, has paid for pizza parties, PlayStation video game systems and playground equipment. And some even went to BoJo the Clown, who was hired with FCAT money to entertain at an elementary school celebration in Sumter County.

It’s really two issues. One is the dilemma of how — literally — to spend such money. Does everyone get a little bit, including the best and the worst teachers? If not, how does that shake out for morale? Do you recognize support people who are not unimportant and could really use a few extra bucks? Do you spend it on the students whose performance earned the reward in the first place? Do you buy some stuff, such as lawn mowers, that the school really needs?

The other issue is the principle involved. Aren’t teaching and learning and performing what the educational process is all about? Whatever happened to certificates, banners and assemblies to honor those who helped make it happen? Is learning no longer its own reward?

Couldn’t that $306 million have been better spent on something other than bonus rewards for those who did their jobs?

Here’s some advice for those black civic leaders who are already questioning Mayor Pam Iorio’s commitment to diversity. Back off.

For openers, don’t rush to judgment. It makes you look more contentious than assertive. A number of appointments have yet to be made. Of the 10 top managers who will report directly to Iorio, she has named but four, one of whom — City Clerk Shirley Foxx-Knowles — is black.

More to the point, your diversity agenda is not more important than the mayor’s charge to find the best personnel possible. Show the sort of good faith you’re demanding from her — even if you still pine for Frank Sanchez or Bob Buckhorn as your mayor.

Moreover, don’t misread the reassignment of Curtis Lane from minority liaison in the mayor’s office to head of city code enforcement. As a former deputy police chief, Lane should mean business-not-as-usual for chronic code violators. It also means window dressing is out in city hall.

Second, and more importantly, look at the mayor’s commitment to East Tampa and see how you can help make it happen. Other than interim City Attorney Fred Karl, no appointment is more symbolically important than that of Ed Johnson, a black banker. Johnson is the city’s director of East Tampa Development and Citywide Lending Programs. It’s a newly created position. Iorio has, in effect, hitched her own political reputation to transforming a poverty-and-crime-infested area into a truly more “livable” part of the city.

Put it this way. If East Tampa becomes nothing more than token islands of Tampa Housing Authority innovation amid a sea of druggies, thugs and dilapidated commercial properties, improved diversity at City Hall will be a hollow celebration.

Black activists need only look across the bay to see the challenges of St. Petersburg’s Midtown for guidance, if not pragmatic inspiration. A recent five-day spree of drive-by shootings in the mostly black and poor section of that city is a graphic reminder that pouring public money into an area is no guarantee that private investors will follow. What they may do is follow each other out of town.

Midtown is Exhibit A for a call to community arms and positive neighborhood leadership. It means saying no to all that is culturally dysfunctional and all that smacks of the victimization syndrome. It means working WITH law enforcement and being thankful that somebody is actually willing to police such high crime areas that are also menacing to officers.

Helping out in East Tampa means heavy lifting. It’s not nearly as easy as calling for diversity at city hall.

But Ed Johnson and Pam Iorio can’t revitalize the area themselves. And it will take more than the creative use of tax increment financing and the creation of community redevelopment areas. City, state and federal purse strings are all drawn tautly.

The key is the jobs-creating private sector. The best intentioned developers are not investing out of altruism. They need to make a profit. They don’t have to choose high-risk communities with scary crime rates, open drug dealing and aging, ill-kept properties.

Absent a community-wide commitment to a safe place to do business, they won’t.

And that’s the mayor’s daunting challenge. And she needs serious, roll-up-the-sleeves, take-no-prisoners activist help to make East Tampa happen.

For all those appalled that the University of South Florida and the Hillsborough school district will be taking a serious budget hit in the coming school year, these thoughts:

*No way is a shortfall not going to hurt. And no way did this have to happen. Florida’s toga-party of a Legislature keeps giving incompetence a bad name. Long-term, revenue-raising solutions? There’s a better chance of bringing back Ol’ Sparky.

Obviously it does no good to write your representative. But here is a perverse suggestion. Send out some thank you cards. One to Jeb Bush, who can’t reconcile Republicans and Libertarians and saves his passion for FCATS, vouchers, affirmative action and presidential visits. One to Johnnie Byrd, who would rather cut a critical service or tap a trust fund than repeal a gaggle of special interest, sales tax exemptions. One to Kendrick Meek, who never got over being kicked out of his governor’s sit-in. The former state senator and now a Congressman from Miami-Dade created Amendment 9 to reduce class size. And the rest to this state’s (but not this county’s) voters who were too clueless to see where their yes vote on Meek’s amendment would lead.

*Florida’s budget is so hamstrung by having to live within Johnnie Byrd’s means, that it was almost shocking that the money would be found to fund a special session to finalize the budget.

Amid the miasma that is the Florida Legislature, it’s obviously easy to lose sight of basic priorities — let alone a given bill. But here’s one that even the fiscally challenged House could sign off on. Florida Senate Bill 2562 won’t cost anything.

The bill would merely designate the Port of Tampa-based SS American Victory as “Florida’s Official State Flagship.” Arguably, in a time of war and world peril, this restored Merchant Marine ship would merit no less a distinction than Florida’s official designations for flower, tree, bird and song.

Built in 1945, American Victory carried supplies, equipment, ammunition and personnel to the Pacific Theater of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. It also transported humanitarian aid in helping to expedite the Marshall Plan.

The Merchant Marine, lest we ever forget, had the highest casualty rate of any service during WW II. It was also the only WW II service that was completely integrated. It was critically important to its time — and ahead of its time. Now seems an appropriate time to underscore that with the flagship designation. In so doing, we celebrate this state’s rich maritime history and honor thousands of Merchant Marine and Navy Armed Guard veterans.

Mayor Pam Iorio’s well-honed communications skills have served her handsomely on the County Commission, in her Supervisor of Elections capacity and on the mayoral hustings. But that was then — and this was Tallahassee.

She was in the capital last week to lobby for Tampa.

By virtue of her two decades in public service, she was hardly a stranger. And by being a big city mayor, she is a big time, state player. But just for good measure, she came accompanied by former Governor Bob Martinez who is also familiar with the perspective from Tampa’s City Hall.

By all accounts, the right doors were opened and the right people seen — from Gov. Jeb Bush to Senate President Jim King and House Speaker Johnnie Byrd. If nothing else, it said Iorio wasn’t wasting any time getting right to the agenda she campaigned on. Iorio, who inherited a city that is largely bonded up, was in Tallahassee to make the case for ongoing help in urban revitalization, affordable housing and the arts. That’s the hat trick for Iorio’s mantra-goal of a more “livable” city. Tampa also can use state leverage for federal help on water issues.

Opened doors, however, can still lead to closed minds. The Governor and the Speaker arguably own two of them.

The economy is dicey and the budgetary process seems scripted by Eugene Ionesco channeling Byrd. Cuts ranging from universities to the medically needy are not just fiscally irresponsible, they’re flat-out harmful to a state that was already behind in such support. Amid a very real crisis that cries out for long-term, revenue-raising solutions, Bush and Byrd soldier on — fighting the partisan cliché canard of liberal spending in state government. Thanks for nothing.

But that’s what you get when you mix a post-Sept. 11 Florida; a couple of ill-informed, costly referenda votes; and a Legislature that has turned “living within our means” into an obscenity. It’s what you get when tapping trust funds and cutting critical services are preferred to revising the state’s outmoded sales tax system and repealing some of the more outlandish, special-interest exemptions.

As to what Iorio gets for her efforts, this much, at least, was encouraging. It was the response of King, the Senate President, to her heads-up that she expected to be working the capitol corridors “a great deal next year.”

“There’s a finite amount of money, and in the end you want to help who you know,” acknowledged King. “It behooves a mayor to make oneself known here to get things done.”

Iorio is quickly finding out how many roles the mayor of Tampa must play. Right now none may be more important than “squeaky wheel.”

In a previous incarnation I taught secondary school here in Tampa and in Philadelphia. They were inner city schools with all the usual connotations and euphemisms for tough neighborhoods and challenging students. Mordant references to “combat pay” — as in, “How about some?” — were hardly infrequent among the faculty.

Now I see where the Hillsborough County School Board has voted unanimously to actually offer extra pay to teachers in its poorest schools, which invariably are the toughest for teaching. The goal is to halt the inevitably — and understandably — high turnover at such schools, which only adds to the formidable task of teaching the neediest students in the poorest schools.

Some 700-800 teachers are expected to receive an additional 5 percent in pay in a program funded with federal dollars that are typically earmarked for recruitment, retention and staff development. Those who qualify for the bonus will also be attending regular training seminars and working with mentors.

This is not, of course, a panacea for high-poverty schools. It doesn’t ameliorate poverty. But it does address one key variable: faculty. As in improving chances for a better, more stable one.

Call it a concession to reality and well worth the investment. The better the faculty, the less likely it will be “combat pay.”

For those looking for a little different way to honor mom this Mother’s Day, consider the annual Mother’s Day Picnic at Ybor City’s historic Circulo Cubano, the Cuban Club.

Doors of the Cuban Club at Palm Avenue and 14th Street open at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, May 11. Lunch, catered by Sabor de Tampa, will be served at noon in the Ballroom. The music of Son de Mi Tierra begins in the Cantina at 1:00 — and dancing continues until 5:00 p.m.

This 91st annual celebration also features a cash bar plus raffles, door prizes, family photos and carnations for all moms.

Seating this year is limited to 400. Tickets are $15. Children ages 5-9, $7.50; ages 4 and under, free. Sponsorships are still available. All proceeds go towards restoration efforts of the Cuban Club building.

To order tickets or inquire about sponsorships, please call either Jorge or Ileana Diaz at 248-2954.