Commentary on Bay Area issues
While the big–surprising to some–news was that Aramark had been chosen to remain as the Tampa Convention Center caterer, one of Aramark’s ideas did take city officials by surprise. It has boldly–and coolly–proposed putting a floating bar on a barge behind the convention center.
Anybody think that won’t work?
Amid the hoopla of Riverwalk’s completion, updates on Jeff Vinik’s live-work-play-stay makeover, the upcoming start of the Heights project and the usual spin about what trendy list Tampa just made, it was well worth noting what the city is doing for kids this summer. Especially kids who are most vulnerable.
The city has expanded its Stay & Play summer program that provides extended nighttime hours at nine recreation centers and five city pools. This is year two of the program that was launched last summer after a surge in shooting deaths in poor neighborhoods.
“We had to do something, because I didn’t want to lose these kids to the streets,” explained Mayor Bob Buckhorn. “These are places where they can come and just be kids. … This saves lives, this builds lives, this shapes lives.”
And this speaks volumes about a priority that has nothing to do with downtown redevelopment.
Speaking of Riverwalk, when you’re down around the Water Works Park area, you can’t help but notice the juxtaposition of what’s across from you. Before too long, it will be the revitalized, catalytic Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park. But there’s also the less-than-aesthetic presence of Howard W. Blake High School. It’s brick and functionally contemporary.
We are constantly reminded that while it was built on the Hillsborough River (in 1997), it faces North Boulevard. The back fronts the river.
Unless you’re nostalgic for the era of insensitivity to the Hillsborough, having a major structure turning its back on the river now seems a stupid affront. It is not only sans architectural elements, it’s also lacking windows.
How ironic that a magnet school for visual, communication and performing arts should be so starkly indifferent to the river that personifies our 21st century aspirations. It looks, inexplicably, like a maximum-security facility from the Riverwalk side.
A suggestion, if not a solution: murals.
We all know that tree limbs and power lines can’t closely co-exist. We get it. We also like our leafy canopies. No need to be aesthetic to an impractical fault, but must “trimming” be a synonym for “butchering”? We get the difference.
Seemingly, there is no limit to entities that put out lists, much of it self-serving, subjective and so-whatish. But since there are such lists, especially about cities–and many are flattering–then you might as well be on one–or more. Latest up for Tampa: WalletHub’s ranking of the country’s best big-city “staycations.” Tampa comes in third, behind Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, finishing ahead of the likes of Las Vegas, Atlanta, Minneapolis and Honolulu.
And speaking of lists you definitely want to be topping: there’s the maritime industry publication, Lloyd’s List, that ranks ports for its annual North American Awards. Port Tampa Bay, Florida’s biggest in cargo tonnage, just won the Port Operator of the Year award.
When Tampa hosted the 2012 Republican National Convention, it was unofficially acknowledged that Tampa may be “one and done” on such mega gatherings during hurricane season. And, lest we forget, recall that there was also the possibility of an anarchist pep rally and no dearth of symbolically-inviting targets for terrorists four summers ago. The post-convention sigh of relief was palpable in security sectors and City Hall. Call it a dodged municipal bullet, maybe literally.
And no one is exactly nostalgic about having turned downtown Tampa into Checkpoint Charlie.
Just a hunch, but I’ll bet Mayor Bob Buckhorn is continually thankful that Tampa did it without incident, that it’s now on the city’s PowerPoint presentation of accomplishments and that Cleveland, not Tampa, has to deal with a convention that will nominate Donald Trump–not Mitt Romney.
No surprise that there’s speculation that former Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor may be prepping for a mayoral run. Castor isn’t saying, of course, but a recent switch in registration to Democrat from life-long Republican certainly fuels the rumor mill. Although the mayoral race is officially non-partisan, it helps a helluva lot to be a registered Dem. Castor’s rationale: The Republican and Democratic parties are not equally embracing of diversity. She hadn’t noticed before?
Two takes on recent developments impacting West Tampa: the transformation of Fort Homer Hesterly Armory into a community-enhancing Jewish Community Center and plans for the game-changing, $35.5-million Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park.
* Imagine, gentrification caveats now being issued for West Tampa.
* And, yes, construction confirms that renderings of the JCC do have an ill-fitting, Ho-Jo’s look more appropriate for Dale Mabry Highway than North Howard Avenue.
We now know that next school year will involve less student testing for Hillsborough County students. State-mandated tests will not be affected, but optional ones within the district will be. Call it more flexibility for teachers to judge student readiness.
Also call it educational spin. “Testing” will now be referred to as “progress monitoring.”
The Hillsborough County Commissioner comment that drew rebukes and created headlines was that of Stacy White who couched support of another iteration of a transportation sales tax referendum as nothing more than “support for a tax hike.”
No surprise that–given White’s ideology. He also had a flawed plan to attack.
For me, the comment that was more of a revelation was one by Commissioner Victor Crist, the transit swing vote who ultimately voted no on the 20- and 30-year taxes. He acknowledged an inherent voting dichotomy. “I may vote one way up here and another way at the poll as a citizen,” he said.
Let’s ponder that. How you vote as a citizen is at odds with how you vote as a commissioner? The former, presumably, is how you really, apolitically, feel about an issue. Need, plan and honest cost-benefit analysis, for example. The latter, ostensibly, is a reflection of constituency. How they really, politically, feel about an issue.
At the risk of terminal naiveté, I say your gut feel for what is right should not alter because of forum change. It should not be offset in the name of “listening” to your constituents, which will always include the loudest of the loud.
Ultimately, it’s called being a leader, not a sounding board. We have too few of the former; we obviously are over our quota on the latter.