Category: Tampa Bay

Technically, Mayor Pam Iorio has one more State of the City speech to give. But the March 2011 address will be largely “retrospective,” she acknowledged. The last one to come with a bully pulpit was last week’s.

 

After a shout-out to city employees (a number of whom were in attendance) and their “sacrifice together” ethic amid layoffs and budget shortfalls, she moved posthaste to her agenda. She continues to leverage her political capital on behalf of a Nov. 2 referendum that would ask Hillsborough County voters to agree to a 1-cent sales tax hike to pay for modern transit, including a major light rail component. What’s at stake: Tampa’s future.

 

Basically Tampa doesn’t have a very viable one without it, said Iorio.

 

“We will lose our competitive edge,” she stressed. “It’s the key to smart growth and urban infill.” Its track record, she pointed out, is irrefutable.  It’s been a “magnet for private-sector development wherever it has gone.”

 

Modern transit is needed for “economic stability,” explained Iorio. “For future job growth.”

 

Not to go this route, she emphasized, is to venerate the status quo of sprawl. Tampa would remain on the path to the past — of following “the urban planning errors of the 20^th century. …This is the biggest issue of our time. Of our generation. We are not defined by our problems, but how we solve them.”

 

Iorio also put light rail into historic perspective. It’s an extension of America’s can-do, visionary aptitude in the face of challenge and the prospect of spin-off benefits. The Trans-Continental Railroad, the Interstate system, the space program – and Tampa International Airport came readily to the mayor’s mind.

 

“Let’s never stop progressing in the great tradition of our country,” she exhorted. “It’s not about careers and the next election. It’s about the future and future generations. It can’t just be about the ‘here and now.’”

 

To underscore the generational commitment, she nodded to the front row of the packed Tampa Convention Center room for a visual aid. There was Exhibit A for a future light rail beneficiary.  It was her 20-year-old son, Graham, home on break from Florida State University. Indeed, it has been seven years now!

 

“We are the last of the major metropolitan areas in this country that has failed to invest in a modern transit system,” Iorio stated. “We must be willing to make this kind of investment to be a first class community,” she added. “We have everything else.”

There’s a lot not to like at what has been going on at St. Petersburg’s embattled John Hopkins Middle School. By all accounts, it’s a mess borne of chronically disruptive students, also known as “hoodlums” to the euphemism challenged. A weak administration and irresponsible parents are enabling, powder-keg factors.  

 

But here’s something to ponder while waiting for Joe “Lean On Me” Clark to come out of retirement to kick butt, put parents on notice and tell Uhurus to help out or hit the road. The Hopkins’ disgrace is cause for as much sadness and reflection as anger and alarm.

 

That’s because Hopkins, which is in a predominantly black neighborhood, is only three years removed from being a model school for voluntary integration. Well-regarded magnet programs were its hallmark. There was even an award-winning school newspaper and a touted orchestra. All of that is now seriously at risk at a school widely perceived as out of control. Magnet applications are half of what they used to be.

 

The usual societal factors and insufficient resources are referenced. But nothing resonates like Pinellas County’s reversion to neighborhood schools, a concept that almost everyone agrees with – in the abstract. But in concrete reality, it means some schools will be skewed by low incomes and academic underachievement. Which is code for black neighborhoods. Hopkins now “leads” all middle schools in the number of over-age and learning-disabled students.

 

But this is not the era of Jim Crow segregation and degradation, where black neighborhoods circled the wagons and took care of their own – a nurturing network of nuclear families, neighbors, shop owners and preachers. Life was legally unfair, but it wasn’t dysfunctional. Discipline was ingrained and reinforced. There were no Hip-Hopkins Middle Schools.

 

Now it seems the largely discredited and uniformly disliked social experiment of massive busing has been turned on its head. Hopkins even feeds the insulting stereotype that a majority-black school and educational excellence are somehow incompatible, if not oxymoronic. 

 

Joe Clark, please call the Pinellas School Board.

It’s hardly Gatesgate, but it does beg a key question.

 

Why does the School District of Hillsborough County need to spend $375,000 on an outside public relations firm to explain the $100 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the public — and to its 17,000 teachers? The district has its own staff of communications specialists. If this doesn’t fall within its purview, priorities or skill set, something’s wrong.

 

“We don’t have time to do PR,” Communications director Steve Hegarty told the Tampa Tribune. Oh.

 

We’re told that the Gates folks were adamant in putting a premium on communicating what’s entailed in its seven-year commitment to change how county teachers are recruited, trained and paid. Of course, they want this explained effectively. Nine-figure overhauls require no less. But they never demanded it be put out for bid.

 

The 18-month contract is with the Tampa office of Hill & Knowlton, an excellent choice if you must choose. It will be interesting to see how this is invoiced. In addition to making the case for what the Gates grant is all about and why it is so important and necessary, will H&K also make the case for why they needed to be hired to spin it? Bet on it.

 

On a related Gates’ front, the district apparently did a good job getting the word out about the peer evaluation system and the need for peer evaluators. There are approximately 116 spots available. To date, more than 660 teachers have applied.

Everybody, of course, still feels awful about that recent incident in Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park where one dog fatally attacked another. The owners of the attacked dog, a 10-pound Shih-tzu, are calling for rules that would separate dogs by size in the park’s small run. The dog that attacked the Shih-tzu was a 110-pound mastiff mix.

 

Officials note that Curtis Hixon Park is too small to justify separating dogs by size. But other, larger city parks can – and do – separate animals by size. To date, no such fatal attacks have ever taken place there.

 

Regardless, rules for all parks put owners on notice. Your dog is your responsibility. Alas, the signs reminding owners of that reality had not yet gone up when the incident occurred at Curtis Hixon.

 

But the point is this. Do you really need a reminder that a mastiff shouldn’t be mingling with a Shih-tzu in confined quarters? Even more to the point: If you really must have a 110-pound mastiff downtown, the onus is always on you.

OK, commuting around the Tampa Bay area – one that is conspicuously, unconscionably minus mass transit – is not a drive in the park. And it’s gotten worse with increased sprawl. But dead last among 60 major metropolitan areas? That’s where Forbes.com put us – ostensibly based on travel time and delays.

 

Forbes even has us behind Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Georgia! I used to live in Marietta. Once you get out of your cul-de-sac community, it’s impending gridlock. Whether you’re heading into Buckhead, commuting into downtown via the merging lanes from hell that is Interstate 75 or going to the store.

 

The upside, however, is that it just may help make the 1-cent, sales-tax case for the November referendum on modern transit/light rail. Maybe.

No, it’s not a mega-bucks deal. And it’s not associated with one of our philanthropic icons. But it was a nice gift, and now a lot of kids are indebted, if you will, to the GTE Federal Credit Union.

 

More than 12,000 eighth graders have been taking part in a joint program between the Tampa Bay History Center and the School District of Hillsborough County. Exposing our children to our common regional history is especially important in an area where so many of the adults are from other places.

 

But school district budget issues put the program in jeopardy. The district asked the History Center if it could pay for transportation. The Center put the word out. Thanks to a grant from the GTE Federal Credit Union, the buses will keep rolling. And keep bringing in those eighth graders to explore first hand the history of this area. Their area.

Time was when an Administrator such as Hillsborough County’s Pat Bean could play out the string. A 64-year-old civil servant who did no harm during the good times. Her contract formally expires at the end of 2011. She has worked for the county for 33 years, the last six as Administrator.

 

The times, however, haven’t been good for a while now. In fact, the times are so challenging for a county with 5,000 employees and a $3-billion budget that there’s no place for anything other than sophisticated, out-of-the-box, regional thinking. The timing couldn’t be worse to be saddled with a vision-challenged, Peter Principled bureaucrat with a ham-handed approach to budget deficits as county Administrator.

 

The Commission, as we’ve seen and heard, has been growing increasingly disgruntled.  

 

Recall that less than three months ago, the County Commission – in a fit of frustration and pique – had called into question Bean’s priorities, judgment, vision, initiative, leadership and innovation instincts. It was obviously a lot more than those ill-advised pay raises, as disturbing as they were.

 

In lieu of a firing, where the taxpayers would have to ante up Bean’s annual salary ($224,000), they upbraided her, treated her like an intern – and told her to come back with a list of goals and measurable objectives. They also adjusted her evaluations from annual to quarterly.

 

When she finally submitted her list – late – it was glaringly shy of specifics. Her “Road To Our Future” term paper was, in effect, a re-stating of the present challenges facing Hillsborough County. The Commissioners needed a perceptive, action-oriented solutions-partner, not a clueless subordinate awaiting marching orders. They were not pleased.

 

They were more than displeased when allegations recently surfaced about Bean being involved in questionable internal records e-mail searches. Bean indicated she did, indeed, make some regrettable requests, but claimed to have thought better after the fact and consequently never actually read one.

 

Commissioner Mark Sharpe summarized the snooping fiasco and Bean’s incredulous response appropriately. “She’s saying she didn’t inhale,” said Sharpe.

 

Frankly, if this didn’t finally fan the flames for firing – six-figure termination severance notwithstanding – you’d have to wonder who else might be smoking on the job.

Commission Chairman Ken Hagan, referring to Bean’s part in a “toxic and dysfunctional” culture, was moved to address an “open letter to the community” urging Bean (along with County Attorney Renee Lee and internal performance auditor Jim Barnes) to pre-empt a firing by resigning.

 

That would be doing the right thing, which is, of course, problematic. Recall that Bean had ample opportunity previously — when the issue was sheer incompetence. Now she has morphed into an ongoing, unwelcome distraction, one that already has resulted in the postponement of something critically important: a session on the transit referendum.

 

However it happens, Bean must resign herself to the reality that she can no longer be Hillsborough County’s Administrator. Sometimes you add by subtracting when investing in the future.

For the third time in six months, a University of Tampa student has either been robbed, assaulted or murdered near campus. Tampa Police patrols have been beefed up as has UT security. In January UT and Tampa Police hosted a student safety seminar. And UT might add a mandated online course on personal safety – to complement the one it does on alcohol consumption.

 

Whenever I hear of these scary criminal and violent acts near UT, I hearken back to my second night of graduate school at Temple University in Philadelphia in 1970. After class I headed back to the university parking lot. It was probably 9:15 pm. The lot was already a crime scene.

 

A random, racially-motivated, drive-by shooting had claimed the life of a fellow student. A British Lit classmate, as it turned out, who I had never met. One who had arrived at the parking lot minutes before I did. Timing was everything. As well as fate.

 

But this was also North Philadelphia, what they called a “ghetto” back in the day. Temple wasn’t downtown; it was in a high-crime area. And it had remained so, despite a formidable Philly police presence, high-profile TU security and well-lit parking lots.

 

In UT’s case, the issue is more addressable. No, the campus is not sequestered in the suburbs or insulated in a college-town cocoon. The campus is downtown. But downtown Tampa isn’t North Philly. Sure, there is public housing nearby – and, yes, it’s a problem. No, you can’t harshly judge all its residents, but let’s be real, if politically incorrect.

 

But here’s the biggest – and most addressable – issue. All these criminal acts took place after 2 a.m. There’s only so much police patrols and campus security can do – short of creating a mini-police-state ambience. And, no, you can’t put a moat around the North Boulevard Homes public housing project.

 

UT now has an enrollment over 6,000. A lot of the students live on campus. They’re young, feeling immortal and residing in an urban setting by choice. But by definition, wherever you are, nothing good happens after 2 a.m. Not back at home, wherever that is, not in the suburbs, not in a college town. Let alone downtown Tampa with adjacent public housing and a smattering of transients.   

 

TPD spokeswoman Laura McElroy put it into perfect context. “It isn’t necessarily the location,” she told the Tampa Tribune. “It’s about who’s out after midnight, who’s out in the early morning hours. Often that’s when the criminal element is out.”

 

In the most recent incident, less than two weeks ago, a UT student was robbed at gunpoint near the Martinez Sports Center on North Boulevard. He was headed to the Metro Market convenience store on Kennedy Boulevard.

 

At 5 a.m.

 

That’s way too late as well as entirely too early. Be smart.

Tampa International Airport isn’t just one of the best airports in the country. It absolutely deserves its “world class” encomium. And it absolutely deserves an Authority and Director of no less luster.

It was not one of democracy’s finest hours. Not the sort of democratic dynamic we like to lecture other countries about, that’s for sure.

 

More than 200 supporters turned out at the Columbia Restaurant recently for a fundraiser for incumbent Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin White. THAT Kevin White. Of tapping-into-campaign-funds-to-buy-stylish-threads fame. Of being-on-the-losing-end-of-a-sleazy-sexual-harassment-suit renown. Of forcing-taxpayers-to-ante-up-for-resultant- court-judgments repute. Of turning-arrogance-into-an-understatement distinction.

 

Notably, the Tampa Tribune, St. Petersburg Times and several TV stations covered it. Normally, that’s an impressive sign of name-recognition acknowledgement and success. Media coverage and free press are the coin of the political realm.

 

But, then, they also cover high-profile fires, deadly auto accidents and the latest after-hours crime scene at Club Mirage.

 

They covered the White fundraiser because, even in these times of consummate cynicism over the political process and curtailed budgets, supporters of White pique media interest. As in: “And you still want this guy to be re-elected?” As in: “And you’re willing to fork over your own money to advance this scruples-challenged career?”

 

One explanation may be the rationale that USF political science professor Susan MacManus pointed out the other day to the Tampa Tribune. “Historically, minority communities rally around minority candidates when it looks like those candidates are under attack,” she explained.

 

If that principle’s in play here, then the politics of race just absorbed another black eye.