Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Miracle-Gro will be using Plant City as a backdrop to promote “National Repot Your Plant Day.” Actor & pitchman Peter Strauss will be in town to conduct interviews with radio and TV reporters on March 31st. Plant City was chosen partly because of it’s name. By the way, Plant City is not named after anything that grows in your garden. It’s named after Henry Plant, who built a rail line along the west coast of Florida and across the state. He also built the Tampa Bay Hotel, now home to the University of Tampa including Plant Museuem and Plant Park.

I don’t usually address national topics here, but I read an editorial today that begins to address the state of education. In the column, Marc J. Yacht takes issue with the details of GWBush’s “no child left behind” initiative. In one paragraph, I believe he has hit on a part of this debate (and many others) that does not get enough press:

Why do students fail? Let’s start with issues in the home and parents who offer no support to the educational achievements of their children. Let’s understand that some children going to public schools live in poverty or with dysfunctional families with few support systems. One must wonder how some disadvantaged children function in school at all.

Yacht points out an excellent place to start with the downfall of education in America, but I say that the parents are an excellent place to start for many social ills. By simply being themselves, parents teach their kids to be responsible or immature, energetic or lazy, honest or deceitful, respectful or boorish, filthy or neat. A child’s education can be helped by good, honest parenting, or hurt by negligence or ignorance. It’s time for parents to take their job of raising children seriously. It’s time for parents to realize that negative impressions and actions lead to a worse life for their kids, their kids kids, and all of society. It’s time for parents to quit blaming the government, quit blaming the schools, and look in the mirror. Good parenting is not easy, but it’s not impossible. Help your child, don’t make his or her way more difficult.

The Florida Legislative session begins today. Both the St. Pete Times and the Tampa Tribune have moved all legislature-related stories to one easy access area. The Tribune ran a comprehensive special section this past Sunday. Both newspapers have several articles related to the lawmakers priorities, and what is expected from this year’s session. They both also detail how this year’s session relates to Tampa and the Tampa Bay area, but if you are pressed for time, I think the Times does the better job.

In a nutshell, legislators all over Florida want state money for various projects. But on the other hand, no one wants to raise taxes. After all – it’s an election year. So, should taxes be raised? Spending cut? It’s up to you to decide. Look at the issues to see if you have any input. Do you have an opinion on an issue? Address it. Tell your representative. Citizens can get things done, but you have to be aware of what’s going on.

To find your elected representatives:
1. Get your zip+4 code from the US Postal Service
2. Type Zip+4 code here at your Florida House page. From there, you can email your House Rep.
3. Type your zip+4 code at the bottom-left of the Florida Senate page From there, click on the District # highlighted to get to your senators home page, which gives you a link to their email address.

Keep in mind that these “home pages” are just the things they want you to see. It takes a bit more research to find how they voted on particular bills, etc. Again, the Tribune’s special section has a good bit of info in their article, that lets you know what is important to your representatives.

A couple more related links:
Florida Legislature & Lobbyists
The Florida House of Representatives
The Florida Senate
The Florida Channel broadcasts notable events from the state Capitol - watch from your computer, choose “Internet” tab at the top of the home page and make your selection from the pull-down menu.
My Florida.com - a gateway to the many pages of Florida’s governor, state agencies, commissions and elected leaders.
Campaign Finance: search contribution and expenditure reports for individual legislators, political parties and political action committees back to the 1996 election cycle.
Ethics Commission browse the latest ethics opinions and rulings, as well as state regulations covering everything from conflicts of interest to the acceptance of gifts.

Become informed and get involved - it’s important!

The nice folks over at Civic Strategies are jumping on the bandwagon of deciding if weblogs are important or not. They don’t take a stance on it, but just in case, they are trying to put together a list of urban-life related weblogs (calling them urblogs). They even go so far as to try to define them: “Urban blogs are those that are focused on a metro area, provide interesting commentary about local politics, culture or urban life and aren’t so ideological that they’re painful to read. So how much ideology is too much? Hey, it’s our list, so we get to decide.”

So far on their short list, they have named six different blogs, including the one you are reading right now. Re-reading their definition above, it kinda sums up what I’m trying to accomplish with this site. Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep it up. At any rate, I was very flattered by their kind words for this page: “Most bloggers tell you too much about themselves. But the person who writes Tampa’s “Sticks of Fire” urblog offers only an odd detail or two about himself (he likes rock music, Cirque du Soleil and the annual strawberry festival in nearby Plant City). What this shy blogger offers, though, is a witty review of news in the Tampa Bay area at http://www.sticksoffire.blogspot.com/. (So what does the name, Sticks of Fire, refer to? Beats us.)”

By the way, Tampa is an old Calusa Indian word meaning “Sticks of Fire.” It is a reference to all the lightning we get here (the storms, not the hockey team).

Pete Gordon notes the Census Bureau’s 2002 commute times survey results. Tampa ranks 43rd worst in travel time to work with a time of 21.5 minutes (each way). That’s better than the median time of all areas, about 23.3 minutes. Tampa’s commute time is about the same as Memphis, and slightly worse than Cincinnati (20.6) and Kansas City (19.4) The worst: New York City averages 38.4 minutes, Chicago 32.7, and Philly, 30.3

It sounds as if Pete is grumbling about subsidized mass transit, but does not offer a solution, or even suggest there is a problem… Deb, who lives in Tampa Bay, and came from DC, wants more (better) mass transit here.

I tend to lean toward mass transit as a viable solution. Driving around the area this past weekend, I came across construction everywhere. They’re doubling the number of lanes on I-4 and the Selmon Expressway. Those improvements are necessary, just to keep up with current traffic. But if we want to keep attracting people here (and we do), and we force them to use their cars, then road expansion will be needed again in no time.

The current state of mass transit here is a mess. Only very few people use the bus system. It needs a complete overhaul. I think some kind of train system – with the correct stops, commute times, and prices – would be able to work just fine here.