question your candidates
tommy permalink | categories: citizens, city, county, election '08, government, politicsby tommy @ 9:34 am
Your local elected officials are the people who determine if Wal-mart will build in your neighborhood. They determine how much you pay for parking, which amenities your parks have, how many police are on hand, and how fast the fire department will show up at your house.
Local leaders are responsible for a myriad of public services and agencies such as airports, convention centers, museums, beaches, harbors, zoos, clinics, law libraries, and public housing. They provide services such as child and family services, elder services, mental health services, welfare services, veterans assistance services, animal control, probation supervision, historic preservation, food safety regulation, and environmental health services. They have many additional officials like public defenders, arts commissioners, human rights commissioners, and planning commissioners. Finally, there may also be a county fire department (as distinguished from fire departments operated by individual cities, special districts, or the state government).
These people affect your day-to-day life as no one else can.
And YOU determine who “these people” are.
We have already listed the candidates for your Hillsborough County elections. From here forward, we are going to find out all we can about them, and encourage them to address us citizens. And we’re going to get to know them, so we can make an informed decision when we vote.
But we all have differing ideas of what makes a good leader, so I want to make sure you are heard. Leave a comment below with an answer to this question:
WHAT QUESTION DO YOU WANT TO ASK THE CANDIDATES?
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July 21st, 2008 at 12:08 pm
What is their opinion on TBARTA?
And why has and is local government so segregated by county and city and municipality in this major metro region?
July 21st, 2008 at 3:36 pm
1. How do they feel about private interests like One Bay and the Partnership planning our land use and transportation in this county?
2. Will they defend the Urban Service Line and say no to sprawl in the rural area?
3. Will they support our local independent Planners at the Planning Commission and MPO or do they think Reality Check is a better option?
4. What is more important to them to fund in a time of budget crisis…..a fire station or the Sports Commission? …don’t laugh they are proposing to cut a fire station right now but still give the Sports Commission a fortune.
5. Where is the majority of their campaign money from….developers or private citizens?
6. What is their history on defending our environment and natural resources?
July 21st, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Kelly reminded me something: How does the Norman-loved Championship Park complex “Serving the kids” if it’s way the hell out in Plant City? How does that serve the youth of the city center(s) in Hillsborough county, or the suburbs?
And (this applies for both Pinellas and Hillsborough counties — as my first comment did) why do county planners, with regards to ballfields for youth, have a habit of designing sprawl-parks instead of single fields for neighborhood kids? It seems rather counter productive to find enough open land (at cost) to put in 4+ fields for football/soccer and baseball at one location isntead of buying up property for single fields in dense neighborhoods.
July 21st, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Questions for County Commission candidates:
• Traffic in Tampa Bay keeps getting worse. What will you do to make it better?
• Do you support or oppose commuter rail in the Tampa Bay area? Why? If you support it, where do you see the routes going? Where do you see the funding coming from?
• All Florida politicians talk fluffy talk about “smart growth” and “new urbanism,” yet once they get elected they just keep allowing the same old sprawl to ruin our communities, degrade our quality of life and devour our agricultural and natural lands. If you are elected, what will you actually DO to curb sprawl and manage growth differently than others before you?
• Under what circumstances, if any, would you vote to approve an increase in density on a piece of land outside the Urban Services Area? Under what circumstances, if any, would you vote to expand the Urban Services Area?
• Under what circumstances would you vote to spend public money on professional sports? Do you support or oppose the $15-million-dollar soccer complex for national tournaments proposed by some Hillsborough county commissioners? Why?
• Over the last year a lot of citizens have spent a lot of energy trying to keep our county commissioners from weakening our wetland protections. What would you do, if anything, to strengthen protections of our natural resources?
• Considering all the issues you are now discussing on the campaign circuit, have you been actively involved in any of these issues before you began campaigning for office? If so, how?
July 21st, 2008 at 9:22 pm
For Hillsborough County: Is it important to keep close to party ideology in governing the county instead of what’s best for the county?
In the past, contempt for HART has been shown by the county commissioners… Do you think HART should be abandoned, that Tampa needs to pay more? That HART and county transit planning should remain separate-but-equal from other counties?