County Commissioner Ken Hagan is using the same tactic Buddy Johnson used to get his name out for the next election. He’s distributing campaign material made to look like public service announcements. See for yourself. Wayne Garcia writes, A curious piece of political literature has been hitting South Tampa homes over the past few days as [...]
It’s hard to imagine a worse place to build houses than smack in the middle of an AQUATIC preserve. Here’s this breathtakingly beautiful, skinny little spit (only 300 feet wide!) running out into the middle of the Little Manatee River [see aerial image] — full of pines, palms, mangroves and wildlife [see photos] — so naturally [...]
Saturday’s Tribune carries a passionate call to arms asking citizens to help save Egmont Key. Bay Soundings editor Mary Kelly Hoppe writes, “It’s time to call in the cavalry. Deliberations in Tallahassee may seal the fate of this beloved historical island. Letters and calls to legislators are needed now if we are to muster the support [...]
Florida State Legislators (just like some Hillsborough County Commissioners) are working to “streamline” — i.e. deregulate — the development industry. State lawmakers want to make it cheaper & easier for developers to build more subdivisions and strip malls, apparently ignorant of the widely reported fact that Florida has 300,000 vacant homes for sale — a [...]
Having seen the Tampa area featured in The New Yorker as America’s prime example of greedy, wrongheaded leadership driving us off the cliff of economic disaster, let’s take a look at how our county commissioners propose to lead us out of this mess shown in this New Yorker video as “ground zero of the foreclosure [...]
The February 9 issue of The New Yorker spotlights the Tampa Bay area as “ground zero of the foreclosure crisis,” and exposes us nationally as a prime example of the political and corporate greed and utter wrongheadedness that has ruined America’s economy and laid waste to Florida. In “The Ponzi State, Florida’s Foreclosure Disaster,” George Packer [...]
For years, the state allowed developers to bury gopher tortoises alive, as long as they “mitigated” for killing the tortoises by paying into a fund which was set up specifically to buy and manage tortoise habitat. Now legislators are raiding that fund to use the money for — well, for whatever they want. They are [...]
Pssst! Wanna have your way with wetlands and habitat? For a good time, call the “biostitutes” at Biological Research Associates. Finally, someone shined a light on these hustlers. Sunday’s St. Petersburg Times featured an exposé of a firm that has long been selling developers the “expert testimony” they need to destroy our natural resources. “For years, [...]
Way down at the bottom of your ballot is a Hillsborough County referendum on ELAPP. The main challenge facing this referendum is simply that many voters don’t know what ELAPP is. A recent poll showed that when people are informed about ELAPP, the majority will support this referendum, so in hopes that you will vote [...]
