Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

St. Pete Times Editorial - Tampa’s firefighters are asking too much

Tampa Tribune Editorial -  City Council That Won’t Say No Falls Over Self To Spend Even More:

Mayor Pam Iorio offered the [firefighters'] union a 6.5 percent average raise, a generous offer in tough economic times. Even a magistrate who scrutinized the impasse said the city’s offer was fair and in the public’s best interest.

But the union wanted an average 10 percent increase and so brought its case to a bigger body of politicians, the city council.

All seven members caved.

Led by tax-and-spend liberals John Dingfelder and Mary Mulhern, the council gave firefighters what amounts to a 9.5 percent annual increase.

… Their largesse will cost taxpayers an extra $730,000 this fiscal year, and an extra $2.2 million if the contract is extended to two years.

And they call this a compromise?

No wonder property-tax statements that recently hit area homes show so little downward movement. The city’s bleeding-heart council has never met a spending proposal it didn’t like. The only time it has said no was when former councilman Shawn Harrison suggested a tax cut. The city had too many unmet needs, members cried at the time.

Taxpayers will be hit hard by the council’s capitulation because word is out that if the mayor shows fiscal restraint in negotiations - a stance for which she will pay a political price - unions should appeal to city council, where anything goes.

…  Tampa’s city council has demonstrated an appalling lack of concern for the financial burden it places on taxpayers. Only Councilman Charlie Miranda seemed to understand that the city cannot afford to keep boosting salaries to unrealistic levels. But given how the others were leaning, Miranda made the vote unanimous. A protest vote would have been preferable.

Dingfelder and Mulhern fail to understand that times are tough. Residents are struggling to make ends meet. Private sector jobs are disappearing. So are tax revenues. Tampa’s recurring property tax-revenues have dropped $28 million over the past two years.

Yet council shot down the mayor’s attempt to kill a convoluted step-plan pay system that in addition to a merit pay increase, gives firefighters a second raise of between 1.2 percent and 19.5 percent a year based on seniority.

Know anyone in the private sector getting that kind of boost?

Council members only wanted to applaud the firefighters, as Councilman Joe Caetano did, for “working their butt off.”

Taxpayers also work their butt off and are struggling to endure a devastating economic downtown. They don’t have time to pack council chambers like the firefighters did. They deserved better.

Instead, council members recklessly inflated the city’s financial obligations to curry favor with a union whose endorsement, as Dingfelder bluntly put it, “we love” to get “on our campaign literature.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how government works.

To get the endorsement of a politically powerful union, Dingfelder, Mulhern and the bunch picked your pocket.

The next election for Tampa City Council is not until 2011.  All seven of them assume (and hope) you will forget this by then.

“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how government works.”

Other Links:

• Tampa City Council
• Tampa Firefighters

Tampa Police Chief Stephen Hogue says Tampa’s crime rate dropped 12 percent in the first six months of 2008 compared with last year.

During the first six months of this year, 9,126 offenses were reported in seven crime categories, 12 percent less than the 10,367 reported in these categories from January to June 2007.

The biggest statistical drop was in reported sex offenses, which declined 28.6 percent.

Murders declined 15.8 percent, motor-vehicle thefts fell 19.3 percent and aggravated assaults declined 18.6 percent, robberies dropped 16.1 percent, larcenies fell 11.1 percent and burglaries declined 5.1 percent.

Hogue credited the drop in crime not only to his officers, but to residents who join Neighborhood Crime Watch groups or perform independent “community policing” when they notice suspicious activity.

Each year since 2003, the City of Tampa has chosen a photographer to chronicle the city for The Big Picture Photographer Laureate Program.

The purpose of the project was to commission an artist to photograph and respond to life in the City of Tampa. The Photographer Laureate Program is inspired by historic photographic projects including the Farm Workers Administration, the National Endowment for the Arts, and regional Photographic Archives. The program’s long-range vision is to build a public collection comprised of images that are representative of the life and times in Tampa, by regional, national and international photographers.

Over the course of the multi-year project, an artist will be commissioned to “add a volume” for one year. The volume must be built upon a theme/topic selected by the artist/photographer and approved by the committee. Over the course of time, the city hopes to accumulate and display a full and varied representation of the multiple and diverse perspectives of artists on Tampa.

The artist chosen for 2007 was Marion Belanger (www.marionbelanger.com) from Connecticut, and the Big Picture Photographer Laureate, Volume V is now finished, and Marion’s work is open to the public.

Check out Real Estate/Spaces in Transition on view at the American Institute of Architects Gallery in downtown Tampa at 200 N. Tampa Street, Suite 100.  Find it on the west side of Tampa St. just south of Jackson.

You may want to check out the online work of previous Tampa Photographer Laureates, including 2003 Photographer Laureate Beth Reynolds, 2004’s Suzanne Camp Crosby, pinhole photographer Rebecca Sexton Larson in 2005, and 2006’s Steven S. Gregory.

The 2008 photographer, Jeremy Chandler, is busy taking photos now.  Look for his exhibit in about a year.

CBS News anchor Katie Couric mistakenly said that the GOP convention was going to be in Minneapolis, when it will really be in St. Paul.  The Pioneer Press was appalled:

Minneapolis is a fine city, but it is 10 or so miles from the [Xcel Energy Center]. Couric and CBS join a long list of Giants of Journalism who have gotten their geography wrong.

Couric, like the other erring Giants, lives in that great city along the Hudson River in New York State — the city we like to call Newark.

Heh.  Of course, Couric apologized.

But she would get the same here if she referred to the local baseball team as the Tampa Rays.

Former St. Pete Police Officer Ken Kokotek retired, and unveiled his secret identity.  Picasso is the screen name Ken used on the Law Enforcement Officer Affairs (LEO Affairs) website while ripping the higher-ups on the force as well as the City of St. Pete administration and others.

Apparently, he’s pretty good with photoshop, too:

In one, Mayor Rick Baker is wearing a pink dress with a matching pink hat.

In another, police Chief Chuck Harmon’s head has been put on an obscenely overweight body, and the chief is looking intently at a two-layer cheeseburger.

Sounds attractive.  Look at the TBO article to see the altered images for yourself. 

Those higher-ups were irritated.  So much so,  there was an investigation into Picasso’s identity, and threats of firing - even after he retired!:

Had he not retired, a St. Petersburg police officer would have been fired for posting degrading computer-altered pictures of police administrators and others on a Web site…

Anyway - the artwork is average at best, but the satire is pretty good.  For more, check out Picasso’s home on the web, SPPD - An Insider’s View.

HART’s next board meeting will be Monday, August 4, at 8:30AM. This may prove to be an interesting session. TBO reported yesterday that the HART Board of Directors plan to vote on whether to pursue a sales tax funded rail initiative in 2010. What didn’t make the papers is that HART is also scheduled to rule on a good many contentious issues; not the least of which are proposed service reductions, service improvements, a base fare increase and an ad valorem [property] tax increase.

Just before 4th of July weekend, HART made public their suggested service improvements and reductions for the coming year. The suggestions were subject to a two week period of public comment and review, culminating in a public hearing at the Marion Transit Center on July 16. Based in part on HART’s reaction to the public comment, the final staff recommendations for service changes in 2009 are as follows:

• Weekday midday service on Nebraska Avenue, Route 2, to increase from 30 minutes to 20 minutes, between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Peak a.m. and p.m. service on Route 2 is already at 15 minutes.
• The recommendation to eliminate Route 88, the Town N’ Country connector is rescinded and a revision has been recommended to include the new Westgate Library and community center
• Additional express buses for Routes 24x and 25x that serve MacDill Airforce Base
• Route 85, the South Tampa Weekend Connector, to be eliminated
• Service on Route 36, Dale Mabry Hwy/Himes Avenue, to be extended on weekends from Britton Plaza to MacDill AFB

An early service proposition that is now noticeably missing from the final staff recommendations is a proposal to spend an additional $1.2 million to increase weekday service on Route 30, between downtown and Tampa International Airport. Service on Route 30 is currently every 30 minutes but the improvement would increase service to 15 minutes only on the downtown-airport segment.

According to the agenda for Monday’s meeting, staff now want the HART board to defer a decision on Route 30 service improvements until March 2009. Officially, staff have requested the deferment because new buses that were intended for that service will not be available until that date. However, I had a conversation with a senior HART staff member this week, and he informed me that HART intends to write the funding for downtown-aiport service improvements into the FY2009 budget, for service beginning in March.

In order to fund the new service, pay for the increase in the price of fuel, and offset the losses in revenue of the ad valorem [property] taxes due to the actions of the Florida Legislature and the Save Our Homes Amendment, HART has proposed an across the board fare increase. The fare increase recommendations vary by category. At the low end, the base one-way fare is proposed to increase 16.7% from the current $1.50 to $1.75. On the high end, the monthly unlimited pass is proposed to increase 20% from the current $50 to $60.

Even with the fare increase, HART still comes up short on a balanced budget. As the County Commission learned earlier this month, the taxable value of property in Hillsborough is down 4% in 2008. HART budget planners had originally projected a $2.8 million loss in their ad valorem revenue. That decrease in property tax money was intended to be offset by the fare increase and by cuts to service. But the public comment on service reductions has lead HART to rethink some of it’s cuts and the cost of fuel for next year is still in flux. To make up the difference, staff will ask the HART board to approve a small increase in the ad valorem millage rate.

The staff recommendation is to increase the millage rate to the authorized maximum of 0.500 mills, which would generate an additional $5 million in 2009. Such an increase will require a two-thirds vote of the HART Board of Directors.

Elected representatives on the HART board include County Commissioners Rose Ferlita, Al Higginbotham and Mark Sharpe, Tampa City Councilmember John Dingfelder and Temple Terrace Councilmember Ron Govin.

If you’ve got opinions on HART’s plans for 2009, be sure to give them a call before Monday morning.

Mayor Pam Iorio says that Tampa needs to get started on rail transit now, and not wait for TBARTA to get it going.

TBARTA wishes she would just give ‘em time to analyze the entire region.

The Hillsborough County Board of Commissioners will have to decide if they want to ask for extra sales tax as soon as the 2010 election.

I took off from work to spend a couple days with the soon-to-be 3rd grader.  Having exhausted my patience with crafts, games, Barbie, and SpongeBob on day one, I thought we should get out of the house for a second day of fun.

I didn’t have a spare hundred bucks laying around for a theme park, so I figured I’d try to keep the nearly-eight-year-old happy without spending a bunch of dough.

Not only did we have a good time, but I got out of it without spending much at all.  In fact, after breakfast, I didn’t spend a thing.

We started out at Dunkin’ Donuts.  Yep - the Rays won the night before, and When the Rays Win, You Win!  So we each enjoyed a free donut for breakfast with all the old folks!  With my coffee and her milk (and, ok, another donut for each of us), we got out of there for about $5. 

Next we went to the library.  There is a lake and a park adjacent, so we took our time walking around a bit.  We looked for frogs on the lily pads (none), butterflies near the flowers (a handful), and dragonflies everywhere else (a bunch).  We successfully avoided all fire ant mounds.

Once inside, she immediately found the library’s toys for smaller ones, and the little girl had fun with them for quite a while.  She then walked the entire juvenile section - over a dozen aisles! -  looking for a good book or three.  I convinced her to put Junie B. Jones (First Grader) back on the shelf and keep the Goosebumps story, The Girl Who Cried Monster.  She also grabbed a big Narnia book.

Then we went off to the mall!  Not to buy anything, but to play in the kids’ play area.  She towered over the other kids, and had fun getting chased around.  I found out later that there is a 42 inch limit to that play area. Luckily, no one kicked us out.  But I was getting hungry, and we left anyway.

We went home, where I taught her how to make a double-decker peanut butter sandwich.  She thought a triple-decker would be a good idea, but seeing as how I am the daddy, I had to put my foot down.

But just because we were home doesn’t mean that we were done for the day.  On to the pool!

The City of Tampa has a dozen parks with pools, and they are all free to use. We went to the Spicola Family Pool at DeSoto Park (we love DeSoto Park!) and spent the afternoon there in the Palmetto Beach neighborhood.

Like the pool at Sulphur Springs, Spicola has lap lanes, two waterslides, and a giant waterspouting mushroom-looking thing that kids love. They even have a shade tent where a daddy can comfortably read his own library book!

On the way home, we stopped at the McKay Bay Nature Park, part of the Great Florida Birding Trail.  It was fun for about 20 minutes.  We saw unusual birds and big spiders on bigger spider webs.  In our one bad decision, we picked a random trail that wound through the brush.  Although we didn’t get bit, we were chased right back into the car by a cloud of mosquitos!

The kid will tell you she had a great day (although she was not much impressed by the mosquito attack)!  Daddy had a great day, too, watching his daughter be a kid.

It wasn’t difficult, either. Just go and use the amenities that are available to you!

For Free!