Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

The subhed in this morning’s headline in the St. Pete Times provides a perfect example of the stuff that bugs me about the boneheads in Tallahassee working hard to destroy what’s left of this wonderful state.

The hed:

“Budget gets final slicing“

Subhed:

“The deal cuts money to classrooms and nursing homes. Only state troopers get raises.”

Kinda says it all. You cut money for education, you’d better increase money for police.

I love and respect cops, glad we’ve got em, believe they deserve more money and bennies than they currently get to do a damn tough job. However, I honestly believe that if we took better care of our kids, we would need fewer troopers and prisons. As for cutting aid to nursing homes, remember that old saying about the measure of a civilization being the way it treats its most vulnerable members? What’s next, are we gonna launch the elderly into the Gulf on rickety rafts to we don’t have to bother with them anymore? Maybe we can put them to work selling lottery tickets to support our schools.

Hey Floridians!  You aren’t gambling enough.  Your kids will be more stupider if you don’t buy some scratch-offs right now.  You should probably smoke more cigarettes, too.  Think of the kids!

I can just imagine:

“Sure, I can drive this. How hard can it be?”

Maybe you should at least check out the “quick start” page of the operator’s manual.

“Naw, I don’t need no instructions. I drove one last time it snowed in Tampa. Can’t be much different than that!”

Um… It last snowed in Tampa in 1977. They may have changed since then.

“Bah! A truck is a truck is a truck. Gimme the keys.”

And with that, former Fire Chief Pete Botto jackknifed a brand new tiller truck, causing almost $6,000 in damage to the city’s new $886,000 Fire Engine.

It is a special truck, called a tiller truck, with a rear end that can be steered separately from the front end.

“As far as I can tell in driving it, you used to be able to swing the old tillers out wide. These don’t swing out the way the others did,” Botto said Wednesday.

Ya don’t say… C’mon, Petey. How much could things change in only, uh, THIRTY YEARS?

Captain Bill Wade said:

the luncheon event Tuesday was set up to bring in retirees who drove tiller trucks years ago so they could offer pointers on how to drive the vehicle. Tampa has not had a tiller truck for more than 15 years.

Captain Bill Wade also said:

“They did not know the unique operations of this modern tiller truck.”

Ya think?

Well, what did we expect. This is Tampa Fire Rescue, home of the good ol’ boys network of Tampa town rednecks.

Botto said that he might have jumped the gun in hopping into the cab and taking off during the ceremony for the truck’s debut, negotiating a wide-open training course the size of two football fields.

“We were just so gung-ho to get out there and drive it.”

You know the type. Those guys who think they can do it themselves, with or without a clue. Home Depot stays in business because of their five trips to fix a leaky toilet.

So we spend $886,000 on a new parade float, and your taxes will pay for another $6,000 in repairs before this thing sees its first strip show.

Yahoo!

I don’t have time to rehash some of the ridiculous things that your local governments have been doing lately.  Luckily, we have a couple of daily newspapers who take it upon themselves to point out the shenanigans at least now and again.  Here are a couple of editorials that you should read, and know that they are close enough to be endorsed by the editorial board of Sticks of Fire (uh, that’s just me).

St. Pete Times:  Don’t padlock the parks - In response to budget cuts, the county is ceding control over its parks to private sports leagues.  With the county’s OK, those leagues have been kicking tax paying residents out of the parks for "not paying."  The Times says it is a "lazy form of money management" and "indefensible."

Tampa Tribune:  Jim Norman’s Disappointing Focus - Hillsborough commissioners agreed that they need a better relationship with the city of Tampa.  It’s campaign season, so Norman’s first idea is to replace Tampa’s fire-rescue department from with his buddies in the county’s politically powerful firefighters’ union.  The proposal is a solution in search of a problem. The Tribune also says that "Norman is incapable of rising above personal, petty politics" to focus on the big challenges facing this community.

Tampa Tribune:  Giving Tampa Codes Some Teeth - Get rid of the ridiculous hoops that Code Enforcement must jump through, start giving out fines, and make life difficult for repeat violators.

That’s enough for now.

Update 1130am:  Replaced last paragraph. 

In preparation for upcoming mandated property tax cuts, Hillsborough County Commissioners Rose Ferlita and Al Higginbotham want to talk with the city of Tampa about merging both parks and recreation departments to save money.

Higginbotham says it makes no sense for both him and his neighbor to each buy a lawn mower, when one mower could do the job on both lawns.

But in an email to the Tribune, Mayor Pam says that the county doesn’t weed whack, or edge the driveway, or even put out any inviting gnomes:

“If our well-run department were to be merged into the larger bureaucracy of county government which serves its residents throughout the unincorporated area, we would lose out in determining the quality of our parks and programming as well as responsiveness to our citizens.”

She also suggested the county’s more conservative values would ruin public recreation, bringing up Ronda Storms attack on gay themed displays at libraries.

Of course, Hillsborough didn’t say if they would run this combined parks department or if the city of Tampa would be in charge. I wonder if Hillsborough County would even consider Tampa run their parks department (ha ha ha).

I use local parks, but only for recreation - I have no experience with other amenities such as after school care or organized sports - so I don’t really care if it is run by the city or the county. As long as it is safe, convenient, and easy to use. After all, it’s just a park.

I could have sworn that I remembered the current county commission reversing the ban on gay displays at libraries.  If they have, I cannot find it online.  After reading Mayor Pam’s entire email on the St. Pete Times website, and looking at Wayne Garcia’s piece about it, I see that the ban is still in effect.  All government facilities should be inclusive of all of our citizens, so it does matter who runs the parks.

Of course, it matters more who runs our government.

As I’m sure you have heard, McCain won half of Florida’s Republican delegates, and Clinton won the Democratic straw poll. Also, you overwhelmingly voted to pass Amendment 1, choosing to grab a bit of cash now instead of just hoping there is some later.

It looks like about 40% of registered voters made their way to the polls yesterday, higher than any other primary election since 1988. In Hillsborough, at least 37% voted in the election, while Polk County set a record with 39% turnout. 40% of Pasco made it to the polling places, 41% of Pinellas County voters cast ballots, and Hernando County saw a 45% voter turnout.

So how does that compare to past elections? Steve Bousquet knows:

Strong turnout, but not a record

The highest turnout for a presidential preference primary in Florida was 58 percent in 1972, the year of the state’s first primary, and the first year 18-year-olds could vote. Richard Nixon would go on to be re-elected over George McGovern. Primary turnout in Florida has generally declined steadily since then, to a low of 19 percent in 2000 and 20 percent in 2004.

OK, so who is gonna’ mark a ballot next week (or mail in an absentee ballott, or perhaps early vote)?

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Besides the Presidential Primary, the property tax amendment (Amendment 1) will be on the table for your consideration as well as other referendums and local items depending on where you’re voting….

You are the owner of a business. A consultant comes to you and says he can help you to increase your profit by $40 MILLION, and it will only cost you $150,000. Of course, you are skeptical, so you check the last job this guy has done, and find that this consultant might have been exaggerating a bit.

The last time this consultant worked a similar deal, he made the same promises. He actually charged the $150,000, but the true cost was double or triple that, due to lost production from employees assisting the consultant. Furthermore, that entity’s profit only increased by about $2.5 million.

What a scam!! We might lose a half million dollars doing this, and realize an increase of only $2 million.

But wait. Isn’t that still a net increase of $1.5 million?

Florida TaxWatch wants to audit Hillsborough County’s finances, and promises to find ways to save the county some money. The $150,000 fee will even be paid by anonymous private donors.

Hillsborough County Administrator Pat Bean says it’s not worth it. County Commissioner Rose Ferlita wants nothing to do with it. Commissioner Brian Blair made the suggestion, and the five other commissioners agreed to it, making Ferlita the only no vote.

Dear Ms Ferlita, This is a no-brainer. It’s possible that the audit will amount to nothing, and we will have wasted some county employees’ time. But it’s more likely that they will find at least a few ways to cut expenses in the budget, and perhaps keep us from laying off employees. If you are worried about your favorite programs getting cut, you will still be deciding which recommendations are actually implemented.

Dear Ms Bean, How is it that you are always on the wrong side of things?

Link: Florida TaxWatch