Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

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!

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

County Commissioner Al Higginbotham invited several citizen groups and community leaders to be videotaped with him today for what his staff called a “Christmas commercial” to be televised on the county’s TV station, HTV22. Higginbotham’s term ends next year so he needs to get his re-election campaign in gear now.

A televised campaign commercial featuring smiling citizens and community leaders with the candidate would ordinarily be very expensive, and most candidates would have a hard time organizing it even if they could afford it. In contrast, this “Christmas commercial” will be paid for by the taxpayers.

The Fishhawk Republican club sounds delighted to be included:

Subject: Commercial for Holiday to be filmed in Fishhawk, join us

Commissioner Al Higginbotham has invited the Fishhawk Republican Club to join him and be part of his Holiday Greeting which will be filmed on Monday, December 3 at 1:15 in front of the fireplace at Town Square. Commissioner Higginbotham requests that you join him for this television shoot. It is exciting that he has invited the Fishhawk Club to be part of his holiday greeting. Please join us at 1:15 at Town Square in front of the fireplace. Please email me or call and let me know you will join us. Also, forward this to any neighbors in Fishhawk.

Thank you.
Debbie

Debbie Cox Roush
President, Fishhawk Republican ClubCo-Chair Hillsborough County Coalition for Women, Mitt Romney for President
Event Chair HCRP

I wonder if Higginbotham also invited the East Hillsborough Democrats to be involved in his taxpayer-funded Holiday commercial? I wonder what Louise Thompson thinks of this use of our county-funded television station and film crew? (Louise is Executive Director of TBCN, the Tampa Bay Public Access television station which Hillsborough County commissioners decided not to fund anymore, while using our their TV station for their own self-promotion.) How do you, as a taxpayer, feel about your commissioner spending your taxes to film himself wishing you a happy Holiday? In an election year?

I don’t like my taxes being used to fund a politician’s self-promotional commercial during campaign season — a commercial which will discourage other candidates from coming forward to run against the incumbent, looking so well-connected with happy civic leaders and all.

The commercials were to be filmed Monday at 1:15 in the Fishhawk Town Square, and 3:15 at the Red Barn Ranch on Thonotassassa Rd. If you had known about it, you could have dropped by and made your way on TV too. After all, you are paying for these campaign spots —er, I mean Christmas Commercials.

Cross Bar Ranch is a wellfield in Pasco County. You can find it North of CR 52 and just East of US Hwy 41, just south of Masaryktown. Pinellas County purchased the property decades ago, and has been pumping water from there for Pinellas residents since 1980.

Because fresh water isn’t abundant in Pinellas, the 12,000+ acre piece of land was important to the county. But now that Tampa Bay Water exists to ensure everyone gets what they need to drink, they no longer need the property. Pasco County wants the State of Florida to help them buy it (scroll down), and some folks simply want to keep it from being developed.

Since at least 1992, the county has had to pay someone to “manage” the property. The water meter must be read to find out how much is pumped out, and report that to the Southwest Florida Water Management District. Oh, and they must “manage” the population of wild hogs. And as of the beginning of October, Albert Roller will get $2.7 million over the next five years to continue to do just that.

But some folks say that Roller has a funny way of managing the property. Rumors persist that there are lots of parties going on at the Cross Bar Ranch. And it’s been suggested that some Pinellas County officials (perhaps Utilities director Pick Talley?) use the land as a private hunting lodge. In addition to the wild hog population that Roller must keep down, there have been allegations of deer hunting there, too. Albert’s brother lived on the property, too, and Pasco County Deputies say Ralph Roller molested a boy there. Ralph is no longer welcome at the Ranch, though.

Much of this is rumor. Any outsiders that gets onto the property are sent away, so no one has seen any “hunting lodge.”

I’m just wondering how I can get a gig that pays half a million dollars a year to kill hogs and read a meter.

Considering all of the problems with the Hillsborough County School System (not enough nurses, students gone missing, not enough Physical Activity, unusual student/teacher conferences, questionable testing, graduation rates that make batting averages seem lofty, and more!), you would think they could at least find a way to get the kids to school on time. But I’m afraid not.

Too many kids are getting to school late, missing breakfast, and missing classes. So they want to find more Bus Drivers and drop off high school kids earlier.

We have already written about the shortage of drivers before, and why only those with a great tolerance for today’s typical kids and an ability to accept a small wage continue to drive a school bus. And that was before parents started boarding the bus to beat up students.

So with the high stress and low pay, is there any surprise they have a shortage of drivers? And because the school district is so desperate, some of the drivers that are on the payroll don’t even have the common sense to do the job.

So the answer is higher pay, right? Nope. But even if it was, the school board decided your tax money was better spent on a consultant. In January the school board said they were gonna pay a consultant $225,000 to study and fix the bus problems. Nine months later, they have spent over $340,000 on consultants. And after spending all that money, we still have kids showing up late to school - some say the problem is worse this year.

Good grief! I’ll say this again. When three high school buses all come through one single neighborhood, and none of the buses are full, it is a complete waste of your money. School choice and magnet schools cause this inefficiency, but the answer is not to get rid of these programs.

The answer is to make parents responsible for delivering their children to anything other than their neighborhood school. Your kids have a right to an education, and I’m happy to pay to get those kids to school. But if you want them in the best performing arts (or environmental studies, or international language) school, then it should be your job to get them there, not the school district’s.

So last week Ellen Gedalius reported in the Trib that the City has come to an agreement with M&J Wilkow who bought the struggling Complex last year. I posted on it back in November 2006 when Wilkow first bought the property and more recently we talked about the positive attitude some of the current business owners have about the new owners. Now the City has approved a plan where the new owners actually agree to help pay the mortgage we are currently paying on the place (well kinda). This addresses one question I had raised in a previous post,

Although I can’t be sure, I read this mean that the loan is not secured against the property (since they would have to pay it off when the complex is sold), but instead secured against city bonds.

In fact it seems that the debt is a mortgage we cosigned and which is going to be resubborned to the new owners (but we still have to pay for it).

Taxpayers long have been on the hook to subsidize Centro Ybor. In 1997, the city guaranteed a $9 million loan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help finance the center. The debt is in the form of a second mortgage on the property.

First of all great job to Ellen and the Trib for making that clear. Calling it a mortgage makes it very clear how silly this deal was for the city. Think about it, would you guarantee a mortgage for somebody to build a nice house next to yours in the hope it will make your home more valuable? I didn’t think so.

The whole story has gotten more than a little wacky with a t-shirt wearing millionaire offering to buy the debt outright. Alana Kahana and Joseph Capitano, themselves big real estate owners in the Ybor area both individually and in the name of Cherokee Associates, offering to buy both the debt by itself and the complex as a whole. Both efforts, according to city attorney David Smith, are designed to get the current owners to sell the property at a discount. Although the offers themselves may be spurious the city seems to be reviewing them to see if they are serious. Of course they seem to hate having to do it. Most of their concerns seems to be with the way the offers were made public.

“This is not the way we do business - coming before council after we’ve done a lot of work over many months,” [chief of staff] Darrell Smith said. “We realize it’s a very complex arrangement. We don’t like to do business with anyone standing up at council and trying to make a deal. This is not the courthouse steps. This is not an auction”
…Mayor Pam Iorio could not be reached for comment late Thursday, but Smith said “she was unhappy with the way it makes the city look, and she’s right. This circus like atmosphere is very embarrassing to the city.”

Maybe it does look bad and maybe these guys all have their own agendas but who really cares? The City is a poor business owner and here we have two groups of locals with proven business experience willing to let the city off the hook that Dick Greco put us on. They can also do it a whole lot faster than the current owners have offered to. Remember M&J Wilkow? They promised to pay a whole $100,000 upfront and $25,000 over the next six years towards the second mortgage that we pay $770,000 a year on right now. That means that they will pay a total of $250,000 on debt that the city will spend $4.6 million on during the same period. That math is bad for us all.

Lost in all the hubbub of the wetlands decisions made last week, Ken Hagan actually came up with an idea. How about that! After five years of just sitting there on the Board of County Commissioners, Hagan finally had a unique thought.

He believes Pasco County residents should pay a toll to drive into Hillsborough County. Hey - I said he had an idea, I didn’t say it was a good one.

After initially laughing at his plan, the rest of the BOCC decided to check into putting a toll plaza up at the county line on Bruce B. Downs Blvd.

He wants a toll plaza on a regular old pothole-filled road. Spending any more time on this ridiculous idea is nothing but a waste of your tax money.

Last Sunday’s big story in the Tribune was about uninspected fire hydrants.

collecting hydrant maintenance fees of about half a million dollars annually, the Tampa Water Department hasn’t inspected some hydrants in as many as five years - a violation of not only city standards but state law.

Those Trib editors must be prophets. On Thursday, the lead story was about a failed fire hydrant.

At any rate, hydrants should be inspected year, and the Fire Department pays the City of Tampa Water Department to inspect each of them. TWD gets $40 per year for each of the city’s 9,000+ hydrants in city limits - over $360,000/year. In addition, Hillsborough County pays TWD $60 to inspect and maintain about 3,700 hydrants in unincorporated Hillsborough - over $220,000. That’s over half a million dollars altogether being paid for a service that is not being performed.

This is the kind of wasteful spending that has citizens irritated. I don’t think any of us mind paying for these sort of safety issues, but the government agencies MUST perform the work. Why pay for something that is not being done? As always, it is us citizens that lose out.

There’s a fountain being built in Ybor City as part of a major beautification project. It’s being built by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) and when completed, will become the responsibility of the City of Tampa. This fountain is huge (nearly 29,000 square feet) and the total construction is going to cost about $1.3 million once it’s done. The upkeep is expected to cost between $3,000 and $5,000 a month.

Now, as long as hospitals success rates aren’t 1000% and crime rates aren’t 0%, there are going to be plenty of valid arguments against spending millions of dollars on things like fountains. But we all know they’re still going to get built and now we’re stuck with this one so there’s no point in bringing any of those arguments up now. Don’t get me wrong; as far as fountains go, this is truly a beautiful fountain. It’s as nice as any you’re likely to come across.

The problem is you’re not likely to come across this one.

It’s located between 21st and 22nd avenues underneath the I-4 overpass, right across the street from a McDonalds, which is what FDOT spokesman John McShaffrey refers to as a “gateway” to Ybor City. If you don’t associate that particular vista with screaming “scenic view!”, but more like just regular screaming, well, you’re probably not alone. I’m pretty sure that’s not one of the gateways to Ybor that Paul Catoe and Norwood Smith of the Tampa Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau tout to out of towners.

It doesn’t help that the entire thing is surrounded by a eight-foot high iron fence with locked gates. That’s right, you can’t (legally) get near it. It seems there are concerns about people misusing the fountain for purposes other than which it is intended, such as a bathing or, um, restroom facility. Now, I’m not making judgements about the people who live in or frequent Ybor City, I’m just following the path being laid here to it’s logical conclusion. That being if that’s really a concern, then maybe a fountain was never the best thing to put there in the first place. I mean isn’t that kind of like getting your kids a puppy but you know they’re too irresponsible to care for a pet so you take it to the taxidermist before you give it to them?
At any rate, the best place to actually view this magnificent fountain is from up on top of the I-4 overpass itself. Simply look for the McDonald’s sign, then pull over and stop (illegally) in the inside breakdown lane, get out and lean over the retaining wall and look down. Voila! Gateway fountaintastic!

Of course, all this grousing about the fountain is pointless anyway, since the the city has already said that because of water restrictions and budget concerns, they’re probably just going to shut the whole thing off once they take control of it. “I don’t know of any reason why it should be running,” said Elias Franco, spokesman for Tampa ’s Water Department.

Oh. Never mind.

(Cross posted at Ridiculously inconsistent trickle of consciousness)