Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Hillsborough County employs about 10,000 people, but, blaming budget cuts, county commissioners are poised to lay off the ONE guy responsible for protecting our wildlife from the bulldozers. If they adopt the budget with this proposed cutback, they will gut our upland habitat protection program, just like they tried to gut our wetland protection program last summer.

We have only one wildlife biologist who manages and enforces our Upland Habitat Ordinance. The Environmental Scientist II position reviews development proposals to ensure that areas designated as “Significant Wildlife Habitat” are protected. He decides whether a site qualifies as “Significant” or “Essential” habitat. And if you want to report someone who is bulldozing gopher tortoise habitat or cutting down Scrub Jay nests, he’s the guy you call.

Without this single wildlife biologist in the Planning & Growth Management (PGM) department, we would have no one qualified to handle your habitat protection program. PGM director Peter Aluotto says one of his staff’s urban foresters could try to take on these responsibilities, but foresters are not qualified for this job, and he knows it. Urban foresters are tree specialists, qualified for overseeing our tree ordinances, and deciding whether a tree can legally be cut down. The work requires a biologist, trained to evaluate habitat for various animal & plant species, assess damage to a whole ecological system and prescribe mitigation.

When a developer’s attorneys and their hired biologists testify at a zoning hearing about what type of ecosystem is on their site, and whether their project will impact this animal or that, they will claim our forester lacks the credentials to dispute their biologists — and they will be right. They will sue the county if our forester dares to restrict their development without adequate expert review — and they will win. Meanwhile, environmental groups could also sue the county for abandoning its responsibility to uphold our laws protecting our natural resources.

At the July 29 budget workshop, Commissioner Rose Ferlita responded to Aluotto’s idea of using a forester to do a biologist’s job:

“Well, pretty soon — and I’m being funny — we can have — because he may be not busy that afternoon — we can have an electrical inspector looking at it and see if maybe he thinks that we’re taking care of gopher turtles. I mean, then it becomes just a train wreck.”

Aluotto admitted his foresters are “not specifically trained” for this, offering,

“in those cases where they couldn’t — if they couldn’t get that job done, we would defer to state and federal agencies like Fish & Wildlife and DEP and those folks.”

Please. State agencies can not enforce Hillsborough County’s environmental standards. (Even if they could, they don’t have extra staff to lend us to do our work!) Aluotto’s suggestion that we “defer to state and federal agencies” is simply suggesting that we abandon our local rules protecting our wildlife habitat.

So why are we even thinking of eliminating our one and only wildlife biologist?

Good question - I’m glad you asked.

Some county commissioners have found the tanking housing market to be a good excuse to financially hamstring the agencies that regulate their developer buddies. Commissioner Jim Norman falsely claimed building had dropped 80% – 90%, arguing that we should cut these agencies by a similar percentage. After he was slammed by the Times’ Truth-O-Meter, Norman backed down from the 80% “off with their heads” stand, but still led the board to direct the Environmental Protection Commission (EPC), and the Planning Commission to cut their budgets off at the knees — and PGM too, although they don’t want PGM cutting too many from their permitting staff, as that would inconvenience developers. (Heaven forbid we should slow down the process by which subdivisions and condos get built, because we don’t have nearly enough of that stuff laying around vacant driving down our home values.)

And so we find PGM’s Peter Aluotto offering to eliminate those positions that service small homeowners who want to add a room to the home they can’t sell in this market, and doing away with the one position that developers would most like to see eliminated: the one biologist qualified to handle wildlife habitat reviews.

Finally, at the July 31 workshop, the administration decided they need to meet with their “customers” to see how they want this handled. And by “customers” they do not mean us taxpaying residents of the county, they are talking about developers. That’s right, they want the regulated community to help decide which regulators they should fire.

But since it’s our money paying everyone’s salary, shouldn’t we tell them who to hire and fire?

If, somewhere between the subdivisions and strip plazas, you’d like to see some natural spaces left green and alive with the wild magic of bobcats, foxes & otters — places where the woodpecker hammers out a staccato beat, and the Chuck-will’s-widow still sings, backed by a symphony of frogs — write your commissioners and tell them to keep the Environmental Scientist II in PGM’s budget. Here’s my letter. You can also speak to them at the public budget hearings, September 9 & 18, 6:00 p.m. at county center.

From July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008, the Tampa Bay area lost over 23,000 jobs. As a percentage, the Bay area’s job losses are second-worst nationally:

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater lost 1.8 percent of its jobs over the year ending in June

That’s second worst for major metros (population of 1,000,000+). Smaller areas such as Fort Myers (down 5.1 percent), Naples (down 4.2 percent) and Bradenton-Sarasota (down 3.6 percent) had bigger percentage losses.

Texas cities Houston, Dallas, and Austin all had job gains.

Check out the US Dept. of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report for June.

Besides the (very) loud music, here’s your introduction to Criss Angel > The Official Website:

Don’t miss the first LIVE episode in MINDFREAK history as Criss attempts to escape from an imploding building! Watch it LIVE on Wednesday, July 30 at 10 PM EST / 7 PM PST on A&E, or watch it LIVE here on www.CrissAngel.com!

It’s always fun to watch a building implode!  The whole “escaping death” part is just a bonus.  We find out more in the news section:

… From within a 9-story former hotel outside of Clearwater, Florida, Criss will attempt to escape a building that is loaded with explosives and set to detonate.

Clearwater!?!?  Now famous for Scientology AND Death Defying Stunts!?!?

Anyway, Angel has 3 and a half minutes to get out of handcuffs attached to a balcony railing, through three or four locked doors, and up 3 flights to the roof, where a helicopter will whisk him off to safety.

Cool.

Even cooler is the building that will host the stunt, the old Spyglass Resort Motel.  You know this place - it’s 10-story building with 100 foot mural of the hot air balloon on it.  Clearwater artist Roger Bansemer painted that mural back in 1978 (Tampa Bay’s 10 has the story of the mural). 

This place became quite the dump over the past few years, but the rooms were cheap!  That, along with many of the balconies facing the beach, the Spyglass became the perfect place for partying spring breakers.

Not everyone is impressed with Angel’s plans to escape getting blowed up.  Steve Otto says the stunt is “pretty lame.”  Ernest Hooper agrees, challenging Criss Angel to attempt to find a parking spot at Clearwater Beach in 3½ minutes on a Saturday.  Eric Snider simply says Angel is repugnant, pretentious, and unimpressive.

Good grief, ya’ll.  The dude is giving Clearwater Beach some free marketing national coverage, and BLOWING UP A BUILDING!! 

Actually, Advanced Explosives Demolition is blowing up the building, and Applied Science International created a video simulation of the implosion.

Those of you interested can watch Mindfreak on A&E tonight at 10pm, or see the webcast beginning at 9pam on AETV.com, watch it live at CrissAngel.com, or watch it live from Clearwater Beach - they will have giant screens there, too.

You gonna watch/go to this?

The tough economy is getting to everyone.  We are all trying to keep costs to a minimum, and come up with money-saving ideas.  Of course, as goes your economy, so goes the entire economy, including non-profits.  For instance, you did not buy enough Girl Scout Cookies last season:

While your support and enthusiasm drives us to provide outstanding service to girls, we’ve been notified that we’ll receive approximately $45,000 less than we budgeted from our United Ways, and our cookie program came in approximately $300,000 under budget. We also know the mileage reimbursement rate will increase again shortly and we can expect that other expenses will follow. We must now identify tangible ways to reduce expenses to make up for the known shortfalls.

After careful consideration and a cost-savings analysis, Girl Scouts of West Central Florida will be closing the service center and branch offices one day a week resulting in most full-time staff moving to a four-day work week.

A four day work week!!!?  From the Girl Scouts!!?!!??

“Thank God it’s Thursday!!”  … just doesn’t sound right.  But it is…

CEO Jody Johnston says the organization expects to save about $200 each day the office is closed, and employees will save about 20% on fuel costs by driving one less day per week. 

It’s not perfect, of course.  Many workers have had to alter their families’ schedules for the switch.  Parents had to make arrangements for their kids’ summer programs, and come August, school routines will be different, too.  Still, the Girl Scouts are working with each employee individually to make sure these types of concerns are addressed.

Along with the logistics of such a change, staffers are not yet used to getting up so early, and find themselves a bit tired by the end of the day.  They expect that it is simply a matter of getting used to it. 

Some are still getting used to the idea of NOT working on Friday.  Chief Marketing Officer Kristin Whitaker says she found herself thinking about work, and has even been checking email from home those days.

But she also notes that a three-day weekend is nice, and that she finally has the time for personal business, such as making those doctor appointments she has been putting off.  The commute is more pleasant now, too.  “Traffic is better since we aren’t on the road for rush hour.”

It seems there is not much of a down side, and the two managers I talked to are quite optimistic.

Interesting that of all the places that you would think of testing this, the Girl Scouts of West Central Florida (GSWCF) just don’t come to mind.  Yet they are the ones moving setting the pace.  Pretty cool.

Oh, and all of this doesn’t mean you can get away without buying Girl Scout Cookies in January, either.

After the jump, find a list of other organizations discussing the option, and the email Q&A with GSWCF CEO Jody Johnston.

(more…)

“The Pier” has been a landmark of downtown St. Petersburg since 1899 when Peter Demens connected the Orange Belt Railroad to a half-mile wharf. D. F. Brantley started the first Pier Pavilion in 1895, and a “Municipal Pier” debuted in 1913.  But it is the 1926 “Million Dollar Pier” (postcarded here) that long-time residents remember.

The Million Dollar Pier was the place to be - whether it was for a veteran’s meeting, a high school dance or a just getting a Coke at the drive-in. In the days before air conditioning, the way to cool off was to take a drive out to this community center pier. Cruise boats docked at the pier and during World War II so did the military ships.

The city began tearing down Million Dollar Pier in 1967, and opened today’s inverted pyramid structure in 1973.  In 1978, the city installed a laser on the third floor of the inverted pyramid, sending a “beam of green” up the pier to downtown.  It never really worked great, and was removed in the mid 80s.

The Pier got a $12 million makeover in 1988, with a lovely shade of turquoise contrasting the pale yellow building.

You may have noticed that The Pier Aquarium is looking to move off The Pier, and over to Baywalk.  It seems that after 35 years, The Pier and the building at the end of it are falling apart.  So now the city is looking for ideas on what to do with The Pier.

To do it right, some have suggested we look at other piers across the nation, such as Chicago’s Navy Pier (pictures), Santa Monica Pier (pics), and San Francisco’s Pier 39 (pics).

But maybe we ought to knock it down and replace it with a bridge to Ruskin.

You got any ideas?

Your Weekly Rays Update

Overall: 58-40
Last Week: AL Won All Star Game, Jays (2-1)
This Week: OAK, @ KC

Considering this was the first All Star game that had any real importance to the Rays (for obvious reasons), it was good to see the three Rays play well in it. Evan Longoria had a game tying RBI hit in the bottom of the 8th and Scott Kazmir picked up the win in one inning of relief work. Even Dioner Navarro helped turn a key double play in the 9th inning (although Navarro also gave up a run on an error the inning before). We all know the Rays are a young team but all three Rays who played in the All Star game were 24 or younger. That’s just the fifth time since 1963 a team has sent three players 24 or younger to the All Star game.

Tampa Bay…58—40 __ .592
Boston………….58—43 __ .574
New York……..54—45 __ .545
Baltimore…….48—50 __ .490
Toronto……….48—51 __ .485

The Rays probably don’t deserve to be in first in the division considering the seven games they dropped before the All Star break, yet there they are. We have three Red Sox losses to the Angels to thank for that. Of concern is the fact that the Rays play dreadful on the road (19-25). The Rays have been saved by their home record (41-15) but it’s difficult to consider the team a serious playoff contender unless they can improve their road record.

HERE WE GO AGAIN
A Commission has been formed as a joint effort between St Petersburg, Pinellas and the Rays to find a site for a new stadium. The Commission, called A Baseball Community, Inc. is looking for applications for the 9 member committee that will head this coalition. The Times Stadium blog, Ballpark Frankness, has a guess at the potential membership of this committee and the biggest question seems to be, will someone from the anti-stadium group, POWW, be allowed on the committee? Personally, I’m torn on the value of adding someone from POWW to this group.

LONGORIA HOT, UPTON NOT
Apologies for the uncreative headline but Longoria has been on fire since the All Star break with 3 homeruns in his last three games. On the flip side BJ Upton has played poorly lately and Joe Maddon has moved Upton around in the lineup to take pressure off of Upton until he finds his swing. Upton is not the only Ray struggling (Carl Crawford and Carlos Pena have as well) so you have to wonder how long can a rookie (i.e. Longoria) essentially carry the Rays offense?.

PERCIVAL BACK
Reliever Troy Percival returns from the 15 day DL and should pitch sometime this week. While the Rays bullpen as a whole is much improved from last season Percival seems to provide a calming influence for a young team.

PLAYOFF ODDS: 84%
(Courtesy Baseball Prospectus)

The Red Bull Flugtag was presented here on Saturday, for the first time in Tampa Bay, and I attended with a group of friends along with another 110,000 people or so. The arrow in the photo indicates roughly where I was. See me? I’m jumping up and down and waving! Hello!

In case you’re not familiar with it, Flugtag, a German term meaning “Flying Day”, consists of teams of people building homemade, human-powered flying machines and piloting them off a 30-foot high deck in hopes of achieving flight. They never do, though.

So it’s basically the Superbowl of putting on ridiculous costumes, building stuff and pushing it off a ledge into water. And yes, this is as funny and entertaining as it sounds. When it comes to free entertainment, it’s hard to beat people falling into water. Include costumes and flying machines that don’t - just adds bonus points.

Tampa is one of three cities to host the event this year, the others being Chicago and Portland, Oregon later this summer. Red Bull has sponsored about 40 of these so far and we (Tampa) set an attendance record, more than doubling the 50,000 that had been projected. I’m not surprised; literally everyone I spoke to for the last two weeks was planning on going. I think event planners were caught off guard:

• It was scheduled to begin at 1:00 and we got there at 11:00 when gates were supposed to open. But it was obvious that a lot of people had gotten in and set up camp much earlier than that, as evidenced by us ending up where we did.
• In spite of previously published warnings about things that wouldn’t be allowed in, there weren’t even cursory bag searches taking place, at least not at the gate where we entered (right outside the convention center).
• Food and beverage locations were few and far between, which was a matter of major concern because with that many people packed in that tightly, smack in the middle of the day, smack in the middle of July (why didn’t they schedule it for later, like around dusk?), remaining hydrated was of vital importance. Just because we were closer to the hospital than the launch pad doesn’t mean I wanted to go there. Eventually, even though we drank plenty of fluids, our group just couldn’t hang so we left around 2:00 and watched the rest of it from The Press Box. We had a good time but it was just too hot and too crowded to be enjoyable after a while.
• A group of people who were probably a little put out would be those presenting and attending METROCON which was taking place simultaneously at the Tampa Convention Center. Some of the more elaborately costumed anime fans might have had legitimate concerns about being mistakenly tossed into the drink by overly lubricated enthusiastic Flugtaggers.
• I don’t think there were nearly enough police officers on hand to handle traffic. We left well before the end and we still wound up stuck in pretty thick traffic on the way out. I can’t even imagine what it was like when the event was over.
• Lastly, I don’t understand why the city didn’t take advantage of the event to publicize the Riverwalk. After all, that’s really where it took place. For all the publicity the event got leading up to the big day, there was never a mention of Mayor Iorio’s legacy project and it’s proximity to the convention center as well as all the exciting cultural/dining/retail shopping opportunities offered in downtown Tampa…or will be some day…hopefully. I don’t know. It just seems like somebody in marketing would have thought of that, that’s all.

Overall, it was fun but there is a lot of room for improvement if/when it comes back.

(Cross posted at Ridiculously inconsistent trickle of consciousness)

Despite a last-ditch effort by developer interests to weaken wetland protections last Thursday, interested citizens prevailed and your county commissioners adopted the final batch of wetland rule changes without any modifications.

Having failed to persuade EPC staff to agree to any weakening of the rules in this last part of the Hybrid, developers frantically lobbied county commissioners to stick last-minute changes into the proposal.

Speaking against those changes were representatives of the League of Women Voters, U-CAN, R-LAND, Sierra Club, Audubon, Tomorrow Matters!, Seffner Community Alliance, Taylor Road Civic Association, and several unaffiliated citizens. A few developers and agricultural interests spoke for looser regulations, but they were outnumbered and outmatched.

A key to the success of the conservationists was that many of their email and letters showed commissioners that they clearly understood the key points included in the changes.  Developers’ demands were couched in harmless-sounding doublespeak like “net environmental benefits” or “classification of wetlands,” but citizens pointed out how those innocent-sounding buzzwords would weaken wetland protections.

Still, Commissioner Jim Norman pushed hard for the “classification of wetlands” modification, which would have made it easier to destroy some wetlands deemed “low class.” This idea was opposed by EPC staff, all 3 advisory committees and the non-developer citizens involved.

Commissioner Brian Blair tried to lend support to Norman, but Blair didn’t seem to understand the issues well enough to do more than flail about, finally resorting to reading a letter out loud.  Blair wrongly claimed the letter was written by a member of the EPC’s Technical Advisory Group (TAG). In fact, the letter was written by Mike Peterson, speaking for the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors, not TAG.  Peterson is also known as a lawyer for developers.

(Side note - I wonder if Tampa Realtors approve of their spokesperson calling for weaker wetland protections?  He previously led Tampa Realtors to call for the total elimination of EPC wetland protections, and this letter reiterates that position.  It’s obvious how it would benefit Peterson’s developer-clients to be allowed to destroy wetlands to build more houses, but how would it benefit Realtors to have neighborhoods flooded by wetland destruction just so their market could also be flooded with more houses for sale, depressing prices?)

Thankfully, Commissioner Mark Sharpe argued firmly against Norman’s pitch for the requests for modifications, noting some of the economic benefits of strong environmental protections. 

Likewise, Commissioner Rose Ferlita moved to adopt the rules as proposed, and flatly refused to allow Blair & Norman to pollute her motion with any language that would direct EPC to weaken wetland protections.

If not for the concerted efforts of those above-mentioned groups and other interested parties, it is my belief that the already compromised rules would have been put off again, eventually leading to further weakening of wetlands rules. Instead, the concerns of citizens were heard by your county commissioners, and Mark Sharpe’s compelling arguments thwarted attempts to delay. With no commissioner wanting to be singled out as voting against wetlands (given all the heat the public & press has directed at them on this issue), the motion passed unanimously.

For more, see the Times and Tribune on the hearing, and the Times’ preview. The Tribune also printed an editorial and Denise Layne’s Op Ed before the hearing, both calling on commissioners to approve EPC staff’s proposal as is. At the hearing, all 3 of Blair’s Democratic opponents spoke in favor of EPC’s staff recommendation. Hear them all on this audio clip of WMNF’s excellent coverage. Full captioning of the hearing is here.