TBARTA Now Offering Community Workshops Online -
Giving the Public Even More Opportunities to Participate

The Transportation Authority seeks public participation in the second phase of its master plan development

Tampa, Fla. – (July 17, 2008) – An online option for public participation in TBARTA’s Community Workshops will be available for this round of regional transportation master planning.

On Tuesday, July 22, from 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m., and Wednesday, August 6, from 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m., the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority (TBARTA) will host Community Workshops online at www.tbarta.com.

What are TBARTA Community Workshops?

Light rail or bus rapid transit? Commuter rail, managed lanes, or waterborne transit? TBARTA will ask the public to imagine the possibilities and share their ideas on different transit modes for our region at the next series of community workshops.

The workshops are part of TBARTA’s effort to develop a transportation master plan for the seven-county West Central Florida region, including Citrus, Hernando, Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, and Sarasota Counties.
TBARTA has recently completed Phase One of the master plan development, during which the public provided important comments on where transit service should be located to serve regional transportation needs. The second phase has begun, and TBARTA is now asking the public what type of transit mode would be best for each of the transportation corridors that moved into Phase Two. Some of the transit mode options that will be evaluated are bus rapid transit, commuter rail, light rail, managed lanes, and waterborne transit.

Participate Online

To participate in online Community Workshops, visit www.tbarta.com and click on the “Meetings” tab to locate the link for the online meetings. Or go directly to:

Online Community Workshop #1: http://www.tbarta.com/?q=node/1188
Online Community Workshop #2: http://www.tbarta.com/?q=node/1189

During the two meeting times – Tuesday, July 22, from 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m., and Wednesday, August 6, from 6 – 8 p.m. – a live, moderated Powerpoint presentation will be given at the beginning of the meeting time and repeated one hour later. In addition, TBARTA representatives will answer questions and ask for ideas and comments from the online audience.

During the online Community Workshop, visitors will be asked to complete a survey. This survey will also be available on the website outside of the meeting times for residents to complete at their convenience.

Other Opportunities to Participate

Additional Community Workshops will be held from 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. at the following locations. The workshops will be held “open house” style and will all contain the same information, so please stop by any time at the location of your choice.

Wednesday, July 23 – Manatee County
The Lakewood Ranch Community Room
(located in Northern Trust Bank, Suite 203)
6320 Venture Dr., Bradenton

Thursday, July 24 – Sarasota County
Venice Community Center
326 South Nokomis Ave., Venice

Tuesday, July 29 – Pasco County
Alice Hall Community Center
38116 Fifth Avenue, Zephyrhills

Wednesday, July 30 – Citrus County
West Citrus Community Center
8940 W. Veterans Dr., Homosassa

Thursday, July 31 – Hernando County
Holiday Inn Express – Spring Hill
3528 Commercial Way, Spring Hill

Tuesday, Aug. 5 – Hillsborough County
Doubletree Hotel
4500 W. Cypress Street, Tampa

Thursday, Aug. 7 – Pinellas County
Largo Cultural Center
105 Central Park Drive, Largo

As the master planning process moves into phase three, additional workshops will be held for public comment as well. These workshops are currently planned for Fall 2008. For more information on TBARTA and the Master Plan, visit www.tbarta.com or call 813-217-4048.

Individuals requiring accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act or persons who require translation services (free of charge) should contact Brandie Miklus at 813-217-4037 at least three (3) days prior to the meeting. Public participation is solicited without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, nation origin, disability, or family status.

About TBARTA

The Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority was created by the Florida Legislature in 2007 to plan and develop a multimodal transportation system that will connect the seven counties of the Tampa Bay region. These counties include Citrus, Hernando, Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, and Sarasota. TBARTA’s mission is to improve mobility and expand multimodal transportation options for passengers and freight throughout the seven-county region. The legislature has mandated that TBARTA must create a Regional Transportation Master Plan for the Tampa Bay region by July 2009 and TBARTA is working to complete it by the end of 2008. The goal of this Master Plan is to engage the public in developing a vision for regional integration of transportation systems and foster partnerships with government agencies and business entities.

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St. Pete Pride is please to announce that Janice Langbehn has agreed to be our Grand Marshall this year. Janice is not a house hold name yet but her story is compelling especially in light of the current attempt to deny gay partners any rights.

A year ago Janice Langbehn’s partner of nearly 18 years was pronounced brain dead after being stricken with a brain aneurysm. While at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, she was met with prejudice and apathy. Janice and her family were consistently denied visitation and didn’t see Lisa until many hours after she was admitted.

Langbehn, a social worker, said officials Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami did not recognize her or their jointly adopted children as part of Pond’s family. They were not allowed to be with her . . . and Langbehn’s authority to make decisions for Pond was not recognized.

Even after a friend in Olympia faxed the legal documents that showed that Pond had authorized Langbehn to make medical decisions for her, Langbehn said she wasn’t invited to be with her partner or told anything about her condition. She said she wasn’t allowed to see Pond again until a priest arrived to give “Last Rites.”

It was only after passionate pleas that a doctor finally spoke to the family about Pond’s condition, informing them that there was zero chance for recovery. With the help of a Catholic priest assigned to perform last the family was granted a five-minute visit, eight long hours after Pond was first admitted.

The Board of St. Pete Pride believes that this story and ones like it are necessary to put a personal face on the consequences of Amendment 2. Please come out and support St. Pete Pride on Saturday June 28, 2008 at 10AM.

By Ben Fry

Our buildings pretty much suck. Too many of them are monuments of energy inefficiency. They suck too much electricity off the power grid and water out of the ground. Construction materials often travel far to the work site, sucking fuel out of the tanks of big rigs. Many were built using harmful chemicals, which sucks.

The Pasco County school system has joined the small but growing ranks of those trying to do something about it.

Gulf Trace Elementary in Holiday became the first K-12 public school in Florida to be certified as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver by the U.S. Green Building Council.

“We were requested (by Pasco County schools) to build green,” said Joshua Bomstein, vice president of business development for Creative Contractors, Inc., who built the school.

Creative Contractors made some minor changes to the original design to make the school greener. The overall cost of the school was only one percent higher than the budget for the original design.

“We delivered a school that was far greener than if we didn’t make those changes,” said Bomstein.

During construction, about 80 percent of the site’s construction waste was recycled and around one-quarter of the school was made from recycled materials. Workers used different bins to collect waste materials, like concrete, scrap metal and drywall, Bomstein said. The drywall was finely ground and mixed into the soil after testing revealed it was environmentally safe.

For long-term benefits, the school uses 40 percent less water than an average building by using dual flush toilets, low-flow sinks and showers, and landscaping with water-wise plants, Bomstein said. Even the school’s carpeting is (environmentally) green: it was made from recycled windshields.

“To build the first K-12 school in the state to reach LEEDs silver really means something,” Bomstein said.

Gulf Trace is one more building in Tampa Bay that is sucking up less. Now on to the rest of them.

The opponents of Amendment 2, aimed at discriminating against gay couples who want to share the same marrriage/partnership benefits as straight couples, have been saying it for a long time, and now the Michigan Supreme Court agrees: a law there aimed at gay marriage has been applied to strip domestic partnership benefits already granted to same-sex couples.

This from Florida Red and Blue, one of two main groups fighting the November ballot initiative:

Dear SayNo2 Supporter:

It’s not often acceptable to say, “We told you so.”
But on occasion, nothing quite says it better.
Just hours ago, the Supreme Court of Michigan ruled that that state’s amendment banning ‘gay marriage’ also prohibits offering benefits to unmarried employees.
This is the exact scenario we’ve been talking about from the start – Amendment 2 could be used to strip existing benefits from Floridians.
We’ve said it, the Florida Legislature’s independent analysis says it and, today, the Michigan Supreme Court confirmed it – broadly worded amendments sold to ban ‘gay-marriage’ will actually take away benefits from everyone.
When we’ve talked about what Amendment 2 can do, the sponsors have been quick to deny it.
In fact, right now, their website says: “our amendment will not invalidate benefits granted from domestic partnerships or any other source.”
Sure. Tell us another one.
Want to hear the kicker?
According to today’s Michigan ruling the Justices on the losing side, wrote, “circumstances surrounding the election suggest Michigan voters didn’t intend to take away people’s benefits.”
And the Associated Press reported today that legal arguments were made in which, “…the ballot committee that sponsored Proposal 2 “consistently and repeatedly” assured voters that the initiative was only about protecting marriage.”
Remember, our opponents – the sponsors of Amendment 2 – claim that their amendment “will not invalidate benefits granted from domestic partnerships or any other source.”
But there’s just no argument any more.

The court’s opinion came in National Pride at Work Inc. v. Governor of Michigan.

(An important aside: A reading of the opinion in the case finds the decision narrowly tailored to prohibit granting same-sex domestic partnership benefits for public employees. It is not clear from the case whether private company benefits would similarly be prohibited, or if domestic partnership benefits for straight non-married couples would similarly be banned, and, of course, the ruling is not binding on Florida courts.)

Florida Red and Blue is dead on point about the “reassurance” that Florida’s Amendment 2 supporters make about their amendment not taking away partnership benefits. Here is what the Michigan court said about that:

Plaintiffs and the dissent argue that Citizens for the Protection of Marriage, an organization responsible for placing the marriage amendment on the 2004 ballot and a primary supporter of this initiative during the ensuing campaign, published a brochure that indicated that the proposal would not preclude public employers from offering health-insurance benefits to their employees’ domestic partners. However, such extrinsic evidence can hardly be used to contradict the unambiguous language of the constitution.

In fact, the Yes2Marriage group’s language and tack is eerily similar to that used in Michigan anti-gay marriage brochures:

Marriage is a union between a husband and wife. Proposal 2 will keep it that way. This is not about rights or benefits or how people choose to live their life. This has to do with family, children and the way people are. It merely settles the question once and for all what marriage is—for families today and future generations.

When it comes to the law, it is about what the people vote on, not what supporters promise, as the Michigan court reinforced in a footnote to its decision:

 … [I]t should bear little repeating that the people ultimately did not cast their votes to approve or disapprove counsel’s, or any other person’s, statements concerning the amendment; they voted to approve or disapprove the language of the amendment itself.

(photo from 2007 St. Pete Pride Parade by Tom Stovall) 

In the latest green news, Tampa Congresswoman Kathy Castor is marking Earth Day by filing a bill long sought — and long denied — by the Florida delegation and most Democrats: a permanent ban on offshore drilling around the state’s Gulf coast.

Initial media reaction is that the bill has a tough road ahead of it, caught up in the Democratic leadership’s lack of desire to revisit the contentious issue after a 2006 compromise that resulted in a temporary ban for Florida until 2022. Caster has led the fight in recent days against an effort to open Florida offshore drilling grounds for natural gas exploration, a Republican-led effort that had hoped to take advantage of public dismay with rising energy prices.

From her office comes these quotes from the Democrat:

“It is ridiculous, not just ironic that they are trying to allow drilling as part of a beach water-quality bill. If they go as far as to introduce an oil drilling amendment in a beach water-quality bill, I don’t know what else they wouldn’t do,” said Castor.

“Drilling off of our beautiful beaches is the energy policy of the past,” said Castor. “If President Bush and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle truly wanted to address high oil prices, they should have voted with the Democratic majority to take the huge tax breaks away from the big oil companies at a time that they are making record profits. Instead of these huge tax breaks for big oil the New Democratic Congress wants to invest those dollars in alternative energy and transportation opportunities to break our addiction.”

“We are fighting for a new direction on energy policy and renewable sources of energy. We value our natural environment, and we value the public health of our communities,” Castor continued. “Tomorrow, we will celebrate the 38th Earth Day, which gives us an opportunity to focus on the key challenges facing us in preserving our planet.”

“This year’s Earth Day coincides with a deepening economic crisis in America. That’s why the New Direction Congress has begun to address the global warming crisis and to spur a cleaner, greener, and more prosperous economy for the American people,” said Castor. “We have begun to reverse the failed energy policies of the past, committing instead to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting renewable energy for the future. By focusing on rapidly expanding the production of clean, alternative energy and reducing our use of oil, we can both reduce global warming and create green jobs.”

“More can and must be done to deal with these challenges facing us in preserving our planet and strengthening our economy,” Castor concluded. “We shouldn’t be endangering Florida’s natural environment and vital tourism economy for 25 days worth of oil and 35 days worth of natural gas, which is all that is estimated to be produced by the area opened up under the compromise of 2006.”

Here’s a good piece by the League of Conservation voters on Dubya’s obsession with fouling our tourist beaches.

(Photo by Enrico Strocchi) 

Mayor Pam Iorio has designated Thom Snelling, the current Deputy Director for Growth Management and Development Services, as the City’s Green Officer.  Snelling will perform these new duties in addition to his duties as Deputy Director.

His primary responsibility in this role will be to ensure the City of Tampa reaches its goal to become a Certified Florida Green Local Government by October of 2010 and to coordinate programs that will help the City fulfill its commitment to the U.S. Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement.  As part of his duties, Snelling will work continually to advance the use of green building techniques and sustainable development practices.

Two Tampa Bay latina public relations pros have formed a new outlet to discuss Hispanic political influence. The Hispanic Vision Forum is now up and running with discussion forums and a blog. One sample post:

When we report “Hispanics” or “Latinos,” who are we really talking about? Roberto Suro, for one, thinks journalists may not have a clear idea. Suro, a professor at the University of Southern California and former director of the Pew Hispanic Center, says the first and foremost, remember the characteristic about this population: It is diverse, dispersed, and growing and changing all the same time.

The HVF is the brainchild of Evelyn Hale and Angelette Aviles, a Democrat and Republican, respectively, making it truly bipartisan. Their mission: “Inclusion: To bridge the gap between the Hispanic community and the mainstream public. To provide a form of communication for Hispanics to express themselves freely so that others have a better understanding of what make us tick.”

 Hillsborough County commissioner Brian Blair has picked up Ronda Storm’s gay-bashing mantle. The The Former Bubble Bee is venting mock outrage that Tampa high school students will protest violence against LGBT.

The April 25th Day of Silence was started in tribute to Lawrence King, whom was gay and murdered at age 15. Students will not speak and hand out cards explaining their silence. All this sounds rather harmless and hardly a disruption to schools. Blair is running for re-election against Kevin Beckner. The latter is openly gay and heavily-backed by the Democratic establishment. Blair is also being investigation for a possible ethics violation. Time for Blair to play the religious card.

This tactic is no surprise. The leading candidate against him, Kevin Beckner, is openly gay and running a tough campaign about Blair’s poor stewardship of the Environmental Protection Commission.