The Big Story: Ronda renews city-county war
March 5th, 2008 by Wayne Garcia in Issues & Wonky Shit, People
A rent-subsidized apartment complex in Belmont Heights, part of the East Tampa CRA, which would be impacted by Sen. Ronda Storms’ new legislation. (photo courtesy of tampagov.net)
The Times reports today that Sen. Ronda Storms has filed a bill that would make it tougher for cities across Florida to revitalize their decaying urban neighborhoods:
Storms, a Republican from Brandon, has proposed limiting to 15 years the life of special taxing districts intended to boost economic development in blighted areas. She also wants any district already in place for 15 years dissolved in 2009.
Such districts, called community redevelopment areas, redirect property taxes raised in their borders toward improving infrastructure and the economy in the area. They typically remain in place 20 to 30 years.
“It takes some time to build up resources that can be used to cure some of the more significant blight conditions in a community,” said Mark Huey, Tampa’s manager of economic development.
The motivation, ostensibly, is to get those property taxes now locked up in CRAs returned to county governments. It is part of Storms’ and her allies’ longtime power struggle against the city of Tampa. It is SB 1528, for those keeping score.
In the past year, Hillsborough County leaders have locked horns with the city over several issues, from Jim Norman’s insistence that county paramedics have a shot at extra-hours jobs at Raymond James Stadium to the possibility of consolidating some city-county services. That last idea, a pretty good one, was scuttled by Iorio because of the county’s anti-gay stance, which (and now we come full circle) was initiated by then-County Commissioner Ronda Storms.
All of this is the result of the fact that city leaders lorded over the unincorporated county and county commission for years until suburban sprawl in the ’80s and ’90s saw so much population growth that the county ended up with three times as many residents as the city. In the power struggle that ensued (and continues today), fiscal and social conservatives came to dominate county politics, which Tampa’s political structure remained more ethnic and more progressive. I wrote about the phenomenon in 2006, and not much has changed since then:
It is about control. It is about who will run Hillsborough. It is about growth and increasing the raw numbers of voters.
It is all about power.
Few of Tampa’s urban power brokers realize the depth of dislike out in the ‘burbs and beyond for their brand of politics. For decades, Tampa and its downtown set called the shots for the entire county. Tampa’s mayor sat atop that heap.
But starting in the 1990s, a group of political activists in eastern and southern Hillsborough worked to change that mix. They knew that the Tampa political base had something they didn’t: access to money, and lots of it. Developers and captains of industry played their politics and elected officials who hewed to a pro-downtown line. Tampa, with its working-class ethnic population, also skewed more Democrat.
So, armed with computers that constantly ran voter statistics, fueled by money from a handful of key supporters to pay for intensive polling that showed how and why certain candidates won races, and aided by a national swing to the right in 1994, these activists were ready to level the playing field. They brought together a working coalition to support conservative suburban candidates: anti-impact fee advocate Ralph Hughes, fiscal conservative Sam Rashid and anti-abortion financier Lorena Jaeb, to name a few.
They tapped into a basic reality: Most suburbanites live outside the city of Tampa because they want to. They don’t like the city, with its urban ways, its ethnic flavors, its rundown sections and its too-exclusive, too-expensive neighborhoods.
They also realized much better than their city counterparts how to use grassroots support, mainly along social conservative lines.
And so slowly and surely — to paraphrase H.G. Wells — they drew their plans against Tampa.
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March 5th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
This happened in Leon County a few years back, when the county sued the City of Tallahassee for lost revenues to CRA’s put in downtown Tallahassee. The county maintained that the CRA’s were ultimately used for building luxury condos for lobbyists, and other wealthy denizens in areas already economically strong, and thus did not fit the definition of “blight.”
The City waged a nasty PR war calling the county out for being backwards, and from what I remember the Deputy County Admin retorted with a nasty OpEd of his own. I recall because he was an adjunct professor of mine at the time and we discussed this issue at great length.
I don’t recall how it finally played out but it would serve as a valid test case for this proposal.
CRA’s don’t really “lose” revenue sources for anyone. Property taxes are collected as they are anywhere else, just those collected in a CRA can only be used in a CRA. If the county is providing services to the CRA, then the CRA revenues collected should be used to pay for it.
Sounds like she’s trying to spread the wealth county-wide…If the Legislature hadn’t been so aggressive on Amendment 1 and the 5% caps, the county wouldn’t find the need to siphon off the revnues…
seems like its time for the League of Cities up there to turn the hypocrisy of the Florida Legislature back on itself.
March 5th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Maybe it’s time for Tampa and points west to form West Hillsborough County and leave the rest of it to the social conservatives so they can form their own inbred utopia.
March 5th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
LOL Chris W
I grew up on the “west side” and to me anything east of US 301 was foreign territory.
However, many younger, up and coming families have moved into Brandon, FIshhawk, etc in recent years (b/c of jobs and waning affordbility of home in Tampa proper)…give them some time to stay and get acclimated (unless the market drives them right back out first), and you might see a “moderation” across the county in a few years.
And Tampa, the city, could stand to do a better job of moving itself out of the bubble for which it has viewed the world for years…Wayne was right in the aritcle, there’s 3x as many unincorported residents than city denizens…that’s a political fight the city lost 2 decades ago and will never get back.
Stop thinking it’s the case, move on, and grow…
March 5th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Of course Help me Ronda would want to renew the city-county wars, these kooks thrive on dissension and the “us against them†attitude that is killing our county. Ronda and her master Hughes simply would never let the city and the county unite and heal towards the common goal of making the area a better place to live…â€them gays is wikedâ€. In the united world of ideas and creativity they’d be lost and insignificant. They are only head honchos when they can mis-inform, play dirty politics, and buy off politicians….i.e. make things shitty for the rest of us.
Without the “us and them†theatrics these losers would be exposed as the short-sighted cowards they really are.
Wake up Hillsborough—Hughes, Storms, Dibbs, Blair, Hagan, Norman, et al are against anything that improves the communities quality of life—mass transit, historic preservation, cultural arts, ELAP acquisition, environmental protection, equal rights for minorities, smart growth and planning, etc..
As they put it, their world is that of the spirit and since the physical world is in its “end timesâ€, why bother making it better? Might as well suck it dry.
March 6th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Bill, I don’t disagree with your vew ont the policy issues.
However, it’s not like the City of Tampa is brimming with gracious comraderie as well.
The fact is the County - by nature of the role of local governments and by electoral facts - will always politically and fiscally hold the upper hand.
That puts the city in a position of “suck it up and deal with it if you want to accomplish anything” that it frankly has never embraced, nor gotten past the denial that it is no longer top dog.
And at the end of the day, perhaps the BOCC is representing their constituents well. Have you ever asked residents in the unincorporated county what defines their quality of life?
If it comes down to 3 county residents opposed to mass transit versus one city resident in pro, you know how that vote is always going to go.
And the more shrill you get calling those residents names like hillbilly, rube, ignorant, etc., the more they will glady exert that 3:1 power they have to strike you down in opposition.
March 6th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Dear Can’t We all Just Get Along Says:
The current dominance of the County is a passing fad. Certainly, there will be additional incorporated areas in the county than the three we’ve had since 1922. after all this is a big county. Lutz, Sefner, Ruskin, Brandon, etc. are all thinking about incorporation and one day it WILL happen.
The Sprawl mentality that accounts for the BOCCs current power is not sustainable and in fact the move back to urban areas for half of the US population has been steadily increasing for 20 years. Escalating gas prices will speed this up. Likewise, we no longer tolerate (nor can we afford) the environmental degradation associated with Sprawl that is part and parcel of the BOCCs current power.
The intolerance, ignorance and fundamentalism of the past BOCC: i.e. hompohobes and anti-mass transit/smart growth planning(the BOCC wants to ax the Planning Commission) is also very “last millenium”.
In addition, the existing three cities in the county are now on to the BOCCs game. They know the tactics of Hughes, Blair, Norman et al. Previously, Tampa, Temple Terrace, and Plant City were not used to a powerful County or BOCC, now they are, and the game has changed.
Lastly, the majority of the county residents are NOT hillbillies, rubes, ignoramous’s–largely, they want to preserve the same quality of the life the city folks do. They merely need to get active and vote. This makes you wonder who, exactly, the BOCC represents??????
March 7th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
more incorporating?! What are you smoking?! Did you not see what happened when Ruskin tried to incorporate in 2006?
The BOCC said they’d contract for services - at 3x the current rate. What makes you think they won’t play that card for every other incoporation attempt in the future.
A brand new city would have to have county services, or would have to raise its taxes so high to pay for police, fire, and water that no one would want to live there - that would be difficult in its own right, but even harder now given the Legislatively imposed caps on property tax revenues, and the passage of Amendment 1.
Incorporation in Hillsborough has been talked about for decades, and nothing’s changed.
Watch to see if former State Sen. John Grant goes back to the Legislature in 2010 (I hear he’s running for Kevin Ambler’s termed-out House seat. He was a big proponent of Hillsborough County itself incorporating (the Miami-Dade model).
But, don’t forget, Jim Norman comes from the Jacksonville-Duval model of unigov, and would push that (and already has on some service, i.e. the most recent tiff with Pam).
You’re right about the “move back to urban areas” across the whole population…but that’s not Tampa-Hillsborough. The City of Tampa’s population growth has been stagnant for 3 decades. Urbanism also raises the demand on property and thus prices.
People flocked to the county becasue it is less expensive to live. Business flocked to the county because they are not double-taxed on property and fees. As long as wages in Florida remain on the lower-end of the spectrum, people will always choose the less expensive living option.
And how do you define “urban”? The service boundary the Planning Commission uses covers land far and wide beyond the Tampa, Plant City, and temple Terrace limits.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
intrigued by your connection of escalating gas prices to increased demand for urban living.
Higher gas prices still have deleterious effects on urban lifestyle too.
Buses still run on gasoline. Locomotives are still powered by deisel. The electrical sytem needed to run a “green” bus or train still requires coal or nuclear powered delivery. Alternative technologies are improving, but even their cost of delivery still relies on high gasoline and energy consumption
All are reasons why Washington, D.C. for example, just raised its rates on the Metro system
Yes, a shorter commute to work would lessen gasoline consumption, but you’d end up paying more for rent or a mortgage.
March 7th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
CWAJGA:
You and I both know that Hillsborough County will not remain with the three cities it’s had since 1922. One thing you can count on and that is change. Folks want representation. Take Brandon for instance, the greater Brandon area has over 250,000 residents, and they get one Commissioner on the County Commission (and until recently that was RRRRonda)? It’s stupid.
No matter what the BOCC offers, even if it’s free tickets to Blairs wrasslin’ matches, the urge for self-determination is too strong. You and I will have this conversation again in 20 years, and we’ll see who’s right.
Jeesh, you wrote a second comment without waiting for a reply?….
Tampa’s urban population won’t be stagnant over the next 20 years as the Baby Boomers and Empty Nesters further the trend to move back to urban areas. And baby boomers who know live in the ‘burbs will move to the urban areas as well. I define Urban based on the Transect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transect_(urban).
If folks live in a walkable urban environment where they have mass transit access and where they don’t need a car except occasionally, or at all, they will not be as hard hit by gas prices as suburbanites, especially the dumb suburbanites that drive Hummers and SUVs. Plus circa 1900 internal combustion engines that use fossil fuels are on their way out, they will be replaced by hybrids, or better yet all electric—yes, the technology will improve to get us there too. And then there’s solar and wind and geothermal and…..
Also, I predict that in the next thirty years the crime ridden slum areas won’t be in the urban areas, they will be in the suburbs. That alone would put a damper on the supposed permanent dominancy of the BOCC.
Lastly, we won’t be given a choice to get off of finite fossil fuel, many think we have already passed peak oil, what is our next energy source? We can sit around and debate whether the status quo will ever change or assume, correctly, that it will and begin making viable plans for the future of our region.
March 7th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
BillPeak, I would like to think that’s true. Tampa needs a big chunk of infrastructure rework to make that possible, though, along with some *serious* quality-of-life improvements. (Big a fan as I am, Riverwalk is nowhere in there.)
1. Protected sidewalks up and down Tampa’s major thoroughfares, with good crosswalks and red-light and “oops, I’m already in the intersection with nowhere to go” ticketing cameras to make it safe for bikes and pedestrians to get around.
2. Take a chainsaw to zoning regulations to make it easy to start businesses in and around neighborhoods - restaurants, flower shops, and the like.
3. Radically change the way we zone for and site schools. Instead of a giant big-box Wal-Mart type school that draws from dozens of neighborhoods, why not more smaller schools sited closer to where people live?
I could go on for pages. My idea for taking the western half of Hillsborough and leaving the Eastern half to the Babbitts is still on the table as well.
March 8th, 2008 at 12:38 am
Right on Chris, I’m with you, and it’s us citizens who have GOT to make these things happen, from the grassroots up.
March 8th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Bill:
Here are some more:
4. Write and pass a county charter amendment that puts the budget and management of the Environmental Protection Commission *and* the Planning Commission out of reach of the County Commission, and write the mission statement of both so clearly that there won’t be anything Rashid or Hughes or their commission hand puppets can do to get around it.
5. Make *all* zoning decisions contingent on fitting in with the comprehensive plan; if it doesn’t fit, the answer is *no*.
March 9th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Well, those are two brilliant suggestions from an astute mind. First, put both commissions beyond the control of elected officials. To whom are those commissions to be accountable? That’s a masterstroke of anti-democratic thinking. Your second suggestion indicates a constipated mind too. Make a plan, and if it doesn’t fit the plan, it’s a no-no. Never mind innovation or any unusual circumstances. One size fits all. If we didn’t think of it when we wrote the plan well that’s just too bad. What an enlightened liberal mind you have. If only your grasp of reality was as great as your indignation and self regard.
March 9th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
As regulatory and/or advisory agencies, they need not be directly accountable to the commission for democratic compatibility. Can you imagine if the sheriff’s office was run under the direct oversight and at the whim of the county commission? The BOCC’s responsibility is in making the rules, the manner in how those rules are executed is, by nature, incompatible with the function of a primarily legislative body. The founding fathers just might have been on to something, don’t ya think? I think you might have missed the point in statement 2(5?) I took it to mean compatible with the comprehensive plan. Anything that falls outside of that should undergo a great deal of scrutiny before approval instead of a rubber-stamp process as the one we have now appears to be. It’s much more fun to cast barbs than to talk about solutions though isn’t it? One must wonder if your moniker is in reference to a name or a title as in Chaucer’s tale.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
“I think you might have missed the point in statement 2(5?) I took it to mean compatible with the comprehensive plan.Anything that falls outside of that should undergo a great deal of scrutiny before approval.” I took it to mean that anything that doesn’t fit the existing plan isn’t approved; that is what is says. Silly me; I assume words mean what they say and lack your gift for nuance. NO generally doesn’t mean I’ll think about & get back to you. And as far as I know the Sheriff is an elected official, hence accountable to the voters, and the SO is not precisely a regulatory or advisory board. Minimizing political manipulation of advisory commissions and thus keeping the commission independent is a good idea, sure, but investing excessive regulatory power in unelected and unaccountable officials is a bad idea. I’m sorry Chris W. doesn’t like the “hand puppets” elected to the BOCC but they are elected and until he follows thru with his plans to secede (now there’s a constructive solution!) he’ll have to live with them and the rest of the Babbitts (hmmm … fun to cast barbs, isn’t it?).
March 9th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Fits must be the disputed term here. Perhaps we should allow Chris W. to clarify his intent.
The Sheriff is an elected official, but does not answer to the BOCC. Enforcement of laws and ordinances is an executive function similar to regulation. So are we arguing for a an elected executive. A county mayor perhaps. Unelected does not equate with unaccountable. City-manager forms of government are good examples of executives that are not elected, but still held accountable to
March 10th, 2008 at 10:54 am
WP:
No problem. I meant what I said - if something doesn’t fit the comprehensive plan, the answer is “no”. If you want to do something contrary to that plan, generate public support and amend it. Developers wanting to build are like kids at bedtime or in the candy aisle at Publix - you will hear such whining and bargaining that you’ll want to plug your ears.
I like the idea of a county mayor with a clear mandate to enforce the county’s laws and charter provisions. The devil in these things is in the details: would the county mayor get to over-ride the individual city mayors and governments? I’m sure Brandon and Temple Terrace and Plant City would love to be in full control of their own destinies.
Reeve:
Do you even know what a “Babbit” is? And no, I don’t like the current crop of bozos on the commission (with two exceptions - Sharpe and Ferlita, and I say this as a Democrat; I think both of them are Democrats in their hearts). As for the people who elected them - well, that’s another story. Most people are too busy with their lives to pay close attention to what their commissioners do, so the people they elect need to be resistant (if not completely immune) to the blandishments of land-use lawyers and lobbyists. Such is not the case right now, and the proof of the pudding is the scared-yet-grudging way the BOCC has had its “come to Jesus” moments on GATV with a roomful of angry voters. You just *know* they’re waiting for people to go to sleep again to sell their birthright for a mess of potage.
March 10th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Yes, I know what a Babbitt is. Sorry, but you are the smartest buy on the blog, you only think you are. You only think you are. And how magnanimous to concede Sharpe and Ferlita might be Democrats at heart. As if this were some sort of compliment.
March 10th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
That should read NOT the smartest guy. Pays to proofread before posting. And good luck with that secession thing, bud.
March 10th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Reeve:
It *was* a compliment. I don’t think I’m the smartest guy on the blog (I don’t know who the rest of you are), but I do know what I know. I know you haven’t addressed anything I actually said.
March 11th, 2008 at 7:26 am
I did address what you actually said. I don’t think it a good idea to invest an excess of administrative power in regulatory and advisory commissions that are not accountable to the voters or to elected officials. And your concept of a comprehensive plan seems inflexible. I do not support draconian measures that stifle all growth, and raise the cost of housing to San Franciscan levels. I understand people are angry about runaway growth in Florida and the dearth of leadership which has spawned the abortive “Home Town Florida” amendment (I’m not sure of the name). However, it may have slipped notice, the economy is in the doldrums, many developers and condo projects are now in bankruptcy, Trump Tower is near insolvency, and building permits in Hillsborough County are at a seven year low.
March 12th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Chris W. Barring a consolidation akin to Duval-Jax or Miami-Dade(FSM-forbid) the individual municipality would retain their sovereignty. The county mayor would merely be the executive arm of county administration under which the various boards could operate away from the direct meddling of the BOCC.
Reeve-Unfortunately until people make the efforts to educate themselves on issues and actually go to the polls to make informed decisions, any official being accountable to the electorate is of little comfort. All sorts of quotes regarding the pains of Democracy have said it much better than I ever could.
March 12th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Chris W
4) EPC and PC are subsets of the BOCC, not co-equal, nor should they ever have been. Their roles are to be policy recommending bodies to the bigger piece. If you want it to be like the Sheriff, Clerk, SOE, etc., you have to go all the way to Tallahassee and amend the state constitution, not simply the charter. Good luck on that, which brings me to…
5.) Hometown Democracy tried that appraoch. Could not get enough signatures STATEWIDE to event make it on a ballot.
March 12th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Reeve, who said anything about the Planning Commission and EPC being unaccountable? They would be elected, subject to recall, and if found to have violated their clear mandate then each of those decisions (and any development projects resulting) would be subject to cancellation.
CWAJGA, Hometown Democracy will make it onto the ballot for 2010 (even its opponents concede that). And when it does, it will pass. As far as making EPC and PC co-equal with the BOCC, that wasn’t what I said. We can write into our charter anything we want that doesn’t conflict with “general law”; that can include tying the hands of the county commissioners when it comes to helping developers screw up our county (like the bunch we have now does when they think we’re not looking), and it can include putting the EPC and PC off limits to their budget cuts (which they want to use as an excuse to get rid of them).