The Political Whore

By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist

Since bad bills like SB 360, legislation to weaken severely growth management laws, and other developer dreams are still alive and well in Tally at the last hour, I wondered what our eight paid lobbyists for Hillsborough County are doing with their time. As legislators attempt to rob a fund to clean up polluted water sources from petroleum leaks (one is in my neighborhood). I wondered where Hillsborough’s Environmental Protection Commission is. I am still wondering. Read the rest of this entry »

By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist

Only in Hillsborough would the Captain of Team Sprawl propose to sell environmentally sensitive land already owned by the public …….get this………in order to preserve it!  WTF?

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City Councilwoman Mary Mulhern has put green jobs on her board’s monthly workshop agenda for this Thursday. Details for those who want to attend are on the jump:

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If your telephone rings next week, it might be TBARTA calling.

The Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority, the group trying to put together a seven-county transportation and light rail system, is going to randomly call residents starting next week and ask them to participate in a phone-in town hall meeting, in a system called iTownHall.

For those not called, you can take part, too, if you like. Just call toll-free, 1-877-269-7289 and enter PIN# 14837 prior to each call. The schedule for which TBARTA elected officials, staffers and appointed board members, and the full news release, is after the jump:

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Tampa is expanding its recycling efforts, with an assist from the Tampa Downtown Partnership. The city is providing 20 recycling receptacles in downtown and the Channelside area; the Partnership will provide the labor to collect the recycled good from those receptacles and take them to a collection point.

The city’s news release after the jump:

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I attended a recent sprawl battle down at Collusionville Headquarters the Hillsborough County Center (see my post on that here), where I asked Commissioner Ken Hagan to recuse himself from a vote at hand.  I asked because the applicant, Stephen Dibbs, was listed as hosting a campaign fundraiser for him, according to this article.

Sure seemed to me that if one of your fundraisers is asking you to change the rules for his financial benefit that would be a conflict of interest. [Editor's note: A Commission on Ethics opinion has ruled that receiving campaign contributions does not constitute a legal conflict of interest for a public official.] Hagan not only flat-out denied that Dibbs ever held a fundraiser for him but he did it on the record. His exact words, according to the transcripts, were “Mr. Dibbs has never held a fundraiser for me and even if he had that would be a ridiculous standard to try and enforce.” I guess that is why they are called puppets, right? As a review, 5 of our 7 current Commissioners have financial contributions from Dibbs.

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Some interesting folks from the Green movement are going to be in St. Petersburg later this week as part of the 4th Annual Smart Sustainable Symposium, brought to us by the Florida Gulf Coast chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council.

Two residents of Greensburg, Kansas, a town wiped out by a tornado two years ago, are set to be part of the symposium on Thursday night. Daniel Wallach, a co-director of the nonprofit Greensburg GreenTown movement, and FEMAville resident Taylor Schmidt will be on hand. Both are part of the documentary series about the town on Planet Green, highlighting Greensburg’s decision not to rebuild immediately but instead carefully plan a new sustainable community.

On Friday night, UC-Berkeley instructor and author Eric Corey Freed speaks. He is an architect and the principal of organicARCHITECT. He will speak about “The myth of Sisyphus: A roadmap to avoiding human extinction,” which organizers say will review “construction issues around Suburbs, Las Vegas, & New Orleans, you’ll see the world in a new way. Drawn from the most advanced research, this provides you with a road map for building for the next 50 years. Using rich graphics and multimedia, this seminar will change your view of green building forever.”

More info and details about the event after the jump and at the symposium’s website.

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Just one more way developers run roughshod over the public and control our public “servants.” This article in the Times shows the beautiful green lawn of a model home and tells us how some vacant model homes use four times more water than if a family were living in them. The fees they get for violating the water restrictions? The builders consider it the cost of doing business. Looks like they laugh at these restrictions the same way the laugh at growth management laws. Probably the same builders that helped cause our housing glut in the first place with the blessing of most of our elected officials.

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By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist

Two Comprehensive Plan amendments that would have breached the Hillsborough County Urban Service Boundary, violated the Comprehensive and Community Plans as well as pushed us further down the slippery slope of sprawl were shot down 7-0 Thursday night by the County Commission. Don’t get too excited, because as often the case, even when we win we lose (mainly because the unsavory characters on the Commission are still in office the next day).

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U.S. Sugar’s prime competitor, the Fanjul-owned Florida Crystals, has commissioned an engineering study that estimates it will cost the state more than $9 billion to fully use all 180,000 acres it is buying from the sugar-growing giant.

That estimate is well in excess of any previous guess.

The Palm Beach Post reports that pro-US Sugar deal forces say the Florida Crystals report has no validity:

The cost estimates for design and construction raise questions about whether the Everglades, which scientists say is in near-irreversible decline, would benefit quickly enough from Crist’s initiative, critics say.

But one leading champion of the land purchase dismissed the study as propaganda by the opposition, which includes rival sugar grower Florida Crystals Corp.

“Their goal is to undermine this land acquisition,” said Kirk Fordham, CEO of the Everglades Foundation, a nonprofit group that pushed Crist to put together the deal. “The report has no credibility.”

Still, opponents say the figures suggest that the ecological benefits from the mammoth land deal remain too distant to justify putting existing restoration plans on hold to pay for U.S. Sugar’s property.

By Ben Luongo
PoHo contributor

Ben Luongo is a USF political science graduate student. He will be graduating this spring.

Tampa’s 15 billion gallon reservoir is now basically drained and the rainy season is months away.  According to Tampa Bay Water spokeswomen Michelle Robinson, Tampa is now going to have to rely on both the underground water aquifer, which could increase the risk of sinkholes, and the small of amount of desalinated water from the plant.

When people think of Florida they might find it unlikely that it would suffer from a water shortage.  However, after decades of development even a state surrounded by water is prone to shortages, and Florida is not the only one.  According to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, 36 states are projected to suffer water shortages in the next five years.  Water shortage is a problem felt at local levels, like the city and state, but also at national and international levels.  This means that efforts to remedy water shortages are going to require both state and federal solutions.

However, on a more individual level, there is stuff that we as Tampanians can do to reduce the amount of water that we use on a daily basis. Here are some easy and cheap examples:

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Judging by the picture in this article in the Times, there is something green growing in the Hillsborough County drinking-water reservoir…….it looks like grass. Hey, my pastures are looking kinda rough with this drought and I do live almost next door…. I wonder if they would consider leasing it out as grazing land since even if we had water it isn’t so good at holding any?

The article is about Swiftmud voting not to tighten water restrictions……….drought? What drought? Drink up and more importantly BUILD UP! The conversation that nobody really wants to have is that while local and state politicians are scrambling to weaken rules for building and raping the environment all in the name of economic development (think developer welfare) what they are really avoiding addressing is the severe water shortage we are in.

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By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist

(Insert Blaring Sirens Here) Consent agenda Alert, Consent Agenda Alert!

I guess the great job HDR did on designing the Cracking Reservoir and the 6-Lane Cluster Study of Lithia Pinecrest warrants another contract to the tune of over 1.5 million dollars to the firm for another PD and E study, this time for Van Dyke Road. Where might this sweet deal be going down? The consent agenda of the Hillsborough County Commission, of course! Does this firm (who Tampa Bay Water is currently suing and citizens have exposed due to their judgment, or lack thereof) and its tall tales told to citizens with regards to the Lithia Pinecrest Road Widening/Not Widening Project deserve yet another fat contract?

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Gainesville has always been Florida’s most progressive city; credit that to it being a large college town with committed activists – and a city-owned utility for generating power.

According to the Gainesville Sun, the city is now taking steps to push private solar energy producers to hook up to its grid:

This month, Gainesville became the first city in North America that requires utility customers to pay a premium for solar energy, twice the going rate for the city’s coal-generated electricity.

The program is being hailed as a pioneering step in U.S. energy policy, one that would transfer power production from massive plants relying on coal, gas and nuclear power to individual homes and businesses using sustainable and pollution-free sunshine.

Within a few years Gainesville expects to have more photovoltaic solar panels than all of Florida combined.

You can read the full story in the Sun’s sister paper, The Ledger.

Here’s a counterpoint to Kelly Cornelius’ most recent post on SunRail, an op-ed from the president and CEO of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Mark Wilson:

Commuter rail helps create jobs

America is in a recession, and Floridians have not been spared. Florida’s unemployment rate is 8.1 percent, higher than the national rate of 7.2 percent. It seems as if every day, newspapers throughout the state report layoffs by Florida companies. Last year, Florida lost 255,000 jobs.

Times are tough, and the full attention of our elected leaders should be given to economic recovery, transition and job growth. While Florida is faced with the same economic challenges as the rest of the nation, we are fortunate to have a governor who understands the need to invest in long-term transportation solutions even in these tough times.

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By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist

This new CSX deal is so ugly it would make a freight train take a dirt road. It would cost taxpayers $1.2 billion, but according to this recent Orlando Sentinel article, that number could go up. According to a recent news release from Senator Paula Dockery, an opponent of the deal, the number is actually at $2.66 BILLION! She had the Florida Department of Transportation do a detailed cost estimate and this is what it produced.

Wasn’t this rotten deal only a paltry $649 million last year? I guess train track prices don’t go down in a recession, and neither did the number of disturbing details about this deal. Still present are the liability issues sticking taxpayers with the bill for negligence, the location issue (that send freight trains through downtown Lakeland) and, of course, there is that little matter of the cost. Not to mention the backroom way in which this scheme was originally cooked up. Taxpayers are getting totally railroaded. Some research finds that CSX is not a stranger to screwing Florida taxpayers; check out this article.

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DGI = Damned Good Ideas.

And that is exactly what Alan Snel, a cycling advocate and blogger, have put before the Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority.

From this morning’s St. Petersburg Times:

The Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority Board will hear a staff report this afternoon on the feasibility of closing the upper tier of the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway to cars on Sundays so bicyclists can use it.

The proposal, brought up by a coalition of Tampa Bay area bicycle stores and bicyclists at last month’s board meeting, asked officials to look into the idea of closing the elevated lanes on one or a few Sundays a month for two to three hours in the morning. The closure would allow bikers to ride the upper deck, typically used for commutes in heavy traffic during the week.

“Hopefully, they (board members) will understand the minimal impact this would have on tolls,” said Alan Snel, director of the bike coalition. “Our area lost the Friendship Trail Bridge and we are very tentative about using roads. I think bicyclists would really embrace this.”

The authority board will hear the bikeway staff report at 3 p.m. at its 1104 Twiggs St. offices in downtown Tampa.

By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist

As I wrote about earlier this week, I was just sick at what a nasty (and in my opinion) unfounded media campaign was doing to former (and now current again) executive director of the Planning Commission, Bob Hunter. Who knew our biggest fight yet against sprawl would not be a comp plan amendment, nor a huge DRI, nor a rezoning nor even a toll road? Who knew it would turn out to be against a smear campaign ruining the reputation of a man who did not deserve it, against forces that often we can’t see, and against a program that is not well received but perfectly legal. This fight was against the negative public perception of a man that the developer lobby served up to an uneducated but all too willing media. This was the battle was in front of us and it was overwhelmingly slanted in the opposite direction. Who said fighting sprawl was easy though right?

For the Planning Commission meeting earlier this week, we donned our battle gear (Citizens for Bob T-shirts) and headed into the meeting. Every citizen speaking on the record was in favor if Hunter’s return. Speaking of the record, I had to also set something straight. During the discussion, Commissioner Frank Chillura raised the issue about negative perception and the comments of other officials who could control the Planning Commission’s budget. Chairman Bruce Cury explained that those comments were made by Commissioner Rose Ferlita, and he thought that it was just a matter of the camera being shoved in her face after a meeting, and he says the planning board’s decision should not be influenced by that.

As Cury is making these comments reporter Mike Deeson turns toward us concerned citizens and mouths the words HE IS LYING (referring to Cury.)

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By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist

Here we go again. Is there no end to the dirty tricks the growth machine in Florida is willing to go to in order to stop Florida Hometown Democracy? Nope. Hometown Democracy is a citizen petition amendment that should have been on the ballot in 2008 but due to nasty gutter politics from Palm Beach to Tallahassee it was never added. If passed the amendment would allow voters instead of politicians to vote on any land use changes outside of what our Comprehensive Plan currently provides for.

Maybe they should have renamed Florida Hometown Democracy to “You Can Say No to Sprawl” because the Sprawlpushers Florida Chamber of Commerce has its own competing amendment to block Hometown Democracy, and of course they named it “The Smarter Growth” amendment. This is sort of like Ralph Hughes naming his group Let’s Make The World a Better Place Because We Have Been Here, like Ronda Storms trying to push religion into public schools but naming her bill the Evolution Bill! Like drug dealers with Say No to Drugs stickers on their bumpers. Like……Senator Craig or preacher Ted Haggard wearing an I Hate Gays t-shirt. The Economic Stimulus Package. You get the picture.

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By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor

Budget Crisis? What Budget Crisis?

Remember Chapter One of the Lithia Pinecrest Chronicles – A Road Widening, Some More Lying and We Just Ain’t Buying? Turns out we might not buy it but it looks like we sure as hell are paying for it! The reason this whole controversy regarding this road PD and E study started is that the consultants doing the study to possibly widen Lithia Pinecrest told citizens (screaming about the rural section of the study) that they had to study 6 lanes to be eligible for Federal Dollars (that argument didn’t really hold up) so then they used the logical termini defense for federal dollars and that one is at best arguable. There is one thing they all seem to agree on and that is the fact that the study can’t be predetermined according to Federal guidelines.

Enter a 10+ acre parcel of land off Lithia Pinecrest and Valrico in 2006 for sale for possible right of way (ROW). Read the rest of this entry »

That RED R over your house does NOT stand for Republican!

Welcome to Chapter 4 of the Lithia Pinecrest Chronicles. If you want some history you can see Chapter 1 here, Chapter 2 here and Chapter 3 here. If you weren’t a NIMBY (Not in my back yard) before………….. seeing your house on an aerial map of a road widening study with a big-ass red R on top of it that stands for RELOCATION just might do it!

[To backtrack, Lithia Pinecrest Road is a two-lane highway through a rural stretch of eastern Hillsborough County. It has been targeted for widening to accommodate an increasing number of new subdivisions and their traffic. Activists have questioned the need to six-lane the road at its most rural point, receiving conflicting answers from county transportation planners.]

There are some homeowners in section B (an urban residential area) who have lived there more than 30 years only to see that R is now over their home. What could be worse than living in your home for more than three decades only to have the county decide it might need to take your land to accommodate its ill-begotten sprawl? Read the rest of this entry »

Kelly Cornelius is a civic activist with R-Land and a contributor to PoHo:

Two assaults …….oops I mean Comp Plan Amendment proposals …… on the rural area were heard last week at the Hillsborough Planning Commission. The attacks on the rural area were directed at Keystone in the northwest part of the county, but if passed, they would have set a dangerous precedent countywide. Both were in violation of our Comprehensive Plan (which is our county’s blueprint for growth) and Keystone’s Community Plan, so passing either one of them would have been undermining community plans everywhere which citizens work long and hard on.

An army from Keystone showed up to defend its plan, and several people outside of Keystone (myself included) spoke out against this would be breach of the rural service area. Joining together with our rural neighbors does two things: 1. It makes us stronger so that a small community has less chance of being marginalized. 2. It really pisses off developers that don’t like to follow the rules (so I sign up when I can.)

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If you come straight to this blog you may have missed some of the changes to Creative Loafing’s website late Tuesday. We have a new home page that features the day’s top headlines from CL stories and others in local, state and national media, including the MSM and bloggers.

Throughout the day, my colleagues and I will feed the best news and political stories (and also art, music and other areas we cover) into this new home page (yes, it’s news aggregation or link journalism, take your pick), so be sure to check it out. Our goal is to be your alternative source for news that is important to us in Tampa Bay, either because it happens here or because it affects us all.

Part of the redesign is a new News section, also. If you just want to find out the most important political and public affairs news, this new section is for you. The day’s most important stories (from both this column and from other news sources) are refreshed throughout the day, new comments from this blog are featured and the best news videos appear at the bottom of the page.

Given those new features, I am no longer going to do Morning Roundup here, since the News section is essentially an All-Day Roundup. I will continue to feature videos, both funny and important, in this blog and hope to bring you a new Media Watch feature soon, reviewing the work of local and state media in covering our community and the Florida legislature.

We’re looking for feedback, so if you are inclined, please leave a comment here or click the comment ask at the top of the new Home Page. If there is something we’re missing or types of news you want featured, let us know. We made these changes for you, so let us know what information you need each day.

Finally, I’m happy to report that I’m going to add some new voices to this blog (and to our family of news blogs at CL). Soon, you will start seeing posts from Catherine Durkin Robinson, whose blog Out in Left Field, is billed as a place “Where parenting and politics meet, but don’t always play nice;” and Deborah Newell Tornello, better known in progressive blogging circles as Litbrit. They join guest blogger and east Hillsborough civic activist Kelly Cornelius, whose Fix It Now posts have run in Daily Loaf before moving to this blog earlier this year.

I am talking with several other prominent local bloggers to add them to either this blog or to a new blog at CL, so I will have other additions to share with you soon.

Kelly Cornelius is a civic activist with the R-Land group in rural eastern Hillsborough County, fighting against sprawl.

Well, the holidays are over, and I am finally making time to go through my public records requests, which include more than 2,000 pages of e-mails from Hillsborough County’s Public Works Dept over the last two years regarding its Lithia Pinecrest Widening/Not Widening Project. When I first started going through them, it seemed kinda creepy to read other people’s e-mails, but fighting sprawl is dirty bidness so I got over it rather quickly. It is making for some very interesting reading, very interesting indeedy.

Lithia Pinecrest road today; planners are discussing six-laning it

Recall: Residents, NIMBYS, concerned citizens and activists had a hairy when we were told in November that Lithia Pinecrest Road in eastern Hillsborough could be six-laned all the way to CR 39. Strange because last year they told us our rural section would not be widened. At the most recent workshop the “federal dollars defense” was born. We were told at that November workshop that although our section MIGHT NOT really be widened, they had to study it for the six lanes in order to get federal dollars.

We screamed, the county commission had a meeting, and the six-lane excuse didn’t really wash, so the “logical termini defense” was played, and it was anything but logical. I am nowhere near done reading all of the e-mails about this bureaucratic mess, but this is what I have learned so far. (And oh, they fully expected our backlash, according to one e-mail.)

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I attended the recent swearing in of Kevin Beckner (so that is what all of you Obama supporters felt like?) Still fresh from the euphoria of seeing a good guy win one (and watching incumbent Commissioner Brian Blair go down in flames), I later headed down to the public workshop that evening regarding the Lithia Pinecrest road widening project in eastern Hillsborough County. I had like six or seven hours in between these two events to just be happy that the people of Hillsborough made a good decision electing Beckner and since Commissioner Kevin “the people have spoken and I am switching teams” White (a longtime pro-development vote) seems to have gotten the message, just maybe NOW the residents would have a majority on the board (so that is what the late Ralph Hughes must have felt like!)

Hey, six hours of hope was good, wasn’t it? Turns out we have been duped by our county AGAIN! When Iand many others attended a meeting last year regarding the widening of Lithia Pinecrest we were told that the rural portion of it (now known as segment D) from Fishhawk to State Road 39 would NOT be widened. The staff assured us…………assured us.

That is why I thought it was fishy when I read this article promoting this year’s meeting that said it could to be 6 lanes all the way through. WTF? In fact, all I remember them talking about last year was possibly 4 lanes and that was only in the urban sections, so to read that they were now talking about 6 lanes all the way through raised many suspicions. So many of us decide to attend this year’s meeting, and it was Beltway deja vu. Lies, circles, and deflections.

There are sections of Lithia Pinecrest that are overloaded by traffic and need relief, but those are in the Urban Service Area, and make no mistake about it, those sections failed because new home construction was approved without appropriate infrastructure. You can thank past and a few current county commissioners for that. The section I am referring to is in the Rural Service Area and it serves us rural types just fine, thanks. Why are we opposed to widening on this particular stretch? Because plowing a bigger road through a rural area is nothing more than a recipe for sprawl. Six lanes with a median is 1-75!

We have been down this road before……..and we destroyed it!

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