From the recent Florida Humanities Council “A Tale of Two Cities” forum featuring Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio and St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker, here are the two mayors answering the question: Who is your favorite mayor from your city’s past?
Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, who a few months ago expressed interest in Mel Martinez’s seat in the Senate, said today she will not run for statewide or national office in 2010.
“My four-year term as mayor does not end until March 2011 and I believe that running both the city of Tampa and a statewide campaign at the same time over the next eighteen months would shortchange the citizens of Tampa,” she said in a statement e-mailed to supporters and the news media.
The evolution of a mayor, 1974-present?
In Tampa these days, playing “Will Dick Greco run for mayor in 2011?” is getting to be nearly a full-time sport, the rumors are just that hot-and-heavy. So I picked up the telephone and gave him a call and asked him, “Are you getting ready to run for mayor – yet again?”
The answer?
They are an unlikely pair: She’s a lifelong Democrat, and he’s a conservative Republican. Their cities are known for decades of feuding and rivalries, a history that seems remote in these days of regionalism. But Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio and St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker both share a passion for history; Iorio was a 
history major at USF and earned her master’s in the subject, while Baker has written his own history of St. Petersburg.
In “A Tale of Two Cities,” a forum held last night at the historic Centro Asturiano building between downtown Tampa and Ybor City, Baker and Iorio showed off their historian chops in front of a crowd of a few hundred people. USF historians Gary Mormino and Ray Arsenault moderated.
I was asked to join La Gaceta publisher Patrick Manteiga and St. Petersburg Times columnist Ernest Hooper in questioning the two mayors on historical matters, and I asked both: What one historical building that no longer exists in your city would you like to have back, and why?
Their answers, and pictures of those two buildings, after the jump:
By Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.
This is the story of a little-known South Florida mayor, a progressive anti-automatic weapons kinda politician with little name recognition and labeled with the tag “the gay candidate” in his quest to be the next U.S. senator from Florida. His name is Kevin Burns. More about him after we set the rest of the field.
Charlie Christ’s decision to wait until the end of the legislative session before declaring his political future has frozen most Republicans with fanciful ambitions of higher office through the first part of 2009.
But with three weeks to go before the popular chief executive announces whether he’ll run for re-election or opt to set his sights on Mel Martinez’s seat in Washington, some members of the GOP last week realized they can’t wait any longer.
Pam Iorio’s State of the City Address
During her first term in office, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio had the luxury of an up-market, sunny days and lots of people interested in building new condos and offices in her city. But for the past two years, in her second term, Iorio has spent her annual State of the City Address trying to reassure city workers that they wouldn’t be laid off and discussing how to live within the new boundaries that local governments in Florida are facing with the so-called tax reform measure taken two years ago.
On Monday, she stayed with that theme, but added a strong condemnation of Florida’s “boom-and-bust” growth mentality that if not aimed at county and state leaders should have been. And, she said, approving her rail transit plan that will hook up the airport with downtown with the USF area ushers in “an era of smart growth” that could just restore and grow our economy.
Yes, there was something richly ironic about taping our very “new media” political podcast in what used to be Creative Loafing’s morgue, or where we kept all our newspaper print back issues. I should say, keep, because they are all still in there, some bound in red leather collections.
Ahh, the good old days.
But I love this podcast biz. For my first, I invited WMNF’s Mitch Perry and Democratic consultant Ana Cruz to throw around three of the biggest issues of the week: the economic recovery and whether the Florida Legislature will try to reject some stimulus dollars; Barack Obama’s timetable for withdrawal in Iraq, which has not pleased some on the far left; and Mayor Pam Iorio’s rail-transit dreams running into a bit of a buzzsaw at the Hillsborough County Commission. Plus, we listen to the sound clip of the week. I’ll give you a hint: it is from a well-known prescription drug abuser.
Listen and enjoy, and we’ll have a new one for you every week.
Download
Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio is making lemonade out of lemons, using the down economy to try to snatch up a prime piece of waterfront real estate and put it into public hands: the former Georgetown Apartments property on South West Shore Boulevard.
She wrote to City Council members today:
Dear Council members,
I want to give you more information about the article you may have read in Saturday’s SP Times about Georgetown Property.Several months ago the city initiated discussions with the Trust for Public Land and the County (ELAPP) about the possibility of acquiring the 160- acre Georgetown Apartment site. Historically this site has housed 600 apartment units however it was sold in 2005 for $125 million with plans to build approximately 1,240 units of single-family and multi-family units. Due to the recession the property has gone into foreclosure and Bank of America will be soliciting bids for the property. This is a beautiful piece of land – most of it undeveloped with great access to the bay. To be able to protect the majority of the land from development forever would be of great benefit to our environment and to the community.
After many discussions and inputs we thought the best course of action would be to have the Trust for Public Land submit a bid when BOA is ready for proposals. The Trust has a successful track record of helping communities around the country to conserve strategic land resources for public use.
I will keep you informed as this progresses and if you want to talk about this further please give me a call.
Sincerely,
Pam
Here is the property from Google’s satellite view:
With everybody awaiting Gov. Charlie Crist’s decision on whether he will get in the race or not, early polling in the 2010 U.S. Senate elections in Florida is highly speculative.
But it does have value. On the Democratic side, it helps shape decisions to run or not to run. And it helps the early money figure out on whom to bet, errr, give a campaign contribution.
Given those two benefits, you have to think that today’s Strategic Visions poll on the 2010 race emboldens Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio.
The view of Tampa Mayor (and possible US Senate candidate) Pam Iorio from the lofty perch of The New Yorker and its reporter, George Packer?
Iorio had been described to me as a competent, unimaginative public servant, but in our conversation she sounded almost visionary. “If there can be any good from this economic calamity, that is occurring, it is causing us to reassess ourselves as a country, as a state, as a city,” she said.
Iorio’s transit plans were touted in the article in this week’s magazine that details the Florida real-estate market as a Ponzi scheme.
First, any prognostication made this far in advance has to be taken with a grain of salt. So, keep that in mind as you read what I am about to say: Kendrick Meek will lose his bid for the U.S. Senate.
Now, there will be quite a few people up in arms about this. I’m sorry. Maybe this will make them work harder to prove me wrong. One of those things where knowing the future could change the future… but I digress.
There are quite a few reasons why I think he will lose, and none are related to the color of his skin. Read the rest of this entry »
Let me start off with a few disclaimers:
I am not a grammarian, and Lee Drury De Cesare, aka Grammar Grinch, has taken my stories apart in the past.
I’m not an English teacher, although I have a lengthy resume of teaching journalism and writing at the college level.
And I don’t really give a shit whether a downtown Tampa sign has a (mostly unnoticeable) grammatical error in it, nor whether Mayor Pam Iorio wants to get rid of said sign because of that error.
But the Tampa Tribune apparently does:
Super Bowl visitors entering the city’s downtown next week will be greeted by this message: “Welcome to Downtown Tampa: There’s so many reasons to love it.”
Sounds like a nice message. But there’s a problem. The banner, at Franklin and Platt streets near Channelside Drive, contains a glaring error: The subject and verb in the second part don’t match.
Grammatically speaking, “There’s” should be “There are” or “There’re.”
So a buddy who is pretty good with words called me and said: “There’re”?
A contraction for “there are?” Not a real word. Maybe not grammatically correct, he posited.
I wasn’t sure, so I checked a few dictionaries.
Is “there’re” in Merriam-Webster? No.
Is it in dictionary.com? No.
In fact, the only sorta-authoritative mention of “there’re” that I can find is at Wiktionary. It says:
there’re
1. (colloquial) Contraction of there are.
* “I say there’re no depressed words just depressed minds.” — attributed to Bob Dylan
Any English teachers out there want to weigh in on this one? Or Dylanologists?
Mayor Pam Iorio will celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Mayor’s Beautification Program on Friday at a breakfast — highlights include an auction for Billy Joel-Elton John tickets — in Tampa. Iorio will meet with individuals and businesses that were notable program contributors in 2008, a year that proved successful for longtime project.
The news release after the jump:
SantaBush?!?:
Here’s my column from this week’s print edition of CL. Happy Thanksgiving to you all:
It’s time to give thanks.
Enough with the things we hate: the recession and mindless campaign commercials and cash-strapped schools and unceasing cries to blindly cut taxes and congressional sex scandals. (Actually, I’m very grateful for congressional sex scandals.)
As we prepare for the holiday season, I feel grateful.
I’m grateful to have a job in journalism in a year where hundreds of my friends, colleagues and former students across Florida have been laid off from their journalism positions.
I’m grateful to continue to have a platform to write about issues that matter, like our suburban sprawl and need for better transportation. A year ago, I wrote that we needed to “Fix it now,” citing 10 problems our community and state faces. We’re not much closer to solving them today.
I’m grateful for people like Mariella Smith, Kelly Cornelius, George Nieman, Dee Layne and countless other civic activists in Hillsborough County who stood up for protecting our wetlands and never let up on Republican blowhard politicians. I’m grateful for their moral courage, even as Hillsborough commissioners demeaned their own Moral Courage Award by naming it after a late partisan ideologue.
TBO.com’s transportation reporter Rich Shopes puts Pam Iorio ahead of the rest of her TBARTA board colleagues this morning in a story about her desire to get a Tampa-centric rail system in front of Hillsborough voters in 2010. From the article:
“I think the city is ready,” she said this week. “I think the people are ready.”
Some members of that regional authority, the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority, or TBARTA, think Iorio is jumping the gun.
“We need the support of multiple counties to make this work,” Clearwater mayor and TBARTA board member Frank Hibbard said.
TBARTA has had a pretty unified front until now, and while this isn’t much of a crack in that facade, it is a crack. But Iorio has increasingly been strident about her desire for a USF-downtown-airport rail line going in front of the voters, given that it will take a decade to build if it is approved in 2010. That puts rail, at its earliest, in the year 2020.
A month ago I sat down with Iorio for a 35-minute interview and she talked about transit as part of her explanation of why she is so methodical (and slow) in her decisionmaking. Here’s that excerpt:
I think being methodical works well because that’s my style, so I can’t be anything different than that. When you bring people in, you don’t make rash decisions. I give the example of the discussion of mass transit. I started three years ago in the State of the City speech saying we need to focus on transit and our bus system is very poor. Well then that started a particular cycle of conversation. Then the next State of the City speech I upped it a little bit and starting talking about, now we have to have light rail and then I produced a white paper on rail and how we had to take the Tampa plan and dust it off and re-do and get the MPO going. So that’s what we did.
Now here we are in 2008, and I think it’s been a pretty methodical approach of introducing the topic, of showing an interest in the topic, getting the MPO engaged to redo their plan, working with the Partnership to get TBARTA. It’s been a methodical process over the past three years. So you can say, well, why not just declare that we need to have light rail and go for it? Because it doesn’t work that way. That’s not how communities get light rail. No one just goes for it. It’s got to be a community consensus. You’ve got to build a dialogue. You have to get to the pont where other elected officials feel comfortable stepping out and saying, Yeah I’ll support a referendum for that.
But they’re not going to get to that point overnight. It’s got to become part of the community debate and consciousness. Now, today, light rail is an acceptable conversation for anyone to have. We’re talking about going to referendum in 2010, and I’m trying to push for a starter line that’s going to be from USF to downtown to Westshore. So there’s an example of something that you start by planting the seed of what should be a community dialogue and you start by taking the steps and it begins to evolve.
It remains to be seen whether Hillsborough County commissioners, who generally seem disinterested in the TBARTA process, would vote to put a transit tax on the 2010 ballot for Iorio.
Some audio of Mayor Pam Iorio endorsing and the crowd (which does not quite fill the St. Pete Times Forum) going nuts:
Mayor Pam Iorio took the stage at 11:40 a.m with the tease intro from Frank Sanchez that she had a “very special announcement.” After saying we need to protect our environment and get mass transit, Iorio got down to it:
“What I want for Tampa and the Tampa Bay area is what we want for America. Some say this primary season has gone on too long. Oh no. We’ve involved more voters than ever before. Wait until November. Wait until November. And so I’ve watched and I’ve seen a man uniquely gifted. He is gifted intellectually. He is gifted in his connection to everyday people, his passion for everybody. He is gifted in his ability to bring everyone together. That’s what this country needs; we need to bring this country together. He can communicate so beautifully, and so this man with uncommon gifts, I believe, is best suited to the be next president of the United States.”
Taking the meters off Ybor’s streets might improve its foot traffic, shown pitifully here during a recent afternoon (photo credit: Wayne Garcia)
This just in from Mayor Pam Iorio:
The City of Tampa has been working with the Ybor Chamber, the Ybor City Development Corporation, residents and members of the Ybor business community regarding many of the parking concerns in Ybor City. Yesterday, I met with staff and asked that they begin work to remove the on-street parking meters in Ybor. The meters will be transitioned to two-hour parking spaces.
It is my hope that the removal of the on-street parking meters will encourage more people to visit Ybor City.
Employee parking in the two-hour spaces will continue to be prohibited. The removal of the meters will require city staff to work with the business district to ensure there is an understanding of these parking policies.
The City’s parking system is funded entirely through user fees. It is anticipated that some amount of tax increment financing revenue collected from Ybor City will go toward reimbursing the Parking Fund for lost revenue. Additionally, there may be a personnel savings through the reduced need for enforcement. Therefore, while the possible revenue loss to the Parking Fund is estimated at $200,000, the amount will likely be far less given these two factors.
The new parking plan for Ybor is expected to take effect within the next few months. Until the meters have been removed, all current parking policies will remain in effect. New signage will replace the meters that will indicate the two-hour parking limitations and the prohibition of employee parking.
The last time we discussed Ybor’s draconian parking meter enforcement, the comment line lit up.
From CL intern Jason Kushner:
Racing downtown to a Tampa City Hall conference room before coffee and amid stormy weather warnings isn’t normal hump-day protocol at the Creative Loafing Intern Affairs Desk. But Mayor Pam Iorio had called for an informal budget meeting with key staff and members of the Tampa City Council, so Florida’s Sunshine Law allowed us local media to sit in. As Council members John Dingfelder and Charlie Miranda shuffled in to join Gwen Miller, Tom Scott, Linda Saul Sena and Mary Mulhern, Iorio waited along with Revenue and Finance Director Bonnie Wise to outline 2008’s post-Amendment 1 budget.
Her message was optimistic: Tampa will fare better than many cities during this period of economic downturn and property tax cutting mania. By creatively transferring a portion of spending from smaller capital projects to operating funds, the city plans to eliminate $8.9 million from a possible $16.8 million deficit without further stressing public services such as parks and recreation. For example, shifting the city’s “Clean City†program to the Solid Waste Department alone could save up to $3.2 million (albeit by increasing garbage fees by 2.2 percent to cover those news costs, rather than increasing property taxes).
“It’s gonna take a lot more than Amendment I to stop us from making progress,†Iorio said.
Of course, progress is subjective. Dingfelder clearly disagreed with some elements of Iorio’s approach. He favored retaining about 100 threatened janitorial and security jobs slated for elimination-by-outsourcing by reducing a $15 million plan for a new Curtis Hixon Park downtown.
Iorio diffused Dingfelder’s confrontational inquiries and suggestions by reminding the Councilman that he could reflect his opinion when it comes time to vote on the contracts for the Hixon Park or outsourcing agreements for the janitorial and security jobs. He continually fired back with extended sighs and eye-rolling. It was, no doubt, jolting for the politically naïve to witness tangible friction in such an intrinsically mannered environment. Iorio and Dingfelder exchanged arguments, cameras rolled and press pens scribbled until Wise emerged from the Mayor’s corner with concrete figures that torpedoed one of Dingfelder’s fiscal proposals.
Meanwhile, resident old-timer Miranda diplomatically took everybody on a nostalgic tour of Tampa’s previous developments (Channelside, the elimination of the “skid row†label from Franklin Street, etc.). His simple declaration: “This is like putting together a puzzle…some pieces are still missing.â€
Final budget numbers typically aren’t available until the late summer as the city adopts its 2008-2009 spending plan by Oct. 1. The Tampa City Council agreed to meet with Iorio again in three weeks to look at other parts of next year’s budget.
(photo credit: Wayne Garcia)Â
And that is a big fat raspberry and a moral lesson in doing what is right. On Friday, Mayor Pam Iorio made a stand that 
is the best thing she has ever done in her political career: She told county leaders she won’t even consider merging or consolidating functions with them because of their anti-gay stance. As she wrote to Times reporter Bill Varian in response to county commissioners’ overtures about merging parks and recreation departments:
We should not merge any services where our values are not compatible. The County’s lack of tolerance towards a segment of our community cannot be allowed to affect the services provided by Parks and Recreation.
Yes, Ronda Storms’ crusade of intolerance back in 2005 lives on. It is county policy not to recognize gay pride events, a policy that Storms made sure can only be overturned by a supermajority vote of the County Commission. As Iorio rightly points out in her e-mail, merging with the county parks department could endanger some city-support gay events:
The county took over the library system many years ago. (It has its own county-wide millage rate) This worked well until a few years ago when the BOCC decided not to allow any Gay pride displays at the libraries. This I very much disagreed with and thought it sent the wrong tone for the entire community. The City co-sponsors through our Parks and Recreation Department many special events as I mentioned above. One for example is Winter Pride at Al Lopez Park.
In my recent “Fix It Now” column, item No. 9 was “Stop beating up on gay people:”
We waste far too much time, energy and newsprint writing about the battle over gay marriage or transgender firings. Richard Florida was right; communities that embrace tolerance and diversity outperform those that don’t. Even if you aren’t down with homosexuality because of your religion or whatever psychosexual hang-ups you have, just walk away from this fight.
Iorio shows why this is so important. No matter what you think about the mayor, take time today to send her an e-mail of support for her strong stance and for the warning shot across the bow of the county leaders. There is a price we pay for intolerance, in lost economic growth, in government efficiency, and in creative and cultural richness. (While you’re at it, send some love over to the county commissioners and urge them to repeal their hateful gay pride resolution.)
Tampa City Councilwoman Mary Mulhern has been leading an effort to expand the representation of the Hillsborough Environmental Protection Commission board (currently made up of only county commissioners) to include the cities as well. Two weeks ago, Mayor Pam Iorio attempted to short-circuit that effort by writing to local legislators and letting them know that she, not the City Council or Mulhern, speaks for the “City of Tampa” and that she doesn’t support messing around with the EPC.
And if Mayor Pam is against something, you know it won’t be long before the Tribune’s editorial page weighs in on Herroner’s side. So came the editorial this weekend,
Mulhern has responded and shared a copy of her letter to the Trib with PoHo. She raises several valid points overlooked by the Trib:
The recent conduct of the EPC board evidences the problems inherent in a regulatory board overseeing itself. With the board made up exclusively of County Commissioners, a conflict arises when the agency wishes to bring an action against the county.
Mulhern’s full response is posted after the break.
Mayor Pam Iorio has taken what I can’t help but think is an unprecedented step in trying to halt the Tampa City Council’s push to change the composition of the county Environmental Protection Commission.
Iorio had previously announced that she wouldn’t support the Council’s vote in July to ask the county to reconstitute the EPC to include a seat for a city appointee. Saying you won’t back the plan is one thing; writing a letter to state legislators in an effort to torpedo the legally voted action of an elected board is quite another.
Iorio wrote to all members of the Hillsborough Legislative Delegation this week:
I know you have many issues on your agenda right now with the special session, but I did want to write to make clear that the City of Tampa does not support changing the composition of the EPC. The City is comfortable with the historic make-up of the County Commission acting as the EPC Board. While some of the recent decisions of the Board may be controversial, the voters can decide at election time who will serve on the EPC Board.
Iorio went on to mention that she has been meeting with County Commission Chairman Jim Norman and County Administrator Pat Bean to “iron out” longstanding differences about money and equal representation on other government boards, such as the city’s Community Redevelopment Agencies. In July, the council’s chairwoman, Gwen Miller, sent a letter to legislators asking for the EPC law to be changed to better represent the cities of Tampa, Plant City and Temple Terrace, none of which has a direct seat at the table. Miller’s letter specifically cited the EPC attempt recently to kill its local regulations that preserve wetlands.
State Rep. Rich Glorioso was set to introduce just such legislation — until Mayor Pam’s letter hit. It is sure to infuriate newly elected City Councilwoman Mary Mulhern, who led the fight to change the EPC, if not all of the council members. This may prove to be Iorio’s first real stumble, since the EPC wetlands fight has left many in Tampa livid with the county’s control over that vital function.
Mayor Pam has called a 3 p.m. newser for Thursday to announce her Tampa budget layoffs. Lots of speculation about the fate of my old Trib colleague Paul Wilborn, who carries a job title that ain’t exactly layoff-proof — creative industries manager. Interesting juxtaposition to the story this morning about the city looking into whether it wants to/can buy the land under the imaginary Trump Tower Tampa as part of its expensive Riverwalk project.
