The Political Whore

Cristina Silva has a great story over at Bay Buzz about how the St. Petersburg City Council has a letter queued up to go to Gov. Charlie Crist urging a veto of SB 216, a good-government bill by local Sen. Charlie Justice.

Upshot is that city officials want to keep the ability to spend your money to tell you how to vote on city referenda or other issues. They say this bill is overly broad and could result in local elected officials getting arrested, they say. It is on the St. Petersburg City Council agenda for Thursday’s meeting, so if you can go and tell them to stuff it, that might be a good idea.

Download the draft letter in .pdf format after the jump:

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With a crucial St. Pete City Council vote coming up Thursday, the Rays have responded to a litany of city administration concerns with a lengthy memo (available as a download on the Times‘ new ballpark blog) it hopes will clear things up.

Like mud.

In a nutshell:

• The Rays acknowledged they were unaware of a deed restriction that affects part of the Al Lang site where they want to relocate. The team said it doesn’t believe that it has to change its site plan, which is wedged into the smallish Al Lang site, but it did so anyway just to make the city happy.
• The team will move its planned offices out of a Mahaffey parking lot, trying to address concerns that the new ballpark would kill attendance at the theater and the new Dali Museum, which will share the waterfront next to the Mahaffey.
• Speaking of problems with those arts organization, the team produced data to support their assertion that ball fans are actually arts fans, too, and therefore the ballpark and the arts scene can co-exist downtown.
• The roads around the planned ballpark would be altered to accommodate the Grand Prix racing held annually.
• The Rays are re-committed to fan comfort. Here is the team’s answer to questions about whether fans will really attend games in the blast furnace that is July and August in Tampa Bay: “Fan comfort is a major business issue for the Rays, as it will directly impact our ability to be successful in a new ballpark. We will be happy to share our plans to ensure the best possible fan environment for our fans with the City as the design advances.”

So, does that satisfy your questions and concerns?
Bonus cuts: The Rays ask local businesses to be their ambassadors to make this thing happen (TBBJ); NAACP, Urban League back stadium plan (TBBJ); Polling doesn’t go Rays way (Drays blog); DEP: Not so fast on redeveloping the Trop … (Troxler on sptimes.com)

Watch out Mayor Baker! Longtime neighborhood activist and Baker foil Karl Nurse was named to a vacant seat on the St. Petersburg City Council last night, likely further frustrating Rick Baker’s former hold on that body. He replaces Earnest Williams, who owed his last re-election to the Baker machine’s work behind the scenes.

CL’s Alex Pickett spoke with Nurse back in September 2007, in which he was (rightly) critical of the inattention to the crisis within the police department:

I’ve worked a lot on crime issues over the last 10 years, and I really cannot make any progress in the police department. And that’s heading for a train wreck.

About 60 percent of the officers are less than five years from retiring and then we have a huge bubble of almost 30 percent that have less than two years [experience]. We’re bringing on officers, but we keep losing them. The leadership is really in denial, and they don’t want to face it. It’s the single most frustrating issue that I’ve worked on.

I am dead certain that we are on a terrible path with what we’re doing with our police department and no matter how far they stick their head in the sand, it’s not going to change it. The earlier we deal with it, the better off we’ll be. And their strategy today is simply: ‘We are not going to deal with it. The police chief will be retired; the mayor will be gone, and when the police department collapses, it will be under someone else’s watch.’

This appointment has lots of civic activists ecstatic, including those fighting against a Tampa Bay Rays plan to get the taxpayers to finance a new $450 million waterfront ballpark.

Full disclaimer: as a political consultant, I worked for Karl Nurse’s mayor campaign against Baker in 2001.

(Photo by Lori Ballard)