The HoCast this week is devoted to an interview with St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Bill Foster, and we talk about everything from the police department, the broken-window theory of crime, high-speed chases, budget cutting and, of course, that infamous “creationism” letter he sent last year to the Pinellas School Board.
My series of in-depth interviews with the candidates for mayor in St. Petersburg continues this week with City Councilman Jamie Bennett. Here is an excerpt from my print story:
CL: What’s wrong with the police department?
Bennett: Every police department on the globe has issues. So what is wrong? We can spend plenty
of time on what is right. What we have are challenges. There is no greater detriment to going forward as a city if people do not feel safe, so your police dept has to be led by people that get it. The city council stepped forward in two particular veins, when we did the police study we immediately began having two good years of adding policeman so that we can reach our authorized strength of 540, which is an awesome consideration in this budgetary crisis year. The other is that we need a police chief that communicates. When Chuck Harmon came to city council, we said please tell the community that — and the police — that they’re doing a good job.
Can Chief Chuck Harmon be that communicator, or would you be looking to make a change at police chief?
There will be no changes going into the transition period. That’s just crazy to think that you’re going in to eliminate this position or that. Chuck is trying very hard. He’s everywhere; you can’t shut the guy up now. He’s doing what we asked him to do. Chuck Harmon is the police chief until such time as we find somebody else, but that certainly is not a priority going into it.
Listen to the entire interview with Jamie Bennett here:
My series of interviews with the St. Petersburg mayoral candidates continued this week, and I am late in getting the full audio online here for my discussion of the issues with Scott Wagman. Sorry about that.
Listen to the entire interview with Scott Wagman here.
An excerpt from my print story about the interview:
The last two months have been rather gloomy times for term-limited St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker. First, it was the news that Alex Sink would not run for the U.S Senate, thereby keeping the CFO position to herself. Then it was Bill McCollum passing on a senate bid to stay on as Attorney General. All the while, every city council member since Connie Kone served popped-in to City Hall to measure the drapes in your office.
For Hizzoner, it’s like what any bartender will tell you at closing time, ‘You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.’ Fortunately for Baker, Charlie Crist may be ready to throw him an after-party. Read the rest of this entry »
Former St. Pete City Councilman Bill Foster got gigged a bit today as he was supposed to be getting good headlines on the formal launch of his mayoral campaign (he filed the paperwork in early February, so no surprise in terms of him running).
Foster’s news release about the launch twice misspelled the word “publicly,” as Cristina Silva in Bay Buzz pointed out:
Bill Foster to Publically (sic) Announce Candidacy for Mayor of St. Petersburg this Monday, March 2nd at Pioneer Park
St. Petersburg – Bill Foster, a former St. Petersburg City Councilman with a rich history of civic involvement, will publically (sic) announce his candidacy for Mayor of St. Petersburg Monday, March 2nd at 12:00 noon at Pioneer Park in downtown St. Petersburg ( 98 Beach Drive , across the street south of the St. Petersburg Yacht Club, east of Bayfront Tower ).
The slogan, at least according to his new website, appears to be “Foster in a New Era.”
I vote instead for “Foster in a spell-checker.”
Kathleen Ford, the former St. Petersburg City Councilwoman who took Rick Baker to a mayoral runoff election back in 2001, will file her paperwork to run again now that Baker is term-limited for this year’s elections.
Ford is expected to give a news conference at 11:45 a.m. on the steps of City Hall coinciding with her dropping off her campaign paperwork.
She joins this lineup already in place: Councilman Jamie Bennett; St. Pete College trustees Chairman Deveron Gibbons; former City Councilman Bill Foster; business owner Scott Wagman; and lesser-known candidates Paul Congemi and Sharon Russ.
Ford has a long history of raising hell in the city — more hell than most folks cared to hear, especially if those folks are the city’s ruling class. She has worked against the downtown waterfront ballpark for the Tampa Bay Rays and been critical of Baker’s police department.
Scott Wagman, one of a handful of top-tier candidates running for the mayor of St. Petersburg, has launched a new website and features this video explaining his early campaign focus: I’m listening.
(Disclosure: One of Wagman’s political consultants, Larry Biddle, is the partner of Cl Editor David Warner. David does not participate in editing or making editorial decisions when I report on the mayor’s race to avoid any conflicts of interest.)
Pinellas County commissioner let supporters know via e-mail late last night that he has decided against a campaign to succeed Mayor Rick Baker in St. Pete. He let his Facebook friends know, as well, changing his status late yesterday to “Ken Welch is remaining on the County Commission, and looking forward to the challenges ahead…8 hours ago.”
The field now seems set, and the major players are real-estate broker and philanthropist Scott Wagman, City Councilman Jamie Bennett, Amscot Veep and St. Pete College trustees Chairman Deveron Gibbons and former City Council members Bill Foster and Kathleen Ford.
h/t to Jim Johnson at The State of Sunshine.
As I reported earlier today, State Rep. RIck Kriseman, a St. Petersburg Democrat, is not going to run for the mayor’s office later today. He posted this on his website this afternoon:
For quite awhile now, people I respect have encouraged me to run for mayor of St. Petersburg. I’m always honored and humbled when someone approaches me about it because the job of mayor has never been more important. I personally have a strong desire to see St. Petersburg shine through this period of economic downturn, and to thrive again as a safe, diverse community, with strong neighborhoods, a vibrant arts scene, a sense of place, and a government which is open and accessible.
With the simple and unelaborated headline “Running for Mayor” on his personal website early this AM, the legislator shakes up the field drew some attention for St. Petersburg’s mayoral election later this year.
Will Kriseman announce he is running, after seeming like he wasn’t while awaiting a Ken Welch candidacy? Or is the headline prelude to his explanation that he won’t run?
UPDATE: It’s the second scenario from above. A source with knowledge of Kriseman’s decision says the representative is not running. Expect his website to add that info at some point today or tomorrow.
h/t to Jim Johnson.
First it was a Tweet from St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler:
HowardTampaBay My Sunday column: St. Pete mayor’s race. Wanna take bets on Kathleen Ford entering? Who do you like?about 1 hour ago from web
Then BayBuzz weighed in with this:
The buzz around town is that former city council member Kathleen Ford has reconsidered and will run for mayor.Ford declined to comment on her mayoral ambitions, but confirmed that numerous community leaders have approached her about running.
“There are a lot of people concerned about the issues facing the city and the lack of leadership to address the crime problem, the decline of Baywalk, the outrageous property taxes collected over the past eight years,” she said. “Folks want an open, honest, accountable and affordable government. We are tired of the secret deal making.”
I said on WMNF’s Radioactivity on Wednesday that Ford’s name had dropped out of the murmurs about who’s in and who’s out, but that there wasn’t another candidate running from the ranks of the, for lack of a better term, revolutionaries in St. Petersburg, many of whom have taken up under the umbrella of POWW on the baseball issue. The absence to date on the mayoral ballot leaves that sector of St. Pete politics wide open for a Ford run.
Baker w/out the stache
Peter Schorsch is a political consultant and writes St. Petersblog 2.0. He joins PoHo as a regular contributor with this post:
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Rick Baker and what he will do after his term in office runs out in 2009. I have to admit he’s done an admirable job as the first real strong mayor, presiding over a prosperous, progressive period in St. Petersburg’s history. I don’t know if that translates into a statewide position but there is one way he could instantly improve his chances if he decides to run for Chief Financial Officer: SHAVE THE ‘STACHE!
Far be it for me to criticize someone else’s looks, but I strongly believe people hesitate voting for politicians with mustaches. I remember working with a client running for judge who had all the advantages in the world, save one: he had a porn mustache straight out of 1977. I begged him to shave that beaver off his face but he just wouldn’t part with it. I even went so far as to Photoshop a picture of him, demonstrating how youthful he looked without his beloved ’stache. It was no use. He went on to lose that race (and a few more after that).
That’s why if hizzoner is serious about running statewide, he’s gonna have pull out the Mach 3. In fact, by just doing some cursory research, I’m hard-pressed to find a politician with a mustache who has won statewide.
They met for maybe 10 minutes on Wednesday, but St. Petersburg and Pinellas County officials all but acknowledge it was perfunctory and that a court battle lies ahead in the dispute over the annexation of two commercial properties in Tierra Verde.
The St. Petersburg Times reports:
“There was not a lot of discussion,” said St. Petersburg economic development director Dave Goodwin. “There was just nothing there.”
The dispute centers on, what else, development. The two commercial properties, including the marina at the right, stand at the entryway to the 
island neighborhood. Their owners want to build bigger projects on the 28 acres than county development codes will allow. So they instead approached St. Petersburg, which will give them greater flexibility (read: density) to build. The rest of the island, all residential properties, opposed the annexation but had no vote in the matter.
St. Pete officials acknowledged to CL last year that the move is simply an effort to expand the city’s tax base.
He’s certainly out and running hard, as I detail in my story for the print edition of CL this week. It starts:
The 60 or so people who gathered at the Piccadilly Cafeteria on a recent Wednesday night represent one progressive wing of the Democratic Party in St. Petersburg. This is a solidly working-class gang. The conversations are intense. The personalities are unique. The 10-oz. Angus chopped steak dinner is $8.49.
That is to say that the St. Petersburg Democratic Club and its meeting location on 34th Street N. are perfectly representative of vast swaths of the city, of the fed-up residents who are not part of the downtown condo boom or the funky bohemian art scene or the Chamber of Commerce: antiestablishment retirees, outspoken activists and others devoted to their take-no-prisoners vision of how the city could be better. Not exactly a gathering of the Mayor Rick Baker fan club.
Read the rest here.
Deveron Gibbons, an AMSCOT veep and Republican civic appointee running in this year’s St. Petersburg mayoral race, has released his list of big-name supporters and finance chairmen, and it is top heavy with a congressman, Florida legislators and other well known politicians.
Read the full announcement after the jump or you can download a .pdf of it:
The Pinellas County commissioner appears to be inching closer to getting into the race to succeed Mayor Rick Baker in St. Petersburg. As I wrote about last week, he is getting pressure/support from some powerful civic and business leaders to get into the game. Welch sent this out over the weekend to his friends and supporters:
Jamie Bennett, left, is introduced Wednesday night by Democratic Club President Jim Donelon
Just before the St. Petersburg Democratic Club meeting convened last night, I caught up with St. Petersburg City Council (past) Chairman and mayoral candidate Jamie Bennett. The councilman was set to address the club of about 60 hardcore progressives at the start of the campaign, which ends in voting this fall. The first thing that came up? Reports that Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch is reconsidering his previous stance that he would not run in the race.
“He’s in. He’s out,” Bennett said. “Nobody knows.”
The affable councilman continued, pressing his case for mayor: “I think you need to know [if you want to be mayor]. You have to have that fire in the belly. I feel confident, no matter who gets in. I think I need to be reckoned with. I’m in it for real.”
This in from Rise Up Tampa Bay:
St. Petersburg — Peace groups and concerned citizens will be gathering outside of the Baywalk facility in support of the victims in Gaza during the most recent military actions.
“Regardless of where one stands on the conflict, we can all agree that war is not the answer, and the horiffically one-sided casualty counts are a travesty”, said Mike Fox, Rise Up Tampa Bay member and Chair of the Pinellas County Chapter of Progressive Democrats Of America. “We ask that all who see the Palestinian people as the “Davids” in this “David vs Goliath” struggle join us as we ask that the US government and our fellow citizens support a free Palestine and an end to the slaughter.”
Sat, 1-03 7:30 PM
On sidewalks outside of Baywalk
2nd Avenue and 2nd Street, N
Downtown St. Petersburg
You recall the annexation that has the small condo-laden island of Tierra Verde up in arms, in which the city of St. Petersburg is jumping across a body of water to annex two commercial properties on the island so that the owners can develop them at greater densities than they are currently allowed? Thought so. Now, Democratic Sen. Charlie Justice is getting involved, according to the Times:
Sen. Charlie Justice said today he will likely support the so-called “all or nothing bill” that would prevent local governments from dividing up Tierra Verde.
The law would require a municipality to annex all of Tierra Verde or leave it alone.
Readers of Creative Loafing will recall the stories we’ve done about St. Petersburg City Councilman Karl Nurse, who is a progressive and advocate for all things green.
Now some in the green-environmental movement are upset with Nurse’s vote to allow an annexation of a handful of properties in Tierra Verde into the city (we wrote about it in “Colonial St. Pete”), a move that enables the landowners to build higher-density condos and one that is opposed by locals already living on the island:
“It’s a sad day for the Sierra Club when a member of the Suncaost Sierra Club, who was also a force behind the Living Green Expo would move to this blasphemous annexation vote WHICH WILL ALLOW INCREASED DENSITY on a barrier island for developers who are KNOWN to care less about environmental issues,” wrote activist Lorraine Morgenson in an e-mail blast sent to local leaders and other activists after Friday’s vote. “Mr. Nurse, as far as I am concerned you are no longer green except when it comes to money.”
Nurse fired back with his own e-mail that listed eight environmental issues he has worked on as a council member, including a project to eliminate methane gas from being a by-product of sewage treatment and lobbying Progress Energy to make their rebates for energy efficiency easier for lower income families.
The list wasn’t enough to appease some activists.
“All well and good, Karl,” responded Jan Allyn. “But WHY IN THE WORLD did you vote for the TV annexation? Just about no one, other than the developers who want to put some more condos out there, thought it was a good idea. And costly litigation is certain to result.”
The Times story didn’t give Nurse’s rationale for approving the voluntary annexation, so I thought I would give him a call to find out. (Disclosure: I ran Nurse’s 2001 mayoral bid in St. Pete back when I was a political consultant.)
“I understand why wealthy areas like that don’t want to be annexed,” he said. “But we are only annexing properties that wanted to be annexed. It’s the industrial and business property that generate the money.”
As an example, he told of writing checks for property taxes for his south St. Petersburg home and his business, Bay Tech Label. The business taxes were 45 times larger.
“Our long-term prospects for money with Amendment 1 [and its tax caps] were not great, and I’ve got 1,000 things that I want done in my community,” he added in rationalizing the need for the more lucrative commercial property inside city limits.
“In a perfect world, you wouldn’t build anything on the beaches,” he continued. “One of the ironies is in the county [where the Tierra Verde properties that were annexed lay until now] they could build a 15-story hotel, but in the city they could build a condo instead. Living next to a condo is less intrusive than a hotel. I thought a hotel was a worse option.”
As for how his supporters are reacting, Nurse said, “I’m catching some flak for it.”
The St. Pete Times editorial pages this Sunday asked that very question, in a way that tips their hand in supporting a new ballpark for the team, a $450 million taxpayer-subsidized waterfront facility:
The loss of team and stadium jobs and the loss of 81 game days and the corresponding hotel and restaurant use can be computed into fairly reliable economic numbers. What is much harder to measure is the extent to which the team is a factor in other business decisions that affect St. Petersburg and Pinellas and in the overall quality life of the entire area. The viability of existing and new hotels would most certainly be affected. But could the loss of the team lead to lost opportunities in business relocations? Could it shake the faith of banks that provide the capital for corporate growth?
So I ask the question that the Times does: What would happen if the Rays left town?
Let’s examine the team’s impact so far, or in other words, what will we get for the $323 million that the Trop and the team will cost us through 2016. The Times editorial begins this way:
A Major League Baseball team, one former St. Petersburg official said nearly two decades ago, would “light the tail on the rocket.”
The newspaper says determining the team’s role in St. Pete’s current state is less relevant than looking forward. But seriously, the team’s impact in our region was oversold from day one and remains overstated. It did not light the tail on the rocket; it didn’t put St. Pete on the map (much to the chagrin of city leaders, the team retains its geographic name as “Tampa Bay” and some broadcasters shorten it to Tampa); its impact on the larger region is even more dubious. It did not create an economic ripple in Downtown West; the few sports bars that were opened as a result, most notably Ferg’s, are lonely outposts for the most part in the immediate neighborhood.
So if the past is any indicator of the future, baseball is not going to “transform” St. Pete into America’s Next Great City.
The team has never directly threatened to leave, but the message has been delivered by two proxies: business leader Steve Raymund and Times sports columnist John Romano, the latter’s none-too-subtle channeling for the Rays ownership headlined “Rays will get their new stadium — somewhere.”
Since the Times has asked, here’s one scenario of what happens if the team leaves:
In this scenario, the city grows its own longlasting jobs, not just the 18-month construction job benefit the Rays tout. In this scenario, downtown St. Pete continues to be an eclectic affordable destination for dining, entertaining and the arts, something that downtown Tampa can’t claim. And the city gets a veritable windfall by cutting the team — and its subsidies — loose. St. Pete and Pinellas County would have to continue to pay off the bonds that were used to build the Trop through 2016, but it already has that burden and can’t do anything about it.
Bonus cuts: The Rays and the city’s secrecy; our Q&A with the Rays’ Silverman and Kalt; PoHo blog on the Trop redevelopment plans; download the Rays’ financial proposal and analysis.
(photo by Ben Ostrowsky)
On the upside, the Rays haven’t trotted out a phalanx of lobbyists and spinmeisters in the team’s effort to win public approval for a new $450 million waterfront ballpark. They get brownie points for that. On the downside, for them at least, they are getting creamed so far.
Last night, nearly 600 people — mostly opponents — showed up to a public forum in St. Petersburg to speak about the proposal. This came after a workshop session of the City Council at which even some of the council members who seemed open to the idea initially — mainly Jamie Bennett — are starting to get testy with the ball team.
Also this week, preservationists weighed in on the plan with a big negatory, good buddy. This from St. Petersburg Preservation:
Over the years significant portions of our open Waterfront Park land have been lost as buildings and parking areas were allowed to encroach into the Waterfront Park. While these encroachments were for uses perceived at the time to benefit the public, cumulatively they have significantly eroded our downtown waterfront open green space. The construction of the proposed stadium would constitute the largest encroachment on the Waterfront Park. It also sets a negative precedent for perhaps even larger projects at some future date.
… The mass and scale of the proposed waterfront stadium is far beyond what may be reasonably accommodated at the Waterfront Park site. The scale of the project is such that it would overpower and interfere with other nearby historic park amenities and residential areas. … We recommend the Rays Owners consider alternative sites, or further enhance the current stadium.
Just posted the results of the St. Pete City Council meeting over at Blurbex. Check out the details there and see what the Rays’ Matt Silverman (at the mic) and Michael Kalt (right) told Mayor Baker and the council members.
Earlier this week, we ran a graphic that opponents to the new Rays’ waterfront ballpark had doctored up to illustrate just how large they contend the Tampa Bay Rays’ retractable sail-like fabric roof will be, claiming it will block views from downtown condos and offices. The sail was highlighted in a yellow that came out in our print newspaper more yellow-green. While I thought it was clear that the Rays aren’t proposing a yellow canopy, and that it was just for the effect of highlighting the size of the roof, we weren’t precise about that and didn’t have room to print some other context for the roof design disagreement. The Rays’ senior VP on the project, Michael Kalt, wrote to clarify:
The rendering of the roof you published is patently misleading. We are talking about a transparent fabric that will be deployed, at most, for a few hours a day less than 90 days a year.
I wrote back to mention that I remembered hearing the Rays describe the fabric as not entirely transparent, that it has to have some opacity in order to block the sunlight and resulting heat and cool the open-air stadium in the Tampa Bay summer.
We are working with HOK to include images of the roof opening and closing in the virtual tour. It should take a few weeks. But your recollection is correct. We are trying to make it as transparent as possible while still ensuring that it reflects or diffuses heat rather than absorbs it (since most of our games will be in the evening, shade is somewhat less of an issue that reflectivity). This should result in a largely transparent fabric, and certainly not anything close to that lemon-yellow cartoon that you published.
In any event, the salient fact isn’t really the roof material. It’s that the roof itself will only be deployed a small fraction of the time: not at all for half the year (i.e., during the offseason), only 81-90 days during the other half of the year (i.e., during the baseball season), and even on those days, only for a few hours. That’s not to dismiss the fact that there will be some impact to waterfront views from a couple of adjoining properties during those hours. But we should be honest about the extent and duration of that impact.
A very fair point and one that did not fit into our cutlines in the newspaper. We should have done a better job describing it in the story, however.
Opponents make the point that the highest point of the sail is approximately 30 stories high, while the point where the sail attaches to the stadium seating structure is about 13 stories high. Members of the Preserve our Wallets and Waterfronts said they felt that Rays’ renderings downplayed the size and scope of the sail roof and showed it as being transparent (it is pictured in the open position so the sail fabric is not visible in any rendering); The Rays insist they have done no such thing, that they’ve always been open about how long the sail would be closed and open and its size, as demonstrated by the fact that they included the outlines of it in their renderings.
You be the judge; here’s the Rays’ renderings showing the roof and its outlines (images courtesy of the Tampa Bay Rays/HOK):
And here is the opponents’ rendering of the roof with the sail fabric up:
From the Creative Loafing issue hitting newsstands today:
‘Project Rebirth’
Public records reveal the active involvement of city officials in the Rays efforts for almost two years.
The seeds for a new waterfront ballpark and a redeveloped Tropicana Field site, the linchpins of the Tampa Bay Rays’ ambitious $1 billion remake of downtown St. Petersburg, were sown as far back as two years ago — twice as long as previously known or reported.
A review of city public records by Creative Loafing shows that discussions between the city and the team about economic redevelopment at or around Tropicana Field go back to at least March 2006, shortly after the arrival of the Rays’ point person on new stadium, Senior Vice President Michael Kalt.
Those discussions — which included gathering data about government financial incentives, adjacent properties and values, and potential environmental issues on those neighboring lands — were not directly part of a plan for a new ballpark, Kalt said in an interview with CL on Friday.
They did, however, form the foundation of the Rays current proposal, a ambitious $1 billion plan for a new waterfront, open-air ballpark at the site of Al Lang Field and a retail-housing-parks redevelopment of Tropicana Field. And those preliminary investigations — aided by city workers who gathered lots of data for the Rays — progressed to the point that by October 2006, St. Petersburg economic development and real estate officials were meeting with the Rays and their ballpark architect, HOK.
It wasn’t until March 2007, however, that the Rays formally requested their discussions about “Project Rebirth†— as city officials dubbed it, to the chagrin of the Rays — be confidential under a loophole in the state’s public records law that allows some public-private business discussions to be kept secret. The plan became public on Nov. 9, after it was leaked to the St. Petersburg Times.
Some civic leaders and opponents of the Rays’ proposal decry the secrecy, especially since it meant city officials kept the public in the dark during discussions about future uses for Al Lang Field and for the duration of the fall 2007 City Council elections.
(image courtesy of Skip Milos / Tampa Bay Rays)
CL staff writer Alex Pickett has a story about a split in the Bartlett Park civic association, which we’ve posted over at Blurbex:
So this group of eight — and two other relatively new residents who couldn’t make the meeting — have formed their own organization: the Buena Vista Neighborhood Association, which will focus on the area between Fourth and Martin Luther King streets and 13th and 18th avenues, approximately half of Bartlett Park.
“We’re going to continue to do positive things for the neighborhood,†Swift says. “But the association has served as an obstacle.â€
The Times is prepping a story, sources tell us, so get the scoop now and be that much smarter heading into the holiday weekend.
Aaron Sharockman of the Times is doing a good job on digging out new angles on the Rays waterfront stadium plan, and today he nails down Mayor Rick Baker’s stance on the matter: one of public fence-sitting. Sharockman writes:
Baker’s silence on the Rays stands in stark contrast to his penchant for supporting city economic development projects during his six years in office.
On Tuesday, in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Baker said not to anticipate his decision on the project anytime soon.
“Ultimately the Rays really need to convince the community,” Baker said. “They can convince me and the City Council, and maybe we’ll all love it. But if they don’t convince the community, it’s not going anywhere.”
As I wrote previously, there is now way a plan this large gets this far down the road without early and frequent nods of approval from the mayor, who has a large reserve of political capital to spend if he so chooses. He doesn’t often choose to spend it on tough items (like addressing and fixing the St Pete Police Dept and the city’s crime problems).
But Baker is a smart politician; he knows that if he comes out right away pimping for the Rays, he risks polarizing the situation further. This way, he appears neutral and needing to be convinced, an advocate for his citizenry. I’m sure, to some degree, he does still need to be convinced. But does anybody really believe that Mayor Rick doesn’t really want a brand, new shiny sailboat waterfront ballpark and the chance to dish off, errrr, bid out some prime real estate underneath the Trop to powerful patrons such as, say, the Semblers?
Wasn’t that yummy?
Interesting development over at The Buzz, with state Reps. Bill Heller and Rick Kriseman withdrawing their endorsements of St. Pete City Council Dist. 7 candidate Gershom Faulkner over anti-gay comments he made to the Pinellas Stonewall Democrats.
Faulkner was/is a shoo-in for the seat, which is currently held by Rene Flowers and covers a racially diverse district west of downtown. He is a Democrat who has attracted lots of money and support from both sides of the aisle. Faulkner told the Stonewall group that being gay was a lifestyle “choice” that he isn’t down with (or for the grammarians out there, “with which he isn’t down.”)
Faulkner’s objection to gay rights, on religious grounds he said, points out one of the more interesting contradictions in African-American politics — that while blacks still vote strongly in a bloc as Democrats many share a more socially conservative bent than the Party of the Left does, believed to reflect the strength of traditionally black churches in community politics. Democratic County Commissioner Thomas Scott, for instance, voted against allowing Hillsborough County to hold any recognition of Gay Pride events a few years ago; he is a preacher in addition to a politician. (Faulkner is a deacon in the Souls Harvest Fellowship Church, in addition to being a former Marine.)
Some see this as hypocrisy, but it’s more a reflection of how complicated political belief systems are and how we can’t reduce them to left vs. right, conservative vs. progressive, etc. And attitudes in the black community are changing for younger black voters; some academic research shows that college-age blacks hold significantly more tolerant views of gay politics than their elders. Faulkner is 36, not old enough to have harshly homophobic views but not young enough to see the shift in gay rights tolerance in the black community.
Cliff Gephart isn’t exactly running his Q rating through the roof in his bid for the St. Pete City Council Dist. 3 race. He’s not raised a whole lot of money for expensive advertising, and the daily newspaper has generally categorized him as “the guy who wrote the comedy screenplay.” Or something like that.
Anyway, when I was writing my part of the St. Pete City Council story in this week’s Gephart and I missed each other on the telephone before my deadline. But I did speak with him afterward and told him that I would put his side on the blog. Gephart is a 37-year-old small business owner with a mortgage and title company. So here are the highlights of our conversation:
PoHo: Why are you running?
Gephart: I looked at who was running and I didn’t think any of them were qualified. The city is a $586 million corporation, it truly is. It needs somebody who looks at business operations every day. I’ve been a business banker. I know what it’s like to make decisions every day that affect my clients and employees.
PoHo: How is your campaign going?
Gephart: I’ve been walking 5 hours a day for 12 days straight. I’m running my campaign a little bit differently. I have not raised the most money …. You shouldn’t have to raise $20,000 to get 2,000 votes. I’m not trying to go out there and ask my friends for money. I’m knocking on doors.
PoHo: What issues are you talking about with the people who answer?
Gephart: Being in the housing and mortgage industry, I see a darker day coming, which nobody has mentioned. If we see a price reduction of 20 percent in housing, we could lose $20 million there. Every year the budget needs to be looked at wholly: this is the money we have, so this is our budget this year. If we fall into a housing recession, we could be looking at cutting more than just the fat. Nobody wants to talk about that now. [He said that pumping up the budget in the fat years has led to the current problems, and he also decried some of the budget cuts.] It’s kind of asinine that they shut down the libraries on Saturday.
PoHo: So are voters mad or even know if there is an election coming up Tuesday?
Gephart: I don’t think anybody knows or cares. There’s nothing on the ballot that is driving people out to it. Most people think: What does city council really do? Very few people know about it. [He especially bemoaned voter participation by people in his age group.] It’s not good. It’s an uphill battle I think. I did a big MySpace campaign [trying to raise awareness], I don’t know how well it is going to turn out.
PoHo: So what about this comedy sitcom pilot you wrote, “Pawn’d,” that the papers keep mentioning as your claim to fame [he says he's spoken with TBS and Comedy Central about producing the series]?
Gephart: Every time I talked to [St. Petersburg Times reporters and editors], they wrote that thing on the screenplay that I wrote. Any time you Google me, that is the first thing that comes up. Yeah, that’s what I did, but you might as well say I play horseshoes on Saturday. I’m proud of it. I’m not trying to shy away from it. That’s not what defines me.
The other candidates in the District 3 primary are Bill Dudley, Cathy Harrelson and Ed Montanari.
Budget-cutting in St. Petersburg prompted by property tax reform appears to have claimed the city’s 30-year-old anti-discrimination law.
Mayor Rick Baker’s proposed budget eliminates six jobs in the Community Affairs Department that investigated and upheld anti-discrimination laws in the city, leaving especially in doubt a human-rights ordinance that protected people in the GLBT community.
Without investigators or supervisors to check out the 200-300 discrimination cases filed annually, the city will stop taking complaints on Sept. 30. A memo to St. Petersburg City Council members said the move would save “several hundred thousand dollars†a year.
Along with the staffing cuts, the city is looking to repeal the human rights ordinance so it can shift the responsibility for anti-discrimination enforcement to Pinellas County government. Council members last week approved a partial repeal of the law. A final vote and public hearing is set for July 19.
Deputy Mayor Tish Elston said the move is designed to try to provide a smooth transition of those complaints to county government without anyone falling “between the cracks.â€
But the change leaves in some doubt how the GLBT community may fare, since prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is covered by the city ordinance but not by the county’s anti-discrimination law.
“We certainly support a more efficient government that results in savings to the taxpayers,†said Jim Pease, the president of the Tampa Bay chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans. “But we don’t want the City of St. Petersburg to forget that they need to ensure that the civil rights of its citizens are protected and that enforcement is a function of government that should not diminish when economic times become challenging.”
St. Pete’s downtown guru, Don Shea, is staying put in his job with the Downtown Partnership. TBBJ had reported that he was in negotiations to take a similar job in Raleigh, N.C., but eventually withdrew.
Shea is a rare blend of business development, urban planning and arts advocacy who really understands the importance of culture. He is chairman of the American Stage board and played a role in creation of a downtown St. Pete arts hub plan announced earlier this year.
Shea said he wasn’t looking to leave St. Pete. “I’ve never complained about my package here. [Raleigh] came calling,” he said. “They offered and I counter-offered. They stayed with their original offer, so I withdrew.”
Shea added that he has been gratified by the support shown by his board and supporters even after news of his possible departure got out.
“I was nervous that I would be looked askance here because I thought maybe some would think I wasn’t keeping my eye on the ball,” Shea said.
This is the biggest staff I’ve seen for a City Council race, but former legislative aide Gershom Faulkner seems ready for battle after announcing five appointments this morning.
Coming aboard are two campaign managers (Jett Jackson and Mitch Kates), a communications director (Peter Schweitzer) and two consultants, the mother-daughter team Ana Cruz and Janet Rifkin, both prominent Tampa Democratic consultants.
Faulkner, who was chief of staff for St. Pete Democratic state Rep. Frank Peterman and a campaigner for Congresswoman Kathy Castor, is running for Rene Flowers’ District 7 seat. Flowers is term-limited.
— Reported by Alex Pickett and Wayne Garcia
It seemed simple enough. Neighborhood activists in St. Pete are faced with reductions in programs aimed at fighting crime and improving the city, due to the potential $22.6 million in budget cuts that may follow property tax reform.
What if, they asked, the city contracted out its police work to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office?
For the past few weeks, they had secretly talked with City Council members about the idea as they gathered financial data to see how much money could be saved.
But asking Sheriff Jim Coats to step in? That part was apparently too hot to handle. When asked about the plan by CL reporters, community leaders who had been briefed about it denied knowing of it or backed away from it quickly — likely because policing in St. Petersburg is a political and racial hot potato.
On Wednesday night, however, the Council Of Neighborhood Associations took the plunge anyway. Its members voted 13-3 to urge the St. Petersburg City Council to send a Request for Proposed Services letter to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office for a cost estimate on outsourcing police duties for the city. CONA’s police review committee will also start researching the matter.
“The rumblings have always been that the Sheriff’s Office could do the policing job for much less than the police department can do it,†says former CONA president Karl Nurse, who presented the issue to the membership. “It looks like the alternative [budget cuts due to property tax reform] could be as much as wipe out everything but police, fire, sewer and garbage services. In that kind of environment, I don’t know how you could not at least ask the question.â€
