Pretty pictures, indeed

The three proposals opened Tuesday for the redevelopment of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg contained many graceful and attractive artist's renderings. All three proposed some graceful mix of retail, office, residential, green space and public use.

This is all well and good. I'm not a naysayer trying to stand in the way of "progress," as some folks characterize the plan's skeptics. But I HAVE spent my entire career watching cities get carried away with pretty drawings and promises in projects such as this without doing their due diligence.

Two points have to be stressed over and over:

(1) By themselves, these proposals mean nothing. Zip. They can promise all the neat stores and X number of jobs and X dollars in economic impact that they want. What matters is the contract that the city enters into. What teeth will the contract have? What guarantees will there be if the goals of the contract are not met? The contract itself is not the guarantee. And neither is a simple "reverter" clause saying that as a last resort, the city can taken the land back. That is a "nuclear option" that does the city little good, as a practical measure.

(2) None of these ideas pays for a new baseball stadium -- not yet, anyway. And that is the entire purpose of this project. The Hines proposal is for a purchase price of the site of $50 million, and even that phased in with dribbles and drabs -- much less than any sale figure I've heard bandied about. The Archstone-Madison proposal is not even for a sale, but just a lease. As for the Williams Quarter proposal -- pretty drawings now, we can talk about those pesky little business details later. All of the grand estimates of tax revenues that will be generated might work, but again, there have to be guarantees.

On top of this, the Archstone proposal calls for the taxpayers to pay for the destruction of Tropicana Field, which I thought was pretty much the purpose of hiring a developer. Both the Archstone and the Hines proposals say the taxpayers will pay for any unexpected costs of environmental cleanup. That is a reasonable position for the companies -- but it will be UNreasonable for the city to agree unless it is entirely sure of what it is doing.

I will be curious to see whether the city continues to take these proposals at face value for as long as possible, choosing one of the developers and only then getting around to the nitty-gritty business details.

Protecting Al Lang Field

One outrageous aspect of St. Petersburg's secret deal with the Tampa Bay Rays last year was that the city went right ahead and held bogus public hearings to ask for "public input" on the citywide land-use plan that was being re-drawn at the time. The city knew about the waterfront stadium proposal; the people didn't.

Several citizens, acting in good faith and believing they were taking part in an honest process, testified that the old Al Lang minor-league site should be used for a park or green space. The city kept putting them off, saying it needed to "keep its options open." After the stadium deal became public, the City Council said -- repeatedly -- that it would designate Al Lang as a park anyway, and if the stadium went through, it could always be changed. But now the council is backing off that statement. Here are a couple of citizen letters that have been sent to the council in advance of Thursday's meeting:

I am writing to propose that the City Council amend the Land Development Regulations (LDR's) for the property known as Al Lang Field and the associated parking lots to the north. The amendment would be to designate the aforementioned property as DC-P (Parkland), rather than DC-3. Making this change in the LDR's would be consistent with the waterfront park system which this City has been striving to protect for close to a  hundred years.  We were promised this “oversight” would be corrected in the first glitch meeting, when the Council presented the LDRs on August 9, 2007.  The Council’s promise was made in the face of significant public outcry on the DC-3 zoning designation for this important part of our Public Parks.  Postponing this change is not acceptable!!  Do it NOW........the citizens have already spoken. -- Lorraine Margeson

Last spring, when you considered the question of LDRs, I was part of a large group who spoke to you about Al Lang Field and its curious designation of DC3 instead of the DCP designation that the rest of the public parkland was given. You all declared, to our faces, that this would be corrected at a "glitch meeting" and merrily passed the LDRs without include Al Lang - and the Mahffrey and Dali - as park.
Many people have worked tirelessly to protect our waterfront. Members of Council have, in the past, worked to turn this city around - from a Green Bench ghetto to a vibrant center of cultural and residential distinction. You promised to correct that glitch but we, the citizens now know that, even when you were promising that to us you were promising something else to the Rays.
We feel betrayed. You are not listening to your citizens. I hesitate to consider what  or who you are listening to. But it's not us - the people that have taken the time to participate in our city government, listen to your campaign promises and hope for the best for our city. Mr. Straub and his friends meant for the waterfront to be one long. emerald necklace framing our fair city - not some disposable commodity to be given away in dribs and drabs. I urge you to do the right thing and make good the promise you gave us last spring. Fix the glitch and change the LDR for Al Lang Field to DCP this  Thursday. -- Faith Andrews Bedford, St. Petersburg

The RFP, Part Two

Well, that didn't take long. The St. Petersburg City Council convened at 3 p.m. and was finished by about 4 -- and the first half of that was about matters unrelated to baseball stadiums.

By a vote of 7-1, with Herb Polson dissenting, the council approved the city's invitation to developers for proposals to redevelop the site of Tropicana Field. The Tropicana project is supposed to help pay for a new waterfront stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays.

There weren't many folks from the public there, maybe in part because of the advance statements that there wouldn't be any public comment. Tax protester and City Hall critic David McKalip tried to speak, but was ruled out of order by council chairman James Bennett.

The next major step occurs on March 18, when the city will unseal the proposals that it gets in response to this invitation.

The RFP, Part One

It took the St. Petersburg City Council a little less than two hours to get through its workshop Thursday morning on issuing an invitation to developers for how to redevelop the Tropicana Field site. The council will convene in its regular session at 3 p.m. today to take a formal vote.

The council considered reversing course and allowing public comment this afternoon, but then decided against it since it was short notice & wouldn't be fair to the folks who had already decided not to come. Instead, the council will hold a series of public hearings over the spring -- but heck, they will already have issued the RFP, which is what people today wanted to comment about!

More later.

St. Petersburg City Council: rushing the RFP; breaking a promise

On Thursday, the St. Petersburg City Council will meet to hold its first -- and only -- discussion of the request that the city will send out to developers about the future of the Tropicana Field site.

The city's "request for proposals," called an RFP, is already drawn up and ready to go. The city intends to send it out on Friday.

It is not clear to me exactly why we need a City Council at all, actually.

Remember, this is the other half of the deal for a new waterfront stadium. The existing Tropicana Field would be sold and redeveloped. The sale proceeds, and future property taxes, would be used to help pay for the new stadium.

The council will hold an informal workshop on the RFP in the morning, and then formally approve the document in its afternoon meeting that starts at 3 p.m. There is no public comment during the workshop, and no public comment listed on the afternoon agenda. Isn't that a heck of a sentence?

* * * * *

Also, please take note of this important story in this morning's Neighborhood Times by my colleague Cristina Silva.

The story says that the City Council is breaking its repeated commitment that it made to the citizens last year to re-designate the old Al Lang waterfront site for a park, when it re-mapped the city.

The City Council promised to re-designate Al Lang in August, when it approved the new citywide rules. It repeated that pledge in December. Some of the council members repeated the statement to me, to my face.

But it was not the case. Now the city will leave Al Lang available for whatever purposes that City Hall chooses down the road.

It is true that if the plan for a baseball stadium did go through, then park designation wouldn't matter anyway. But it matters NOW. And it matters if the new stadium is not built after all.

The City Council said it was going to do it. It made that promise to the citizens. How can the citizens believe anything the council says about a new stadium or anything else, if it can so easily break its word?

* * * * *

Please do not misunderstand these criticisms. Unlike some of my friends who have made up their minds for other reasons, I am not opposed to the idea of the waterfront baseball stadium. This is entirely about the process leading up to it -- for the voters to approve any deal in November, this has to be 100 percent public, and handled well by the city.

So far it hasn't been on either count.

Here's the (Tropicana) pitch...

Heres a copy [Download RFP-Trop.site.PDF]  of the city's of St. Petersburg's request for proposals (the "RFP") to redevelop the site of Tropicana Field. The City Council will review at its Thursday meeting and then it is supposed to be sent out on Friday.

The RFP is vague or silent on the specific financial requirements the city is looking for -- although in theory, whatever happens at the Trop site has to help pay for a $450-million baseball stadium down on the waterfront.

I'm getting copied on several citizen e-mails asking the City Council to delay (or even defeat) the RFP. Defeating it would, of course, kill the entire deal right away and that is not going to happen. The city will move ahead on the theory of "we're just gathering information here." The question is how far down this road the city goes before it then argues, "We've gone too far to turn back."

Here's a baseball e-mail from a dissatisfied customer

You think there's any chance at all that the Times can or will say something positive about the proposed stadium ?? The e-mail that I sent a few days ago I originally intended to send to the Times - but I decided instead to send it to the Mayor and the Chamber of Commerce.  My reasoning was that they might not be quite so biased. It would be nice to see the Times mention that our Chamber of Commerce web site has a picture of the proposed stadium - along with quite a bit of "positive" information.  It might also be helpful to provide a chart or graph showing how the Rays' proposal stacks up against other cities stadiums - or give your readers the websites of those other ball club's stadiums. What I didn't mention below, but will here is that a major league city deserves a major league newspaper, not one that pushes it's bush league attitudes on it's citizens. -- David Good

Dear Mr. Good: Speaking for myself, I have described the proposed stadium as beautiful and exciting, and the concept of the new "downtown west" on the existing Tropicana Field site as "gracious." Indeed I also have been critical of City Hall for keeping the proposal for a new stadium secret for most of 2007. I also have expressed the opinion several times that any deal needs to provide iron-clad protection for taxpayers on the front end. If this is a "bush league attitude," then so be it.

We have lots of information about the proposed stadium, renderings, virtual tours, etc., and related topics gathered on our web site in a single location.

Lastly, as I said in a reply to a reader the other day, it is kind of refreshing to be accused of being a negative nabob, since most of the time the newspaper is assume to be in the tank for City Hall, in bed with boosterism and so forth...

Assorted other baseball comments

On Wednesday night's public input session on what to do with the Tropicana Field site IF it were redeveloped: [Times photo | Edmund D. Fountain]

My wife and I attended, as well. We were separated, sent to different tables. Probably a good thing, because we came away with two totally different experiences. At our table, there was adamant expression of our frustration with the guidelines for the meeting – that nothing should be said regarding the “new” stadium... The gentleman next to me called the entire process “a scam” because we were playing right into the Rays’ hands by proposing development ideas based on the stadium being razed. That’s why we were united in our recommendation that any new site development include a stadium. Ain’t St. Pete politics fun? -- Paul Cooper

Most of the tables I visited included "keep it as a stadium" as an option. But, even that was a little rigged, since "keep stadium" was only ONE out of all the options that got "votes." But really, that's the first decision to be made -- keep it as a stadium, or build a new one? Then and only then do we decide what to do with the Trop! So, it was kind of a fake weighting of the "keep as a stadium" option. If they try later to claim the event was some sort of proof for support for change, I think we should blow the whistle big-time. But I suppose until then we should have good faith that they would simply include the public comments as the "what if" the way it was pitched.

Like it or not, I suspect you are being anointed as the Keeper of the Castle when it comes to protecting the taxpayers from the owner and management of the Rays.  To say that the Rays would love to pull the wool over the taxpayers eyes, would certainly be a major understatement. -- John Garner, Treasure Island

I don't know if I am cut out for being keeper of the castle, though. Really, all I keep saying is that I want to see the numbers up front, and for the taxpayers to have iron-clad protection. Without that iron-clad protection, there ain't no way the city should enter into this deal. On the other hand, there are lots of other folks are opposed to the stadium because it's waterfront, outdoors, because of environment, parking and all that kind of stuff  -- I'm not. Heck, I'm a fan, I'll go if it's there.

So now this losing franchise wants a shiny new stadium. The owners haven't put a winning (or even a substantially improved) team on the field for ten years now yet they pine for this new stadium which will hold only 34,000.  I suppose if they must watch a loosing team at least the yuppies pushing for this stadium will enjoy the waterfront view. This is not about honoring a commitment to produce a competitive team, this is about procuring a new toy to solve a problem. -- J. Blomgren

And also, along those lines:

Why don't the owners of the Rays take the money to be used for the stadium and buy some good athletes like George Steinbrenner does? Maybe if the Rays would win some games and become contenders for the World Series, people will start going to the games at the Trop! Then they could talk about a new stadium and the public would embrace the idea. -- Jim Thurmann

Well, sure, that's ONE way...

If the Trop's for sale and worth potentially $300M+, then theoretically 1/2 of the site could be sold for $150M+ we could PAY OFF the Trop! The premise of the downtown proposal is voluminous parking is not required - therefore, 1/2 of the site is extraneous and can be sold. Now, the benefits - we keep baseball, the City and County budget requirements and public subsidy are eliminated, the Trop with considerable remaining value is preserved. -- Dave Shanks

I dunno, Dave, whether the magic wand that is supposed to make the parking problem nonexistent would still work west of, say, 4th Street...

Column: Let's just SAY the Trop's for sale...

There was plenty of reassuring talk to open Wednesday evening's public meeting at Tropicana Field.

First, the moderator stressed, the meeting was only about an "if" - what the public wants to do with the 86-acre site of Tropicana Field if there's a new, waterfront baseball stadium.

The mayor of St. Petersburg, Rick Baker, spoke next and said he wanted to make it clear the city has not committed to a new stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays.

The chairman of the City Council, James Bennett, promised the 300-plus citizens there: "We're going to have as many meetings as it takes to be open and flowing and open to the public."

(Flowing?)

And by the way, Bennett added, the city has not taken a position on a new stadium.

There also were a few words from a spokesman for the Council of Neighborhood Associations. As it turns out, he said CONA has not taken a position either.

And so, once everyone had agreed they had taken no position on a new stadium, the meeting got down to the business of what to do with the old one. [link to entire column]

Meanwhile, these baseball stadium comments (#1)

Here's an excerpt from an e-mail being circulated among members of the Alliance for a Livable Pinellas, St. Petersburg Preservation and Suncoast Sierra, suggesting talking points and urging them to ask the city of St. Petersburg to delay issuing a request for developers to redevelop the Tropicana Field site. I'm not saying I agree with every one, just that it's an interesting list:

1.  Are you ready as taxpayers to pay $450,000,000 for a new stadium?  (the Ray's figure and the most compelling for voters)
          a.  $450,000,000 up front from taxpayers
          b.  Rays will pay back only 1/3 of this through rent ($100,000,000 from $10,000,000 per year for the ten year contract balance)
          c.  $100,000,000 balance still owed on present stadium.
2.  The RFP must be stopped due to the lack of public input.
3.  The secret process continues to be rushed.
4.  This process is contrary to Vision 20/20.   (Public waterfront is sacred)
5.  The project requires filling of the Bay which is environmentally unacceptable.
6.  Parking is inadequate and will create gridlock.
7.  This public land will remain closed to only baseball fans.
8.  This violates the sacred waterfront preservation tradition of St. Petersburg.
9.  This will detract from the decades of building downtown small businesses due to the siphoning from the new redevelopment.
10. Pollution will drastically increase in air, light and noise.
11.  The reason of improved attendance is unproved and unsubstantiated.  ("Build it and they will come" mentality)
12. What is the value of baseball in St. Petersburg?

Meanwhile, these baseball stadium comments (#2)

In the man-bites-dog category, here is a boiled-down version of my exchange with a gentleman who complains that I and others at the Times have been mysteriously soft on the Rays and the stadium proposal:

While many of my friends in St Pete are cheering your stand on the lack of transparency by the Rays with the stadium deal. It would seem the facts show you to be just a tad disingenuous... Why have there been few or no follow up stories on issues such as the bay fill-ins that are required. What about the incredible obstruction that this new stadium presents to the line of sight for downtown. The skyscraper condos already effect the wind currents for those who regularly sail out of the downtown marinas...the stadium will only make this worse. Do you honestly think the FAA will allow the Albert Whitted Field to remain with this stadium back up right behind it? ... I think the St Pete Times owes the citizens of St Petersburg a serious comprehensive series of unbiased investigative articles into the history, background, motivation and justification of new downtown stadium. -- Michael Wickersheim

Dear Michael Wickersheim: It is a little refreshing, I will admit, after writing columns that have been extremely critical of the handling of this stadium proposal so far, to be accused of going too soft on it... When the idea was first floated publicly back in May I wrote a column back in May laying down the idea that it should never be accepted if it put the taxpayers at risk. We also had several articles along the way about the city's curious refusal to designate Al Lang as a park.

Since the thing became officially public in November, we have had pages of coverage about it, including a front-page article on the very point that you raise --  explaining the complexity and difficulty involved with dredging and filling the bay. In case you missed it, here's the link to that article in our archives. Here, as well, is an article discussing the many hurdles and considerations, including the FAA issue that you raised:

I promise you that I will be writing columns throughout the upcoming process, raising heck because I do not believe they are going to issue a particularly specific RFP and that they are plunging ahead with a "we'll figure the numbers out later" kind of attitude.

BayWalk

In other news, there's a new round of "Is BayWalk safe?" worry following what sounds like an awful time late on Christmas night in and around the downtown St. Petersburg shopping and entertainment complex. Shots fired in the air, a guy shot in the parking garage, fights and melees, some idiot throwing money in the air...

Now, BayWalk is a perfectly safe, mom-and-pop, Mayberry kind of place during the days and early evenings. I go there all the time. But I wouldn't step foot in the place after mid-evening on a weekend, precisely because it is jammed with raucous kids, even with the 10 p.m. curfew for the younger ones. This is more out of my being a cranky old guy than out of any sense of personal fear.

Still, I thought the statements of the mayor ("The police handled it well"), Police Department ("a couple" of troublemakers) and BayWalk management ("a security plan that worked") were a little forced. Your standards and mine for what constitutes the unacceptable breakdown of civilization might be different, but mine include gunplay and melees in public places.

Mr. Foster reports that his hair is still safe

In response to my post earlier today, departing St. Petersburg City Council member Bill Foster just called to say that at the end of last evening's council meeting, he did in fact bring up this new memo. Foster asked for confirmation that the council had committed to designating Al Lang as a park.

The video is not up on the city's web site yet, but Foster said that the other council members agreed that designating the Al Lang site as a park was the plan... if so, then either the city staff will have to go along with the council's firmly expressed wishes, or else the council will have to be, you know, persuaded otherwise.

Foster told me that as far as he was concerned, the council HAS been through a public process, and the public said it wanted Al Lang as a park.

City staff: Don't make Al Lang a park

If you're following the proposed baseball stadium saga in St. Petersburg, here is a most interesting memo that came out yesterday from Rick Mussett, the city's economic development director, addressed to the City Council. [Click the images to enlarge]

The gist of the memo is to tell the City Council NOT to designate the Al Lang waterfront site -- the site of the new proposed stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays -- as a park under the city's new land-use plan.

Now, designating Al Lang as a park would not block baseball from the site -- the voters could still approve the stadium in November 2008 -- but it WOULD make it impossible for the city to do anything else with Al Lang if baseball fell through.

First in the memo, in the time-honored fashion of bureaucrats everywhere, Mussett says there have been plenty of times over the years that the citizens COULD have asked to make Al Lang a park, such as in past "visioning" sessions. He lists several examples. The implication is that the more recent input is Johnny-come-lately stuff that somehow counts less.

Mussett goes on to say the City Council should not "arbitrarily" designate Al Lang as a park, just because citizens ask for it. Even if it turns out not to be suitable for baseball, Mussett said there still should be a "broad based public consensus-building process" before deciding the ultimate use of the site.

(Hmm, I wonder if this means city has signed ANOTHER secret deal as a backup plan? After all, when the stadium deal was still secret and the citizens were asking to make Al Lang a park, it was Mussett who kept calling for "keeping our options open"...)

When the City Council passsed the new land-use map in August, it said would come back and make Al Lang a park site as part of a follow-up amendment, just as the public had requested. The City Council repeated this intention as recently as its Dec. 6 meeting. And just the other day, when I mocked the city for keeping the stadium proposal secret during these important decisions, outgoing council member Bill Foster called me to chide me for not giving the council credit for its promise. If the council doesn't do what he said, he told me, he will shave his head.

Well, now the City Council has its new marching orders from the city staff. Can anyone convince me that the City Council will not do whatever the mayor's staff orders it to do?

I have just the barber for Mr. Foster....

Wednesday: Museum bailout, Tierra Verde annexation, FSU cheating

Goood morning and happy Wednesday. Hope you survived the brutal "cold" snap. It is now less than a week until Christmas, which means less than two weeks left in 2007...

Notice the news in this morning's paper of yet another proposed bailout for the Florida International Museum in downtown St. Petersburg. The city is being asked to forgive $260,346, as part of a deal in which the museum's private benefactors forgive the rest of its debt as well.

The museum has never been a "museum" as much an an exhibition hall for tourist and gimmicky attractions. Admittedly, the early blockbusters (Treasures of the Czars) helped bring people downtown and played a role in the downtown's renaissance. As to whether this justified all the subsequent propping-up... nah. I really do not want to hear any more irksome "You owe us" kind of stuff. Who's in charge over there, Vince Naimoli?

Meanwhile, our neighbors in Tierra Verde, down at the southern tip of Pinellas County, are nervous now that the city of St. Petersburg is eyeing annexation. And they should be. They are between a rock and a hard place -- trampled by the county government up in Clearwater, and in danger of being gobbled up by St. Pete. Plus, some residents are rightly suspicious of the motives behind all this. Meanwhile, as the story points out, some in Tierra Verde are advocating incorporation into their own city out of self-defense.

Now, about this FSU football scandal: Hey, I don't want to take any cheap shots at Free Shoes University (whoops, sorry, that was a previous scandal). But if I were king of Florida, I would say that NO Florida university could take part in ANY bowl game until the state's universities were on a better academic footing overall. Imagine the gnashing and wailing of teeth then! Obviously, my priorities are misplaced.

Column: Nice art, but can we please see numbers?

The color drawings are very pretty. They show an exciting new baseball stadium on St. Petersburg's waterfront.

They show a gracious new "downtown west" that would rise on the site of the existing Tropicana Field.

And if color drawings were enough...

Oops, wait a minute.

That is exactly the trouble. In St. Petersburg, color drawings and slogans and sweet talk are enough. They've always been.

We're talking about a city that is a tad weak on the meaning of "due diligence." Let's put it this way: To balance this year's budget, St. Petersburg is still waiting for that prince from Nigeria to send the cash he promised. [entire column]

Very pretty, but...

I'm just back from the Rays' big unveiling of their plans for downtown St. Petersburg. The biggest news is that we can't just call the plan "a new ball park" because this is really TWO major ideas -- the new waterfront ballpark and the redevelopment of the old Tropicana Field site.

They had lots of pretty pictures. As a baseball fan and a downtown booster of course I am interested. But I will be even more interested to read the black and white of the details.

Nothing seems exactly as stated. The Rays say they're putting up $150-million of "their" money for the stadium, but it's more of a two-step: they'll pay more rent to the city, then the city issues more debt to cover that $150-million... the Rays also stress that no "new" tax dollars or tax increases would be involved... which fudges the fact that some existing revenue streams would be extended, and that the whole shebang involves public resources.

Then there's the whole redevelopment of the Tropicana Field site, which is supposed to generate the rest of the new ball park's cost. The city of St. Petersburg will have to issue a request for proposals for developers, etc.... to convert the Tropicana site into a big mixed-used community, retail, residential, greenspace, etc...

The team owners say they'll be responsible for any cost overruns for the stadium. As for many other details -- insurance? who's on the hook for revenue shortfalls? -- all is yet to be made clear.

No doubt the St. Petersburg City Council will scrutinize the whole deal with its customary fine-toothed comb... [insert long, sarcastic pause here]

More in tomorrow's print column.

Tuesday column: Lie of omission? More like just a lie

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No to the city of St. Petersburg.

No to its government. No to its mayor. No to its deputy mayors and assistant pooh-bahs.

They do not get to run the government like this. They just don't.

For much of 2007, the citizens of St. Petersburg, also known as taxpayers and voters, believed that they were taking part in actual democracy.

They thought they were taking part in a public process to decide the future of the city's waterfront.

They showed up, they signed up to speak, they testified, they pleaded. The city pretended to be listening.

We now know it was a sham. Since March 2007, the city had a signed confidentiality agreement with the Tampa Bay Rays concerning plans to use the waterfront for a 35,000-seat, $450-million baseball stadium. [rest of column]

Field of secrets?

Hello and happy Monday. I'm back from three weeks away and eager to catch up. First on the agenda has to be the proposed baseball stadium for downtown St. Petersburg, which the Tampa Bay Rays are going to make public on Wednesday.

I think this will be my first column topic in tomorrow's newspaper. The shocking thing  is that the city of St. Petersburg knew about the stadium idea from early 2007, but kept it secret from its own citizens -- even as those citizens were taking part in a supposedly public process on deciding the future of the downtown waterfront! And of course, there was no sense in letting such a major secret be part of the city elections, so it stayed quiet until after that as well.

How many other secret deals does the city have in place, then? How can the voters EVER know that their dealings with the city of St. Petersburg are being conducted on the up-and-up, and that the city hasn't already signed some sort of secret document saying what's really going to happen? This has been a sorry, sorry start to this process. It might be sorry enough to kill the whole idea. [Times photo | Skip O'Rourke]

Column: Want a ballot? Read this first

When the voters of St. Petersburg show up for city elections on Nov. 6, a poll worker will hand them an unusual letter.

Voters will be asked to read the letter before voting, then to hand it in before leaving. There will be 50 copies circulating at each precinct.

The letter, written by the city's government, spells out the consequences of voting a certain way in one of the races for City Council.

The choices in that race are between an incumbent council member, James Bennett, and an option on the ballot labeled "New Election." [link to entire column]

Here's the city's letter to be handed out to voters:

Here's the instruction to poll workers:

Column: Pigs fly!

I went to a St. Petersburg City Council meeting the other day, and the darnedest thing happened. A big developer practically got booted out of City Hall.

Holy condo tower, Batman! I swear it's true. The developers fumed. They blustered. They insulted. They threatened. In short, they did what usually works.

But the City Council voted 7-0 not to allow a 257-foot-tall, 23-story, 154-room hotel and condo project on the border between the downtown and the Old Northeast neighborhood.

It was the right call, if you ask me. Otherwise we'd have this Great Wall of Monstrosity lining the south side of Fifth Avenue N, towering over the neighborhoods to the north.

The tricky part of the decision was that the proposed Westin hotel met the technical requirements under the city's rules in effect at the time of application. The city's staff had recommended approval.

The developers made a big deal of that, saying that they had been "lured" to the city by the old rules, and that if the city ignored the staff recommendation, then they would See You In Court.

(Having spent the past 25 years watching developers' lawyers argue that staff recommendations aren't the last word and should be overruled, I thought that part was sort of funny.)

The developers also said:

* The neighbors shouldn't complain about the building's shadow, because they already sit beneath a lot of shade trees.
* The opponents (who had a pretty good lawyer who was making an effective argument) were just "emotional."
* The hotel wouldn't allow workers or patrons to park on the streets of the neighborhood, which is already jam-packed. (As to how to enforce that, maybe they had a magic parking wand.) [rest of column]

Rare role for developer: underdog

It's rare to see a developer cast in the role of clear underdog in front of a local government body. But the folks who wanted to build a 23-story Westin hotel on the fringe of downtown St. Petersburg got a pretty frosty reception Thursday evening in front of the City Council. In the end the council voted 7-0 against the developer's appeal.

Council chairman James Bennett set the tone when the developers' lawyer, Ron Weaver of Tampa, began his presentation by asking for extra time to make it. That wouldn't be appropriate, Bennett replied. Perhaps not used to not getting the red carpet, the developers' side had to rush and fumble through their case in 10 minutes.

The proposal was to build a 23-story, 154-room hotel on 5th Avenue North at First Street, on the northern border of the downtown area and at the southern end of the Old Northeast neighborhood. The project also included 60 to 70 condominiums and a parking garage.

In the technical sense, the Westin project complied with city codes. But there was enough wiggle room in the language about affecting the city's overall character, the project's consistency with existing uses, its adverse effects and so forth to give the council grounds for denying the appeal from the city's Environmental Development Commission, which had already rejected the project.

Still, the developer might have a court case. Weaver argued that the city was changing its tune in midstream, pulling the rug from beneath the developers. Honestly, it didn't help that a lot of the folks who spoke in opposition kept talking about how the hotel doesn't comply with the "spirit" of the city's new rules, which just took effect in September -- those rules don't apply to the Westin project.

Three thoughts:

(1) If you ask me, the thing is a monstrosity that has no business towering over the neighborhoods to the north. If the developers are intent on ramming it down St. Petersburg's throat, then I have no problem at all wishing them and their hotel a spectacular lack of success.

(2) I wouldn't read too much into the City Council's rejection, in terms of deep meaning or sea change. These were out-of-town guys with (no offense, Ron!) an out-of-town lawyer. If the developer was named Sembler, and the neighborhood was in west St. Petersburg instead of being the Old Northeast,  would the result be the same? Hey, wait a minute...

(3) On the other hand, opponents of Hometown Democracy can find some ammunition here. The citizens rallied; they hired an effective lawyer; they made their case -- and the City Council listened. In the wake of the council denying a Wal-Mart up on Gandy Boulevard, it's hard to accuse the St. Pete gov't in this case of being pro-developer at all costs...

Thoughts?

Column: A Life Built Upon All The Right Trappings

It seems easier to start with the public life of John Bryan.

There have not been many people who wanted so badly, and so specifically, to be a member of the St. Petersburg City Council.

Bryan thought about the council years in advance. He arranged his life accordingly, shutting down his business to make time, touring other cities to observe their workings.

He spent dutiful years on various city committees. He tried to get appointed to a vacant seat in 1998, and was finally elected in 2001.

In 2005, even against a long-shot opponent, Bryan was consumed by the prospect of not being re-elected.

"The fear of losing eats me up," Bryan told a reporter then. "I love this city and I love my job and I don't want to take any chance of losing it."

So I wonder what was going through his mind on Aug. 20, the first date on his letter of resignation from the job that was so much of his identity... [rest of column]

The Readers: Another View On TV Debates

My Thursday column argued that the city of St. Petersburg should find a way to televise a League of Women Voters-Council of Neighborhood Associations debate of City Council candidates. I have been critical of governments that use their TV stations for propaganda, and asked, what better use of a "city" station than informing the voters about an upcoming election?

As former City Council member Virginia Littrell points out, there are problems involved. An excerpt from her letter:

One of the statements in your column hits the nail on the head.  " I suppose the Bromeliad Society or Pave the Manatee Club could squwak..."  is exactly the reason it should not be done.  Its not a matter of "squwakking".  It is a matter of much greater legal and ethical implication than just a noisy squwak. 

I think we probably agree that the government channel should be fair to all.   So why not Pave the Manatees ?  Why not any organization who wishes to push their particular agenda?   And make no mistake, the questions asked at candidate debates are controlled and screened by the organization holding the debate, thereby framing the debate.  It is a logical and reasonable dynamic, after all they want to hear about issues relative to themselves.  Go Figure!
 
A citizens advisory board appears an easy fix, but has its own set of ramifications. Who appoints the members?  The elected officials?  The Mayor?   Do they stack the board with people who will set standards which limit the air time of organizations unfavorable to the elected officials who are trying to get reelected?   Is it locigal to think a mayorially appointed citizens advisory board would allow a debate by an organization dedicated to..oh, say.. revealing the inadequacies of the mayor's police chief and the problems within the Police Department?

Of course, she makes good points -- almost any mechanism for airing debates on the city's TV channel brings these difficulties into play. My general answer is, if we are worried about discriminating against groups, then use it to air ANY group's debate that meets a few objective standards. In the alternative, if we can't use the city channel to inform the citizens, then by golly, the city ought not be able to use it to glorify the government either. By law, government TV channels should be restricted to showing public meetings and proceedings -- that's it.

A Tale Of Two Budget Cuts

Our old boss here at the Times. Gene Patterson, was a WWII tank commander under George S. Patton. He tells the story of Patton chewing out his men for not gaining ground fast enough -- he knew it was not fast enough, Old Blood and Guts yelled, because he wasn't seeing enough second lieutenants getting killed.

That story popped up in my mind on Wednesday when, by coincidence, I had a previously arranged lunch meeting with Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio. It turned out to be the eve of her announcement  of how she would meet the tax cuts just passed by the Legislature. The next day she laid off 121 full-time employees, and eliminated 133 part-time and seasonal jobs and 115 other posts. Here's this morning's article by Janet Zink. [Times photo | Brian Cassella]

Why did this remind me of Patterson and Patton? Because Iorio said she specifically told her top managers that she wanted to see assistant department heads and management included in the cuts, and not just low-level workers or things that were most visible to the public. "I got the message," Iorio said, talking about public opinion in favor of property tax cuts. "And I decided we were going to do it, and do it without any hand-wringing."

It is tempting to contrast the Tampa story with this morning's article by Aaron Sharockman about the comparable cuts proposed by Mayor Rick Baker in St. Petersburg. Sharockman's article says Baker's cuts are more targeted toward lower-level workers. My Thursday column also criticized the direction of the cuts under the headline, At least the deputy mayors survived.

However, in the Tampa-St. Petersburg comparison, there is an important difference that ought to be factored in. St. Petersburg, under Baker, has made at least SOME cuts to its tax rate year after year, while Tampa's millage stayed the same. That meant Tampa was riding the full tide of soaring property values, while St. Pete was giving back to taxpayers at least some of it (not all, but some). So if Tampa's response to the new order seems more dramatic, it's also the case that Tampa might have had further to go.