Local Politics is All

Friday Morning Cultural Tourism

2008-02-13T15:15:00.000-08:00

A small, but interesting band gathered last Friday morning at the Atlanta Bread Company for the Friday Morning Group meeting. It won't do you much good by the time you get this, but we learned that the Pinellas County Cultural Affairs Department is having another round of Fiscal Year 2008 grants. It won't do you much good because the grant application deadline is this Friday, February 15th. Yes, you read that correctly. This is an additional round of grants for work to be completed in 2008.

Speaking of 2008 and grants, I learned something interesting, but not altogether surprising today. The City of St. Petersburg will be sending letters out today to all the Cultural Grants recipients for fiscal year 2008 letting them know that fiscal year 2009 is also a very tough budget climate for the City and they should plan on receiving little or nothing in the way of grant funding from the City again this upcoming year. Sounds like a replay of last year.

Speaking of the City and arts funding, the newly created Arts Trust Fund pushed through by Council Member Jeff Danner is still awaiting its $500,000 seed money funding from the City. I spoke recently with Jeff about this. He assured me that the Mayor is committed to funding the Arts Trust Fund. It is just a matter of identifying an appropriate source of funding. Stay tuned.

We are looking forward to hearing from Michele Tuegel about the Cultural Tourism Workshop held by the Cultural Affairs Department and the Convention and Visitors Bureau last Friday. Talk of that brought up a discussion again of the "New Product Development" grants available from the Convention and Visitors Bureau. Remember, the CVB is funded from the heads & beds tourist tax and thus is not subject to the vagaries of the property tax "reform" movement. This could be a source of funding for an arts project that would draw visitors to Pinellas County, for anyone who is interested.

And of course, what would a Friday Morning Group meeting be these days without a discussion, sometimes passionate, of the art of the City's downtown waterfront, the future of Al Lang Field and the Rays proposal.

All in all, another very interesting Friday Morning.

County Connection

2008-01-30T20:03:00.000-08:00

The entire Pinellas county government management team showed up at our last Friday Morning Group meeting. Well, OK, not exactly. However, we were joined by our old friend, Michele Tuegel from the Pinellas County Cultural Affairs Department. Michelle brought us copies of the slick new newsletter she has been working on. It was just over a year ago that the Pinellas Arts Council became a department in the county government with its new name - the Pinellas County Cultural Affairs Department. Thus this newsletter was Michelle's first collaboration with the County Communications Department. It was just about this time that Marcia Crawley, Pinellas County's Communication Director walked in to join us. Now Michelle and Marcia swear they didn't plan this, but I dunno...

Actually, it was a real treat to have Marcia join us. She has been active at The Studio@620 and has been wanting to be able to join us for some time. But that drive to Clearwater kept getting in the way.

Michelle also brought us news of a Cultural Tourism Workshop to be held in conjunction with the Convention and Visitors Bureau on February 8th. The workshop will focus on helping arts organizations better market themselves. The workshop will be held at the Collaborative Labs at the EpiCenter on 58th Street and Ulmerton. For more on county art happenings, be sure to check out the Cultural Affairs Departments' retooled website.

Another topic discussed last Friday was affordable live /work space for artists. The St. Petersburg City Council has placed a new emphasis on affordable housing this year with the creation of a Housing Services Committee. A committee meeting last Thursday impressed upon me that there is funding available from state and federal sources to assist in providing affordable housing. So why not try to have some of that money spent on affordable live / work space for artists? Peter Kageyama had gotten me some information on just such a project he is working on in Michigan, The Armory Arts Project. This is a very interesting adaptive reuse of an old National Guard Armory providing live / work space and a large gallery display space for artists.

Michelle Tuegel told us about something being worked on closer to home in Tallahassee. The Art on Gaines project there just received a $350,000 grant from Artspace , a Minneapolis based non profit whose mission is

to create, foster and preserve affordable space for artists and arts organizations.

The Tallahassee Democrat reported last week that

Arts on Gaines is envisioned as a mixed-use development where artists live, work and hold exhibits; where organizations and businesses devoted to the arts share space and ideas, an incubator for arts-related commerce and creativity; and where an eclectic collection of restaurants and retail stores serves a bustling clientele.

A model of neighborhood revitalization.

Just the sort of vision we could use around here. If we want to keep the arts buzz going in St. Petersburg, we are going to have to keep innovating. Standing still only gets you farther behind in the end.

Speaking of vision, Kudos to the artists of the former Gallery Royale for contributing equipment (lighting & such) to the burned down IMAAGO Art Gallery's reserection efforts.

A Year's Worth of Friday Mornings

2007-12-26T10:41:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays everyone. Given the press of business and the Holiday season, I have not been able to sit down and write up the last two weeks worth of meetings until now. However, I decided rather than just catch up on the last two weeks, I'd take a look back on the entire year as 2007 comes to a close.

The First Friday of 2007 was not atypical of the entire year. Here's how we got the year started:

Our main focus again was how to support artists in St. Petersburg. It was suggested that one way to do that would be to try and get the City and the County to market us as an art buyers destination. The tie ins with economic and tourist development became rapidly apparent. Michele Tuegel of the County Cultural Affairs Council suggested that for St. Petersburg, it would make sense to approach Mayor Rick Baker. Herb Snitzer indicated he would contact Pinellas County Commission Chair Ken Welch.

We also talked about affordable and mixed use housing development for artists, historic preservation in St. Petersburg, and there was a rather lively discussion about education. And so the year started.

A couple of weeks later we had quite the discussion of the Big A and the Little a. Here's how some of that went:

The St. Pete Times was all abuzz about the Big A shuffle of the Palladium, American Stage and the Florida Orchestra engineered by all the usual Big A suspects. Not a word was written about the Little a artists who actually produce the art for the Big A. So what else is new?

The multi-faceted Peter Kagayama dropped the phrase "creative competitiveness"on us. That has a ring to it doesn't it? And our old friend Nancy Loehr dropped by with County Commissioner Ken Welch in tow.

February started off with a Friday Morning Mojo Moment:

This past Friday, February 2nd, may have been a watershed mojo moment for the Friday Morning Group. Not only were we honored to be joined by Pinellas County Commisioner Ken Welch, we were also able to extend a Friday Morning Welcome to St. Petersburg City Council Member Leslie Curran.

The admonition to arrive promptly at 8 AM was adhered to by a hardy group of talented folks and Ken started right off by asking how we wanted to proceed. Herb Snitzer laid out for Ken the nut of the issue for the Friday Morning Group artists - respect and recognition. Ken was also exposed to the idea of getting tourist development dollars to promote the City and the County as an art buying destination. That will help to support our Community Based artists, but also meets the Tourist Development Council and Convention and Visitors Bureau's missions of heads in beds.

This discussion shaped the course of a large chunk of our discussions for the next few months.

Ken must have asked at least three times, if not more, for the group to tell him what it is we wanted him to do for us. ... Leslie Curran took out her hammer and beat us over the head, gently. She admonished the group to make sure and follow through to deliver our wish list to Ken. ... Sandy Tabor volunteered to lead a mission statement and goal visioning session and or sessions. This is to be the first step in creating a strategic plan for the Friday Morning Group. (Scary, isn't it?) Bob (Devin Jones) stressed that the mission of the Friday Morning Group needed to be focused on Little a artists and how to support them. Group consensus seems to have formed generally around that premise.

That "mission statement and goal visioning session" led to the creation of a plan for the Pinellas Prize and from there OMG - we had a plan :

a "concept paper" that included the Pinellas Prize as a major component... Well, this past week, the Friday Morning Group subjected the "concept paper" to a more or less formal view. And the we did something really astounding - we took a vote! Those in attendance voted unanimously to support the "concept paper" and present it to Commissioner Welch. More than that, we agreed to go back to our various places in the world and try to get support for the provisions put forth in the "concept paper". Our hardy band of volunteers (our committee?) agreed to present the paper to Ken and to be available to him to respond to the questions he would surely have.

Now, I don't know about you, but all that sounds like we are getting awfully formal to me. It also sounds like progress.

As we moved into March, even the Friday Morning Group could not avoid the topic of homelessness in St. Pete. The Art of the Homeless included these snippets:

City Council Member Leslie Curran ... mentioned that Grace-Ann Alfiero of Creative Clay had previously approached the city with a proposal to extend their services to the mentally challenged homeless

and

Mike Conway reminded us of the Project Home show to be held in Williams Park on March 30th and 31st. This show, planned prior to the current homeless plight emerged in St. Pete, is about artists' concepts of what a "home" means or is.

March closed out with a couple of different views on how different communities view supporting artists. Attitudinal Change was how I described the reception our concept paper (http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfr39tgx_117cgrt39 ) got from the Pinellas County bureaucracy:

... told us right off the bat that our problem was going to be with the $50,000 stipend to the prize winners. That much money going to an individual would be "problematic". ... Bob Devin Jones perhaps said it best when he said placing value on artists is at the core of what we are about. The $50,000 is about valuing artists in the way that our society values things - through financial means.

The real work though is to set out to create the attitudinal change necessary to bring that idea of valuing artists to the forefront. We have the ear of and a proposal before a County Commissioner.

Contrast that with Irish Eyes which started like this:

WOW!!!

That about describes our Friday Morning Group meeting last week for me. For those of you who weren't there, well you can follow along below.

Peter Kagayama brought us a very special guest indeed last Friday. Roisin McDonough is the Chief Executive of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the equivalent of our National Endowment for the Arts. Boy did we get an earful about what respect for artists looks like there.

The contrast could not have been more stark.

Moving into April, a conversation began about our concept paper featuring the Pinellas Prize and the Creativity Center:

Last week at the Friday Morning Group a rather lively discussion took place. Judith Powers had written up her comments on our Concept Paper. These comments were distributed to all seven County Commissioners and to Liz Warren, Judith's direct supervisor and to Paul Cozzee, the Assistant County Administrator under which the Cultural Affairs Department now falls (Parks, Leisure and Culture).

Herb Snitzer gave us a brief review of Judith's comments. They were pretty much what was expected after Judith's visit to our Group on March 9th. If you wish to read Judith's comments, you can find them here. The attendees at the meeting pretty much agreed that despite Judith's comments, we would continue to pursue the concepts of the Pinellas Prize and the Creativity Center contained in the Concept Paper. Also, we agreed that what we would do is advocate for our concepts

The conversation continued the following week :

Herb Snitzer and I reported on our meeting with Pinellas County Commissioner Karen Seel. We had a very good meeting with Commissioner Seel (we tried very hard not to talk about money). ... We did succeed in getting Commissioner Seel to be supportive of the concept. However, the money part was definitely going to be a problem. We were urged again to look to the Tourist Development Council (TDC) as their revenue stream (bed tax on hotel and motel stays) is not going to be impacted by whatever property tax "reform" ultimately occurs.

April closed out with a group discussion about the group itself and a wide ranging discussion on arts and society:

Topics covered included African American Heritage and diversity and tolerance in media in the now post Imus age.

We discussed Bob Devin Jones' opening performance in Permanent Collection at the studio@620 (http://www.thestudioat620.com/p_tpir07.htm):
Permanent Collection is a searing examination of racial politics that ultimately ask how much space – literally and figuratively – the white world gives to African-Americans. What is the cost of failing to view the world through another’s eyes?

Those who have seen it gave rave reviews and highly recommended that the rest of us go see the play.

Herb Snitzer gave us an update on his activity for the week - a table at the African American Heritage gathering at the Hilton. ...

There was also a discussion of the City's situation with the Public Arts program given the current tax "reform" climate.

Moving into May, we had discussions on Participatory Art , Arts and Attitude and Looking at the Long Term. Lively discussions all.

June began with Ideas Bouncing Around All Over the Place:

About a dozen of us were joined by St. Petersburg City Council Vice Chair Jamie Bennett. Jamie came all prepared to tell us about the situation the City of St. Petersburg finds itself in vis a vis the property tax reforms coming from Tallahassee .

... the City of St. Petersburg has already sent a letter to all the Arts and Social Services groups that the City helped to fund last year. That letter told these organizations that they better count on zero money from the City this coming year. The reason for that, of course, is the uncertainty all the local governments are facing about the severity of the budget cuts that may be enforced by the State Legislature.

... we started kicking around the usual ideas. You know, contacting our state legislators, contacting the Governor.

... it looked like we were really going nowhere fast. And then Peter Kageyama tossed three pennies onto the table. Peter asked us to take a moment and realize we were all creative people in the room and that maybe we should be thinking on the creative edge. The pennies were about an idea to find a dedicated funding source for government support of the arts. Now that's thinking on the creative edge.

As June moved along we discussed Art Happenings and Other Stuff, Smart TV and Looking for Writers (Tom Taggart from WEDU joined us), The Art of Livin' and we had A Whole lot of Art Going On.

In July we had great discussions about an Interesting Meeting & Big Weekend (Herb Snitzer's show at the Museum of Fine Arts among other things), the Sociology of Art and a continuing discussion on the (lack of) local media coverage of the arts.

In August we had a (W)EDUCational Discussion with Joyce Cotton, the Director of Marketing and Community Partnerships at WEDU. And we had a conversation about The Art of Guerrilla Tactics that was brightened by the all too rare appearance of Carol Dameron.

August was also when we began our discussions of the arts with City Council candidates beginning with Cathy Harrelson and Jamie Bennett.

In September, we did some Catching Up and we talked about Preserving the Garden Cafeteria and Some other History. Also in September, St. Petersburg City Council Member Jeff Danner joined us to talk about Advocating for the Arts and the allocation of the funds the City did manage to find for the arts and social services.

In advance of the November City Council elections, October was full of of discussions with City Council candidates, Ed Montonari, Bill Dudley and Herb Polson.

In November, in advance of the announcement of the Rays stadium proposal, we had a lively discussion about designating the Al Lang Stadium site as a park. Through the good offices of St. Pete City Council Member Leslie Curran, we were able to "kidnap" an old friend for a few minutes last week. Nancy Loehr, who more than anyone else was responsible for the formation of the Friday Morning Group. And I had a very pleasant surprise when my good friend Tom Orr came down from Tarpon Springs to join us at the Friday Morning Group. That was a pleasant enough surprise in itself. But Tom had brought his good friend Rose Sperling along as well. Rose is a very talented potter who is currently living in Fort Pierce. We are (I am) trying very hard to get Rose to move to St. Pete. Can't we all do something to encourage her?

In December so far, we have had a very interesting discussion that If I Told You I'd Have To... that featured City Council Member Elect Bill Dudley and special guest Lance Rogers. And city issues were prominent in a discussion that I labeled Meet the Mayoral Candidates?

That brings us up to the last two weeks. With the holiday season, we had some smaller groups but still some interesting discussions. We were also joined by former St. Petersburg City Council Member Jay Lasita.

All in all a year jam packed with very interesting Friday Mornings.

Meet the Mayoral Candidates?

2007-12-12T13:40:00.000-08:00

We had a very interesting discussion (how many different ways can you say that?) last week at the Friday Morning Group. As you might surmise from the title of this post, city issues were prominent in that discussion. But more on that later.

I want to make sure I pass along to all of you the information on the benefit for the IMAGO artists next Wednesday in Dunedin. Here is the flier(I hope):

And yes, we did discuss art as well. We talked about the Salt Creek opening that was scheduled for last Friday night. And we also discussed Bob Devin Jones' play "C" which was to open last Friday at the Studio @ 620 as well.

Now back to the City happenings. Herb Snitzer related that he has heard nothing about his proposal to document the mural on the wall at the old Piano Exchange (or Garden Cafeteria) if you will. This was followed up by a rather lively discussion about developers and preservation.

And we also talked about the upcoming mayors' race - which is only two years away (November 2009, but who's counting?) This discussion came up because the St. Petersburg Times had run a story the day before about some polling they had done, and specifically related to some potential Mayoral candidates that they polled on.

As Council Member Elect Bill Dudley had joined us, the idea of bring in potential Mayoral candidates to get their view of the arts and perhaps to impart some of our views. Accordingly, we are going to start bringing in the potential candidates to meet with us. The idea is that, perhaps, by starting early we can shape the debate about the value of artists and the arts to our community.

So starting next month, we will try and get these mayoral hopefuls (maybe one per month) in for a chat. Stay tuned.

If I Told You, I'd Have to...

2007-12-05T17:04:00.000-08:00

We had a really interesting meeting last Friday morning at the Friday Morning Group. City Council Member Elect Bill Dudley wowed us all by actually coming back to see us after the election. Bill gets major points for that!

Not only did Bill come back to visit with us, he brought a special guest with him. Now I don't really know how we got so far along in life here at the Friday Morning Group that we would consider Lance Rogers to be a special guest. Nonetheless, we were all glad to see Lance. And we were really glad and intrigued to see what Lance had brought for us to peruse. I'd like to tell you about it, but if I told you...

Details about this most interesting project will be published when the time is ripe. And apparently now is not quite the time. But soon, I hope.

And no, we are not cooking up a stadium deal in the back room at Atlanta Bread. But that is another story.

A Rose By Any Other Name

2007-11-20T17:34:00.000-08:00

I had a very pleasant surprise last Friday morning. My good friend Tom Orr came down from Tarpon Springs to join us at the Friday Morning Group. That was a pleasant enough surprise in itself. But Tom had brought his good friend Rose Sperling along as well. Rose is a very talented sculptor who is currently living in Fort Pierce. We are (I am) trying very hard to get Rose to move to St. Pete. Can't we all do something to encourage her?

We had a wide ranging discussion this past Friday. We talked about the Roser Park Art Festival that was held the weekend before. We also talked about the new Saturday Art Market to be held in Williams Park starting on December 1st. For more information about that, contact Leslie Curran at Interior Motives, 1110 Central.

The Studio@620 was also a topic of discussion. Seems they are having a juried show in February and the deadline for submissions is January 8th. We also talked about the current show The Water is Wide - the Art of Boat Building which opened last week. I am really looking forward to getting over there to see that.

We also talked about Al Lang Field again. The Rays announcement of their plans to build a new major league stadium on the site certainly puts the decision not to zone the site as parkland into a new light. There are still many questions to be answered, but the site has been the traditional home of a ball park, so I am certainly open to the idea.

Talk of ballparks led us to an unusual historical discussion of artists ties to this area. We talked about the Rolling Stones performance in Jack Russel Stadium in Clearwater which led to the composition of Satisfaction at the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel. Clearwater led to talk of Jim Morrison's ties to this area as well as Jack Kerouac's. And to top it all off, I had heard on NPR on the way in that last Friday was the anniversary of Janis Joplin's arrest at Curtis Hixon Hall in Tampa for using profanity on stage.

That woulda never happened in St. Pete.

Kidnapped

2007-11-15T14:50:00.000-08:00

Wait, hasn't somebody already used that as a title? Oh well. It is apropos here because through the good offices of St. Pete City Council Member Leslie Curran, we were able to "kidnap" an old friend for a few minutes last week. Nancy Loehr, who more than anyone else was responsible for the formation of the Friday Morning Group, was able to join us this past Friday morning at the Friday Morning Group.

Nancy has some marvelous title at Progress Energy, but mainly she deals with community affairs. Since her office has moved to Clearwater, it has been a bit more difficult for her to join us. But we are awfully glad she did last Friday.

Leslie wanted to remind us all of the Saturday Art Market that is starting in Williams Park on Saturday, December 1st. This market will feature artworks from dozens of artists from St. Petersburg and the surrounding area, and is intended to be a compliment to the Saturday Morning Market on Central Avenue. If you are interested in participating, contact Leslie Curran at the Interior Motives Gallery at 1110 Central Avenue or call her at 727 898 6061.

Leslie also told us a little about the Avanca Ska event scheduled for Williams Park on December 7th. This intriguing event will feature a portion of the Florida Orchestra, ballet and live art. Sounds interesting.

While we had Leslie, we asked her about the status of the update to the City's Cultural Plan. Apparently the next step is discussion by the City's Arts Advisory Committee. Stay tuned.

We did talk a little about the now Tampa Bay Rays new logo and uniform launch event last Thursday night in Straub Park. There was general agreement that Kevin Costner ought not give up his day job for the band. Otherwise a very good event.

Of course that conversation was held before we learned of the Rays plans to leave TropicanaField and move to a new stadium on the site of Al Lang Field. As usually happens at the Friday Morning Group, talk of sports franchises brings up the vastly superior economic impact of the arts over sports franchises. Leslie indicated that the arts economic impact study has recently been updated.

We also heard that early next year (which is not all that far away) The Studio@620 is going to be doing a project that pairs Senior artists with Junior Artists. Sounds similar to components of our Pinellas Prize and Creativity Center concepts?

And Shirley got an agent!

To Park or Not to Park

2007-11-07T18:04:00.000-08:00

My apologies to the Bard, but let me make this perfectly clear:

BOB IS FOR MORE PARKLAND

This past Friday at the Friday Morning Group, we had yet another lively discussion. This one centered on the City as the Art.

There was not a politician in sight last Friday, but somehow the conversation got turned onto an upcoming issue the City Council will be facing. When the City passed its long in development new set of Land Development Regulations (LDRs), one major item remained unsettled: What to do with Al Lang Stadium.

The new LDRs created, amongst other things, a brand new zoning district called Downtown Center - Parks (DC-P). The areas currently zoned as DC-P can be seen on this map in green. Areas zoned DC-P include Williams Park, North Straub Park, South Straub Park, Pioneer Park, Demens Landing, Spa Beach and the new Albert Whited Park. Notably absent from this list is Al Lang Stadium, and oh by the way, the property the Mahaffey Theatre now occupies as well as the property to which the Dali is planned to relocate.

Those areas, shown as blue on the map, are in the DC-3 zoning district. DC-3 is basically the downtown waterfront district. One thing that is evident from the map is the myth of the unbroken string of downtown waterfront parks, at least as far as zoning goes. The park chain is broken by the Museum of Fine Arts, the St. Petersburg Yacht Club and, of course, the Al Lang / Bayfront Center (now the Mahaffey Theatre and Dali) plot.

What is sparking concern about the zoning classification of Al Lang is the fact that the Devil Rays will no longer hold Spring Training at Al Lang after this upcoming season. Without a Spring Training tenant, speculation about what will happen to Al Lang is running rampant. St. Petersburg has hosted Spring Training baseball games on its downtown waterfront since 1914. I am in the camp of those who wish to see that rich part of our history continue into the future. The problem seems to be that the City administration does not appear to be making attracting a new Spring Training tenant to Al Lang a priority.

And therein lies the problem. Because the Al Lang site was not given a park zoning designation, there is a tremendous amount of concern in the community about just what the City administration may be cooking up for Al Lang. To prevent another surprise announcement on the City Hall steps, a very active movement is afoot to give the Al Lang site the added protection of parkland zoning. And just to be clear about that:

BOB IS FOR MORE PARKLAND

Many ideas have been bandied about regarding what would be the best use for Al Lang presuming baseball goes away from that site. A home for the Saturday Morning Market is oft mentioned. Also widely discussed is a plan for a walking trail that would connect Beach Drive directly to the Progress Energy Plaza with the Mahaffey, the Dali and the new airport park. One thing to remember about the Al Lang site: the Dali came to St. Pete lo those many years ago in part because a suitable site was available for it.

There is no doubt that the downtown waterfront park system is the jewel in this city's crown. It is a major part of what makes the city the beautiful canvas that we all paint on. And it looks like we will have the opportunity to repaint a portion of that canvas. We should consider very carefully what happens next. But just to be clear:

BOB IS FOR MORE PARKLAND

Twas the Night Before Election

2007-11-05T18:01:00.000-08:00

Yes, Virginia, tomorrow is Election Day in St. Petersburg. For the candidates and their families, the long ordeal of running for office will be over. There will be candidates who will be winners and candidates who will be losers.

But at the end of the day, will the City of St. Petersburg be a winner or a loser? The answer is, at this late date, not entirely clear. What is clear is that there has been a remarkable alignment of disparate candidates into what are effectively two distinct slates in this "non partisan" election.

On one slate you have Herb Polson, Ed Montanari and Gershom Faulkner. (For good measure, throw Jamie Bennett onto this slate as well.) These candidates could be considered the establishment or "insider" candidates. On the other slate are Bob Kersteen, Bill Dudley and Wengay Newton. These candidates could well be called the "outsiders" or the insurgents.

On the establishment side Herb Polson is an appointed incumbent who is now seeking election in his own right. Ed Montanari is the campaign manager for Bill Foster's last re election campaign. Gershom Faulkner is an integral part of the Democratic Party establishment in St. Petersburg. He currently works as Outreach Director for Congresswoman Kathy Castor. Prior to that, he spent 6 years as Legislative assistant to State Rep. Frank Peterman, and is seen to be a protege of County Commissioner Ken Welch.

Jamie Bennet is a 6 year incumbent, having been originally elected to fill the term of Larry Williams who resigned to run for Mayor in 2001. He drew no opposition to re election to a full term in 2003 and did not even appear on the ballot. This time, his opponent dropped out of the race after the Primary. This triggered a bizarre provision in the St. Petersburg City Charter that has Bennett now running against "New Election". That means if New Election were to garner the most votes tomorrow, the City will be forced to go back to square one in the election process for this seat.

On the insurgent side you have Bob Kersteen, who served on the City Council previously, but left to run for another office. (He lost.) Bill Dudley, a retired wrestling coach who was soundly drubbed for this seat by Bill Foster 4 years ago. And Wengay Newton is a neighborhood association president who's brother happens to be the head of the local firefighters union. Anyone want to take three guesses who the firefighters endorsed?

So here are the match ups. In District 1 it is Herb Poslon and Bob Kersteen. Polson was a long term employee of the City who for over twenty years was the City's lobbyist. He probably knows more about this City government than any other living human being. Kersteen was a member of what was described as the most dysfunctional City Council anyone could remember. Kersteen campaigns like an angry old man. Apparently this City has done nothing right in the time he has been off the Council and he is going to fix it all. Trouble is, everything he says he wants to do is solely within the purview of the Mayor. Bob, you are running for the wrong office.

District 3 gives us Ed Montanari and Bill Dudley. Montanri was Foster's campaign manager when they beat Dudley to a pulp last time. He was also Chairman of the Albert Whitted Blue Ribbon Task Force and by all accounts brought the disparate interests on that Task Force to consensus and the plan they brought forward is now being implemented.

To his credit, Bill Dudley is a much better candidate this time around. He ought to be. He has been running for this seat for well over 4 years now. However, he is still running with the same chip on his shoulder attitude. Like Kersteen, he apparently thinks nothing good has happened here lately, and that he is the only one who can get the City back on track. Bill, see note to Bob above.

District 7 provides probably the most competitive race. It didn't always look like it was going to be that way. Gershom Faulkner was clearly the candidate favored by the political establishment (of both parties). He had wrapped up the endorsement of just about every elected official on the planet. OK, it only seemed that way. Faulkner raised a prodigious amount of money early on. He also spent a prodigious amount of money early on. And then along came the Stonewall Democrats.

Actually, the night before the Stonewall Democrats meeting in August, came the CONA candidate forum. CONA (the Council of Neighborhood Organizations) took questions from the audience and presented them to the candidates through a moderator. All the candidates were asked if they would attend the St. Pete Pride Festival (one of the largest in the Southeast US). Gershom Faulkner said that he would probably not go, but he went on to say that he would ensure that no one in this city was discriminated against. His opponent, Wengay Newton, who claims not to be a politician, saw an opening and jumped all over it. Wengay said that he probably would go. However, he was no where in evidence a few weeks before when the Pride Festival was actually held.

The following night's events qualify Faulkner as a finalist in the stupidest political move of the year award. The Stonewall Dems, as do many organizations, sent the candidates a questionnaire and invited them to their meeting. Not surprisingly, the Stonewall Dem qustioned the candidates on their stand on a number of hot button gay issues, none of which were ever likely to be raised at the City Council level. Faulkner, like many socially conservative African Americans, apparently was not a supporter of the gay issues. So here is where Faulkner went all stupid on us. He filled out the questionaire with all the "wrong" answers and then went to their meeting.

A more seasoned candidate, or one who was listening to better political advice, would have not answered the questionnaire, but would have responded with a letter employing many non discriminatory platitudes, and regretting that a schedule conflict precluded him from being able to attend the meeting. But Faulkner, a hard headed Marine if there ever was one, charged straight into the lions den. And he got his ass kicked. Not only that, he enraged the Stonewall Dems President, who put out an email calling Faulkner a "homophobe". Note to Stonewall Dem President: my dictionary says a hompophobe has an unreasoning fear of homosexuals. I would say Faulkner was probably too stupid to be scared of you, because he came to your f-ing meeting, moron. He just doesn't believe in your issues. As does about half the country. That doesn't make him a demon. What it makes him is not the guy who is going to champion your issues. But then you have plenty of those already.

So Faulkner, who had been cruising along as a shoo in for election, had now angered a vocal but politically weak constituency. Two State Representatives pulled their endorsements of Faulkner. But Faulkner appeared unruffled. He reached out behind the scenes to leaders in the St. Pete gay community for private conversations. But he underwent no conversion.

However, his opponent was in no position to worry him. What little money he was raising, Wengay Newton, who looks like he hasn't missed many meals, was spending on meals at Burger King and MacDonalds. About this time, though, the insurgent candidates seemed to sense their affinity for one another. Newton seemed to benefit from that and his long, rambling discourses became somewhat more focused long rambling discourses. The self proclaimed non politician began feeling his feet come under him on the campaign trail, exactly as a good politician eventually does. He used humor to good effect, both pointed at himself and his opponent. However, he, like the other insurgents believed that everything the city had done should be blown up so they could remake the City in their own image, whatever that is.

Newton began distorting information he found in the newspaper as facilely as the best politicians seem to do. Again, pretty good for a non politician. Newton's favorite distortion involved a cost comparison for lawn mowing in parks. Seems the County pays a lot less than the City to mow lawns in parks. And that seemed strange because the County has much more acreage of parks than the city does. However, what was not mentioned by Newton is that much of the County's park land is kept in a natural state which does not require mowing. Conversely, most of the City's park land is in active parks that do require mowing. Newton either knew that and chose not to disclose that salient fact or he didn't know. If he knew, he was playing politics with the truth. If he didn't know, he should have done his homework, something he would need to do on the Council.

The final fiasco in this district race came in the form of a newspaper endorsement. Seems Gershom Faulkner had some minor run ins with the law. Well not entirely minor, he did get arrested a few times. A few is more than one, but less than many. There is some dispute about the number of "arrests". In any event, two of the possibly three arrests were for traffic infractions, so maybe they are minor after all. This information came to the public when the St. Petersburg Times endorsed Fulkner. Perhaps in an effort to make up for their past non disclosures, the Times felt compelled to disclose information supplied to them by Faulkner about his past. None of these incidents is recent and Faulkner has since married, and become a Deacon in his church. None of that stopped Newton from beginning to refer to himself as the candidate who hadn't been arrested. Again, that's just exactly the way a politician handles a situation like that. He doesn't talk about the other guy's arrests. He just says nothing like that ever happened to him. Just what a politician would do.

In my humble opinion, things have been going fairly well in St. Petersburg up until lately. While I personally disagree with Mayor Baker on any number of issues, and I don't much appreciate the "Stealth Mayor" approach, this City has been moving forward. Much, much more has been done right than has been done wrong. And now with the shameful shenanigans of the Republican politicians in Tallahassee, this City is going to be facing some difficult challenges in the next few years.

It is therefore more important than usual that well qualified people with the proper temperament sit on the City council. The insurgents do not fit that bill. They do not show the temperament that will be needed to deal successfully with the challenges this City is sure to face.

We will be winners in this City if we re elect Jamie Bennett and Herb Polson. And we will be winners if we elect Ed Monatanari and Gershom Faulkner. If we don't, someday soon we'll be wishing we had.

Experience Matters

2007-11-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

Last week, the Friday Morning Group had Herb Polson on the hot seat. Herb is running for re election to the St. Petersburg City Council in District 1.

We actually started off with a discussion of the meaning of the term re election. That's because Herb was originally appointed to the Council last year to fill the vacancy created by Rick Kriseman's resignation upon his successful run for the State Legislature. Herb is now running for the seat in his own right. He also did his homework. Understanding the power of incumbency, Herb asked for and received a ruling from the state Division of Elections telling him that, as the incumbent, he was entitled to use the term "re elect" in his campaign material.

Well, Herb's opponent did not like that fact and complained to the St. Petersburg Times. The Times, which has had precious little coverage on any of these City Council races, decided that this complaint was newsworthy. However, as Herb was able to show us, the complaint was absolutely unfounded. So maybe the lesson is if you want to get into the newspaper, lodge a completely unfounded complaint.

OK, enough about that. Herb Polson has spent nearly his entire adult life in the service of the City of St. Petersburg and our country. Herb stared his career with the City as a civilian in the police force, and wound up for many years being the city's liaison to other governments - the city's lobbyist, if you will. Herb also is (was?) an officer in the Navy Reserve for many, many years.

When Rick Kriseman ran for the legislature, Herb retired from the City so that he could seek appointment to the vacated council seat. Herb was appointed last year and has been putting his knowledge of city operations to work as a council member since that time.

And what a year it has been! Of course the big issue for the City this year has been in dealing with the effects of the property tax "reform" effort in Tallahassee. This has caused the City to cut back their spending and initially led the Mayor to propose zero funding this year for arts and social services organizations.

In one of his roles as a City employee, Herb was actually responsible for arts and social services funding. He was also responsible for putting together the City's Cultural Plan that was the initiative of then and now Council Member (and Friday Morning Group member) Leslie Curran.

We had a discussion about the amount of tax relief we each actually received from the first round of property tax "reforms" in Tallahassee. Herb posed the question to us if for the amount of property tax relief we each received, did we think it was worth it in terms of the cuts the City was forced to make. Universally, we did not think it was worth it. However, Herb warned us that the next round of cuts that may come would even be much more painful for the City.

However, Herb also told us that there is a tremendous amount of money inside and outside the City available to fund some of the things we have indicated we wanted, if we just were creative in how we went about looking for it. To his credit, Herb has already found "outside the box" solutions to keep the libraries open on Saturday and with the help of the Devil Rays, to keep an exchange student program with our Japanese sister city alive. That's what experience can do for you.

We also talked about how the arts have had a tremendous impact on the City of St. Petersburg. That, in fact, the arts are a much more valuable economic engine than any of the professional sports franchises in the area. We also talked about how this all seemed to come about when St. Petersburg quit trying to be Tampa and just decided to concentrate on being St. Pete.

Herb also told us how he was a firm believer in asking people what they want and then delivering it to them. This would be as opposed to telling people what they should want and delivering that to them instead. Herb told us that the City used to regularly poll its residents to see just what it was the residents did want. In the early 90's, Herb was responsible for a questionnaire that went out to all 93,000 households in the City asking the residents what their needs and desires for the City were. Out of this came the city's extremely successful neighborhoods program and many other programs that make the City the success story that it is today. Herb believes that it is well past time to go back to the residents again asking them what they want the City to be.

Seems to me like experience does matter.

All in the Family?

2007-10-24T09:40:00.000-07:00

Last week at the Friday Morning Group we continued our meetings with St. Petersburg City Council candidates. In the hot seat last week was Bill Dudley, candidate for City Council District 3. So far, no blood has been spilled.

This session started off a little differently. Rather than focusing directly on a candidate's feelings about art funding and appreciation of the arts, Bill Dudley was asked why he was running. This is a question that is more typically asked than the kinds of questions we usually ask candidates.

Bill handled this question with aplomb, as he has doubtless been asked it many times before. He related that he felt a calling to serve, and that he has been a public servant his entire adult life, having been a teacher at North East High until his recent retirement. He also described himself as an independent thinker, not endorsed by the Mayor.

Dudley went on to say that the first issue on his agenda was financial. He said people are suffering from taxes being too high and said that he wanted to streamline the way the City does business. He quickly sensed that that message was not being well received by a group that had just seen arts funding in this City cut to the bone due to tax cuts.

He told us that his daughter is a member of the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay and also a music teacher; that he had fought for arts funding as chair of the art department at North East High. Dudley stressed that he thought the arts funding shortfalls could be met by reducing the number of high paid city management employees. Among those specifically mentioned for dismissal was the Deputy Mayor for Midtown Development and the Mayor's education initiative liaison.

Bill also suggested that we aren't being creative enough in seeking public / private partnerships for arts funding. He gave one example of a former student of his who now has a very successful business here in town. This person has never been asked to help fund the arts in the community.

We also briefly discussed the future of Al Lang Stadium (after the Devi Rays stop holding their Spring Training games there next year) and other issues relating to development. The new Land Development Regulations (LDRs) the city has just implemented created a new zoning district called Downtown - park. The Al Lang stadium site was not given this zoning designation. Many people are concerned that this would leave the site open fro redevelopment after the Devi Rays cease Spring Training there. Consensus was that the land needed to be protected as a park. Bill Dudley suggested that development be encouraged to spread west out the Central Avenue corridor.

One other area briefly touched on was the tax structure in the state and the country. Bill Dudley indicated he was an advocate of the so called "Fair or flat tax" idea which as I understand it is some variation of a national sales tax.

As I said at the beginning, no blood was shed and Mr. Dudley made it safely through his encounter with the Friday Morning Group. I hope the next politician is similarly fortunate. I know that we will all look forward to seeing you at the next meeting of the Friday Morning Group.

Economic Benefits or Quality of Life?

2007-10-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

That was one of the questions that came up last Friday at the Friday Morning Group. We had Ed Montanari, candidate for St. Pete City Council District 3 in the hot seat.

To his credit, Ed came in reasonably well prepared. He was quite familiar with the economic benefits the arts have provided to this state, and particularly to our community. While that is something most of us are very well aware of, not that many political candidates get that fact. Unless, of course, we had beaten it into them.

Of course we talked about the art funding situation given the city's current budget constraints. Ed acknowledged that budget issues were the big issue for the City Council right now. Ed described a strategic view of the issue. He pledged to work to increase the City's tax base as a way to provide more revenue for arts funding for the City. He is looking forward to projects like the Chihuli museum creating more jobs. Also he wants to work with the City's Economic Development department to get some of the City's underutilized assets up to their full potential.

In that regard, one of our old friendly discussion areas came up - the Manhattan Casino. We kicked around ideas for the Manhattan Casino over four years ago at the Friday Morning Group. And still the building sits empty.

All that talk of economic development finally was a bit much for one of our members. She reminded us all that she is involved in and enjoys the arts for the quality of life that they bring to her and to all of us. The arts always make us richer. And it isn't always about the money.

We had a special drop in guest last Friday morning as well. St. Petersburg City Council Member Herb Polson dropped in at the beginning of the meeting. He wanted to let us know that the City is going to be updating its Cultural Plan. A presentation on the update is to be made to the Council's Policy and Planning Committee this Thursday, October 11, at 9:30 AM. The meeting will be at City Hall in the Community Resource Room. Herb urged anyone interested in the City's Cultural Plan to show up for this meeting. After all, it is the Cultural Plan. Seems like artists should have some input.

We extend our thanks to Herb Polson and also for Ed Montanari for sharing their Friday Morning with us. We hope you will do the same next Friday Morning.

Advocating for the Arts

2007-10-02T22:18:00.000-07:00

St. Petersburg City Council Member Jeff Danner joined us last Friday morning at the Friday Morning Group. Jeff came in begging off speaking after using up his voice at the City Council workshop the day before. But some how he hung in there and filled us in on what is happening with the allocation of city funds to the arts, and some future plans as well.

Jeff Danner is the City Council member assigned to the the City's Arts Advisory Committee. In that post, Jeff worked with that Committee to present a coherent plan to the City Council for the allocation of the funds the City did manage to find for the arts and social services. Essentially the plan was to use last year's split of funding to arts organizations and social service agencies to split this year's available funds between the two. That ratio last year was approximately 60% to social service agencies and 40% to arts organizations. That concept to split this year's available funds was adopted by City Council at their workshop last Wednesday.

The next step was to get the Council to agree to let the Arts Advisory Committee plan to allocate that 40% share of funds amongst arts organizations. Jeff was successful in getting Council to agree to that proposal as well. This process will be occurring sometime later this month. The amount to be split amongst the organizations is $175 thousand. Considering that earlier this year the amount was going to be zero, that is something, anyway.

So that's the story of arts funding for this year. However, it pretty much leaves arts organizations in a pickle going forward given the budget pressures cities and counties are currently under. To alleviate that strain, Jeff told us about a couple of possibilities that are being looked at to provide a dedicated funding source for the arts.

The first of these involves some way of charging groups that use city parks for events such as concerts, for example, to pay the City for the use of the park. Currently these organizations pay for the cost of city services provided to their event, but they do not pay for the actual use of the park itself. The idea is that that money would then be used to fund arts and cultural organizations. This proposal is currently being examined by city staff.

The second idea is to establish a trust fund for arts funding. One of the ideas being considered is pretty interesting. The city has a pot of money that it received for the sale of City owned property in Weeki Wachie. The sale of this property had to be approved by voter referendum. As part of that referendum, the money from the sale was set aside in a separate fund. The income of the fund is to be used for recreational and cultural uses. The current idea being floated is that income from the Weeki Wachie fund could be used to establish a trust fund for arts funding. Stay tuned.

Jeff was asked what he thought would be the best thing that arts supporters could do to impress upon City leaders the value of supporting the arts. Jeff suggested a couple of things. One would be to make sure that the Mayor and Council members are invited to arts openings and other events so they will be reminded of the vibrancy and the importance of the arts to our community. The other idea is to come to City Council meetings and speak at Open Forum to extend those invitations and to talk to Council Members about arts events in the City. the advantage of that approach is that anyone watching the Council meeting on TV will hear about these events. Maybe they will attend themselves. Or maybe they would become more aware of the value of arts to our community. A couple of good ideas, in my opinion.

I want to extend my personal thanks to Jeff for coming to the Friday Morning Group last week; and despite having nearly lost his voice fighting for the arts the day before, speaking at length with us about the state of the arts in St. Petersburg.

And I want to extend to each of you my wish to see you this Friday.

Preserving the Garden Cafeteria and Some Other History

2007-09-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

Another lively discussion and a call to action was had last Friday morning at the Friday Morning Group (FMG). It all started out innocently enough. Patrice Pucci reported on attending the WEDU Be More Awards seminar the previous week. We had previously discussed the WEDU Be More Awards for non profit groups and the seminar was held to educate the non profit groups on how to apply for the awards.

Tom Taggart reminded us that WEDU would be 50 years on the air in October 2008. In connection with that, Patrice Pucci had used the Friday Morning Group Mail List with an interesting request. It turns out that WEDU originally was housed at what is now known as the Gibbs Campus of St. Petersburg College. Patrice had put a request out on the mail list for any information or documentation of that fact that anyone may know of. She was looking for this information for the St. Petersburg History Museum. Of course her request sparked several replies which were all shared with the FMG via the list.

Shirley Linde also got in on the act by using the list to ask the FMG if anyone knew of an alternative publisher she might approach for publishing her book. This also sparked several replies shared with the FMG via the mail list.

Tony Collins then remarked on the online social phenomena of mail lists and the interests sparked by seemingly simple requests. Tony remarked about these two requests being invitations to our community to respond via a new, social interactive media. in this case, the mail list.

The conversation then turned to a photographic assignment that was being offered to Herb Snitzer. The Garden Cafeteria / Piano Exchange building is slated for demolition and redevelopment. This building located in the 200 block of 2nd Street North is currently the studio of a metal working artist. It had also formerly been the home of a piano sales business. But the building had started out in life as the Garden Cafeteria.

The Garden Cafeteria was one of many cafeterias in St. Petersburg in the days of the green benches. The only remaining example of this type of business still in use is the Tramor building, which is used as the St. Petersburg Times cafeteria. In the heyday of the green bench era, cafeterias were one of the major parts of the tourism trade in St. Petersburg. Many, many such enterprises were located in and around the down town area catering to our winter visitors.

To differentiate themselves, many of these cafeterias used interior decorating to lure customers. If you have not seen the interior of the Tramor on 4th Street South, you should definitely check it out. (Little know fact - it is open to the public). The Garden, as its name implies, used a garden decorating motif. This included interior streams and bridges and potted plants all over the place. To top off this motif, the Garden employed muralist Scott Hill to paint murals on the walls and other murals to be mounted on the walls. Scott Hill was a well known Depression Era muralist. One of his murals has been preserved and is on display at Tampa International Airport. Hill in this case apparently picked up some commercial work. The crowning piece is a full wall mural painted directly onto the back wall of the Garden Cafeteria.

As the years have gone by, the Garden Cafeteria / Piano Exchange Building has deteriorated. Along with it, many of Hill's murals have deteriorated as well. The building has been acquired by a developer, who plans to demolish the building and redevelop the block. it's location across the street from Bay Walk makes it a prime candidate for such redevelopment.

When the developer filed his site plan for redevelopment of the property with the City, St. Pete Preservation became interested in saving the murals. They entered into talks with the City and the developer about saving the Scott Hill murals. The developer was not adverse to this, but everyone knew the full wall mural was going to be a problem. The developer hired an appraiser, another Florida muralist who was very familiar with Hill's work.The appraiser noted the deterioration of many of the pieces that had been painted on the mounted wall boards, but which could be removed and preserved relatively easily. He also noted that some of the work was probably not Hill's at all, but some other unknown artist's. However, much of the work was undoubtedly Hill's.

The full back wall mural turns out to in fact have been painted directly onto the wall. In approving the site plan, the developer and the city agreed that any murals that could be, would be removed and preserved. Prior to any demolition of the building, the remaining murals were to be photographically documented. This is the commission that was offered to Herb.

This is a rather long winded description of the situation to this point. But at the last meeting of the Friday Morning Group, a really interesting thing happened. It was suggested that while photo documenting the building was a good idea, a better idea would be to actually preserve the entire wall mural. This is a huge mural, encompassing the entire back wall of the building. The consensus of the group was that the effort should be made and that a way would be found to accomplish this.

So, anybody got a home for a wall with a beautiful mural on it?

Catching Up

2007-09-18T18:12:00.000-07:00

I have a little catching up to do. I was a little busy last week, what with the election and all. What, you didn't know about the election on September 11th? That's OK, most of St. Pete didn't seem to know about it either.

There were primary elections for St. Petersburg City Council on Tuesday, September 11th. However, only about 11% of the registered voters in the two districts with elections bothered to show up to vote. In Council District 5, incumbent Council Member Jamie Bennett received 67% of the vote. He will face Chris Kelly in the general election in November. Kelly received 19% of the vote in the District 5 primary.

In the District 3 Primary, Cathy Harrelson failed to advance. Harrelson received 23% of the vote in the four person primary. The top two vote getters were Ed Montanari (42%) and Bill Dudley (30%). These two advanced to the general election, to be voted on city wide, in November.

So much for the election results. At the Friday Morning Group meeting on September 7th, we were joined by Barry Rothstein of the Maddux Report. In his spare time, Barry is also President of the Downtown Business Association. Barry filled us in on the Downtown Business Association's plans for a holiday window display program, themed to "Holiday Music". Downtown businesses will be teaming up with interior designers for some eye catching window displays (a la New York city) in the hopes of turning the downtown into a window viewing (and shopping ) destination this holiday season. The kickoff will be the day after Thanksgiving and the displays will run through New Years.

And for those of you who don't know, Barry is also a painter. In fact, Barry has a show opening at the Finn Gallery (176 4th Ave NE) on October 19th. You'll want to check out the bottom of this little ditty for a real treat.

On September 14th, we were joined at the Friday Morning Group by the inimitable Tony Collins. Tony, one of the founding members of the Friday Morning Group, is going on the Board of Directors of the Tampa Museum of Art in October.

We also got all the low down on the Friends of Photography dinner for Herb Snitzer at Redwoods. This sold out event was half tribute and half roast. Herb also sold eight photographs at the dinner. And the Museum of Fine Arts extended his show for one week. To top it off, Herb is now a member of the faculty of Eckerd College.

In other news that made the rounds last Friday Morning:

Mike Conway received an Honorable Mention at the Arts Center Member Show. Congratulations, Mike!

Rave reviews were given about the rave review received by Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson now playing at American Stage. Here is a snippet from the St. Petersburg Times:

"It is a brilliant production that goes to the heart of why Wilson was an American playwright to rank with Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. ... Sharon E. Scott heads the outstanding cast of Gem of the Ocean, expertly directed by Bob Devin Jones. ... Gem of the Ocean is so rich with humanity, and this production is so fine, that it virtually demands American Stage return to the other plays of Wilson's cycle in seasons to come. "

Bravo, Bob!
Salt Creek Art Works will be hosting the Art of Healing on September 28th. This show is a benefit for the Bayfront Medical Center Foundation.

Finally, the City of St. Pete has found an additional $200 thousand for arts and social services funding in the upcoming budget year. Yet to be determined is how it will be divvied up. The level of arts and social services funding is still only about 25% of what it was a year ago.

And for a little treat, here is the invitation to Barry Rothsteins's show at the Finn Gallery.

St. Peterburg Votes Today: Primary Edition

2007-09-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

Today is Primary Election day for City Council races in St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, I had one candidate ask me last night if I thought voter turn out would exceed 15%. On September 11th, what could be a more patriotic thing to do than to go out and exercise your right, and duty, to vote?

There are 2 races on the ballot today. Primaries are being held for Districts 3 and 5. Districts 1 and 7, with only 2 qualified candidates each, skip the primary and will be on the ballot for the city wide General Election in November. Today, only voters in Districts 3 and 5 can vote to winnow down the number of candidates for the Council seat in their districts to 2 each. The top two vote getters within these districts today will go on to the city wide voting in the November General Election.

The District 5 race features one of only two incumbents on the ballot this cycle. Acting Council Chair Jamie Bennett is seeking re-election to a post he first won in 2001 in a special election to fill the seat of Larry Williams who had resigned to run for Mayor. Bennett drew no opposition in his bid for a full term in 2003. The widely held belief that Bennett will run for Mayor in two years has drawn at least one candidate to challenge him this time.

Chris Kelly, a community activist, appears to be running with 2009 in mind. Kelly is a former President of the Roser Park Neighborhood Association. He did move to Pinellas Point a few years ago, but has not been civicly active within the district. His campaign seems to be aimed at establishing himself as a viable candidate in 2009 should Bennett vacate the seat to make his Mayoral bid. Bennett's other challenger is little know school teacher Debra Woodard. Ms. Woodard has run a perfunctory campaign at best.

The much more competitive race is for the District 3 council seat. This district, encompassing Snell Isle, Shore Acres and other neighborhoods in northeastern St. Pete will see Council Member Bill Foster leave the seat due to term limits. We will probably see Foster again in a Mayoral bid in 2009.

Meanwhile, 4 candidates are vying to replace Foster. Ed Montanari is Foster's anointed heir apparent. Montanari, an America Airlines pilot, was Foster's campaign manager in 2003. Montanari was groomed for this run by being appointed Chair of the Albert Whitted Airport Advisory Board. Prior to that, Montanari, who has been heard to say that "the Mayor's the boss", had no civic involvement. Montanari's connections have enabled him to lead the pack in fund raising. However, as befits a good airline pilot, no one will mistake Montanari for Mr. Excitement.

Returning from his unsuccessful 2003 bid to unseat Foster is now retired Northeast High teacher Bill Dudley. Dudley got through a 3 way primary in 2003, but was drubbed by Foster in the citywide general election. To improve his chances this time, Dudley is President of the Snell Isle Neighborhood Association. Much like John Edwards, Dudley has been running for this seat since his defeat 4 years ago. The experience shows. Dudley is a much better candidate this time around, and has managed to raise substantial dollars as well.

The significant new face in this race belongs to Cathy Harrelson. Harrelson is a financial professional whose long civic involvement has been focused on environmental concerns. Harrelson is immediate past President of the 3,000 member strong Suncoast Sierra Club. She has also been recently appointed to the County board advising on the Booker Creek preserve. There she was elected Policy Chair by her peers. Harrelson brings the rare combination of business acumen and enviromentalist to the race. She also has the most realistic chance of maintaining the two woman minority on the Council. With Renee Flowers leaving the District 7 seat due to term limits, Leslie Curran is the only other woman on Council. Also, in this allegedly nonpartisan race, Harrelson is the only Democrat.

Mortgage Broker Cliff Gephart rounds out the field in District 3. Gephart has not run a substantial campaign, but speaks well in forums. Hopefully Mr. Gephart will stay involved in civic affairs and try again sometime in the future.

The District 3 race is really too close to call at this time. Dudley, Montanari and Harrelson are closely bunched and each has run a vigorous campaign. Which two advance to the General Election in November could literally come down to a hand full of votes. So if you are reading this in District 3 today, be sure to get out and vote. Your vote will definitely matter in this race

Bennett Gets His Ear Bent and Bends Right Back

2007-09-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

St. Petersburg City Council Member Jamie Bennett got his ear bent in our hot seat last week at the Friday Morning Group. Jamie is running for re election to the District 5 seat he has held since 2001. He joined us last Friday.

Jamie was immediately taken to task about a mail piece he brought with him. The mail piece talked about "Protecting Our Quality of Life". Yet nowhere did the arts get mentioned as a part of that quality of life. Jamie, to his credit, stated that when the mailer gets redone for the city wide general election, the arts would be included in the quality of life being protected.

Jamie related that this is going to be the battle for the next 10 years. He told us that the arts are as much of an economic driver in St. Petersburg as anything else we have here, if not more so. Jamie told us that to be a real city that you had to have more than just police and fire service. You need the arts and the social services that go hand in hand with making St. Petersburg the wonderful place we all believe it has become. Jamie agreed that to a very large extent the arts are the quality of life in St. Petersburg.

When asked how he might turn around the mind set that puts the arts and social services on the front of the chopping block, Jamie was blunt and forthright in his outlook. He suggested that some organizations will have to be funded out of emergency contingency funds to keep them from shutting their doors. Jamie explained that under our strong mayor form of government, the Mayor sets the tone and those that the Mayor controls end up dancing to his tune. He told us if we want to see this changed, the arts community would have to go get its political mojo and elect the right people.

Jamie explained that there is a great philosophical war going on between those who bleieve that the government has a role to play in the arts and social services and those who do not believe the government has a role. Right now, in St. Petersburg, the non believers are winning, Jamie said. He also had a rather interesting suggestion about what might be done to help stem the tide - partnering with big business. Currently the Mayor is getting corporate sponsors, or partners, for the public schools in St. Petersburg. Jamie suggested that we could be doing that for some of the smaller arts organizations. He also cautioned that for the arts to maintain their independence, that a variety of sponsors would have to get involved.

Herb Snitzer reminded us that Sandy Freidman, when Mayor of Tampa, would hold her cabinet meetings at the Tampa Museum of Art. This resulted in a very large increase in the number of memberships in the Museum. Jamie asked Herb to keep reminding him to hold meetings at the St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts.

Here is a correction that most of you probably already know. The Arts Center Member Show opens this Friday, Septmeber 7th, not last Friday as previously reported. But, we hope to see you all this Friday morning at the Friday Morning Group.

Harrelson on the Hot Seat

2007-08-30T03:42:00.000-07:00

The Friday Morning Group had Cathy Harrelson, candidate for St. Petersburg City Council District 3 on the hot seat last Friday. Cathy has been an investment advisor and financial professional for over twenty-five years. She is also immediate past Chair of the Suncoast Sierra Club. She is running for the City Council seat currently held by Bill Foster, who is leaving due to term limits. So Cathy came to the Friday Morning Group to hear our concerns. She got an earful.

Herb Snitzer, never the shrinking violet, looked at her campaign materials and noticed there was no mention of the arts. Cathy forthrightly explained that to get through the primary, her mail pieces to voters in District 3 had to deal with the issues of top concern to the voters in that district. To her credit, Cathy came equipped with information on the economic value of the arts and indicated that she could make use of that in the general election , but she needed to focus on "front burner" issues for the primary election.

Herb noted how the arts are too often seen as a luxury and thus get the short end of the funding stick, even in good economic times. Cathy agreed that the arts always moved to the front of the chopping block when it is government budget cutting time. Bob Devin Jones volunteered that he would be more than happy to help Cathy understand how to move the arts off the front end of the chopping block.

This lead to a vigorous discussion about how best to do that. I noted that when the City and the County were holding public input budget hearings, the artist community failed to show up and give their input. Bob responded that after all his service on governmental arts committees, that if our elected officials didn't get it by now, they were never going to get it. I pointed out that the real audience for these hearings was not the elected officials on the dais, but the general public watching on TV, or those that would be reading the newspaper accounts of the hearings.

At the end of these discussions, it was apparent to those in attendance that Cathy Harrelson would be an ally to the arts if elected. Carol Dameron suggested that Cathy contact the women in the Stuart Society at the Museum of Fine Arts and seek their support. Herb and Carol also graciously agreed to be hosts for a fund raising event for Cathy.

There was also a discussion about one of my favorite subjects - that the City is the Art rather than St. Petersburg being the "City of the Arts." I gave the group an update on the City Council's recent passage of the new Land Development Regulations (LDRs) for the downtown, completing a seven year effort to update zoning and land usage in the entire city. There are still some issues to be resolved in a "glitch bill" later on this year.

The biggest issue is the zoning for the site of Al Lang Field. Al Lang has carried a commercial zoning designation and that has carried over to the new LDRs. However, with the Devil Rays moving their spring training out of town in 2009, there is significant citizen concern about future uses for that site. Many people feel that the City would be better served by designating the Al Lang site with Park zoning. Others believe that a really special use could be found for the land that would offer unique benefits to the City.

The other big issue to be resolved is historic preservation efforts against the background of downtown redevelopment. The new LDRs provide some incentive to developers for historic preservation. However it is unclear that they are sufficient to actually accomplish much in the way of historic preservation as the incentives currently are written. Stay tuned.

And this week, Friday, August 31st, City Council Member Jamie Bennett (District 5) will be getting in the hot seat. Council Member Bennett is also running for re election this year.

Speaking of elections, there are primary elections in Districts 3 and 5 on September 11. Early voting is already underway. Voter turnout is expected to be dismally low. If you live in these districts and want the voice of the arts community to be heard, please be sure to vote in this important election.

And for some arts news, the Arts Center Member Show opens this Friday August 31st. I hope you will start the day by joining us at the Friday Morning Group. Hope to see you there.

Three Jewels of St. Petersburg

2007-08-22T11:36:00.001-07:00

Last Friday at the Friday Morning Group, we noted the passing of Mrs. Astor in New York and her remarks about the three jewels of New York City. We could recall that she named the Metropolitan Museum, and the New York Public Library, but could not recall the third.

This led to a discussion about the three jewels of St. Petersburg. There was widespread agreement about the first two jewels, the waterfront park system and the Dali Museum. After that, well...

The Florida Orchestra was mentioned as the third possible jewel. However, there was not agreement that the Orchestra was in a place that qualified as being called a jewel. There is certainly the potential, and I know many of us would like to be able to say it it the third jewel in St. Petersburg's crown. So ,let's hear it. What do you think the three jewels of St. Petersburg are?

We also talked about the Battle of the B3's at the Palladium. For those of you who did not attend, you really missed a show. The Palladium was sold out for this battle of Jazz vs Blues organists playing the venerable Hammond B3 organs. The good news for those of you who missed it is that this event will almost certainly be back next year, probably for more than one night. This was a terrific display of the musical talent in the Tampa Bay area.

We also talked about an art preservation project now going on in St. Petersburg. The Piano Exchange Building, formerly the Garden cafeteria, is going to be redeveloped. This building is on Second Street North in downtown St. Pete, across from the Bay Walk. The Garden cafeteria was once one of the jewels of the cafeteria culture in St. Petersburg. It was decorated in a garden motif including Florida garden scene murals on the walls.

As a condition of the approval of the site plan for redevelopment of this building, the developers agreed to make the murals available to anyone who wants to preserve them. There are several murals that are painted on wall boards that can simply be removed. However, the entire back wall of the building is a giant mural that appears to be painted directly into the concrete. The developers have agreed to make the wall available to anyone who wants to remove it. But it is BIG. At a minimum, the artwork will be photographically documented before the building is demolished. If you can provide any assistance in this project, please let me know.

See you this Friday.

Three Jewels of St. Petersburg

2007-08-22T11:36:00.000-07:00

Art of Guerrilla Tactics

2007-08-16T09:01:00.000-07:00

The conversation at the Friday Morning Group last Friday ranged from "radical transparency" to guerrilla tactics and everything in between. No matter the topics, the conversation was brightened by the all too rare appearance of Carol Dameron.

The underlying topic that had us touch on these diverse subjects was the position of arts and culture in these tough financial times. We all have been feeling the effects of the property tax reform movement in Florida and its impact on local government funding for the arts. Now as signs continue to show the overall economy slipping, the art funding situation appears to be even more tenuous.

We discussed how people and institutions make values choices when allocating resources. The question we are continuously trying to answer is how to demonstrate the total value of arts and culture on the community. Where do arts and culture fit into this mix? What do we value and why do we value it? What impact does this have on our quality of life. And what does it say about us as a community?

We also touched on who our natural allies should be in this effort to upgrade the place of arts and culture on the values choices ladder. We even talked about good old Mazlow and his "hierarchy of needs". We talked about the creation of "Business Improvement Districts" and how incremental taxes within those districts can be used to provide additional city employees to aid visitors and residents within those districts. This has been used to great effect in Washington DC. There are a number of economies with this approach, because these "Business Improvement District" city employees are not police officers and therefore do not carry the high cost overhead of additional police.

We talked about the role of cities, that they exist to create human interactions. These interactions create possibilities which all serve to enhance the quality of life in our communities. But how to raise the visibility of the value of arts and culture within the clutter of everything else that is going on?

That is where the guerrilla tactics come in. Imagine a series of more or less spontaneous little artistic "interventions" going on all over town at unexpected times and places. Don't know what these interventions might look like? Me neither. But you all are creative. Think about it. How much fun could you have with it? How much would it add to the quality of life in the community? How much might it add to the value of arts and culture in the community?

Anybody feeling guerillaish today? How about joining us tomorrow at the Friday Morning Group and sharing your ideas? I look forward to seeing you.

St. Pete Council Money Race - PrePrimary

2007-08-15T07:30:00.000-07:00

The September St. Petersburg City Council Primary Election date is rapidly approaching. As it does, the money race is starting to get hot too. Not surprisingly, the hottest part of the track in the money race is the crowded field for the open District 3 seat being vacated by Bill Foster. Stay tuned for the real surprise here, however.

In the contest for the other open seat, Renee Flower's District 7, the first reporting period leader, Gershom Faulkner's torrid fundraising pace slowed remarkably. The most recent reporting period is a short period from July 1 through August 3rd. Faulkner has now reported raising a total of $12,598. However only $1,575 was raised in the most recent period. and Faulkner has spent most of the money already, having spent $11,933.

Faulkner's only opponent, Wengay Newton is not in any better shape financially. Newton has reported raising only $2,900 so far and has spent $2,100. Faulkner's fundraising pace is expected to pick up. His bipartisan support is starting to kick in. At a recent fundraising event hosted by a high profile financial services executive, it was announced that Faulkner was receiving support from an unlikely confluence of sources that will ensure that he will have the funds necessary to compete vigorously for this seat. Stay tuned.

The District 1 seat is currently held by Herb Poslon, who was appointed to fill State Representative Rick Kriseman's seat. Polson has picked up his fundraising pace dramatically. Polson now reports raising a total of $14,455, with nearly $11,000 raised in July. Polson has been a relative piker when it comes to spending that money, having expended only $2,503 to date. His only opponent, Bob Kersteen has raised only $2,500 and has spent $1,600. Looks like Polson is in good shape here.

Incumbent Jamie Bennett's fundraising continues to lag in his bid for reelection to the District 5 seat. Bennett who eschewed raising money when it was uncertain he would be opposed, has raised only $3,300 so far. However, neither of his opponents have demonstrated any fundraising prowess to date. Between them they have only raised about $1,100 and have spent about half of that. Jamie needs to pick up the pace to avoid any nasty surprises, however.

That brings us back to the District 3 donnybrook. The big surprise here is that Ed Montanari is not leading the fund raising in this district. Montanari, who ran Bill Foster's campaign last cycle, is raising serious money, having raised $12,695 to date. However, Bill Dudley, who ran against Foster 4 years ago, is leading the money race for this seat. Dudley raised $16,705 in July bringing his total to $17,524. Cathy Harrelson is trailing the field here, having raised a total of $7,772 so far.

Montanari is leading this district in expenditures so far as the campaign signs springing up around town would seem to indicate. Montanari has reported spending nearly $7,000 to date. leaving only about $5,500 on hand. The Mallard Group continues to be a big drain on the Montanari campaign funds, raking in over $2,300 in July alone. Signs costs for Montanari were over $3,100.

Dudley has spent nearly $5,000 to date, almost all of it in July. Dudley has also spent heavily on signs, about $2,600 in July. He also spent nearly $700 on an ad in the St. Pete Times and another $500 plus on T shirts. Cathy Harrelson , as behooves a financial manager, has spent the least so far. Harrelson's total expenditures are just $3,800. The vast majority of her spending has been on campaign literature and signs.

The District 3 race will be by far the more competitive of the two primary races. Coach Dudley seems to be in very good shape with over $12,000 in the bank and signs proliferating throughout the district. Montanari's spending on the Mallard Group will be showing up in a mailbox near you soon. But he better raise more than the $5,000 he has on hand to pay for the printing and the mailing. If Harrelson wants to get into the general election, she is going to need to pick up her pace in a big hurry.

(W)EDUcational Discussion

2007-08-08T11:20:00.000-07:00

We had a pretty good crowd last Friday morning to hear Joyce Cotton, the Director of Marketing and Community Partnerships at WEDU. Joyce has been in television for 31 years (really Joyce, you can't be that old) and at WEDU for six years. She had a lot to share with us about activities at WEDU that are largely unknown to a lot of people, myself included.

As we were doing our customary self introductions, Bill Moriarity apprised us of the sad news that Artists Gallery Royale is closing at the end of this month. Bill, you were not the captain of the Titanic. Honest.

We got through the rest of the introductions without any other really sad news. Joyce told us about several programs that she is engaged in on behalf of WEDU, but I am going to cover a couple of the highlights. I encourage you to visit the WEDU web site at WEDU.ORG .

The Ready to Learn Program is an extension of WEDU's children's programming. The station works with Head Start programs, schools, Girl Scouts or whoever might be interested in participating in special events with WEDU. One of the most successful of these is Angelina's Ballerina held at Ruth Eckerd Hall during the holiday season. This event typically sells out with over 300 children participating.

There are also the WEDU Be More Awards. This is a program where WEDU partners with non profit organizations to honor particularly noteworthy non profits. Last year WEDU sent out 700 nomination invitations, receiving 82 back. There was a luncheon judging event to select the winners. WEDU will be hosting their Be More Awards Workshop at their studios on September 19. Check it out on the WEDU web site.

We also discussed WEDU's local programming. Tom and Joyce provided us with DVDs of The Gulf Coast Journal which will be entering its fifth season this year. This is a program produced by WEDU featuring former NBC newsman Jack Perkins and Sarasota County. You can watch it on the WEDU web site here. It would be tremendous if we could secure funding for a similar program for Pinellas or the Tampa Bay area.

I want to close by reminding everyone that Herb Snitzer will be giving his "formal" talk on his work at the Museum of Fine Arts this Sunday, August 12th at 3:00 PM. I hope to see you all on both Friday morning and on Sunday afternoon.

Stop the Presses

2007-07-31T20:09:00.000-07:00

Last Friday morning we talked about a subject that keeps coming up again and again - coverage of the arts in the local media - or lack thereof. This has been a subject that we have been talking about at the Friday Morning Group for about as long as there has been a Friday Morning Group.

Meeting in St. Petersburg, most of the attention was focused on the efforts of the Times to cover the burgeoning art scene in St. Pete and Pinellas County over the years. Nice things were said about John Fleming, the Times performing arts critic. Fleming had just written a piece on the effects of the upcoming budget cuts as a result of the property tax reform. On the whole, not a pretty picture. Perhaps more pieces on the economic impact of the arts in the community would have kept us from getting to this point?

We were also joined by photographer Richard Stewart. Richard has been involved in the effort to start the St. Petersburg Photographic Gallery. The gallery, a more or less cooperative effort, has been stalled by lease issues. However, the idea lives on.

Patrice Pucci filled us in on the successful City Players run of Hello Dolly at Ruth Eckerd Hall. They sold the place out for the Sunday Matinee. Way to go!

We also talked again about the success of Herb Snitzer's "informal" talk to over 50 people during the first weekend of his show at the Museum of Fine Arts. The show is celebrating Herb's 50 years in photography. Pretty remarkable considering photography is only about 150 years old. Herb will give his "formal" talk about his work on Sunday, August 12th at 3 PM.

For more informal art talk, we hope to see you Friday Morning.

City Council Money Race

2007-07-25T05:08:00.000-07:00

Now that the match ups have been settled for the St. Petersburg City Council elections this year, it is time to take a look at how the fund raising race is going. Money does not always equate success in local elections (see John McQueen in 2003, or Darden Rice in 2005), but it can provide some clues.

Leading the money race at this point is Gershom Faulkner running for Renee Flowers seat, District 7. Faulkner has raised an astounding $9,933 in the reporting period ending June 30th. Faulkner started raising money in earnest in April when he garnered over $2,000. Much of this money was raised from connections he had made in Tallahassee during his tenure as legislative assistant to State Rep. Frank Peterman. This money can also be viewed as the high regard Faulkner is held in by his Tallahassee contacts.

In May and June, Faulkner turned to his fund raising ability in St. Petersburg. Supporters such as State Senator Charlie Justice, and State Reps. Bill Heller and Rick Kriseman helped him raise the balance of the $ 9,900. The good news for Faulkner, he has yet to tap the fundraising assistance from many more of his high profile supporters including County Commissioners Ken Welch and Calvin Harris. Also, Rep. Frank Peterman has yet to tap his fundraising base for Faulkner.

The bad news for Gershom Faulkner? He spent $8,700 this past quarter. Much of this money went to his high profile Campaign Manager, Mitch Kates. However, a substantial portion also went into campaign literature most of which is still in inventory.

Wengay Newton, Faulkners' opponent in the general election in November has raised only $2,300 to date. Like Faulkner, he has already spent most of it. Newton has spent over $1,600 to date. This doesn't leave him with a lot of cash on hand either.

The other big money raiser is Ed Montanari. Montanari will be facing a September primary in the race for the Distrcit 3 seat being vacated by Bill Foster. Montanari raised $6,400, the vast majority of it in June alone. Unlike his counterparts in District 7, Montanari has spent only a paltry $743 to date. Most of that ($500) went for consulting fees to the Mallard Group in Clearwater. Montanari better hope Mallard will break out of the losing streak they went on in 2006.

In contrast, Montanaris' opponents have raised only $2,300 combined. Bill Dudley, who lost this race to Bill Foster in 2003 has raised only $819 to date. This despite the fact that he has been running for this seat for the past 4 years. Cathy Harrelson contributed the $500 that her campaign reported raising this period. She did not officially get into the race until June. The fourth person in this race, Cliff Gephart, has yet to file a campaign finance report.

In the District 1 race, Herb Poslon, appointed to the Council to replace Rick Kriseman, raised $2,625 this period. $1,000 came from the Polson family. Herb's wife wrote a $500 check to the campaign and Herb loaned $500. Polson spent a considerable amount already on campaign start up costs, but still had $1,300 cash remaining at the end of the reporting period. Polson's opponent, former Council Member Bob Kersteen, loaned his campaign $100. This is the total extent of Kersteen's fundraising so far.

In District 5, incumbent Jamie Bennett was waiting to see if he was going to draw an opponent. He has only loaned his campaign $500 so far. He wound up drawing two last minute opponents, Chris Kelly and Debra Woodard. Neither of the challengers have had to file a finance report as of yet.

Sociology of Art

2007-07-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

I guess you are getting somewhere when a social scientist is interested enough in what you are doing to want to study you. We were joined last Friday morning by a sociologist from Eckerd College who also happens to be a potter. Unfortunately for him, he joined us about half way through, so here's what he missed.

We started off talking about the Music of the Harlem Renaissance show at The Studio@620 the previous night. All who attended gave it rave reviews. Thanks to sponsorships from the Florida Humanities Council, The Studio@620 and the Al Downing / Tampa Bay Jazz Association, the event was free to the public. Way to go guys!

Herb Snitzer informed us that seven of his photographs have been hung in the Mayors outer office in City Hall. Also, Herb's show went up Friday at the Museum of Fine Art. Herb gave an informal talk Saturday afternoon on his fifty years in photography. Interestingly enough, he gave it to about 50 people.

We again talked about the idea of getting community art programming on WEDU. We kept coming back to the funding stumbling block. It costs about $250,000 to produce 12 1/2 hour episodes. Maybe the Pinellas Convention and Visitors Bureau would have an interest in underwriting something like that?

And speaking of money, we got a report from the St. Pete City Council. It seems the City Council has not yet decided how to allocate the $500 thousand that it has put back in the budget for arts and social service agencies. One proposal floated by a Council Member is to give all $500 thousand to the homeless. That would be none to the arts and none to any other social service agency. Stay tuned on this one.

See y'all on Friday.

St. Pete Council Races Set

2007-07-24T11:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the close of qualifying for St. Pete City Council races. There will be two primaries in September. In District 3 where Bill Foster is term limited out and in District 5, where Jamie Bennett is running for reelection.

District 3 is the only seat up this cycle that is currently held by a Republican. The Democrats only chance to pick up this seat rests on the shoulders of Cathy Harrelson. Harrelson is an investment advisor and financial professional. She is also a past President of the Sierra Club, although that is not prominently featured on her web site. Also, her campaign is being run by Darden Rice, another Sierra Club leader. Rice ran and lost against Ernest Williams in 2005. This despite raising $50,000.

There are two Republicans running to keep this seat on their side of the ledger. Bill Dudley, a retired high school wrestling coach is running again after losing to Bill Foster in the general election in 2003. Ed Montanari is the remaining candidate. He ran Bill Foster's campaign in 2003. Ed is a commerical airline pilot and was Chair of the Albert Whitted Advisory Task Force. This is going to be the toughest race in the City this cycle.

Jamie Bennett has drawn 2 opponents in his bid to retain the City Council seat he first won in 2001. Bennett was unopposed in 2003 and was hoping to get a campaign this time. Bennett has aspirations to run for Mayor in 2009 and wants a platform to start that campaign. Well, he certainly got one. Chris Kelly, another Democrat has filed to run. Kelly is co-founder of Pinellas Heritage and is a former President of the Historic Roser Park Neighborhood Association. Also running is Debra Woodard. Woodard is a 55 year old African American Democrat. Unfortunately not much else is know about Ms. Woodard at this point. The Republicans apparently were unable to come up with a challenger despite the rantings of Dave the Appraiser. Well, better luck next time Dave (not). One would have to give the early edge to Jamie Bennett right now. However, one would also be careful about what you ask for. Jamie may have gotten more than he bargained for.

In District 1 Herb Polson, who was newly appointed to fill the seat vacated by State Rep. Rick Kriseman, will face off against former City Council Member Bob Kersteen. Kersteen is a 70 year old Republican who last served on the City Council in 2000. Polson is one of the most qualified people ever to run for a City Council seat. He retired from the City of St. Petersburg last year in hopes of being appointed to fill Krisemans seat as Rick ran for the state House. Herb's hope was fulfilled when the Council appointed him over, you guessed it, Bob Kersteen. Because elections are about the future and Herb is superbly qualified, I'd have to say that this will be a laugher.

That brings us to District 7 where Rene Flowers can not run again due to term limits. There will be no primary here as only 2 candidates qualified. In November Wengay Newton will square off against Gershom Faulkner. Wengay Newton is president of the Westminster Heights Neighborhood Association. His brother Winnie also happens to be president of the local fire fighters union. Faulkner was the long term aide to state Rep. Frank Peterman and is currently Outreach Director for Congresswoman Kathy Castor. Faulkner certainly has the inside track on endorsements from elected officials. This starts with the Dems in the Pinellas legislative delegation, runs through the Dems on the County Commission, includes Mary Brown on the School board and several other local elected officials. Faulkner was also Deputy campaign manager for Kathy Castor's successful primary election for the Congressional seat vacated by Jim Davis. He knows what it takes to win elections and seems to be doing most things right. This should be a big win for Faulkner who is a real up and comer in the Democratic Party.

Turnout is likely to be extremely low in the primary elections. It will be only slightly better for the general election in November. It is pretty safe to say the Dems will at least hold on to their 5-3 majority on the council. It is also possible that they might gain a 6th seat, although that is looking like a pretty tough proposition right now.

We'll have something on 2nd quarter fund raising soon. So stay tuned. This could be interesting.

Interesting Meeting & Big Weekend

2007-07-18T17:02:00.000-07:00

It was an interesting meeting of the Friday Morning Group last Friday. Topics ranged from Nina Simone to the decline of the newspaper industry. And for early summer, or almost any time for that matter, this is a big weekend for some of our community based artists.

First, Herb Snitzer's show goes up this Friday, July 20th at the Museum of Fine Arts. Herb will be at the Museum on Saturday, July 21st at 4 PM. On Sunday, August 12th at 3 PM Herb will give a lecture at the Museum. There will be a dinner in Herb's honor in September at Redwoods. Cost will be $35. The dinner will be sponsored by the Museum's Friends of Photography.

Speaking of friends of photography, there was a discussion about the recent auction price of photographic art. Seems an Edward Weston piece was recently auctioned in New York for $824,000!

Also opening on Friday, July 21, the City Players, ably represented at the Friday Morning Group by Patrice Pucci, will present Hello, Dolly at Ruth Eckerd Hall. Shows are Friday and Saturday at 8 PM with a 2 PM Matinee on Sunday.

Last Friday, at The Studio@620, the Artist's Trading Card show opened. Sounds like a very interesting show, and it runs to Saturday, July 21. Learn more about ATC's here. Bob Devin Jones also let us know that in September he will be bringing in a doppelganger of Herb Snitzer's friend Nina Simone. I, for one, will be looking forward to that.

And we'll look forward to seeing you on Friday morning.

A Quiet Week

2007-07-11T04:24:00.000-07:00

It may have been the 4th of July hangover effect, but last Friday Morning was a quick, quiet meeting at the Friday Morning Group. It was an interesting one nonetehless.

The talk on Friday centered around the looming budget cuts for local governments. But this one had a twist. Almost all local governments are saying that they have to cut social service and arts funding to protect law enforcement functions. That includes the City of St. Petersburg. But it turns out that there is one law enforcement function that St. Pete has no qualms about cutting.

So, which function is this you ask? St. Petersburg is eliminating its Human Rights Office. This function is going to be handed off to Pinellas County. There is one slight problem with this, however. Pinellas County does not have the authority to enforce St. Petersburg's Human Right Ordinance. That little factoid has the practical effect of killing off the Human Rights ordinance that the Mayor didn't support in the first place. That's because no one will be around to enforce it. So, in effect, the Mayor is cutting law enforcement.

There was also some discussion that the City Council was likely to restore some funding to Arts and Social Service organizations. The question was, how much. The number $500,000 was floated previously by Council Member Leslie Curran. It turns out that was the number that was restored in yesterday's City Council Budget workshop. That's still an 80% cut from last years levels. At least it is not a 100% cut. Stand by now for the scramble as organizations make a mad dash to get some of that money.

Whole Lot of Art Going On

2007-07-04T21:04:00.000-07:00

Last Firday morning there was a lot of information sharing going on. That's because there is a a whole lot of art going on in our area now and in the coming months.

The first item to report is that Herb Snitzer's show at the Museum of Fine Art is set to open July 20th. The show will run to September 11th. Herb will be giving an informal talk on July 21st and a gallery talk on August 12th. There will also be a dinner in Herb's honor in September. Stay tuned for more details.

Patrice Pucci reported that the City Players will be performing Hello Dolly at Ruth Eckerd Hall on July 20-21. All the players are volunteers. Through a deal with the City of Clearwater, the City Players get free use of Ruth Eckerd Hall. The net proceeds from the show go back to supporting City Players.

Tom Taggart reported that as of this past Tuesday, WEDU is broadcasting its entire program stream in Spanish. Part of this comes from PBS and part has to be locally produced. This brings the number of channels broadcast by WEDU to 5.

And our old and dear friend Dave Ellis stopped by. Dave is co artistic director of the Studio@620. Dave told us about an exciting program he is working on for a mid November to mid December run. The show is titled The Water is Wide - the Art of Boat Building. I, for one, am looking forward to it.

And we are looking forward to seeing you this Friday.

Tampa Bay Week That Was

2007-07-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

It was another interesting week in St. Petersburg, my hometown. It started off with an interesting and effective procedural move at the Pinellas Democratic Executive Committee meeting. And it ended with the mother of all Florida Pride Festivals in St. Petersburg. Then there was all kinds of other interesting things going on in between.

Tuesday night, Acting Pinellas DEC Chair Arlin Briley knew how to solve a knotty problem. Between the summertime doldrums and people showing up for meetings but refusing to sign in and be counted, the Pinellas DEC had been having trouble getting a quorum. This was holding up the election of new and appointed DEC members. Mr. Briley was acting in the place of DEC Chair, yes she had the baby, Toni Molinaro. Arlin was not going to let this situation go unchallenged. When told that the meeting was four members short of a quorum Briley knew just what to do. he called a special meeting of the DEC Board of directors right there and confirmed the new appointed and elected members present. All legal within the By Laws of the DEC. And it was all done before those not officially present knew what was going on. Good for you, Arlin.

Also at the DEC meeting Tuesday night, most Pinellas Democrats got to hear Reverend Charles Mackenzie for the first time. The former FL-13 Congressional primary candidate showed that hew will clearly be the best speech giver in the expected to be crowded HD-55 primary for the term limited Reverend Representative Frank Peterman's seat.

Wednesday was marked by John Edwards House Parties. Uber One Corps leader Liz France graciously made her Pass a Grille home available for the South Pinellas party. As a reward for her efforts, Liz got to ask Senator Edwards a question during the Q&A portion of the conference call. She gave him a real hot potato, asking his stance on Israeli - Palestinian issues. Senator Edwards handled it as flawlessly as if he had been playing softball with little Jack. We got the extra added bonus of speaking with Elizabeth Edwards before Senator Edwards got on the call. Thanks to Liz and all her hard work to make the house party a smashing success.

Friday was all about John Edwards again. This time Edwards was holding a Small Change for Big Change low dollar fund raiser at Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo. Remind me again why anybody would want to put their candidate in a zoo? Actually the Saunders Pavillion at the Zoo is a terrific venue for this kind of thing. And the staff of the Lowry park Zoo treated us great. A real pleasure to work with.

Despite the heat and humidity and the fact that weather delayed Senator Edwards take off from Washington for two hours, the event was a smashing success. The Edwards advance team was a well oiled machine and the Lowry Park staff could not have been more helpful. Round that out with a terrific volunteer contingent headed up by the aforementioned Liz France, and you have the full recipe for success.

After getting wheels up in DC, Senator Edwards closed the time gap down as much as humanly possible. He took the stage at about 8:45 and had the crowd rocking for the next 20 minutes. As reported in all the news accounts, Senator Edwards led off with praise for his wife standing up to that vile hate monger, Ann Coulter. The Edwards campaign has taken a page right out of the Bill Clinton playbook. When the other guys hit you, you hit back harder.

Senator and Mrs. Edwards are doing just that. Edwards talked about his signature issues of fighting poverty and providing universal health care coverage. He did not waste the chance to tell the crowd of 300 plus that on his first day as President he would close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and that he would be getting our troops out of Iraq. Edwards closed his speech with a heartfelt plea for support from everyone in attendance.

Saturday was the 5th Annual St. Petersburg Pride Festival. The Festival began with the Promenade led by Grand Marshall Susan Stanton. Democratic Presidential Candidate, Congressman Dennis Kucinich was seen touring the Promenade assembly area. He had the oh so successful (not) political wannabe Ed Helm sniffing up his elbow the entire time. BTW, Helm was seen craning his neck for a better view of John Edwards on Friday night.

State Representative Bill Heller and St. Petersburg City Council Vice Chair Jamie Bennett participated in the Promenade, dispensing beads along the way. State Representative Rick Kiseman (he of the leg broken in the legislative softball game) had a table a the event. Bennet and fellow Council member Jeff Danner read the Festival Proclamation for the St. Petersburg City Council. This occurred immediately after the St. Petersburg Police arrested four pretend religious people from Georgia who violated the Festival's permit's sign requirements and would not comply with police requests to lose the offending signs.

Most of the estimated 70,000 who attended the Festival did not appear to be bothered by the imported hate mongers. I must say when we had to march past the bullhorns that were permitted during the promenade, my ears hurt when there were bullhorns blaring on both sides of our entrance onto the parade route. Turns out the Pinellas Stonewall Democrats have tougher ears than I do. Maybe mine are just older than most of theirs? Following the Pinellas Stonewalls were the Suncoast Stonewalls from south of the Skyway. Their banner holders came all the way from Venice for the event.

Perhaps the largest crowd in the Dem group were the green shirted supporters of Hillsborough County Commission candidate Brian Beckner. Beckner will be running county wide against incumbent Brian Blair in November of 2008. Beckner's campaign manager, Mitch Kates is also handling the race this November of Gershom Faulkner who is running for the St. Petersburg City Council seat being vacated by the termed out Rene Flowers.

Next week will be dominated by the Fourth of July celebrations throughout the Tampa Bay area. Hard to see how we could get more fireworks on Wednesday than we had this past week.

Art of Livin'

2007-06-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

It was a fairly quiet Friday Morning Group meeting last week. Some of the usual suspects were talking about a wide range of things. We discussed the weekly Swing dancing on Wednesdays at the Gulfport Casino. The discussion moved to the Bleau Acier Studio on Columbus Avenue in Tampa. This is the venue where Erika Schneider plies her art as a master printer, engraver, block printer and etcher.

Then in walked Norman Jones of the Art of Livin' Art Gallery. This is the home of the African American 20th Century Cultural Exhibition. Norman had brought with him some photographs from the St. Petersburg Times Negro pages, and they were absolutely fascinating. Most of the photos looked to be 50 or so years old. They described a rich palette of life from the time when the civil rights movement was first beginning to emerge.

So. you just never know who is going to walk in the door on any given Friday morning.

This Week in St. Petersburg

2007-06-23T06:28:00.000-07:00

It was an interesting week in St. Petersburg, my hometown. It started off at the home of Larry Newsome. Newsome, the developer of the Midtown shopping center anchored by SweetBay, graciously opened up his home in support of Gershom Faulkner. Faulkner is running for the St. Petersburg City Council seat being vacated by the term limited Rene Flowers.

Faulkner lined up an impressive host committee for this event. Former Florida House Speaker Peter Wallace and and current County Commissioners Ken Welch and Calvin Harris were joined by restaurateur Dan Harvey as headliners on the host committee.

The question of the night was, what was Bob Kersteen doing there? Kersteen is running against Herb Polson. Polson, the City's long time lobbyist, was appointed to fill the seat vacated by now Representative Rick Kriseman. Look for Jack Latvala to continue his losing streak as Kersteen has hired him to lead the smear campaign against Polson. Kersteen and Jack Latvala. There's a recipe for electoral failure right there.

Thursday saw the St. Petersburg City Council approve the Greater Childs Park Strategic Initiative. The consultant for the City produced a plan document that certainly passed the weight test. There are two glaring problems with the Childs Park plan. First is the fact that it was adopted by the City just as the full extent of the first round of property tax cuts were being examined. That does not bode well for the ability of the City to actually spend the funds needed to implement the plan.

The second problem was a statement both in the covering memo and the plan itself. Every table at the City's first public meeting on the plan listed crime and crime related problems as an issue. However, somehow the consultant determined that crime was not a predominate issue. It remains to be seen if that was an accurate statement.

On Friday, the City Council received a briefing from Mayor Rick Baker on his suggested budget cuts resulting from the first round of property tax reforms signed by the governor this week. In all, the mayor recommended that 70 positions be eliminated, including 25% of the Codes Compliance Department. As he threatened to do earlier, the Mayor suggested cutting off all funding to social service agencies and arts organizations. Only Council Member Leslie Curran suggested that cutting all funding to the social services and arts organizations was maybe not the best way to go.

After the somber budget briefing, Council Members Herb Polson, Jamie Bennett Jeff Danner and Ernest Williams attended the Tiger Bay luncheon featuring Florida CFO Alex Sink. Sink showed her growing political maturity by deftly handling the lead off question. An unapologetic boor Republican hit man tried to to rattle Sink with a question about her religion and homosexuality. He failed to rattle Sink and also failed to win the coveted Tiger award. Just another example of the failed conservative worldview that is going the way of the dinosaurs.

And that brings us to the scoop of the week. County Commissioner Bob Stewart was asked about the rumor that he may not run for reelection. His response (with a twinkle in his eye):

There may be some truth to that.

The week is going to end on a high note for St. Petersburg. A portrait of Governor Charlie Crist will be unveiled at the St. Petersburg History Museum on Saturday afternoon. Crist, the first native of St. Petersburg to occupy the governors mansion will also headline a fundraiser for the museum at the former Rutland Estate.

Smart TV and Looking for Writers

2007-06-21T08:21:00.000-07:00

We were joined last Friday morning, by Tom Taggart, Director of Planned giving for Florida West Coast Public Broadcasting, Inc., more commonly known as our own community PBS station, WEDU Channel 3. Tom engaged with us in a very stimulating conversation about the possibilities for community produced programming for WEDU, particularly focusing on art education.

Tom reminded us of the Gulf Coast Journal program that is produced at WEDU featuring Sarasota County. This is an extremely well done and well received program. It was funded by a grant from Sarasota county interests and features retired NBC News reporter Jack Perkins as the on air face of the program.

Tom told us that WEDU is always interested in producing more community based content, but the funding challenge is one that must be met at WEDU as it is anywhere else. Twelve programs typically cost $250,000. The funder usually gets about $50,000 worth of on air in kind promotion making the net cost to the funder $200,000. However, the value of a well produced program is inestimable.

We discussed the possibility of looking at the Pinellas Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) as a potential funder for a community produced art education program featuring our community based artists. We are still looking to bring the new CVB director to a Friday Morning Group Meeting soon.

Herb Snitzer brought 3 books with him to our meeting last week. All three of these books were written by authors living in our community, including the newly published book on Mickey Mantle by Peter Golenback. Herb brought these books to illustrate that we have successful authors living in our community, but we do not seem to be attracting them to our Friday Morning Group.

This points up something I have been remarking about lately. That is that we all could be better ambassadors for the Friday Morning group. I would encourage all of you to reach out to any creative thinker that you encounter and extend them an invitation to join us at the Friday Morning Group.

Speaking of creative thinkers, we also discussed a new group that has formed in St. Pete. The St. Pete Creative Network had its first meeting recently. It seems to be heavily weighted towards graphic artists, which we also do not seem to be attracting to our Friday Morning Group meetings.

This Saturday at 4 PM a portrait of St. Pete native, Governor Charlie Crist will be unveiled at the St. Pete History Museum on the Pier approach. No mention has been made of the artist in the newspaper coverage of this upcoming event. Imagine that. However, it should be an interesting crowd. I am looking forward to seeing the portrait and meeting the artist.

And with that, I am going to just repeat that I am going to increase my efforts to be a better ambassador for the Friday Morning Group. How about you?

Art Happenings and Other Stuff

2007-06-13T21:38:00.000-07:00

Last Friday morning was a bit of a reprieve from talk of cuts to arts funding and their impact on the community. Not that it didn't come up at all. But the bulk of the discussion last Friday was more about art happenings. Imagine that.

A Center for Photographic Arts is soon to open at 316 Central Avenue. This is below the parking garage of the former Florida Federal building, which provides them with a good amount of storefront window space to display photographs. It sounds like it is going to be something of an artists cooperative. Amongst the organizers is Richard Stewart, a member of the Artists Gallery Royale.

The Friends of the St. Petersburg Police is going to be commissioning a sculpture to honor fallen police officers. The sculpture will be situated on a plaza to be built in Demens Landing. The winner of the commission will not only create the sculpture, but will be responsible for the overall construction of the plaza. Sounds like an interesting project.

We also had a discussion about a more creative use of the band break time at the Saturday Morning Market. It has been proposed to the organizers of the Market that the band break time be used for clips or short performances by various community arts groups. Say the Palladium, or the Studio@620 for example. Stay tuned for more on this.

Of course we could not get through a morning without a discussion of the topics of contemporary concern. We did discuss the idea that potentially more arts funding is available from the County Convention and Visitors Bureau. Their mission is to deliver tourist dollars to Pinellas County. One of the ways that they do this is to provide arts funding for cultural tourism. And they are looking to do more of it. They have a new director who, while in a similar position in Lee County (Fort Myers - Sanibel), marketed their community based artists as a way to break through the clutter of the other Florida beach communities. We are going to arrange to have him visit us some time in the not too distant future.

And that brought us to a discussion about getting more organized. Actually, this was a rather lively discussion. If we are going to advance the concepts in our Friday Morning Group Concept Paper directly, that will definitely require some sort of formal organization. However, sentiment ran strongly that the Friday Morning Group functions best as a "think tank" or an idea incubator. That is the unique feature of this group. Just a place where people can go and kick around ideas.

Some of the ideas that have gotten kicked around or germinated in the Friday Morning Group discussions have taken root here in the community. That has been largely due to individuals or groups of FMG members taking these ideas and working them into reality outside of the group. Or it has occurred because of the influence that our groups' discussions have had on other organizations. No doubt if some of these particular ideas that have been discussed are going to be implemented, that process will have to be repeated.

In the meantime, we will continue to talk about what interests us. And hopefully, we will continue to give others something to talk about.

Faulkner Campaign Flexes Its Muscles

2007-06-07T13:25:00.000-07:00

In a show of strength for his fledgling campaign, Gershom Faulkner was treated to a star studded fund raiser tonight. Faulkner, 36, is a candidate for St. Pete City Council District 7 seat being vacated by the term limited Rene Flowers. Among the hosts for the event at Mid Town Sundries were State Senator Charlie Justice and State Representatives Bill Heller and Rick Kriseman. Sending their regrets at not being able to attend were County Commissioners Ken Welch and Calvin Harris. They were at a county budget hearing.

The fund raising event was organized so that the state legislators could participate before heading to Tallahassee for the special session on property taxes. Senator Justice said some very kind words of support for Gershom Faulkner. Faulkner's campaign manager, Mitch Kates, gave a rousing talk about the need to get out and work hard to make sure that Gershom is elected. Faulkner thanked the crowd of approximately 50 for showing their support. He promised to work hard to continue to earn their support and was looking forward to serving the community. Faulkners' experience in the process, having worked as a legislative aide to State Representative Frank Peterman for 6 years and his current work for Congresswoman Kathy Castor have prepared him to hit the ground running on Day 1 at the City Council.

Ideas Bouncing Around All Over the Place

2007-06-06T16:16:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, the Friday Morning Group was one of those meetings you wanted to be at. About a dozen of us were joined by St. Petersburg City Council Vice Chair Jamie Bennett. Jamie came all prepared to tell us about the situation the City of St. Petersburg finds itself in vis a vis the property tax reforms coming from Tallahassee.

For those of you who may not know, the City of St. Petersburg has already sent a letter to all the Arts and Social Services groups that the City helped to fund last year. That letter told these organizations that they better count on zero money from the City this coming year. The reason for that, of course, is the uncertainty all the local governments are facing about the severity of the budget cuts that may be enforced by the State Legislature.

So, the first part of the meeting, Jamie ran through some figures for us about what kinds of impacts various levels of revenue reduction would have on the City's budget. It was pretty clear under just about any scenario, the Arts are definitely on the chopping block. Jamie was very sympathetic to us, but he is only one vote on the Council. And they are all facing some very hard choices.

So, we started kicking around the usual ideas. You know, contacting our state legislators, contacting the Governor. The problem is, most of our local state legislators understand that severe restrictions on local revenues will have serious impacts on the quality of life here. And the governor is all for cutting taxes for the people.

So it looked like we were really going nowhere fast. And then Peter Kageyama tossed three pennies onto the table. Peter asked us to take a moment and realize we were all creative people in the room and that maybe we should be thinking on the creative edge. The pennies were about an idea to find a dedicated funding source for government support of the arts. Now that's thinking on the creative edge. This idea could be dubbed Pennies for Progress or Coins for Quality. That idea sparked a whole series of ideas about how to deal with a situation of reduced government support for the arts.

Other ideas flew around fast and furious after that. Asking art patrons to perhaps donate pieces that were excess to their needs to be auctioned off to support the arts was one idea. Others were mentioned. But the whole idea is that it got people thinking creatively about how we could make lemonade out of the lemons we are sure to be experiencing soon.

I was glad I was there. Stay tuned for what happens next.

Six Months Back...And...Forth

2007-05-30T14:30:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd take a look back at the last six months. Last December we re kick started the Friday Morning Group. Can you believe it has been six months already? I know I can't. Back on December 8th we got the 2006 / 2007 version of the Friday Morning Group off to a rousing start. We reviewed some of the accomplishments from the past. The Manhattan Casino restoration was one of the first projects the group took on. Also, the idea and practice of artists being able to live and work in the same location was spearheaded by the Friday Morning Group. The Studio@620; The new, more casual look of the Orchestra's catalog is a direct result of the groups' conversation with the Orchestra. My favorite little passage is this

A couple of years ago, a reporter from Creative Loafing sat in on one of the meetings of the group. We were discussing the Chamber of commerce brochure that proclaimed on its cover that St. Petersburg was the "City of the Arts". Well, our artists particularly thought that was just pretentious as hell and were pretty contemptible of the whole idea. Yes St. Petersburg is a good place for artists. It could be better. But to proclaim St. Pete as The City of the Arts? Hello.

So we were discussing this foolishness and kicking around ideas. One of our members came up with this:

St. Petersburg is not the City of the Arts, the city is the art.

That comment wound up in print. I think that's a pretty good explanation of the Friday Morning Group. The beautiful City of St. Petersburg is the canvas that is our art work in progress. We continue to put more creative touches on it all the time.

Moving on to January 2007, we talked about this

Our main focus again was how to support artists in St. Petersburg. It was suggested that one way to do that would be to try and get the City and the County to market us as an art buyers destination. The tie ins with economic and tourist development became rapidly apparent.Michele Tuegel of the County Cultural Affairs Council suggested that for St. Petersburg, it would make sense to approach Mayor Rick Baker. Herb Snitzer indicated he would contact Pinellas County Commission Chair Ken Welch.

Later on in January, we had this happy news to report

Last Friday we welcomed back some old faces and greeted some new (to me anyway) faces. Bob Devin Jones brought us up to date on the goings on at the Studio @ 620. The Studio currently is showing a very interesting photography exhibit by Zachariah Thompson. The photographs are of laundromats reminding all of us of the good old (or maybe not so good old) days. The show has been very well received, perhaps because we all can relate to the subject in one way or another.

The multi-faceted Peter Kagayama, current President of Creative Tampa Bay, another old familiar face also joined us last Friday. Peter just returned from some more of his Creative Community globe hopping to Singapore and other interesting far off places. Being the ever so deft communication specialist that he is, Peter dropped the phrase "creative competitiveness"on us. That has a ring to it doesn't it?

Len Neff also joined us. Besides Len's well known work with beaded glass, Len talked about his work with public art in Pinellas County.

And our old friend Nancy Loehr dropped by with County Commissioner Ken Welch in tow.

Moving on into February, we had this

This past Friday, February 2nd, may have been a watershed mojo moment for the Friday Morning Group. Not only were we honored to be joined by Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch, we were also able to extend a Friday Morning Welcome to St. Petersburg City Council Member Leslie Curran.

Ken must have asked at least three times, if not more, for the group to tell him what it is we wanted him to do for us. ... After Ken left us, Leslie Curran took out her hammer and beat us over the head, gently. She admonished the group to make sure and follow through to deliver our wish list to Ken. It was clear to Leslie, and she made it clear to us that Ken wanted to help us, but he needed guidance on exactly what we wanted him to vote on.

Well that little session morphed into OMG - We Have a Plan . A group of volunteers got together and came up with the Friday Morning Group Concept Paper which included plans for the "Pinellas Prize" and a Creativity Center.

As time went along, we continued to work on bring the Friday Morning Group Concept Paper to life. But we also talked about the Art of the Homeless and about Attitudinal Change . And we even had time to be wowed by Irish Eyes. That happened when Peter Kagayama brought us a very special guest indeed, Roisin McDonough, the Chief Executive of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the equivalent of our National Endowment for the Arts. Boy did we get an earful about what respect for artists looks like there.

Moving along into April, we began a conversation about implementing the Friday Morning Group Concept Paper at a very tough time for local governments in this climate of tax reform. We talked about being leaders instead of followers and The Value of Art Education .

Lately we have been Looking at the Long Term nature of attitudinal change. Last week we talked about group life cycles and dynamics.

And that is the point. This is your group. It will be whatever you want it to be. Or not.

A Group Not Heard From

2007-05-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

I'm here to talk about a group you have yet to hear from. It harkens back to the old "Silent Majority" days. Thses folks are the owners of homesteaded property for whom Save Our Homes is working exactly as intended.

You don't hear from them, because for the most part, as far as taxes go, they are reasonably content. Remember these are the people who voted for Save Our Homes not really all that long ago. That's right. Let me repeat that. The voters in Florida voted for Save Our Homes. And it is doing exactly what it was intended to do. Homesteaders are not getting taxed out of their homes.

Now Save Our Homes isn't perfect. It has had the unintended consequence of making it more difficult for folks to sell their home and replace it with another. That is something that should get fixed, and I expect it is going to be fixed in the special session. But for all you people who are here to complain about Save Our Homes, leave me alone. I bought my current home in downtown St. Pete 11 years ago. With exemptions and thanks to Save Our Homes, my taxable value is just under what I paid for it. There are many, many folks who are in exactly the same situation I am in. Start messing with them and you better really learn how to duck and cover in a big hurry.

Now I do believe there are some folks who need tax relief. Commercial property, including rental property needs relief. I wish there was more tax refrom focus for those property owners. And the legislature could do us all a favor if they would do something that really fixed the insurance mess. They sure didn't do it in January.

I have lived in St. Petersburg for 51 years. I have seen many, many changes here over those years. I love this City, and I love the direction it is headed. Some call this the City of the Arts. I say the City is the art. Let's keep it that way.

Looking at the Long Term

2007-05-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

Last week, at the Friday Morning Group, we talked about the long term nature of attitudinal change. Sometimes progress can be agonizingly slow, but it is progress none the less. Sometimes it is two steps forward and one step back. Nobody likes taking that step back, but you are still one step forward than you were before. Change is never easy, and it really doesn't come rapidly very often. Most times when it seems change is coming rapidly, when you really look at it, you find it has been a long time coming.

Speaking of long term, we talked about an opportunity for next year. The Pinellas Convention and Visitors Bureau has a grant program called "New Product Development". For those of you who don't, know the Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) is part of the Pinellas County Government. It gets its funding from the bed tax on hotel rooms. This funding stream is not at risk in the property tax reform struggle going on in Tallahassee.

Last year, the CVB had $250 thousand budgeted for New Product Development Grants. They were only able to fund approximately $180 thousand to qualified programs. The purpose of the New Product Development Grants is to draw more tourists to Pinellas County. The County Commission believes in these grants and has urged that they be increased despite the inability to fully fund them last year. This coming year the budget has been increased to $300 thousand.

The reason that this is an opportunity for next year is that the deadline for grant applications for this year was last Friday. That's the bad news. The good news is that we now have a year to develop the FMG concepts into a grant proposal for next year. One other piece of good news is the the CVB has a brand new director. DT Minnich has just come on board from a similar position in Lee County. He has been known to use the community based artists in Lee County as a way to differentiate his area from other Florida beach communities. I think this is a great opportunity for us. We look forward to the opportunity for DT to join us at the Friday Morning Group sometime soon.

Sometimes progress can be agonizingly slow, but it is progress none the less.

Arts and Attitide

2007-05-16T09:18:00.000-07:00

I want to start this off by welcoming back Shirley Linde who joined us last Friday for the first time since her unfortunate accident. We missed you, Shirley.

Besides the very welcome appearance of Shirley, we had another lively, engaging discussion last week. There was an update on the Pinellas County Arts Panel grants award meeting. Apparently it did not go as collaboratively as in years past. It seems the panelists were not given to interactivity with the grant requestors and the process was less than pleasant for the grant seekers. The panel seemed particularly tough on the arts organizations from St. Petersburg. These groups received criticism from the panel for being too St. Petersburg-centric. I'm not sure I would totally agree with that characterization. Looks like there is some room for improvement in this process.

An update was also discussed about the progress, or lack there of, on the Friday Morning Group Concept Paper. It is becoming more and more apparent that private funding will need to be secured before any public funding will be available. Even that is problematic given the current status of tax "reform" in Tallahassee. As many of you are aware, the City of St. Petersburg has already given notice to all the cultural and social service organizations that had previously received city funding that none will be available this year. The impact of these property tax "reforms" is going to have a severe impact on local governments. Once again, the arts are right up there on the chopping block, pretty much first in line.

If you would like to let your state legislators know what you think about this, there are several legislative delegation town hall meetings coming up to discuss this. The first one is this Thursday (May 17) at the Saint Petersburg College Seminole Campus Digitorium building. It will be hosted by State Representative Janet Long and will be from 5 PM to 8 PM. The next one will be May 23 from 6 to 8 PM at the Sunshine Center in downtown St. Pete. That one will be hosted by Representative Bill Heller. And State Senator Charlie Justice will host one on May 31st at the Pinellas Realtors Organization building on Ulmerton Road. I would encourage you all to take this opportunity to let your legislators know how what you think about this matter - whatever you think about it.

And I would encourage you all to take the time to drop in on our Friday Morning Group meetings. We are going to need all your insights and ideas about how to make this a better community for artists - and everyone else - going forward.

Local Elections This Year

2007-05-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

Before we get to the Presidential Primary here in Florida, we have local elections in St. Petersburg and Largo. The St. Petersburg primary is in September. Four seats are up, two are open due to term limits. These elections will be a test of organization capabilities.; Although officially non partisan, almost no one really believes that.

Follow me for a look at how these races are shaping up.

Running for Re-election

Two seats are held by incumbents running for re-election. Herb Polson was appointed to fill the seat vacated by Rick Kriseman. So far, no one has filed the necessary paperwork to run against Herb.

Jamie Bennett is running for re-election to his District 5 Council seat. Jamie has yet to draw oppostion. However, the Republicans have targeted him for defeat. Jamie is looking forward to the challenge.

Open Seats

Bill Foster and Renee Flowers can not run for their respective seats due to term limits. That leaves District Three and District Seven looking for new Council Members. Several people are looking at these two seats.

District Three covers Snell Isle and Shore Acres and other parts of northeast St. Petersburg on the mainland. Only one person has filed the paperwork to run. However, at least two other folks are looking at this seat. Bill Dudley, who was defeated by Bill foster 4 years ago, has filed to run again. The Democrats have some one lined up to run for the seat. This person could conceivably keep the number of females on Council at two. The Republicans, not wild about Dudley's chances for winning this seat, have asked someone else to get into the race. This person is experienced in running campaigns for this seat. He should also have a lot of support from the Albert Whitted Airport crowd. These folks are very vocal and very active.

District 7 has already drawn two young men who have filed to run. Wengay Newton and Gershom Faulkner are set to run in the September primary. Wengay's brother is head of the local firefighters union. Speaking of active, the firefighters are a group that every candidate attempts to woo. But Newton has effectively taken them out of play for Faulkner. However, Faulkner, a long time aide for state Rep. Frank Peterman, is no stranger to running campaigns in this district. He was Congresswoman Cathy Castors deputy campaign manager with primary responsibility for the Pinellas part of the district. He currently is the Outreach Coordinator for Castor.

Largo

I admit to not knowing as much as I should about the Largo races. but with the Steve / Susan Stanton escapades recent in most Largo voters minds, this should be pretty interesting. Mayor Pat Gerard, who supported Stanton, is running for re-election this go round. If no one has filed yet to run against her, I am sure someone will. I am going to have to do some more research before I can say anymore on the Largo races.

We are going to have some live fire training this year to test our abilities to get our message across and to get out the vote. I am looking forward to the challenge.

Participatory Art

2007-05-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

There was a spirited discussion at the Friday Morning Group last week. Most of the discussion centered around how to put the ideas that have been bounced around at the Friday Morning Group into action. This would include the ideas espoused in the Friday Morning Group Concept Paper and other ideas about making the community better for artists.

Here's what we came up with. We are asking as many of you as possibly can to join us this week. We are going to attempt to put together an action plan to move these ideas closer to fruition. We need you to participate both in the planning and the execution of the plan. Consider this a participatory art exercise. We have the rough idea for subject matter and a blank canvas (or piece of paper, or computer screen) in front of us. We need to bring this rough idea into life. And we need your participation to do it.

Herb Snitzer and I began our quest for private funding for our concepts last week. We met with Dick Jacobs of the law firm Trenam Kemker. Dick, besides being an accomplished attorney, is also a skilled photographer. He is also the former chairman of the Art Center Board of Directors. And his firm has the largest collection of photography in the Southeast US. If you know of any other folks who could be helpful to us in the acquisition of private funding, please let Herb or me know.

In other news:

The annual NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet will be held June 2nd at the Coliseum. Tickets can be had from Herb Snitzer.
Patrice Pucci related her experience at the Destin Jazz Festival. Despite being held on the Redneck Riviera, there was a very heavy flavor of African American participation in the audience.
The City of St. Petersburg has sent letters to all the recipients of cultural and social grants informing them to expect no money from the City this year. This included more than $100 thousand for the Florida Orchestra and funding for the Black Nativity. This is a result of the pending property tax "reform" that is bouncing around the state legislature. The legislature will be back for a special session in June to deal with property taxes.
To help us understand the impact that this tax "reform" will have on St. Petersburg and our quality of life, St. Petersburg City Council member Jamie Bennett will join us on Friday, June 1st.

Please plan to join us this Friday for a little participatory art.

Wide Ranging Discussion: Arts and Society

2007-05-01T11:43:00.000-07:00

Last week's attendees at the Friday Morning Group engaged in a wide ranging discussion of the Arts and their impact on society (and vice versa). Topics covered included African American Heritage and diversity and tolerance in media in the now post Imus age.

We discussed Bob Devin Jones' opening performance in Permanent Collection at the studio@620 (http://www.thestudioat620.com/p_tpir07.htm):

Permanent Collection is a searing examination of racial politics that ultimately ask how much space – literally and figuratively – the white world gives to African-Americans. What is the cost of failing to view the world through another’s eyes?

Those who have seen it gave rave reviews and highly recommended that the rest of us go see the play.

Herb Snitzer gave us an update on his activity for the week - a table at the African American Heritage gathering at the Hilton. There he met the lovely director of an African American museum in Jacksonville. They are going to be working on a possible showing of Herb's work and tying it into the Civil Rights movement. That developed into an interesting discussion on the diversity of cultural offerings in Jacksonville - museums, galleries, restaurants and art exhibits. Jacksonville has a rich cultural background, fueled in part by its traditional role as the financial capitol of the state.

There was also a discussion of the City's situation with the Public Arts program given the current tax "reform" climate. Arts are way down the list of people's thoughts, particularly those 1 1/2 paychecks away from being homeless. There was also a comment that art is messy - it causes creative thinking. We generally agreed that the arts potential for this community is great, but that perhaps the governance isn't there for it - yet. Anyone interested in a discussion of the value of art education can find it here.

So, that's a brief rundown of what you missed last Friday. Why not stop by this week and experience it firsthand?

The Value of Art Education

2007-04-28T16:58:00.000-07:00

This may be a particularly apropos time for a diary on this topic. This very week The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation joined forces with The Broad Foundation and announced a $60 million political style campaign for Strong American Schools called Ed in 08.

In Florida, my home state, the combination of rising property insurance premiums and property tax increases is driving the state legislature towards draconian changes in the tax system. The major target is property taxes which are the only source of revenue for local school funding requirements and the major source of revenue for local governments. The state legislature's well intended efforts to provide much needed relief to property owners are about to have some very severe unintended consequences for the quality of life here in Florida.

Caught squarely in the headlights of those unintended consequences are the arts and art education. The arts are always high on the list of the first place to cut funding in times like these. Follow me below the fold to examine why this is precisely the wrong place to start cutting.

My good friend Alonewolf , has heard more than enough about workforce training. As the CEO of an innovative high tech company, he worries about creating the next generation of leaders and creative thinkers. "Workforce Training" makes him think of the 1984 Apple Super Bowl commercial with the suited automatons marching over the cliff. At a recent "Regional Leadership Breakfast" in St. Petersburg, the topic was "Education in Florida". There were several comments and questions about "workforce training." But at this "leadership" breakfast, no one seemed to much care about leadership training.

New Horizons for Learning provides a terrific resource for the value of arts in education. Their prologue states in part:

Today it is recognized that to be truly well educated one must not only learn to appreciate the arts, but must have rich opportunities to actively participate in creative work. The arts are languages that most people speak, cutting through individual differences in culture, educational background, and ability. They can bring every subject to life and turn abstractions into concrete reality. Learning through the arts often results in greater academic achievement and higher test scores.

In Why are the Arts Important?, Dee Dickinson provides a 15 point checklist. Here are my favorites from that list:

They improve academic achievement -- enhancing test scores, attitudes, social skills, critical and creative thinking.

They exercise and develop higher order thinking skills including analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and "problem-finding."

They provide the means for every student to learn.

To my way of thinking, that should be enough to end this diary right here. But not every decision maker is influenced solely by these factors. So here is something decision makers do understand - $$$$$$.

The Economic Impact of Florida’s Arts and Cultural Industry released by the Florida Cultural Alliance in January 2004 is a study by Dr. William Stronge of Florida Atlantic University. The study is based on fiscal year 2001. Some highlights are:

Florida’s arts and cultural industry is one of the fastest growing in the state. Its annual statewide economic impact has grown from $1.7 billion in 1997 to over $2.9 billion and now supports over 28,000 full-time equivalent jobs. (That is $104 thousand per full time equivalent job!)

Attendees at the programs and events of not-for-profit cultural organizations exceeded 400 million in 2000-01. Audience participation is significant because attendance at these events generates related commerce for local businesses such as hotels, restaurants, and shops.

An estimated 7 million out-of-state tourists visited Florida’s cultural facilities or attended cultural events as a primary activity. These “cultural” tourists spent $4.5 billion, adding $9.3 billion to the state's gross regional product and creating 103,713 full-time equivalent jobs with a payroll of $2.6 billion.

The Florida Department of State has also published a brochure, Return on Investment: Florida's Cultural, Historical and Library Programs which highlights not only the economic impact of the arts but also the impact of our state's historic preservation and libraries.

Any fair reading of these studies leads to but one conclusion. Funding for the arts and art education is the last place that should be cut. Please join with me in letting our legislative and business leaders know that if they want to be leaders in the future and they want Strong American Schools , they need to lead with the arts.

Soliciting Your Ideas and Support

2007-04-25T08:03:00.000-07:00

It was a quiet week this past Friday at the Friday Morning Group, my favorite event of the week. That does not at all mean it was not interesting.

The main topic of discussion was how to increase attendance at the Friday Morning Group. Since we tried to re-kick start the Group just before the end of last year, we have had mixed results. We had very good attendance after the holiday break. We have had good attendance when we have had special guests, such as County Commissioner Ken Welch or Roisin McDonough, Director of the Northern Ireland Arts Council. But attendance at the FMG when there is no such guest on the agenda is spotty at best.

Various thoughts about group dynamics and life cycles were discussed. There was some discussion of what the focus of the group ought to be. We have lately narrowed the focus somewhat by focusing a lot of attention on the FMG Concept Paper with the Pinellas Prize and the Creativity Center. While those are important topics, it was suggested that they should not be the only focus of the FMG.

There was also a discussion about the every week nature of the meeting. Some thought was given to the idea that an every week meeting loses some of its feeling of speciality. The idea was floated that an effort should be made to make at least one meeting a month more of a special event, perhaps with a guest speaker or some other event type meeting.

Please let us know your thoughts on these or any other ideas you might have on increasing interest and attendance at the FMG. I can be reached by email at gatordem@verizon.net, or by phone 727-823-3074.

There was some discussion of the efforts to move the FMG Concept Paper proposals towards reality. I spoke before the County Commission twice last week on the subject of supporting artists in the community and the Concept Paper proposals specifically. I also attended a planning meeting of the Pinellas County Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB). It has been suggested to us by at least two County Commissioners that the CVB's funding is not subject to curtailment under the property tax proposals currently being debated in Tallahassee. Also, the CVB is geting a new director, D.T. Minich. While the CVB Director in Lee County, Mr. Minich used the community based artists there to market his community and as a way to break through the "clutter" of other beach communities in Florida. This seems like a promising line to pursue.

Speaking of things getting curtailed in the current tax cutting environment, I attended a very interesting City Council workshop in St. Petersburg last week. Ann Wykel presented a very interesting study on how to improve the Public Arts program in St. Petersburg. While the Council Members who attended were impressed with the plan, they were hesitant to even have it formally presented to them at a televised meeting. The City is facing some very severe revenue shortages under any of the property tax reduction plans currently being debated by the legislature. As you might suspect, programs supporting arts, cultural and charitable activities of the City are prime targets for cuts. Please let your local elected officials know how you feel about these possibilities. It wouldn't hurt to let your state legislators know either.

And please try to attend a meeting of the Friday Morning Group in the near future. Bring a friend and let other interested folks know about us. We can use your help.

Charlie Crist: a Wolf in Progressive Clothing

2007-04-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

Over at RockridgeNation right now, there is a posting up about Florida's new and so far hugely popular Governor, Charlie Crist, entitled A John Lennon Conservative?

As a resident of Charlie Crist's hometown, I can bring an up close and personal perspective. I have known Charlie Crist for over 20 years. One need make no mistake about Charlie - he is a consummate politician. I think he is doing these "progressive" things because he does believe in them. But I'm not so sure he believes in them in and of themselves, but as in where the political advantage lies.

Florida is one of those states that really makes people shake their heads, especially progressives. Florida is about 4 states in one. There is the very progressive Southeast Florida (tempered by the reactionary ant-Castro Cubans in Miami), We have the very conservative Southwest Florida. We have the moderate I-4 corridor through the middle of the state. And we have conservative North Florida (tempered by the two big university cities, Gainesville and Tallahassee.)

Boiling all this down, Florida actually comes out as much more moderate than folks on either end of the political spectrum want to admit. Charlie Crist knows this very well. His biggest political defeat, and his springboard onto the state political stage, came when he took on the moderate and hugely popular US Senator Bob Graham.

Charlie Crist is hugely popular right now because he is trying to be all things to all people. The RockridgeNation posting did not mention Charlies' number one priority - his "anti-murder" bill. He demanded and received it as the first bill he signed from the regular legislative session. This bill requires judges to keep probation violators in jail until the judge certifies the person is not a danger to society. The cost of building the jail cells needed for this could well bankrupt the state. My guess is the Florida Legislature is not going to provide all the necessary funding for this, thus creating an onerous burden for the County jails where most of these folks are going to be housed.

Charlie Crist also knows that for every progressive action he takes, he must do something to satisfy his political base. Thus his support of the failed school accountability test program and tax cuts. Crist is playing both ends against the middle. Whether he can continue to pull it off is an open question.

Stay tuned.

Lead, Follow or...

2007-04-17T19:19:00.000-07:00

The conversation continued last Friday Morning regarding efforts to implement the proposals in the Friday Morning Group's Concept Paper. Herb Snitzer and I reported on our meeting with Pinellas County Commissioner Karen Seel. We had a very good meeting with Commissioner Seel (we tried very hard not to talk about money).

We had previously sent the Concept Paper to Karen for her to review prior to our meeting. We asked her to just think about the concepts and leave the money aside for the moment. Ultimately we did talk about money. It is unavoidable in the current property tax "reform" environment in the state legislature. We did ask her to think about the funding for the proposals not as "new" money projects but as a rather modest reallocation of existing Cultural Affairs dollars.

We did succeed in getting Commissioner Seel to be supportive of the concept. However, the money part was definitely going to be a problem. We were urged again to look to the Tourist Development Council (TDC) as their revenue stream (bed tax on hotel and motel stays) is not going to be impacted by whatever property tax "reform" ultimately occurs. The TDC, through the Convention and Visitors Bureau, controls Tourist Development Tax grants and New Product Development grants. Ken Welch has also suggested that the TDC would be a good place to look for funding as their revenue stream is protected.

The conversation turned to the idea of government funding in general. The Concept Paper and requests for County funding all stemmed from Commissioner Welch's visit with us in February. Herb Suggested that we approach some friends in the corporate community to help us identify arts supporters in that community. Then we could strategize on the best way to pitch our proposal to them for seed money funding. We could then re-approach government for public / private partnership funding.

We renewed the discussion about the proposed size of the awards for the Pinellas Prize. Again we talked about the South Florida Cultural Councils banding together to give 10 $15,000 awards to artists every year. It was noted that Tampa gives a $15,000 stipend to their Poet Laureate and a $25,000 stipend to their Photo Laureate every year.

Herb said it was time to stop looking to others for "models" of what we ought to be doing. If we are going to think of ourselves as a leading arts community, we need to start acting like leaders. It is time for us to quit following what other communities might be doing. As a leading arts community we should be raising the bar, not seeking only to emulate someone else.

If you wish to see these proposals from our Concept Paper get implemented, we are going to need your help. We are going to need you to help us secure private funding. We are going to need your help in advocating these proposals before governmental bodies. And we are going to need your help in promoting these proposals with your friends, neighbors, relatives and anyone else who will listen.

It is time to quit following and lead.

A Conversation Has Begun

2007-04-10T12:59:00.000-07:00

Last week at the Friday Morning Group a rather lively discussion took place. Judith Powers had written up her comments on our Concept Paper. These comments were distributed to all seven County Commissioners and to Liz Warren, Judith's direct supervisor and to Paul Cozzee, the Assistant County Administrator under which the Cultural Affairs Department now falls (Parks, Leisure and Culture).

Herb Snitzer gave us a brief review of Judith's comments. They were pretty much what was expected after Judith's visit to our Group on March 9th. If you wish to read Judith's comments, you can find them here. The attendees at the meeting pretty much agreed that despite Judith's comments, we would continue to pursue the concepts of the Pinellas Prize and the Creativity Center contained in the Concept Paper. Also, we agreed that what we would do is advocate for our concepts and not get into any kind of dispute with anyone who has expressed different views on the concepts.

Along those lines, apparently word of the concept paper has spread throughout the artists community. Mike Conway reported on some conversations where some artists were pretty much stunned at the suggested size of the Pinellas Prize. Apparently there is a little bit of grumbling about the size of the prize, with some folks suggesting that perhaps the money could be spread out among more artists. Personally, that is part of the attitudinal change that we have previously talked about. Given the scale of the Cultural Departments budget ($2.1 million), the size of the prize ($50,000) is really not that much money. Heck, in this day and age, $50,000 is not a lot of money period.

Speaking of money, Michele Tuegel reported on an artists workshop that was held to go over requirements for the $1,000 grants the County is offering. On fairly short notice, about 40 artists showed up for the workshop. One of the points of interest to Judith was that after the workshop was over, many of the artists stayed and chatted amongst themselves. It seemed to her that this indicated that a gathering place for artists, where they could feel comfortable to meet and discuss their art, their lives and their daily travails might be a very good thing indeed.

There was also some discussion about the Cultural Affairs departments new location off of Ulmerton Road where there is at least meeting space available. This location is co-located with St. Pete College's mid county location. Michele reported to us about the business development courses that SPC is offering there. We have had many discussions over the years about the need for artists to recognize that they are, in fact, small business people. As such, artists could use help in the area of business development. It was suggested that perhaps SPC could be persuaded to deliver some of these business development sessions geared towards artists.

Stay tuned for further developments.

The Property Tax Puzzle

2007-04-08T03:10:00.000-07:00

Cross Posted from Florida Kossacks

Property tax reform is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, issue facing the state legislature this year. There has been much hand wringing all around. Many hare brained schemes have been floated. Civic Concern has just published a thoughtful, reasoned history of the property tax problems in Florida and proposed some solutions. Some commenters on the St. Peterburg Times Buzz Blog piece on this report claim that

The people want major reduction in property taxes

Others argue

I don't think "the people" want a bunch of half-cocked, sound bite ideas. ...
Recent polls show they're pretty skeptical of all the various proposals.

Most of "the people", i.e. the voters in this state are already benefiting from the "Save Our Homes" tax cap. Homesteaders in the City of St. Petersburg saw their City taxes stay essentially flat this year in dollar terms. These are not "the people" clamoring the most for property tax reductions. The "Save Our Homes" amendment has worked exactly as it was intended. Homesteaders are not being forced out of their homes by rising property taxes.

There have been some unintended consequences, some foreseen, others unforeseen. The foreseen consequences are that other property tax payers would pay a larger share of the tax burden if homestead property taxes were "capped". That is certainly happening. Business property owners, and by extension, renters have been seeing their uncapped property valuations and their taxes going through the roof with the recent boom in real estate prices. Chief among the unforeseen consequences are homesteaders being "trapped" in their current homes because they couldn't afford the taxes on a new property if they moved and had to step up to current market valuations.

One of the most curious scenes in this whole property tax situation is how local governments are made out as the whipping boys in this "debate". I say curious because just last fall Leadership Florida did a comprehensive survey of Florida residents. Among the key findings in this survey was the relative approval ratings of the various levels of government. Fully 61% of the respondents see the state government as doing only a fair or poor job. County governments were rated fair or poor by 55% of respondents. Only 38% of city dwellers rated their city governments as fair or poor. The state government, which people like the least, is pointing the tax reform gun right at the heads of local governments, which people like the most. I'm not sure how well that is going to work out for them.

Besides, the increasing revenue requirements of local governments are not entirely of their own making. One of the biggest drivers of increasing expenditures by local governments is growth. And that is not just on a linear basis, because growth does not pay for itself. The new taxes generated are not sufficient to pay for the increased capital needs (roads, schools, sewer) or service needs (police, fire, garbage collection) caused by the growth. Neither have we collected sufficient impact fees to pay for this growth. This, in effect, has shifted the tax burden for growth onto existing tax payers and not the new ones.That is the major reason I am not at all bothered by the apparent inequities in taxes paid for newly built homes relative to existing homes covered by the "Save our Homes" amendment. To the extent that local governments could have ameliorated this situation by charging higher impact fees, it is their fault. To the extent that the state did not do a better job of regulating growth and anticipating the increased costs, it is their fault.

But the question really is not about the blame game. The question is what to do to solve the very real property tax problems that do exist. First, here is what not to do. Arbitrary roll backs of local government revenues are not the answer. Most local elected officials are much more careful with their taxpayers dollars than the folks in Tallahassee ever were. Do you really want them deciding how much your local government can spend on your police and fire departments?

We can do something to stop the bleeding for non homestead property owners. We can change the way properties are valued. Currently, non homestead properties are valued on the basis of their "highest and best use". That is to say that the corner ice cream shop will be taxed as if it were a luxury condo building site if that is what the appraisers deem the "highest and best use" for the property. Changing the valuation method to one based on the value of the current use of a developed property would keep businesses and renters from being pilloried by higher taxes due to speculation in the real estate market.

We can fix one of the unintended consequences of the "Save Our Homes" amendment. We can make the tax benefit accrued by a homestead property owner portable. If the difference between the market value and the capped value of a property is X, we could let that homestead property owner take that X amount of benefit to a new homestead with them. Some say that this might not withstand constitutional scrutiny. I believe that problem could be overcome by carefully crafting the law and developing an appropriate legislative history. All citizens would in fact be treated the same for tax purposes because they could all accrue tax benefits on an equal basis.

These two measures would solve the most egregious issues involving property taxes that we currently face. Turning back the clock and pretending that local governments could maintain the same level of services with less money is nonsensical. Having Tallahassee decide what those levels ought to be really makes no sense. Providing solutions that will work into the future is what we should be striving for.

Not This Week

2007-04-03T20:06:00.000-07:00

Usually, I will write up a little something to update you all on what went on at the Friday Morning Group last week. I'm not going to do that this week. If you weren't there and you really want to know, ask somebody who was.

Instead, I am just going to say that I hope you all got out and participated in some of things going on around here that were not cars racing or planes flying like:

Project Home in Williams Park
Pedro's show at the State Theatre on Sunday night.
Heb Snitzer leading a discussion on the Birmingham Bombing at the Studio@620

With any luck at all, I'll have a little more to say next week.

Irish Eyes

2007-03-27T21:20:00.000-07:00

WOW!!!

That about describes our Friday Morning Group meeting last week for me. For those of you who weren't there, well you can follow along below.

Peter Kagayama brought us a very special guest indeed last Friday. Roisin McDonough is the Chief Executive of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the equivalent of our National Endowment for the Arts. Boy did we get an earful about what respect for artists looks like there.

Peter and Roisin had been touring some of the cultural hot spots in our country. They had been to Washington, DC, Austin, Texas, and of course here in the Tampa Bay area. Roisin is in this country to help promote an Irish arts exposition at the Smithsonian and on the Mall in late June and early July.

Roisin regaled us with some of the things the government of Northern Ireland is doing to demonstrate respect for artists there. The Northern Ireland Arts Council provides an apartment in New York City for a Resident program. There is a similar program in Banf in Canada. Perhaps the most telling sentiment espoused by Roisin is that these programs allow artists "Time and Space" to explore their art without being tied to a specific output. WOW!!!

There is also an artists colony that is supported by both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland governments. The only requirement for these artists is that they have dinner with their fellow artists every evening. Cross-pollination don't you know.

Roisin indicated to us that the single most important thing that we could do to advance the conversation about valuing artists would be to survey the community regarding their attitudes towards artists and the arts. Perhaps we could get the Pinellas County Cultural Council to spearhead that effort?

Another valuable tool would be an artists survey. Northern Ireland did one of these about five years ago and is preparing to update this study. Not surprisingly, the two key findings from this prior survey are:

Artists do not feel valued;
Most artists live in abject poverty at about 20% of the average income in Northern Ireland.

I could ramble on for quite some time about this fantastic FMG meeting. However, I am going to stop here. If you would like more context and to hear different viewpoints, I am providing a list of the participants below. If you want to learn more about Roisin, Peter has provided her CV which is also posted below.

I look forward to seeing you all next Friday.

Partial ist of participants last week:

Peter Kagayama
Michelle Teagle
Bob Devin Jones
Bob Barancik
Bill Moriarty
Cindy McFerrin
Patrice Pucci
Grace-Ann Alfiero (and her sidekick Jenny)

Roisin McDonough

Roisin McDonough is the Chief Executive of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland which is the government body charged with supporting artists and arts organisations across the region. It distributes public subsidy to both artists and arts organisations and is the main agency in Northern Ireland for the arts. It advocates the value of the arts to wider society; it seeks to build audiences and participation in the arts and to strengthen the capacity of arts organisations and artists to pursue their objectives.

It supports projects in hospitals, schools, youth centres, local communities and internationally. The current Rediscover Northern Ireland Programme which is being rolled out in the run up to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on Washington’s Mall, where Northern Ireland’s folklife culture is being presented, is but one example.

Roisin has extensive experience in local government, central government regeneration initiatives and in community development as well as the arts.

Liberal Media Myth Exposed

2007-03-25T06:15:00.000-07:00

The St. Petersburg Times has just given us the smoking gun to expose the myth of the so called "Liberal Media". Your recent editorial regarding the adding of domestic spending to the Iraq "Emergency" Supplemental Appropriations bill is that smoking gun.

You have bought the conservative frame on this spending hook, line and sinker. The folks who were spending like drunken sailors when they held the gavel are now calling the appropriations added by the Democrats "pork". In your editorial, you repeat this characterization. The same folks who had no problems giving billions to Big Oil and billions in no bid contracts to Haliburton claim these domestic spending addons are "pork" and you fell into their trap.

The same folks who didn't pass appropriations bills before the elections are now bemoaning the fact that the new Congress has a different take on spending priorities. Barbara Boxer was dead on last week when she held up her gavel and said "Elections have consequences". Since the Republican controlled Congress would not make the hard spending decisions before the election, the new Congress controlled by Democrats will.

The very idea that the now five year old Iraq war requires "emergency" supplemental appropriations should be raising red flags aplenty. The American people spoke loudly and clearly last November that they wanted this country moving in a different direction. Part of that different direction includes the domestic agenda.

Katrina relief spending on the Gulf Coast, better care for wounded veterans and much needed aid to farmers stuck by their own catastrophes are not "pork". They are the consequences of the election. Big Oil will have to take a back seat now to the Big Needs of the American people.

I'm more than OK with that. It's what I voted for. The fact that you bought the "pork" frame of the Republicans points out the extent to which the "Liberal Media" misstates the facts.

Attitudinal Change

2007-03-13T20:45:00.000-07:00

If last Friday's meeting was any indication, we clearly have our work cut out for us. We have been talking on Friday mornings for a long time now about making this community better for artists. Herb Snitzer put it to County Commissioner Ken Welch that it was about "respect and recognition".

As a result of Ken's visit in early February, a hearty band from our Friday Morning Group put together a concept paper for Ken. You can read the paper here:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfr39tgx_117cgrt39

One of the components calls for a prize modelled after the Kennedy Center Honors to recognize

accomplished artists who reside in Pinellas County in recognition of their lifelong artistic work.

This prize would be accompanied by a $50,000 annual stipend for the Prize Winners for a two year period. All in all a modest proposal for a County who's Cultural Plan has a goal to

Value and assist artists and creative workers as fundamental to a vibrant community

And that's really what we are talking about here. We need to work to create an attitudinal change about the value of artists to our community. We have the ear of one County Commissioner. But if we want to see these concepts come to fruition, we are going to have to start working on building constituencies outside of our own group to support our concepts.

Last week we were visited by Judith Powers to give us some feedback from the County staff about our concept papers' proposals. Judith is the head of the Pinellas County Cultural (formerly Arts) Council which has recently been absorbed into the County Government.

There are two proposals in the Concept Paper. One for the creation by the County of a "Creativity Center". The other is the Pinellas Prize. We spent no time last Friday talking about the Creativity Center. All the discussion focused on the prize. Judith told us right off the bat that our problem was going to be with the $50,000 stipend to the prize winners. That much money going to an individual would be "problematic".

What is problematic is that a County who has a goal to "Value and assist artists and creative workers as fundamental to a vibrant community" has a problem placing a $50,000 value on "accomplished artists who reside in Pinellas County in recognition of their lifelong artistic work".

Bob Devin Jones perhaps said it best when he said placing value on artists is at the core of what we are about. The $50,000 is about valuing artists in the way that our society values things - through financial means.

The real work though is to set out to create the attitudinal change necessary to bring that idea of valuing artists to the forefront. We have the ear of and a proposal before a County Commissioner. To bring our concepts to reality, we need 4 yes votes from the County Commission. To get those 4 yes votes, we've got to get all the communities that we interact with to talk about changing our attitudes about valuing artists. If we get the Commissioners hearing enough different voices in favor of our concept, we can have that attitudinal change we are seeking.

Art of the Homeless

2007-03-07T04:23:00.000-08:00

Even the Friday Morning Group can not avoid the topic of homelessness in St. Pete these days. At both meetings in the last two weeks the topic has come up and been addressed in various ways.

The week before last, City Council Member Leslie Curran joined us again. She reminded us of the St. Petersburg Homeless Summit that was to be held the next day. Herb Snitzer participated in the charette style meeting that was held at the USF Saint Pete Student Activity Center.

Leslie mentioned that Grace-Ann Alfiero of Creative Clay had previously approached the city with a proposal to extend their services to the mentally challenged homeless. I spoke to Grace-Ann about this at the summit. She indicated she was still willing to look at the idea. However, she rightly insisted that sufficient funding would have to be forthcoming to get any such plan to happen.

Mike Conway reminded us of the Project Home show to be held in Williams Park on March 30th and 31st. This show, planned prior to the current homeless plight emerged in St. Pete, is about artists' concepts of what a "home" means or is. There will be a pre-show event at the St. Pete Shuffleboard Club on March 24th. Mike is looking for a home for a post-show event. If anyone has any ideas, let Mike know.

On the topic of keeping artists from becoming homeless, Sandy Tabor reported on how our concept paper was faring at the Pinellas County Government. Commissioner Ken Welch has shared the concept paper with an Assistant County Administrator and with Judith Powers of the County Cultural Commission and asked them to study it. Judith will be joining us this Friday to discuss the concepts with us.

Entirely away from the homeless topic, Bob Barancik brought a new friend on Friday. Lynne Warburg is a photographer living in Sarasota. She has leased the Ringling family's "party house" there and has restyled it as the Ringling Art House. She is using the space as a communal space for artists showings. There is a new show opening Thursday, March 8th at 6 PM. The Ringling Art house is in Sarasota at 7715 Westmoreland Drive. Anyone interested is asked to call 941-296-5942 to RSVP (and to get directions).

Other ongoing and upcoming events:

Herb Snitzer told us of a new show at Salt Creek. Among the featured artists is Herb's wife and a fine artist in her own right, Carol Dameron. Pedro Jarquin of the Nation of Poetry reminded us of his show upcoming at the State Theatre on Sunday, April 1st. Tickets are $10 and can be had by contacting Pedro at 727-698-3998. Advanced ticket sales will help Pedro with some last minute funding needs for the show.

OMG - We Have a Plan

2007-02-20T20:46:00.000-08:00

One of the things I have really enjoyed about our Friday Morning Group is that it is not a very structured affair. People attend, or not, as the spirit moves them. There is no written agenda. It has just been a place where people could float ideas and get feedback from their peers.

That is not to say that nothing constructive has come out of the Friday Morning Group meetings. That is far, far from the truth. It has just sort of worked that individuals or small groups have taken ideas bounced around on Friday Morning and gone out and made something of them. You know who you are and what you have done.

The change started a couple of weeks ago. Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch and St. Petersburg City Council Member Leslie Curran joined us on the same day. Ken solicited our ideas for improving the community for artists. He got an ear load (or two). Fortunately for Ken, he couldn't stay long, he had a dentist appointment. But he did ask the Group to provide him something concrete that we would like to see happen.

This spawned a group of volunteers (a committee?) to do a little visioning to see what they might come up with in response to Ken's request. The response was a "concept paper" that included the Pinellas Prize as a major component. We talked a little about the Pinellas Prize last week ( http://localpoliticsisall.blogspot.com/2007/02/pinellas-prize.html ) . I don't have the position paper in front of me, and I don't want to do it an injustice by trying to paraphrase off the top of my weary head. Suffice it to say, it is an extremely intriguing idea.

Well, this past week, the Friday Morning Group subjected the "concept paper" to a more or less formal view. And the we did something really astounding - we took a vote! Those in attendance voted unanimously to support the "concept paper" and present it to Commissioner Welch. More than that, we agreed to go back to our various places in the world and try to get support for the provisions put forth in the "concept paper". Our hardy band of volunteers (our committee?) agreed to present the paper to Ken and to be available to him to respond to the questions he would surely have.

Now, I don't know about you, but all that sounds like we are getting awfully formal to me. It also sounds like progress.

Would You Give Money to This Man?

2007-02-18T05:01:00.000-08:00

There is an effort under way, quietly, to make an impact on local politics. The goal is to get reasonable people who share progressive values elected to local office. The difference here is to not leave this to chance. This efforts' mission is to identify, nurture and finance these candidates early on in the process.

The business plan, including an initial budget proposal, for this effort has been drafted. Political goals for 2007 have been drafted. Most folks who have been asked about the idea and specific plans have been supportive, in theory.

The issue for this effort, now, is how to turn this theoretical support into concrete support. Unfortunately in realpolitik today, that means money. While many people are supportive of the effort and have added their ideas and encouragement, no one has stepped up to fulfill a financial commitment.

While the effort is designed to be somewhat under the radar, there is a face in the forefront. It is a face that really doesn't seek the spotlight. This might be part of the problem. So what we are going to do here is to describe this face:

Note: Here's a plea. If you think you know the identity of this person, keep it to yourself. Comments and suggestions are welcome, but please make them generic or issue related, not specific to the individual as much to as to the mission.
This guy has met and had both private and public discussions with every major Dem presidential candidate for the last three cycles. His history in this area goes back before that, but the current streak goes back to 1996.
He has travelled extensively with a former Senator and Governor during the Senators' short lived presidential bid. He feels fortunate to be considered a friend of the family. And while he loves the Senator, he thinks the Senators' wife walks on water.
During these travels with the Senator, he met an independent film maker who happens to have a highly placed mother (currently second in line of presidential succession). Because of this relationship with the daughter, the well placed mother calls the dude by his first name (even when he is not wearing a name tag) and has, from time to time, made her staff available to assist the guy in his various political efforts.
That brings us to what our guy considers one of his serious drawbacks. Most of his most intimate political experiences have been with unsuccessful efforts. However, he likes to think about Abraham Lincoln and Toby Ziegler. That may seem like an unlikely pairing, but consider this: Neither one had been particularly successful until they hit the big one.
Our guy has never considered himself particularly creative. However he was informed by someone who has been spectacularly successfully creative that he has it all wrong. This dude perceived in our guy an ability to recognize and act on a good idea when he hears it. While our guy did not consider this particularly creative, his creative friend told him that that is one of the most sought after capabilities amongst advertising and other "creative types". Our guy is still not totally convinced, but he does enjoy hanging out with creative types.
One of the dude's most cherished values is "community". Because of this, he has a burning desire to add value to the community that he loves so much. This is why he is willing to be the face of the subject effort when his preference is to remain securely in the background.

So there is a thumbnail sketch of our guy. Here are two questions for you:

Are you supportive of the proposed effort?
Would you let this dude control your financial contribution to this effort?

I truly am interested in receiving your feedback. Don't hold back. Let me know what you really think.

Pinellas Prize

2007-02-15T04:04:00.000-08:00

Last week, the Friday Morning Group talked about keeping our eyes on the Prize. What prize, you ask? Why the Pinellas Prize of course!

The week before last. Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch and St. Petersburg City Council Memeber Leslie Curran asked us to provde them something they could talk about. something they could vote on. Last week, several Group members met at The Studio@620 to do just that. The result? Why the Pinellas Prize.

The Group members gave Ken Welch quite an earfull the prior week. But we had a very small window to address the commissioner. Poor Ken. He had to listen to us immediately prior to going to the dentist. I can't imagine that he had a very good morning that morning.

Ken's response to our laundry list of suggestions and complaints? Give me something I can talk to my colleagues on the Commission about. He must have made this request at least three times. After Ken departed for his rendezvous with the dentist, Leslie Curran made it as clear as it could get. Give Ken what he asked for if we want to move forward with anything concrete.

Sandy Tabor led the group's committee that met at 620. Bob Devin Jones graciously provided the venue before he had to hop on an airplane and head for the frozen north. Herb Snitzer was there as well. Sandy gave us her report last Friday, including a brief description of how the Pinellas Prize would work.

If you want to know more about this - stay tuned.

What Every So Called Political Professional Needs to Know

2007-02-12T05:30:00.000-08:00

Authors Note:

To spark conversation, I am issuing a challenge to our local readers:

How many of the politicians in this diary can you name?

Cross Posted from Florida Kossacks

Do you ever hear a phrase or a saying that just sticks with you? The kind of thing that keeps popping into your head at the weirdest times? Here is the story of one that should be first and foremost in the minds of every one who considers themselves a political professional.

I was standing in this room with a bunch of disgusted Democrats. It was early in 2003. They were still pissed off about the 2000 election fiasco in Florida. And they were absolutely steaming about the governors race that was so badly handled in 2002.

It was the 2000 elections that they were using as a rallying cry. The number 537 played a prominent part in this discussion. There was no crying over the spilt milk of 2002 here. This was all about 2004, and the lessons learned in 2000 and not applied in 2002.

It was a pretty interesting group. There was a County Commissioner whose mother was to run for the US Senate and who is now, herself, a newly minted Congresswoman. There was a former County Commissioner who ran a valiant but unsuccessful Congressional campaign in 2006. The campaign manager for the incumbent Congressman was there. There were some dudes there, but none of us were as impressive as the women in the room.

The matriarch of this group was the mother of the successful attorney who had graciously offered up her home for the evening. One of the interesting things we did that night was to go around the room and offer up our reasons for being a Democrat. That's a story for another time. As we were about to wrap up for the night, the matriarch said she wanted to leave us with something to think about.

Our matriarch was, at that time, a recently retired County Commissioner. She did not stay retired for long. She is now a very successful County Clerk. She wanted to leave us with something that had stuck with her for a very long time. It was something that was told to her by someone we all knew. This fellow was a former teacher and a union leader. He became a Mayor and then a Governor. He wasn't with us that night because he had changed teams in the midst of his rise to political fame and fortune. There were a lot of people in that room that night who had won, and lost, a lot of elections. But they all nodded when our matriarch relayed this pearl of wisdom to us:

If you have a dozen committed volunteers, you can win any
election.

Now those of you who have worked on large campaigns are probably shaking your head at the perceived naivete of that statement. But think about it for a second. This wasn't a statement from some dude who just got elected dog catcher. He had been elected and re-elected as a union leader. He was the mayor of a major city. He was the governor of a significant state. If you still don't get it, maybe you should take up another profession.

At the end of the day, in a close election, what is going to make the difference? In my mind it is the ability to get more of your voters to the polls than the other guy does. In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, 538 more Democratic voters would have changed the history of the world. That's less than 10 votes in each county in Florida. Or for your dozen volunteers, less than 45 successful calls per person.

But the real power of the dozen volunteers is not just the work they do directly. It is the dozen volunteers recruited by each of them, and the dozen volunteers recruited by each of those volunteers. It is the fact that these dozen volunteers believe in you that sustains you. So let's not let these dozen volunteers down again.

Let's not ever lose another election because we did not put enough resources into our ground game. Remember what a difference 538 votes would have made in 2000. For all the mistakes of the Kerry campaign in 2004, they got that lesson, sorta. They got more Democratic votes to the polls than any other candidate in history. Their problem there was that the other guy did better than they did. Who'd a thunk it?

The 2006 election cycle was one that saw many wonderful victories for our team. But I keep thinking about the one we let get away. We faced a daunting challenge. Our opponent would raise and have spent more money on his behalf than in any other campaign in the country that cycle. He had run several statewide races before. This was our guy's first try at statewide office. And we were not going to get close in the money raising department.

Still for all that, we were closing at the end. We could have won this one. So why didn't we? We did not get more of our voters to the polls than the other guy did. At the end of the day that is the only story that matters. Our team made a conscious decision to put as much of the money as they possibly could into television. It's a huge state after all. You can't win statewide in Florida playing retail politics they said.

Well, they were wrong. You can do it. One of our greatest campaigners walked throughout the entire state. Another went out and spent days working ordinary jobs with ordinary people. That's retail politics folks. And ground is cheap. Ridiculously cheap. But that is where you leverage those 12 committed volunteers. You pay your organizers to look after their care and feeding and to give them some direction. Then you get out of the way and let them do their thing.

You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out.

And friends they may thinks it's a movement.
Arlo Guthrie, Alice's Restaurant.

Friday Morning Mojo Moment

2007-02-03T17:47:00.000-08:00

This past Friday, February 2nd, may have been a watershed mojo moment for the Friday Morning Group. Not only were we honored to be joined by Pinellas County Commisioner Ken Welch, we were also able to extend a Friday Morning Welcome to St. Petersburg City Council Member Leslie Curran.

The admonition to arrive promptly at 8 AM was adhered to by a hardy group of talented folks and Ken started right off by asking how we wanted to proceed. Herb Snitzer laid out for Ken the nut of the issue for the Friday Morning Group artists - respect and recognition. Ken was also exposed to the idea of getting tourist development dollars to promote the City and the County as an art buying destination. That will help to support our Community Based artists, but also meets the Tourist Development Council and Convention and Visitors Bureau's missions of heads in beds.

Herb and Bob Devin Jones also expressed their disappointment that the Pinellas County Cultural (nee Arts) Council's failure to extend honors to any Little a artists at their annual awards banquet. Bruce Kotchkey was asked by Ken for his take on that issue. Bruce replied that the criteria for an award to an artist was based on community participation in the furtherance of the arts. Surely we had artists at the table Friday morning who met that criteria. Stay tuned on that one.

Ken must have asked at least three times, if not more, for the group to tell him what it is we wanted him to do for us. Ken left us at 8:30 to go to his dentist's appointment. When asked to comment on which he thought was going to be more fun, Ken was unwilling to declare. He has declared that he is running for re-election to the County Commission in 2008. Thank you, Ken, for taking the time to meet with us. Please know that you have an open invitation to join us any time that your schedule permits.

After Ken left us, Leslie Curran took out her hammer and beat us over the head, gently. She admonished the group to make sure and follow through to deliver our wish list to Ken. It was clear to Leslie, and she made it clear to us that Ken wanted to help us, but he needed guidance on exactly what we wanted him to vote on.

Sandy Tabor volunteered to lead a mission statement and goal visioning session and or sessions. This is to be the first step in creating a strategic plan for the Friday Morning Group. (Scary, isn't it?) Bob stressed that the mission of the Friday Morning Group needed to be focused on Little a artists and how to support them. Group consensus seems to have formed generally around that premise. The first strategic visioning session for the Friday Morning Group will be this Monday afternoon at 2 PM at the Studio at 620.

Leslie Curran could not have been more supportive of the mission of the Friday Morning Group. Seated on her left was Ann Wykel . In the category of two degrees of separation, Ann's very presence in St. Petersburg was due to the efforts of Leslie Curran. In her former incarnation on the St. Pete City Council, Leslie pushed for the creation of a Cultural Plan. Ann Wykel's position at the City of St. Petersburg came out of that Cultural Plan. Leslie is currently asking that the Cultural Plan be reviewed and updated, since it is getting nearly a decade old.

All in all, this Friday had to be one of the best meetings ever held by the Friday Morning Group. If you were in attendance and either agree or disagree with that statment, please let me know. You can either email me at gatordem at verizon.net or you may post a comment at Local Politics is All.

Until next week, here's looking at your art kids.

Big A and Little a

2007-01-24T05:46:00.000-08:00

Last Friday Morning as the news of the Big A shuffle hit the papers, the Little a artists group was having our Friday Morning Group meeting. The contrast could not have been more stark. The St. Pete Times was all abuzz about the Big A shuffle of the Palladium, American Stage and the Florida Orchestra engineered by all the usual Big A suspects. Not a word was written about the Little a artists who actually produce the art for the Big A. So what else is new?

Speaking of Big A, we did get some interesting news from our own Lexy about Tom James latest plan. Tom is going to build a Western Art museum in downtown St. Petersburg at a yet to be determined site.

Last Friday we welcomed back some old faces and greeted some new (to me anyway) faces. Bob Devin Jones brought us up to date on the goings on at the Studio @ 620. The Studio currently is showing a very interesting photography exhibit by Zachariah Thompson. The photographs are of laundromats reminding all of us of the good old (or maybe not so good old) days. The show has been very well received, perhaps because we all can relate to the subject in one way or another.

The multi-faceted Peter Kagayama, current President of Creative Tampa Bay, another old familiar face also joined us last Friday. Peter just returned from some more of his Creative Community globe hopping to Singapore and other interesting far off places. Being the ever so deft communication specialist that he is, Peter dropped the phrase "creative competitiveness"on us. That has a ring to it doesn't it?

Len Neff also joined us. Besides Len's well known work with beaded glass, Len talked about his work with public art in Pinellas County.

Among the new faces was Cliff Rice. Cliff works with folk musician and social activist Lorna Bracewell. Lorna has been doing a series of On This Earth benefit concerts for CASA and other worthy causes. The next concert in the spring is going to benefit Habitat for the Humanities. Cliff is looking to incorporate visual artists into the event, so if you have an interest you can contact Cliff at Cliff@LornaBracewell.com or call him at 727-430-3130.

And our old friend Nancy Loehr dropped by with County Commissioner Ken Welch in tow.

You never know who might show up at the Friday Morning Group. This Friday, it might even be you.

Really Stupid People Tricks

2007-01-20T15:21:00.000-08:00

Michael Hussey over at Pushing Rope alerted me to one of the stupidest and mean spirited plans I've heard of from someone local in a long time. You have to read this and maybe like me, you still won't belive it:

Rachel Moran has the less-than-brilliant brainstorm of filming homeless people getting assaulted by her friends.

We are thinking about proving this nuisance and need for civil action by making a short film called “Eddie Rolls on the Homeless,” whereby Mark secretly videotapes me and Lil Sis in a variety of situations to see how many homeless people approach us and, then, how many of these situations escalate into harrassment. Then, he’s gonna videotape Eddie in the same scenarios, only Eddie is going to beat up every homeless person who escalates the contact after being told that his panhandling is illegal and annoying.

All You Gotta Do is Act Locally

2007-01-07T08:33:00.000-08:00

After the 2000 Presidential election debacle in Florida, I did what many of my fellow Floridians did. After I got done slamming my head up against the wall and puking at the sight of Katherine Harris (I still do that, BTW), I started doing some soul searching and some number crunching.

What came out of that was the realization that if we had just been a little smarter, worked just a little harder, we could have changed the course of history. And it was right there in front of us the whole time.

So, below the fold, I'm gonna take you to the big time, all you gotta do is...

Cross Posted from Florida Kossacks

Regardless of what we think of it, the final official vote count in Florida for the 2000 Presidential Election had Al Gore losing Florida's then 25 Electoral Votes to George W Bush by 537 votes. After the Supremes sang their final tune, ole Al sang "Turn out the lights, the party's over". And that was all she wrote.

How could this have happened? We had the butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County. We had hanging and pregnant and dimpled chads. We had the Goper Goon squad led by John Bolton (yeah that John Bolton) beating on the glass at the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections office.

But all of that should not have mattered. There are those who say elections are never perfect. The only time we even care about this crap is when the elections are so close. And you know, they're right. Any plan conceived by humans becomes worthless once the opening bell rings. But it didn't have to be that way.

I live in Pinellas County Florida. Pinellas is the western anchor of the infamous I-4 Corridor in Central Florida. It is now the swing County in the swing region in the swing state. I bet my fellow Pinellans didn't get it that we are such swingers. We swung to Al Gore by 10,000 votes, so you'd think we could say we did our part. But that ain't the whole truth. The sad fact is we left 10,023 votes on the table in Pinellas. That is the number of votes rung up by erstwhile Green Party candidate Don Quiote de la Nader. Don Ralph Nader and company can be said, fairly or unfairly to have cost Al Gore the White House.

You could use the John Kerry 2000 Electoral analysis. His answer when asked in early 2003 how her was going to win in the South was an absolute classic. After his jaw stopped tightening up and his face stopped turning red, here's what he said:

If Al Gore had won New Hampshire, he'd be President of the United
States.

The last time I checked, New Hampshire was not even is Southern New England, much less the Southern United States. But that was the way Kerry looked at it. I shoulda, known, I shoulda known. I did work for Bob Graham's abortive campaign, and then sat back as Kerry claimed the nomination. And there wasn't nuthin I could do about it. So, I got on the Kerry Bandwagon and did what I could for him. But we all know how that turned out.

So, here we go into the the nascent stages of the 2008 Presidential campaign cycle. John Edwards and Tom Vilsack have announced. A host of others from Biden to Clinton to Obama and some in between are lined up waiting their turn to jump.What are we going to do this time to make the outcome better?

I tried something in the 2004 cycle. I tried to snake some of those 10,000 Ralph Nader votes back from our Green Party friends. I went to Green Party gatherings and made nice. I listened to what they had to say. I found where where our values overlapped. And I took to heart something that is the Green Party Mantra:

Think Globally and Act Locally

Once that sank in, I think I helped make a difference. And I don't think I'm anything special, or that I did anything all of y'all could have done and probably done better than I did. Ralph Nader was again on the ballot as the Green Party candidate in 2004. My pitch to the Green's was pretty simple. Greens and Dems share most of the same values. Greens could make an impact on the Dems and move the Party in their direction if the got in the game on the side of the Dems. And the clincher was my sig line:

You cain't govern if you cain't win
Did it work? Well, John Kerry lost Pinellas County by 226 votes. But Ralph Nader only got 2,042 votes in Pinellas. Did we pick up an additional 8,000 votes for Kerry? I don't know. I'd like to think so. I know we got some, maybe most.

And all I had to do was act locally.

First Friday of 2007

2007-01-05T10:59:00.000-08:00

The Friday Moning Group resumed the weekly (Friday morning, imagine that) meetings at the Atlanta Bread Company in Downtown St. Pete this morning. About 10 of us gathered to talk about things of interest to us.

As is often the case, there was another meeting going on at the ABC at the same time. A City employee who has something to do with the Arts, a Downtown Business Booster, and a Florida Progress Employee were all huddled right outside our little meeting room in the back. No tellin what they were talking about (they wouldn't tell), but I'll bet we had more fun and will get more done. Takers?

Our main focus again was how to support artists in St. Petersburg. It was suggested that one way to do that would be to try and get the City and the County to market us as an art buyers destination. The tie ins with economic and tourist development became rapidly apparent.Michele Tuegel of the County Cultural Affairs Council suggested that for St. Petersburg, it would make sense to approach Mayor Rick Baker. Herb Snitzer indicated he would contact Pinellas County Commission Chair Ken Welch.

There was also a discussion about affordable and mixed use housing development for artists. There is a critical need for affordable housing and studio locations for artists in St. Petersburg. Artists are particularly feeling the twin sqeezes of rising property taxes and property insurance. We talked about various options currently available to assist first time home buyers and also using properties the City has purchased primarly as a land bank.

We then moved to a discussion of historic preservation in St. Petersburg. There was a discussion of a plan to purchase a large chunk of the Jannus Landing block to preserve the buildings and the concert venue. There was also a discussion about the transfer of development rights on historic properties within the CBD-3 area in downtown.

Before the group really got under weigh, there was a rather lively discussion about education, which is always a good thing. The talk centered around how to close the achievment gap between white and other students. Heb Snitzer suggested that for the first at least two years, that children are in the public school system, be spent entirely on reading. It was suggested that this might help level the playing field for disadvantaged students. Their main disadvantage at this point is that a good portion of these children are far behind their counterparts in time spent reading with their partents or other care givers.

First time attendees this morning included:

Bob and Amy Barancik. Bob is an artist, photographer and independent film maker.
Cndy McFerrin, a developer and art enthusiast.

And we welcomed back Lexey Covell who is the Tour Coordinator for the Raymond James art collection, the most extensive corporate collection in the Southeast US.

If you were not at the meeting this morning, we missed you. If you were at the meeting and want to include something I left out. please do so in the comments.

We look forwad to seeing you all next Friday morning.

Wish List Version 2.007

2006-12-31T04:53:00.000-08:00

When I ascend to my rightful place as Queen of the Universe, I will return to the year 2007 and make these wishes come true (or not):

Gershom Faulkner announces his candidacy for the St. Petersburg City Council seat to be vacated by term limited Council Member Rene Flowers. Ed Helm moves into Flowers' district and announces his candidacy as well. Jamie Bennet decries the move saying "Helm promised to run against me."

The Florida Gators thrash Ohio State University 65-3 in what Brent Musberger describes as the most exciting BCS Championship Game ever. Florida coach Urban Meyer says he will be relieved when the Gators finally learn to execute his spread offense.

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker is arrested for assaulting Council Member Leslie Curran for telling Baker "That might not be a good idea." St. Petersburg City Council Chair John Bryan ascends to Mayor after Governor Charlie Crist suspends Baker. Crist reinstates Baker one hour later after receiving a complaint from Bakers' mother. Before Bryan leaves the Mayors' office he issues an executive order banning the hiring of consultants by the City.

At her first regular meeting of the Pinellas County Democratic Executive Committee, Chair Toni Molinaro announces the appointment of Bill Bucolo as chair of the newly created Kumbaya Committee. Jack Smack immediately stalks out of the meeting followed by, well, nobody.

The St. Petersburg Grand Prix is won by Danica Patrick, who announces from the winners circle that she is moving to St. Petersburg. All 5 people in attendance cheer wildly.

Ronda Storms complains that the state insurance crisis is all the fault of gay insurance agents. Governor Charlie Crist appoints a rainbow ribbon committee headed by Katherine Harris to investigate the allegations. This comes on heels of the the special legislative session where legislators aproved a 350% rate increase for insurance companies as the best possible solution to the crisis.

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker is arrested again. This time it is for distrubing the peace. Seems Baker was playing his guitar again at the Saturday Morning Market. The crowd cheers when Baker smacks his head while being put in the back seat of the new hybrid police cruiser. Charlie Crist announces he would suspend Baker, but Bakers' mother would only complain and he'd have to reverse himself.

The Florida Legislature adjourns its 2007 session after three days. On the first day, the legislature passed a bill banning property taxes in the state of Florida. On the second day, the legislature passes a resolution proclaiming the 350% rate increase passed in the special session has, in fact, solved the insurance crisis. And on the third day, the legislature passed a budget outsourcing the entire state government to the new company formed by Jeb Bush, Haliburton Florida.

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker is convicted of disturbing the peace. He is sentenced to 300 hours of community service telling Charlie Crist what not to do.

The Hillsborough Expressway Authority announces it is moving to St. Petersburg where it plans to convert the Pinellas Trail to a barge canal. Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio immediately announces plans to expand the trolley system from Channelside and Ybor City to Brandon, citing the increased need after the elevated section of the Selmon Expressway collapses crushing both cars under it at the time.

Bill Young announces he is dead and he is not running for re-election in 2008. George Critikos immediately endorses Karen Seel as the Republican candidate in the special election to succeed Young. Seel says, "I'll probably only serve 45 years, since I'm kind old already."

Developer Grady Pridgen announces he is buying Progress Energy Florida in a leveraged buyout. All of Prgress Energy Florida's generation capacity will be turned into wholesale production. Retail production will be generated from the new green urban village that Pridgen has planned for the Pinellas County Solid Waste Disposal site.

Rod Smith wins the Academy Award for the worst political ad ever. Smith confesses his main disappointment is coming in second to Donald Trump in the worst hair category.

Jeb Bush announces that Haliburton Florida is taking the state of Florida private in a private equity deal underwritten by the Carlyle Group. Bush 41 breaks down in tears at his favorite son's accomplishments.

Hillary Clinton announces she is not attending the Florida Democratic Party's annual Jefferson Jackson gala. Her spokeswoman says Hillary has already taken the last remaining Democratic dollar in Florida. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's keynote speech is delivered to all three Florida Democrats attending the event. The other 7 million Florida Democrats are all accross the street listening to Steven Colbert's announcement that he is running for President. Rush Limbaugh donates $2 billion to the Colbert for President PAC.

Ed Helm fails to receive a single vote in the St. Petersburg City Council primary elections. Extensive reviews of the voting machines and the computer source code prove conclusively that Helm forgot to vote and the his wife voted for Gershom Faulkner.

The Republican Party of Florida unanimously proclaims Jeb Bush as their favorite for the 2008 nomination. Katherine Harris files an immediate protest, clainming the election was rigged.

Surprise candidate Peter Wallace wins election to the St. Petersburg City Council seat vacated by the term limited Bill Foster. The St. Petersburg Gay Straight Alliance announces the appointment of Foster as special counsel.

Barack Obama wins the Florida Democratic Party Conventions' straw poll after announcing he will name Bob Graham as his running mate when he wins the nomination. Graham is not in attendance because he is in Gainesville watching the Florida Gators demolish the FSU Seminoles 96-3. Florida Coach Urban Meyer rubs his crew cut and says his team has a chance to be pretty good if they ever learn to execute his spread offense.

Arrested again upon a sealed indictment, St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker announces from the Pinellas County jail that it is another great day in St. Petersburg. Reminded by a reporter that the jail is not in St. Petersburg, Baker responds, "That's the second part of my announcement. The City of St. Petersburg has just struck a deal to acquire Pinellas County in a private equity deal financed by Haliburton Florida.

If you can figure out which, if any, of these wishes I would make come true, I'll buy a damned tractor.

Florida Kossacks Rock

2007 Predictions - Local Politcs

2006-12-27T09:11:00.000-08:00

OK, over on Florida Kossacks, I posted national predictions for the first quarter of 2007. I then cross posted to DailyKos. That's where the fun started.

OtisisHungry posted this comment predicting, anongst other things:

Mary Mulhern wins her race for Tampa City Council and kumbaya breaks out all over Tampa.
Joe Redner is named Arts and Cultural Czar of Tampa.
Brian Blair is exposed in a gay pay for play meth scandal.
And a great snark about Janee Murhpy and the Hillsborough DEC that you just have to read for yourselves.
So when I stopped rolling around on the floor laughing my a** off, I thought, self, let's have some more fun with Local Politics Predictions.

OK, here are some of mine:

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker takes the job as State Director in Charge of Cleaning up Charlie Crist's screw ups. He gets paid 4 times the Governor's salary and says, "This is the greatest job in the world, and its another great day in the State of Florida".
Pinellas County Commisioner Bob Stewart gets snowed in in his real home out west and misses 6 months of County Commission meetings. No one notices.
The City of St. Petersburg recognizes that the Opus South 400 Beach Drive building is 20 feet closer to the street than is allowed. The building is blown up as the opening scene of Lethal Weapon XXV.
Bill Foster beats Renee Flowers in a close election to replace Baker as mayor of St. Petersburg. The GLBT community endorses Foster, who promises to lead the Gay Pride Parade in July.
The City of St. Pete Beach approves charter ammendments that require every beach front building to be 50 stories tall.
St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster signs a peace treaty with County Commission Charman Ken Welch that ends the bloody war between the County and the City. As part of the treaty Susan Latvala has to stay north of Ulmerton Road, but St. Petersburg gets to keep Karen Seel who was captured near the end of the conflict in a daring raid led by new St. Petersburg Police Chief Rudy Guiliani.

So there's my silly six. Let's hear yours. Got game?

Save O'Neill's Marina

2006-12-19T20:32:00.000-08:00

St. Petersburg Mayor, Rick Baker, is a "free market" guy. We know this because he told us, several times. Baker kept repeating that he was a "free market" guy while he was engineering a communist style coup. What was this free market vs communistic clash all about?

It seems the City of St. Petersburg has land er, uh, water grabs on their minds. There has been a lot of talk lately about the lack of marina slips and boat ramp access in Florida. Seems marina owners are selling out to developers who are building, you guessed it, condos on the former marina sites. The City has just discovered that they, in fact, are the owners of a couple of marinas in St. Petersburg that they don't already operate. The City is leasing the two marinas to private operators and receiving well in excess of $200,000 per year from the two marinas combined. This isn't good enough for the City. No, the City does not want to renew the leases on these marinas for any appreciable length of time. They want to take over operations of the marinas themselves. The Harborage Marina on the Bayboro Harbor waterfront deserves a diary all of its own. This diary is going to concentrate on O'Neill's Marina.

O'Neills website has this to say on their home page:

For more than 50 years O’Neill’s Marina has given boaters and fisherman
what they’ve asked for. Good products, fair prices and great service. O’Neill’s
Marina is a family owned and operated business that takes pride in the facility
and the people it serves.

Our facility is nestled along the coastline in St. Petersburg near the
mouth of Tampa Bay, easily located by land or water. By land, we are just off
Interstate 275 on the west side of exit 16, just North of the Sunshine Skyway
Bridge.

O'Neill's Marina moved to its current location in 1954, at the urging of the City, who wanted O'Neill's to move from the old ferry landing to the approach to the brand new Sunshine Skyway Bridge. It has been operating at its current location for more than 52 years. O'Neill's has been leasing the land from the City all this time. Their current lease expires around the middle of 2007. The city has suddenly discovered that they actually are the owners of the marina, and they want to look into the possiblity of operating it themselves. City staff proposed to renew the O'Neills' lease for only one more year. This would give the city time to pursue the permitting process necessary for the City to "modernize" O'Neill's.

The City Council decided to give O'Neill's a two year lease with the possibility of extensions if the City can not get their permitting done in that time. The member of the O'Neill family who is now operating the marina is 60 years old. All he wants to do is operate the marina for 5 more years and then retire. At that time, he will be more than willing to just let the City have the marina. After all this family has meant to this City, this is an extremely shabby way to treat this man.

So what is up with this self- avowed "free market guy" Rick Baker. His buddy Jeb Bush has just spent 8 years turning every govenrment function he could think of over to the private sector. Baker wants to take marina operations away from the private sector and give it to the government. What kind of "free market" conservatism is that?

Sounds more like that Castro guy than that Bush feller.

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker In Your Face - Again

2006-12-16T19:34:00.000-08:00

The St. Petersburg Times reported on December 16, 2006 that:

Police Chief Chuck Harmon is ending the city's 15-year-old community policing program

Twelve paragraphs into the story the Times reports:

Mayor Rick Baker said Friday he supported Harmon's decision. "The system we're putting in place is more common than the one we had," Baker said.

Since the Mayor has the first and last word in everything that happens in the Police and every other Department in the City of St. Petersburg, why does the Times wait untill 12 paragraphs into the story to give us Hizz Honor's take on this idiotic plan? And why is this really happening?

The Times alludes to the real reason:

The move, which received a mixed response from neighborhood leaders and was criticized by the police union, comes as the department struggles to retain officers and faces an outside review of its management practices.

Is this the review that Mayor Baker:

Fought tooth and nail to keep from happening?

When he was forced to accede to the review, fought tooth and nail to have the review performed by the consultant of his choosing?

Now that Mayor Baker has been forced to endure a management review of the Police Department conducted by a consultant he doesn't control, all of a sudden he's in favor of ending community policing? That dog just won't hunt.

Mayor Baker has pulled the Mayoral equivalent of taking his ball and going home. His polce department is being forced to undergo this management review that he didn't want and that he can't control. So what does the Mayor do? He authorizes the end of the most popular (from the citizens standpoint) policing program going. The polite way of describing the Mayor's attitude toward City Council and the citizens of St. Petersburg is:

In Your Face

the not so polite way is, well, something else.

Here are some excerpts from the Community Policing Philosphy on the St. Petersburg Police Department web site:

The CPO (Community Police Officer) fosters a partnership with the community in order to mutually identify and resolve neighborhood problems and concerns. They identify repeat calls for service and implement problem-solving strategies to resolve them. They review problem-solving progress with coworkers, supervisors and the community. CPOs also develop mutual respect and trust between coworkers and the community. They interact with residents and merchants, enhance partnerships, and encourage teamwork.
... zone officers are encouraged to partner with the CPO for their assigned area, as well as offer "directed patrols" during uncommitted time. These "directed patrols" are a means for the zone officer to be a part of the problem-solving process, such as providing additional patrols at a problem location or by assisting with a traffic enforcement detail. A "team" is formed consisting of a CPO and at least one zone officer for each of the shifts (days, evenings, and midnights). Furthermore, most of the detectives assigned to the Criminal Investigative Division are also given geographical responsibilities, thus allowing them to become part of the "team" to address emerging crime patterns.

Furthermore, here is the core statement of that philosophy:

The St. Petersburg Police Department is committed to establishing and maintaining a meaningful and productive partnership with the community. The goal is to achieve excellence by facilitating a partnership between members and the citizens in order to mutually identify and resolve community problems. This partnership will ultimately enhance the safety and quality of life for the citizens of our community.

So, what is Chief Harmons' stated reason for scrapping Community Policing?

Harmon said tensions exist between community officers and patrol officers, who feel overworked and think community officers had too much freedom.

Should the potential for this tension have been a surprise to Harmon? Not if he had read this report prepared the U.S. Department of Justice about commuinity policing in St. Petersburg in 1997:

There were a number of distinctions between the behavior of CPOs and that of 911 officers. This suggests that considerable care is warranted concerning how officer responsibilities are constructed if departments are to promote community policing attitudes and behavior.

St. Petersburg has had this report in hand for nearly 10 years. If the Police Department did not take "considerable care ... to promote community policing attitudes and behavior" , that is a management failure. The managers are Police Chief Chuck Harmon and Mayor Rick Baker, and they have failed us.

Pinellas DEC Election Results

2006-12-14T21:46:00.000-08:00

Last night, before heading off to the the Pinellas Democratic Executive Committee's biennial elections, I unleashed a little rant. The question at issue was whether Ed Helm, the erstwhile Chair of the Pinellas Democratic Party should be given a new, full two year term, or whether four months was more than enough for Mr. Ed.

For those of you who did not see the front page of the Metro section in the St. Petersburg Times on December 14th, here's a news flash:

Democrats oust Helm as leader

When it was announced that Toni Molinaro of St. Petersburg, who teaches English as a second language in the Hillsborough County school system, had bested Helm 142 votes to 72, her supporters cheered and chanted her name.

Here's a great big shout out to the following Democratic elected officials who showed up to support Toni Molinaro:

State Sen. Charlie Justice, State Rep. Bill Heller, State Rep. Janet Long, Pinellas County School Board Member Linda Lerner, and Pinellas County Commissioners Calvin Harris and Ken Welch. State Rep. Rick Kriseman couldn't attend, but he had already signed the letter also signed by these other Democratic elected officials as well in support of Toni Molinaro.

This was an unprecedented show of support by Democratic elected officials in Pinellas County for a Party Chair candidate. Every Democrat in Pinellas County should thank these elected officials for getting behind Toni Molinaro and the need for a change. These officials supported us in our time of need. We now need to make sure that we support them. We also need to make sure that we stay in close contact and consultation with these elected officials. We will all benefit from that.

To Toni and her team of Vice Chair Arlin Briley, Secretary Chris Piccone, Treasurer Norma Roberts and Sergeant at Arms Ed Fink, Congratulations.

To all you Democrats who helped bring this change about, THANK YOU and congratulations to you as well.

OK, so celebrate for a day or two. When that is over, let's get going to make the changes that we need to make. Let's get more Democrats involved in the Party. Let's get ready to elect a Democratic President in 2008, to increase the number of Democratic Members of Congress in Florida, to increase the number of Democrats in our Counties' State legislative delegation, to get more Democrats on the County Commission and to finally get a Democrat elected to a County Constitutional Office.

If we want to accomplish all of this, the time to start is now.

Pinellas DEC Elections Preview

2006-12-13T12:05:00.000-08:00

Well, tonight's the night. Do we get rid of Ed Helm tonight as DEC Chair or don't we? Toni Molinaro is primed and ready to go. In a few hours from now we should know.

This should not even be a close question. Ed Helm has done nothing but divide this party and lose elections since he has become Chair. He became involved in Democratic Primaries (against Party rules), and lost every one of those elections. He was soundly outvoted about giving the Pinellas County YD's the money that was budgeted for them, and he has still refused to disburse the funds.

Oh, wait, I was wrong. Ed Helm has done something other than be divisive. He has brought the Party into disrepute. One need only look at the St. Pete Times editorial page to see that.

And to top it all off, we now have Ed Helm, the Mayoral candidate who could not win a single precinct as our Party Chair.

Oh, please, oh please. If there is a God, please spare us from this madman.

Down below is something I wrote in an earlier post about the Pinellas Democratic Party under Helm. Pray for us.

The Pinellas Democratic Party, well, what can you really say about them? The local Dems have been a complete horror show since July when Chair Carrie Wadlinger resigned. She was succeeded by Ed Helm. That's when the fun really began. To say that Helm has been divisive is a massive understatement. In a year that Democrats seemed to have everything going for them, Helm has made the local Democratic Party more fun than a three ring circus. For everybody but members of the Pinellas Democratic Party, that is. Helm decided to violate Florida Democratic Party rules by endorsing his own slate of candidates in the September 5th Primary. Showing what an adept politician Helm really is, every one of his candidates lost in the primary. Helm stirred things up during the primary by suggesting that the winning candidates were not "real" Democrats, whatever those are.There will be an election of officers for the Pinellas Democratic Party on December 13th. Former Party Webmaster Tony Molinaro, who Helm unceremoniously fired in the middle of the general election campaign, will be running for Chair against Ed Helm. The Pinellas Party meetings since Helm took over as Chair have been real donnybrooks. The election meeting on December 13th should be no different. Look for a Credentials fight before the voting begins. I say it is even money whether or not a vote will even be held on the 13th. Stay tuned. We'll be sure to have more on that later.

Friday Morning Group

2006-12-08T11:13:00.000-08:00

There was an interesting meeting this morning in Downtown St. Petersburg. A rather eclectic group gathered at 8 ish to talk about artists and the arts in St. Petersburg. Included in this group:

Former Director of a theatre foundation
An attorney who is also a singer and actor
A gallery owner
A volunteer public art docent
A poet and promoter
An art gallery marketing director
A travel writer
An executive from the Pinellas County Cultural Council
A Political and governmental relations consultant (guess who)

These were all members of a group that had met regularly for about 2 years until it sort of dwindled away. The group is fairly loosely organized, as befits the varied nature of its participants. There is no formal agenda. There is no chair person. People come and go as necessary. Nonetheless, the group has had a measurable impact on many things in St. Petersburg in the past few years.

The Manhattan Casino restoration was one of the first projects the group took on. The groups' efforts helped set the tone and feel for how the old ballroom upstairs was refurbished. If only we could get the soul food restaurant on the ground floor that we supported. Oh, well. Maybe someday in the not too distant future.

Also, the idea and practice of artists being able to live and work in the same location was spearheaded by the Friday Morning Group. A pair of very well known artists had moved to town and wanted to have their studio on the ground floor and live upstairs in an abandoned garment factory in the Old South East, Well, the city codes inspectors were really scratching their heads over that one. After much effort and consultation, the city finally figured it out and our artist couple is now well ensconced in the old bra factory. (They hate it when I call it that.)

The Studio@620 is something that came directly out of the Friday Morning Group. The co-art directors were both charter members of the group. The group also put a lot of time in discussing the Florida Orchestra. The new, more casual look of the Orchestra's catalog is a direct result of the groups' conversation with the Orchestra. The Florida Orchestra is moving its headquarters to St.Pete due in no small measure to the efforts of the group.

A couple of years ago, a reporter from Creative Loafing sat in on one of the meetings of the group. We were discussing the Chamber of commerce brochure that proclaimed on its cover that St. Petersburg was the "City of the Arts". Well, our artists particularly thought that was just pretentious as hell and were pretty contemptible of the whole idea. Yes St. Petersburg is a good place for artists. It could be better. But to proclaim St. Pete as The City of the Arts? Hello.

So we were discussing this foolishness and kicking around ideas. One of our members came up with this:

St. Petersburg is not the City of the Arts, the city is the art.

That comment wound up in print. I think that's a pretty good explanation of the Friday Morning Group. The beautiful City of St. Petersburg is the canvas that is our art work in progress. We continue to put more creative touches on it all the time.

It is a never ending project of love.

Saturday Morning Market

2006-11-26T12:40:00.000-08:00

There is nothing I like better than going to the Saturday Morning Market in downtown St. Pete. Every Saturday morning from October through May, the city closes off Central Avenue between 1st and 2nd Streets and transforms Central into an old time market place from days long gone by.

Just like Alice's Restaurant, you can get anything you want at the Saturday Morning Market. There is food of every description. There is art, there is kitsch, there are chairs and clothing and massages. There is coffee.

There is music. For the last couple of years, there are two live music venues. When one takes a break, the other one starts right up. Yesterday we had a blues band in the main music area and a Caribbean steel drum band in the other.

But hands down, the best thing about the Saturday Morning Market is the people. There are of course the musicians who are working far from their normal working hours. The market opens at 9 AM. I defy you to get hold of any working musician you know before noon. There are the vendors, who must arrive at 0 Dark 30 to get set up. And then there are us other folks.

I have to admit that people watching is one of my all time favorite pastimes, and the Saturday Morning Market certainly does not disappoint in that regard. But what is really, really great about the Saturday Morning Market is how it takes the place of the Town Square.

I like to sit at one of the tables in front of the main music venue. There is terrific people watching from there. I particularly like the parents who get their kids to dancing to the music. They are sooo cute. Eventually someone will come along and ask if one of the seats at the table is available. Of course I always say yes. Unless of course when it isn't. But if it is, and I get really lucky, the person will join me at the table. That's where the real fun begins.

Two weeks ago, I had been sitting down at the table for some time and was beginning to feel the urge to move around some. Just about that time, an elderly gentleman wearing a Korean War Vet ball cap asked if he could join me at the table. I replied that he was certainly welcome, but that I was just getting up to leave. As he was black and I am white, I felt uncomfortable at the idea of getting up just as the gentleman was sitting down. I tried to make it clear that I was not leaving on his account.

Much to my good fortune, when I went to sit down at the Market yesterday morning, my elderly gentleman with the Korean Vet ball cap was back, pretty much where I had left him the week before. I sat down, we struck up an inconsequential discussion, and the blues band began to play. That's when I saw my friend Linda pushing her bicycle. Now Linda had just completed a cross country (yes that's not a typo, a cross country bike ride). So me being the smart mouth that I often am, asked her what she was doing so close to a bike so soon after her excellent adventure.

Thus began a brief but very interesting conversation. Linda is also executive director of the local domestic violence shelter, and she reported back to the St. Pete Times periodically on her bike trip progress. I introduced her to my new friend with the Korean War Vet hat. He gave her his full name (he had only given me his first name). Linda said, oh yeah, I know who you are. It seems my new friend Charles is an active neighborhood activist. (Is that redundant?) Charles lives in a neighborhood that has been largely neglected by the City. As often happens in such neighborhoods, it has seen more than its share of crime. Charles has been very active in attempts to clean the neighborhood up. Who knew?

So, of course the topic of Charles and my conversation shifted immediately to his neighborhood. The neighborhood contains the once world famous City Tennis Center. In the good old days, it hosted one of those must attend tournaments on the woman's tour. I have seen Chris Everett as a 16 year old on those courts. Billy Jean King, Yvonne Goolalgong, Margaret Court Smith and a host of others. A dear, dear friend of mine, who passed away just a few years ago, taught many a tennis lesson on those courts. My friend Dan Sullivan was a very fine tennis player in his own right, in the days of Pancho Gonzalez and Bobby Riggs. Yes Bobby Riggs was a legit tennis player once. One of the main courts at the Tennis Center is now named for my friend Dan Sullivan.

One of the best programs going on in the City right now is the after school tennis program for neighborhood kids at the Tennis Center. Supported by local tennis fans, as well as the likes of Jim Courier, who has given a lot of his time to this effort. The program is hugely successful, giving hundreds of kids every week a chance to learn how to play tennis and how to compete within the rules. Youngsters who are learning to play tennis are not out stealing cars, or dealing drugs. (At least not while they are playing tennis).

This has gotten me to thinking of my misspent youth. Those days, kids were pretty much left to look to themselves for recreation. but there were always other kids around and places to play baseball or football. There were basketball courts and tennis courts, pretty much everything we needed. All of this was provided by the City Parks and Recreation Department. My parents could shove me out the door in the morning confident that I would find some non criminal activity to keep my mind and body occupied and that they wouldn't have to worry about me until supper time.

Now the City has more parks than ever before. What don't they have that is working so well at the Tennis Center? They don't have anyone around to help the kids get organized around one event or the other. We always at least had the older kids who'd already been around the block and knew how to get things going. This is pretty much a skill that can be learned, but it does not come naturally to a lot of kids.

Maybe if our City would put a little more effort into seeing that our kids are entertained or are entertaining themselves in sporting contests or otherwise recreating, we wouldn't be wondering why we can't hire and retain enough cops to deal with the crime problem in this City?

Things I Don't Like About St. Pete

2006-11-24T09:05:00.000-08:00

I was going to write a Thanksgiving Diary about St. Pete. Lord knows, there is a lot to be thankful for amongst those of us fortunate enough to live here. But now it is the day after, and I'm sort of over it. Maybe it's because I participated in one of the best Thanksgiving traditions in St. Petersburg, Harvey's Thanksgiving Night Party. Used to be there was absolutely no other place to go on Thanksgiving evening. Last night, someone told me that even Pepins was open. What's up with that?

But, the one thing natives and even a lot of visitors know for sure is that Harvey's will be open and you will see people you never see any place else and only maybe at the same place on Christmas night.

Dan Harvey has opened up his 4th Street Grille on Thanksgiving and Christmas nights since I can't remember when. Everybody who went to school here, used to work there, or who knows anybody who knows, knows that Harvey's is the place to see and be seen on The big holiday nights. After a day cooped up with family, even if it's all good, folks just need a break. And they know just where to get it.

That's a pretty long introduction to what was supposed to be the shorter of my diary options. Chalk it up to staying up almost past my bedtime for tonight, let alone last night. But , here goes:

I don't like that Harvey's on Thanksgiving and Christmas is the only time and place I see so many old, young and good friends. We should stay in better touch.

I don't like that so many of my friends kids are now buying me drinks at Harvey's. But, hey, that's my problem.

I don't like that the Saturday Morning Market is so successful that is having to consider moving. My suggestion - go West young people. Expand across 2nd Street to the same block that Get Downtown is at on the first Friday of the Month.

I don't like that I have such a hard time finding places to park in Downtown St. Pete. Grrrrr. And those Meter Maids - don't get me going on them.

Speaking of downtown, why can't folks building condos here learn to build them on their own property and quit using our city streets for storage and office space? I mean that is something I seriously don't like about downtown. I'm not kidding Leslie, Bill, John, Renee, Earnest, Jamie, Jeff and Herb(?).

I don't like Mayor Rick Baker. OK, actually I do like Rick Baker. That's what I don't like.

I like Bill Young and I like Samm Simpson. So, just like the 18,300 folks in Sarasota, I decided not to vote in that race. Right. (Oh wait, that's not St. Pete.)

I don't like that there is no place to get breakfast in the late night early morning hours in downtown St. Pete. Does anybody besides me miss the Owl?

I like Charlie Crist. I really like that the Governor-elect is from St. Petersburg. I don't like that Jim Davis is not going to be the Governor for the next 4 years. (I like having cocktails with Charlie. Opportunities to do that are going to be a little harder to come by.) And, oh BTW, Jim would make a great Governor.

I like having Bill Heller as my new State Representative. I can quit being embarrassed by Frankly. Can't think of anything not to like there. Damn.

I like the fact that my friend Gershom Faulkner is going to run for Renee Flowers Council seat when it opens up next year. I don't like the fact that we don't have a good candidate for Bill Fosters' seat yet. I'm open to any and all suggestions?

I don't like the fact that Laura is not state Representative Charlie Justice's LA. anymore. I like the fact that Laura is now in charge of Governmental Affairs for the City. I don't like the fact that she got it because Herb Polson retired. I like the fact that Charlie Justice is now Senator Justice. And I'll like all of this a lot better when the Council appoints Herb to fill the seat vacated by newly elected Representative Rick Kriseman.

I don't like the fact that there's too many places I can walk to downtown where I can get great stuff to eat. Wait, yes I do. Never mind.

Speaking of food, I'm going to grab lunch now. I really won't like it if you don't tell me what you don't like about St. Pete.

I don't like that I haven't heard Tommy Wareham singing You'll never Beat St. Pete at Ten Beach Drive in way too many years.

Local Politics is All Where All Politics is Local

2006-11-20T12:53:00.000-08:00

Tip O'neil's famous line, "All Politics is Local", has never been more appropriate. Here in Pinellas County, Florida, we have just gone through an election of historic significance. Local Democrats picked up two open seats in the Florida House of Representatives, and one open seat in the Florida Senate.

Pinellas used to be the most Republican county in an overwhelmingly Democratic state. The irony is that now that the State of Florida leans Republican, Pinellas County is now leaning Democratic. That doesn't mean that the local Republicans have rolled over and played dead. Governor-Elect Charlie Crist hails from St. Petersburg, and he carried Pinellas County handily. All but two of the County Commissioners are Republicans, as are all of the county's Constitutional Officers. Of the three Congressional Districts representing all or parts of Pinellas, only the portion of FL-11 in south St. Petersburg is represented by a Democrat.

Pinellas is beginning to become a tale of two counties. Southern Pinellas is starting to look pretty blue, while Northern Pinellas is still bright red. However, one of the biggest surprises this cycle is how close Carl Zimmerman came to victory in House District 48 in Northern Pinellas. The two State House seats picked up by Democrats this cycle are both in South Pinellas. When added to the Dist. 55 seat held by Frank Peterman, and Dist. 53 held by Rick Kriseman that was formerly the seat of newly elected Democratic State Senator Charlie Justice, the South Pinellas County House district map is almost entirely blue. The only red parts of this map below Ulmerton Road are the parts of House District 54 now held by newly elected Republican Jim Frishe.

St. Petersburg's Mayor, Rick Baker, is a Republican. However, 5 of the 8 city council seats were held by Democrats. The City Council will select a new Council Member to replace Rick Kriseman who resigned to take up his new seat in the state House. The best bet is Kriseman's replacement will also be a Democrat, Herb Polson. Two St. Petersburg Council seats will be open for the city election in November 2007. Bill Foster and Renee Flowers will be leaving due to term limits. Flowers seat is likely to remain in Democratic hands, with Gershom Faulkner the likely winner. The interesting race will be for Bill Fosters' seat. Foster is a Republican, but his Council District resides within State House District 52 which was just picked up for the Democrats by Bill Heller. Stay tuned. We'll be talking a lot more about both of these seats in later issues.

While St. Petersburg is the most Democratic of the cities in Pinellas, the other larger cities are not bereft of Democratic office holders. Three of the seven Commissioners in Largo are Dems, including Mayor Pat Gerard. Pinellas Park Democrats hold 2 of the 5 Council seats. Even Clearwater has Democratic Council Member Carlen Petersen.

One could not set the stage for local politics in Pinellas without a discussion of the local Republican and Democratic Parties. Each of these parties will soon be getting their own story told in more detail. However, we must talk a little about both here.

The Pinellas Democratic Party, well, what can you really say about them? The local Dems have been a complete horror show since July when Chair Carrie Wadlinger resigned. She was succeeded by Ed Helm. That's when the fun really began. To say that Helm has been divisive is a massive understatement. In a year that Democrats seemed to have everything going for them, Helm has made the local Democratic Party more fun than a three ring circus. For everybody but members of the Pinellas Democratic Party, that is. Helm decided to violate Florida Democratic Party rules by endorsing his own slate of candidates in the September 5th Primary. Showing what an adept politician Helm really is, every one of his candidates lost in the primary. Helm stirred things up during the primary by suggesting that the winning candidates were not "real" Democrats, whatever those are.

There will be an election of officers for the Pinellas Democratic Party on December 13th. Former Party Webmaster Tony Molinaro, who Helm unceremoniously fired in the middle of the general election campaign, will be running for Chair against Ed Helm. The Pinellas Party meetings since Helm took over as Chair have been real donnybrooks. The election meeting on December 13th should be no different. Look for a Credentials fight before the voting begins. I say it is even money whether or not a vote will even be held on the 13th. Stay tuned. We'll be sure to have more on that later.

Meanwhile, Pinellas Republicans have had no bed of roses to lie in either. While devoid of the histrionics that have characterized the Dems under Helm, The GOP has had its own trials and tribulations. Chair Tony DiMateo has drawn more than his share of criticism lately. Losing the two State House seats and the State Senate seat formerly held by Republicans hasn't helped him any. He has not appeared to have drawn any opposition for re-election so far, however. Neil Brickfield, a former local elected official and County Commission candidate is slated to become Vice Chair this cycle. Rumor is Brickfield will replace DiMateo after the 2008 presidential election.

Well, Pinellas is not Peyton Place, but sometimes it comes close. There will be the Party elections in December. There are municipal elections in March, and St. Petersburg will hold Council elections in November. Plenty of politics and local governance issues to talk about in between elections. Come back and see what's been happening lately.