Saturday, December 31, 2011

Mayor Bill Foster's Hidden "Eighth 'S'": Stumble

I received another "Foster's Weekly Forecast" email yesterday with an update on how the Mayor thinks he is doing with his "7 S's for City Success" after two years in office.

He mentions a drop in the "overall crime rate" this year(no mention of the murder rate going up) and he spends most of the SAFETY portion talking about how we are paying $1.8 million a year to ship our homeless problem to Largo.

In the SMALL BUSINESS section, he talks about his goals for helping businesses and "eliminating those things that are progress resistant", maybe he should start by rolling back all of those new and raised permitting fees he just pushed so hard for.

In the SUSTAINABILITY section, he talks about budget challenges and the "three budget summits scheduled so that residents can have early input in formulating next year's budget", so you mean you are actually going to listen to the residents this time? I can't think of a single suggestion given by residents during the last round of budget summits this year that you implemented. Loudest among the suggestions was getting rid of the more than $200,000 in yearly vehicle subsidies for high-ranking city administrators that almost never use their vehicles for work. In the end, Mayor Foster ignored the people and kept the perk.

With the exception of the SPORTS, ARTS & CULTURE section(most of which had little to do with the Mayor directly), the other S's had mostly fluff content in them, especially the SEEMLESSNESS section which used 66 words to say pretty much nothing at all.

So on to the main topic of this post, Mayor Bill Foster's hidden eighth "S": Stumble. From his consistently horrible mishandling of the Rays(on several occasions) to his poor schedule management, poor prioritization of issues, his fear of his own employees, contempt of his City's citizens and even ambivalence to his own city's election(which he wasn't even in the country for), Mayor Foster has clearly STUMBLED through the first two years of his term as Mayor, we can only hope that when he says in the email "I've said to staff that we find ourselves at half time", that it means he won't be seeking a second term as Mayor.

Friday, December 30, 2011

Mayor Bill Foster Procrastinates on Selling New Police HQ

Mayor Bill Foster is accepting blame for low approval numbers in St. Petersburg to build a new $60 million Police Headquarters. According to the St. Petersburg Tampa Bay Times article, Foster said "That one's on me... We're early in the process, but we need to do a better job educating the people."

Early in the process? He knew 10 years ago when he was on City Council that the police station needed to be replaced, and again over seven months ago when the City Council voted to proceed with the plan, so how exactly are we 'early in the process' Mr. Mayor? Maybe he should spend less time writing plays and traveling on the taxpayer's dime, and more time on critical projects like the new police station.

Doc Webb over at The Patch presses the need for a new police HQ, as does the St. Petersburg Tampa Bay Times in their recent editorial, but it seems as though the cost is what most people are finding hard to swallow, especially after seeing what we are being forced to settle for in the New Pier and the $40-$140 million that project is going to cost, at the same time we will be building the new police HQ. In the comments on the St. Petersburg Tampa Bay Times articles you will see many calling for a reevaluation of what is really needed in the new Police HQ, mostly since the price seems a bit inflated, especially for a city that is decreasing in size.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Might Bill Foster be a One Term Mayor?

Peter Schorsch over at StPetersblog wrote a good article on how State Rep Rick Kriseman might run for Mayor of St. Petersburg in 2013, and how he just might win in such a race if he did decide to run, especially in light of Bill Foster's lackluster approval ratings. We at Bill Foster Watch couldn't think of a better outcome than having Mayor Foster re-enter the private sector after a single term as Mayor, so here's to hoping that Kriseman decides to run.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

New Poll Shows Mayor Bill Foster's Negative Numbers Nearly Double

Some poll results released by the St Pete Times shows that people who think Mayor Bill Foster is doing a good job fell only 1%(from 39% to 38%), but those who said he was doing poorly went from 11% to 20% in the last year, showing that as undecideds get to know the Mayor, many of them don't like what they see.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

"Bad Cop" Mayor Bill Foster Wants to Keep Homeless Out of St Pete

Just saw this great posting over at the examiner going over the homeless good-cop bad-cop relationship between St Petersburg and Tampa, and is it really a surprise that Mayor Bill Foster is the bad cop?

Friday, December 23, 2011

Mayor Bill Foster Endorsement: Watch Out Romney!

Establishment-Republican Mayor Bill Foster has endorsed Mitt Romney for President and will be the Pinellas county campaign leader along with Clearwater's Mayor Hibbard. Given Foster's history of backing the loser this doesn't bode well for Romney.

EDIT:
Forgot to mention that Bill Foster also backed Mitt Romney back in 2007 as well, he must REALLY like the guy.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Is Mayor Bill Foster Scared of His Own Staff?

On the heals of another city staff scandal(this one from before Bill Foster was Mayor), more insight into how Mayor Bill Foster is as a boss, saying that he doesn't want to "second-guess the previous administration" because "I need to have the confidence in my staff.". So let me get this straight, you need to have confidence in your staff that ripped off the city to the tune of over $200,000? Money that we taxpayers have to make up by the way. And the way that you show your confidence in these staff members is to not question them or even seek to conduct a thorough investigation into what happened exactly?

So is Mayor Bill Foster shooting for the title of "Easiest Pushover Boss" or something? It seems so, just take a look back at the recent scandals within the city's real estate department where a member of that department was found to be lying in his testimony to the City Council, and the mis-appraisal of a house to be purchased by the city and misinformation about it given to the city council. In Mayor Bill Foster's own words "I cannot help but conclude that this omission was an intentional act," and "It's against the way I do business", yet he has not disciplined anyone involved for either incident. So, what this tells the people that work for him is, "go ahead and lie, cheat and steal from the city, nothing will happen, I need to have confidence in you."

I have the utmost respect for most of the city staff members, but by not punishing or throwing out the bad apples, it makes the whole city look bad. And on that subject, here's a short book that the Mayor should make some time to read.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Mayor Bill Foster: Aspiring to be St. Petersburg's "Big Brother"

The great editorial from the St Petersburg Times on Sunday about the rise of government-controlled surveillance in this country reminded me about our Mayor Bill Foster's goal to equip most of downtown St Petersburg with surveillance cameras(it's actually one of his campaign promises), which he reaffirmed at an event in September. Of course he's already started us down the road to becoming a surveillance city with red light cameras, and if the Mayor gets his way he will be able to identify and log every person that goes into a liquor store, bar or any other business they happen to be monitoring. Just one more step towards Mayor Bill Foster becoming St Petersburg's "Big Brother".

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Thursday, December 8, 2011

ARCHIVE: Mayor Bill Foster Rushes to Destroy Scene of Police Officer Murders

Back on January 24th of this year, a very dark day for the City of St Petersburg, two St Pete police officers were shot and killed while assisting a federal marshal investigating Hydra Lacy Jr. Only 2 hours after finding the fugitive dead, the house was destroyed and hauled away at the order of Mayor Bill Foster. This unprecedented order by the Mayor confused police experts and removed any chance of a thorough investigation of the circumstances around the murders of the police officers.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Candidates Endorsed by Mayor Bill Foster Both Lose in City Election

An endorsement from the current Mayor of St. Petersburg meant about as much this City election as it did four years ago, as the two candidates endorsed by Mayor Bill Foster both lost their City Council races. Of course it probably didn't help that Mayor Foster couldn't be bothered to be in the same country while his city was having it's municipal election.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Taxpayers Pay For Mayor Bill Foster to go to Japan

Last month, during the City's election, Mayor Bill Foster flew to our sister city of Takamatsu in Japan, with his trip paid for by our tax dollars. Even though his staff had stated that the Mayor would be paying for the trip, that didn't end up happening.

ARCHIVE: Bill Foster goes to NC to save Baywalk?

Back in August 2010, Mayor Bill Foster took a taxpayer-funded trip to Charlotte, North Carolina to try to save Baywalk. The trip was basically dinner and night clubbing and supposedly some meetings with an entertainment complex management company. Not many details came out about what was accomplished in these meetings, or how in favor of this meeting the management company even was in the first place, but a while later the Mayor finally disclosed that they didn't think Baywalk was a good risk.Maybe a simple phone call would have been more efficient Mr. Mayor.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Mayor Bill Foster to Rename Sanitation Department "the Department of First Impressions"?

We are not sure if Mayor Bill Foster was serious when he told a reporter for the St Pete Patch that the department of sanitation was being re-branded as the "department of first impressions" to focus on "look smell and feel". While not entirely out of the realm of possibility for a Mayor that likes to rename things for no good reason, it sure seems like a waste of time and resources for something that would just confuse people. What's next, the recreation department being renamed the "department of sports and smiles"?

Mayor Bill Foster Adds New Fees and Raises Several Others

Two weeks ago at the City Council meeting, at the urging of Mayor Bill Foster, some new fire-related fees were put into place and several other existing fees were raised, some by more than triple what they were before. Fire inspection fees were raised, fire prevention fees were raised, a new per-page fee was added for plan revisions, and the fines for parking violations were also raised. Just another step in Mayor Foster's crusade to bombard his spoiled citizens with new fees and overwhelm us by raising many existing fees.

ARCHIVE: Bill Foster Promises to Remove Three Deputy Mayor Positions... Then He Keeps Them All Under New Titles

Back in 2009 on the campaign trail, then mayoral candidate Bill Foster, said that the three deputy mayor positions would be removed when he became Mayor, but was not specific about how exactly he would do it. Well, as it turns out it was pretty much just a job title change, since all three deputy mayors stayed with only slight changes to their duties.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Foster Sits Quietly While Pool He Wanted to Close is Saved by Council

At yesterday's city council meeting, Mayor Bill Foster sat quietly as the City Council unanimously voted to give the Jennie Hall Pool historic landmark status, protecting it from being shut down, as Mayor Foster had been considering just three months ago when he pushed for the delay in historic status for the south-side pool complex. Foster had used the excuse that attendance was down as a justification for the shutdown, of course he was the person who shortened hours and days open of the pools, so it seems that is the effect he was looking for all along. Cheers to the City Council for going against Mayor Foster and saving this historic landmark.

ARCHIVE: Bill Foster believes Darwin lead to Nazis and Columbine Massacre

Back in January of 2008, before he was Mayor, Bill Foster wrote a letter to the Pinellas school board about how Charles Darwin's theory of evolution lead to the rise of Nazi Germany and the Columbine Massacre. It seems that what he was trying to accomplish was to get the school board to include Creationism or Intelligent Design in their science curriculum because the Theory of Evolution is so bad it can lead to mass murder. I guess we should just ignore all religious massacres, like the Inquisition,  the Salem Witch Trials, the Crusades or the many other cases in history of religion being used as a justification for killing people. Of course, there are even passages in Bill Foster's own bible that seem to condone genocide. It is a very interesting window into what our Mayor believes, and luckily for us, he is not in a position to force his beliefs on our children.

Click here to read the St Pete Times article on this.

Mayor Bill Foster on Free Parking: "people are spoiled"

Last week Mayor Bill Foster showed his contempt for the average citizen again by saying that people wanting to park close to the businesses that they go to downtown are "spoiled", and he used that as justification for adding another 275 parking meters around downtown St Petersburg. Too bad we all can't have reserved parking and aides who stand around and hold our parking spots when we go to city events.

Mayor Bill Foster Writes a Short Play

Apparently Mayor Bill Foster has a lot of free time on his hands, enough to write a short play that was performed last night at the Studio@620. Let's hope it was something happy to cheer up his sad citizens.

Click to go to the northeast patch for more info.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Bill Foster Watch is on the air!

After almost two years of watching St Petersburg's Mayor Bill Foster stumble through being the Mayor of our city, and after talking to dozens of other St Pete citizens who had no idea some of the things he has done and said, we decided to start a blog to document what Bill Foster is up to.

We will be posting new "Bill Foster Alerts" as they happen, as well as periodic "Bill Foster Archive" postings from the past until we have posted everything from our archives on this blog.