Mayor Bill Foster Backpedals on Pier Closing Date

Less than two weeks after suggesting that the Pier could be closed October 1 of this year, Stpetersblog reports that Foster has promised that the Pier won't be closed until May 2013 at the earliest. No reason was given for this back-tracking on the part of the Mayor, but he clearly changed his mind since talking to Council about it or he wouldn't have suggested a closing date 7 months earlier.

"Big Brother" Foster's First Surveillance Program: Worthless

Back in 2009, Mayor Bill Foster started to make good on his campaign promise to add surveillance cameras around the city of St. Petersburg. The pilot program consisted of 10 cameras and uplinks and cost the city over $10,000. Now 2 years later it comes out that the cameras have not helped in the investigation of a single crime in the city, and Foster even admits that nobody is even watching the cameras. Of course Mayor Foster is not deterred by the total failure of the pilot program, he now wants to spend even more money to put cameras all across the city in his quest to become "Big Brother" of St Petersburg and be able to keep tabs on everyone in the city at all times.

We have covered this topic previously.

UPDATE: Doc Webb has posted his point of view on this subject over on saintpetersblog, since he was personally involved in these cameras it makes for a very interesting read.

UPDATE 2: Saintpetersblog reports that Councilman Karl Nurse wants the Mayor to come up with a plan in regards to these cameras. Also, another update from Doc Webb on the patch.

Mayor Bill Foster Came Away the Loser of the Trop Meeting

There have been dozens of articles(see some links below) written about Mayor Bill Foster's meeting with Stu Sternberg at the Trop last week, and it basically came down to this: they only talked about marketing. There was no discussion about a new stadium at all. Stu laid it out that he didn't want to discuss a new stadium, even though Foster brought it up, and Stu indicated that they don't know if the Tampa Bay region as a whole can even support the Rays.

It's pretty clear that Stu dominated the conversation, he knows Foster is inflexible on a new stadium, and he's most likely already planned what he is going to do in the future, which is probably either to wait out Foster(who may be out of office in less than two years anyway) or just bide his time as it becomes cheaper and cheaper to buy out their contract and then just take the Rays wherever he wants to go. He threw Foster off balance by not talking about a new stadium at all(something Foster probably spent a lot of time preparing for) and instead Stu questioned the entire region's support for the Rays, putting Foster on the defensive.

So in the end, Foster's shortsightedness with the Rays has hurt him in this meeting, and he clearly ended up as the loser, even promising more free marketing support to the Rays. Advantage: Stu.

BayNews9
St Petersburg Tampa Bay Times
TBO.com and another

City Council Votes to Request Two Budgets, Mayor Bill Foster Says No

In a typical thumbing of his nose at the City Council, who voted on Thursday to request two separate budget proposals from Mayor Bill Foster, he said he would only send them one because two is unnecessary in his opinion, and since we have a strong-mayor form of government he can pretty much get away with that too, even though the vote was 6-2, a veto-proof vote.

It's clear that Mayor Foster is only doing this because he wants the city council to be seen as the ones pushing for property tax rates to be raised, since he has been very sensitive to accusations of raising property taxes in the past. Then again he hasn't had a problem pushing for dozens of new and raised fees in almost all aspects of city services, so it's very hypocritical of the Mayor to be behaving this way when talking about property taxes. His posturing is all politics and has nothing to do with what is best for the city.

Mayor Bill Foster Skips Easy Opportunity to Lobby for St Pete

In a posting on StPetersBlog, Peter Schorsch details his experience at the St Petersburg Chamber of Commerce Public Policy Council on Monday, where Mayor Bill Foster was there to make a presentation about redistricting. Apparently, right after his presentation Foster skipped talking to the legislators, policy makers and influential business leaders that were in attendance and went right to go talk to Mr. Schorsch. Now don't get me wrong, Peter is a nice guy, but this wasn't a social mixer that the Mayor was at, he was trying to affect policy, and he missed his chance to talk to all of the people there that could actually do something about it.

This is even more surprising(or damaging) when you consider that the Mayor did away with the city's full time lobbyist last year in favor of a "shared lobbyist" who also lobbys for other cities in Florida as well as St Petersburg. So now not only is the city getting less face time up in Tallahassee, but the easy face time right here in town with legislators and power brokers is being ignored by Foster too. I guess this is just another stumble for our soon-to-be one-term Mayor Bill Foster.

Mayor Bill Foster Not Interested in Finding Source of Impact Fee Short-Charge

As a followup to a topic we've covered before: In another show of contempt for the people of St Petersburg, Mayor Bill Foster has said that he is still not interested in getting to the bottom of the impact fee short-change that occurred under his predecessor Mayor Rick Baker related to the Hilton Hotel in Carillon. Mayor Foster says he has "a lot of faith in my auditing staff", but they never did conduct a full audit of the situation, it was an informal investigation that was conducted almost entirely by phone with very little documentation and it never reached a conclusion. So why the resistance to finding out the truth of who really ordered the reduction of impact fees? Who are you protecting Mr. Mayor? This was a $160,000 mistake that we the people of St Petersburg had to pay for, and that is just the one instance we know of.

A big THANK YOU to councilman Kornell for requesting a full audit of all impact fee and tax collection by the city for the last 7 years, we might find out that this is just the tip of the iceberg, Steve Kornell is looking more and more like a good candidate for Mayor himself every day.

Of course, Foster lap-dogs councilmen Kennedy and Dudley side with Foster on this one by downplaying the problem. As usual, they are going along with whatever Foster tells them, always taking his word and never questioning his actions or motives.

If Mayor Foster wanted to show his constituents that he isn't just an incompetent, push-over boss, maybe some firings at the Development Department would help with all of the selective amnesia that is going on over there.

UPDATE: The St Petersburg Tampa Bay Times editorial on this subject

UPDATE 2: Doc Webb's take on this from The Patch

Mayor Bill Foster Still Doesn't Know Who is Paying for His Party's Party at the Trop

Mayor Bill Foster still doesn't know who is going to pay for the Republican Party's planned party at Tropicana Field for delegates and reporters during the RNC convention later this year. He claims that security costs could go "well into six figures" and that he doesn't know who is going to pay for it. Maybe you should have thought about who was going to pay before you agreed to host your party's party here Mr. Mayor.

Here is some earlier coverage of this from two months ago.

Mayor Bill Foster's Showdown at the Trop

Mayor Bill Foster is finally going to go meet Stu Sternberg at the trop later this month to have a discussion about the future of the Rays in St. Petersburg according to a posting on WTSP reporter Noah Pransky's shadowofthestadium blog.

Foster had promised that he would try to set a meeting "after the world series", we just didn't think it would be this far past the world series. Maybe our "Minor League Mayor" just wanted some cooling off time after his little spat with county commissioner Latvala about his feeling that the Rays were not marketing in the community enough.

I'm sure the meeting will be behind closed doors, and Mayor Foster will say the meeting "went well", but in the end it will accomplish nothing. Unless of course Mayor Foster whips out his "secret plan" and solves everything.

UPDATE: The meeting will be on January 17th at Tropicana field. Here is additional coverage from the St. Petersburg Tampa Bay Times and from tbo.com.

UPDATE 2: Here is more from Stu's side of things

Mayor Bill Foster Lowering Financial Support For The Arts

Mayor Bill Foster hired a $50,000 consultant to try to find ways to fund the arts in St Petersburg since he will be reducing the amount that the city directly funds arts organizations in the city. Billed as a way to "find sustainable funding sources" for arts organizations, it appears as if it is really being used as an excuse for Mayor Foster to cut arts funding in the city in order to balance his budget without having to cut things like the $200,000 administrator vehicle subsidies that he refused to cut from the last budget. Read the editorial here at the St Petersburg Tampa Bay Times.