The Pier Referendum Vote

The vote last Thursday was 5 to 3, in favor of putting "some kind of question" on the November general election ballot about the Pier. Curran, Danner and Kennedy were the "no" votes.

There was heated discussion for almost 2 hours amongst the council members about the ballot question issue and the Pier design process as a whole. Mayor Foster offered his own symbolic support for a referendum, saying: "They've been working on this for two years... The process was not designed to stop a referendum... If they get the signatures, they've earned it... now, the signatures have been verified... to me, I think they deserve something on the ballot."

We applaud Mayor Foster for his stance, even though it was an easy position for him to take, because he doesn't get to vote on the issue, and even if the referendum had not been approved he could have said he tried.

Council-chair Curran and councilman Danner(who have both been very vocal about their support for demolishing the Pier for over two years) got very upset that a referendum on the pier might be approved, they tried argument after argument to try to convince their fellow council members to not approve a referendum on the ballot. The desperate tone to their voices and poorly thought out arguments were really just sad to watch.

Here are some of Danner's points: Councilman Newton had many chances and nobody seconded his motions, the referendum question isn't valid, council should have started the referendum process earlier, the vote on the pier group has spread too much misinformation, we've already looked at ways to save the pier, if there is a referendum we can't advocate for the Lens pier.

Here are some of Curran's points: The people that signed these petitions only wanted this one question on the ballot not just some question, the people that went through the pier design process need to be represented too, the petition gathering was funded by someone who didn't like the Lens, the one thing that people don't like or understand is change, I do not feel that I am cutting anybody short by voting no, the petition is from Safety Harbor not St. Petersburg, nobody will want to go through a city design process again if we overthrow this one.

Councilman Kennedy also ended up voting "no" because he said a vote won't make the pier pilings stable and it won't change the subsidy, he ignored any options for reinforcing the caissons and he also completely missed the point that the people don't want the Lens.

All three of the "no" voters ignored the spirit of the verified referendum petitions, that people don't feel like they have been heard in this "open" process, and that the majority of people don't like the Lens.

We have covered this process before in quite a few postings here on BillFosterWatch, and it is clear that there is a big divide in the city on this issue, and ignoring the referendum petitions would have only made that divide worse. We would like to thank the 5 councilmen who did the right thing and voted "yes", especially Councilman Newton who was the lone voice of the people for these last 20 months after council voted to demolish the Pier(at Mayor Foster's urging) at an unannounced meeting with no public input allowed.

Hopefully city council will put some unbiased questions on the ballot, and will follow through with what the people vote for in November.

Up next, an analysis of the "New Pier Presentation" that Lisa Wannemacher gave at the same meeting last Thursday...