Thursday, August 30, 2012

Mayor Bill Foster Spent Like A Drunken Sailor On His Party's Party

Last week we covered how Mayor Foster's bet paid off for a piece of Tampa's RNC security federal tax money, but an article in the Tampa Bay Times today exposes how the preparations for that 4-hour private party ended up costing almost $600,000 more than Foster had budgeted, and that cost overrun will most likely have to be paid by the people of St. Petersburg.

Let's add up the costs of Sunday's private party for 8,000 Republican delegates and low-level members of the press. Pinellas county contributed $600,000 from tourist development funds, Hillsborough county contributed $400,000 from their tourist development funds, St. Petersburg received $1 million from the city of Tampa out of their $50 million allotment from federal tax funds, and on top of all of that, the city spent another $600,000 they didn't have on preparations for the pre-conference party. Grand total: $2.6 million dollars.

Breaking that down, we spent $325 on each delegate and member of the press that attended. Or to put it in other terms, that 4-hour private party cost as much as the entire operating subsidies for both Tropicana Field and the Pier, combined, for the whole year of 2012.

Earlier this month, Mayor Foster was quoted as saying, "I will not do anything that causes the city of St. Petersburg taxpayers to bear the costs of a private party." We would like to thank Bill Foster for his generous contribution, you can make your $600,000 personal check out to the City of St. Petersburg Mr. Mayor.


Friday, August 24, 2012

Former Foster Foe Ford Files Suit on Future of the Pier

Mayor Foster will be squaring off in court against his former rival Kathleen Ford. Earlier this week, Ford filed the lawsuit on behalf of herself and the thousands of other St. Petersburg voters that signed petitions to have the question of the future of the municipal Pier put on the ballot. The suit calls the city out on it's refusal to allow the referendum on renovating the Pier, as well as the city's ignoring of the charter requirement to hold a referendum on significantly altering city-owned waterfront property.

This shouldn't be a surprise for Mayor Bill Foster, he and his staff had pushed hard for the demolition of the Pier and they tried to craft legal language to avoid the charter referendum requirements. They also gave city council a slanted view of the Pier's ability to be renovated, resulting in all renovation proposals being excluded from the rushed pier design competition. Now the people of St. Petersburg will have to pay for Foster's actions. Even though the majority of people don't want the new Lens pier, our tax dollars will be used to defend it in court.

Mayor Foster's Ever-Changing Fire Fee

It started as a rather generic concept, charge every property owner in the city a flat fee for "fire readiness" as a way to generate revenue to fill the city's budget gap. Calling it a "fire fee" is about as true as saying lottery money goes to education, its just a way of shifting money around within the budget, there will be no budget increases or added funding stability for the fire department if this fire fee is enacted. Nobody but virtual-co-Mayor Kennedy would admit to understanding it at first, and it has been changed at least a dozen times since it was first proposed.

First it was going to be a flat fee, then Foster talked about making it a graduated fee, bigger for expensive properties than lower appraised ones(although nowhere near as graduated as the general property tax is).

The Mayor started by saying that non-profits would not be exempt, and then he came out this week saying that they would be exempt.

He was against offering exemptions for the poor, then came up with a complex "deferral" idea that would involve putting a lien on the property and charging interest and recording fees on top of it. Maybe the Mayor should get into the car-title-loan business too, it's not much of a leap from there, and we are unsure how deferring a tax payment can help the yearly budget if you don't see the money for years, or even decades.

City Council has gone along for the ride, voting for approval of the fire fee along with the large payments for legal services to try to get approval for it without even knowing the specifics of how the fire fee would be implemented. It's time for them to stop the wobbling fire-fee-train and pin Foster down on the specifics before they allow it to move any further.

Former Foster Target For Closure, Historic Jennie Hall Pool Dedicated Last Weekend

In an update to a subject that we've covered before, the Jennie Hall Pool was dedicated as a historic landmark last weekend. Just last year, the pool was on Mayor Bill Foster's chopping block, then City Council decided to save the historic pool last year, in a rejection of Foster's attempts to delay its historic designation process and close the pool down as a cost saving measure. Thanks again to city council for preserving our city's history.

Update on Foster's Party's Party

Mayor Foster's gamble paid off, but it came down to the wire, last week Tampa's City Council approved the transfer of almost $1 million(out of the $50 million that they received) to St. Petersburg for security-related costs associated with hosting the RNC pre-conference party. So Foster gets a big piece of government cheese(our federal tax dollars) to host a private party for his political buddies. He doesn't even try to hide the fact that this party won't generate immediate benefits to the city the night everyone is in town."Hopefully they will come back to the city of St. Petersburg," Foster said. "The welcome mat is up and we are open for business." Of course if you look at the pictures in that article, all the party-goers will see of St. Petersburg is the highway and a whole lot of barricades around the Trop. Heck, they can't even walk across the street to Ferg's where Ron Paul's after-party there had to be canceled and moved across the bay to Tampa. So the net loss of an entire weekend's worth of business for a good portion of downtown St. Petersburg's businesses, and a whole lot of city employee overtime, is about all we will be getting out of this event.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Who Will Pay For Foster's Party's Party?

There have been several articles over the last few days about Mayor Bill Foster asking Tampa to pay for some of the costs for the Republican party's party at Tropicana field later this month. We've covered it twice before, and Mayor Foster has said a few conflicting things about who is paying for it over the last nine months. Back in January, Foster said the costs could run "well into six-figures". Then in March he said that "he expected that the city would end up covering some of the costs", yet in June he said "There won't be any general-operating funds used for this event." So which is it Mr. Mayor, who is going to pay for your party's party at the Trop?

He sent a letter to Tampa's Mayor Bob Buckhorn earlier last month asking for some money, and has yet to receive any kind of response. Foster's backup plan is to ask the host committee for money, although the Trop party is not actually part of the convention.

Another expense that is overlooked in this is the $270,000 that Foster pushed through City Council for security cameras for the event, again he had no guarantees on outside money to cover those costs either. To get approval for that expense, City Council had also been told that the cameras could be moved after the event, but after the vote Foster then said they couldn't.

Why is the Mayor gambling with our money? He has bet that he can get someone else to pay for these expenses, without any kind of contract or assurance from these outside organizations that they will pay, and in the process he has played fast-and-loose with the facts to the city council and people of St. Petersburg.

The worst-case scenario is that the people of St. Petersburg will spend a half-million dollars on this one-day closed party for Republican delegates and the press. And Mayor Foster will have lied to the people once again, to get what he wants.