Mayor Bill Foster Does Something Right For Once

As the old saying goes, "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day", and even our stumbling Mayor Bill Foster can manage to do the right thing once in a while. Today we felt the need to praise Bill Foster for his approval of domestic benefits for all city employees. Of course the Tampa Bay Times article mentions several times how he downplayed the significance of his decision, perhaps in an attempt to offer an excuse to his conservative base for his straying from the party line. It also might have been simply a calculated decision on Foster's part to help him gain favor in the gay community ahead of next year's race for Mayor. But don't think that this changes our mind about Mayor Foster over all, he has a long way to go to undo all of the stumbles, incompetence and lack of leadership that he has shown for the last two years he's been in office.

Mayor Bill Foster, The Unwitting Pitch-Man

Michael Van Sickler from the Tampa Bay Times posted this humorous article on how Mayor Bill Foster's image is being used by a house-flipper in a local magazine ad, and they even have a video testimonial with Foster himself giving a glowing account of one of the house-flipper's rehabs, it's not even taken out of context. The Mayor responds in his usual legal-speak, "I didn't authorize the use of my name for marketing purposes,", and "I'll take a look at this... If we have to take action, we will". Watch out Joe Cavaleri, you've slightly annoyed Mayor Bill Foster, man of mystery!

A Tale Of Two St Petersburgs, Mayor Bill Foster Style

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... financially speaking at least.

On the one hand you have the Mayor Bill Foster that is looking to raise taxes and cut the city budget to make up for a $13 million drop in property tax revenues, and he is looking for as much public input as possible for justification to raise taxes in some way.

On the other hand you have Mayor Bill Foster and City Council that are looking to spend $50 million on the new "Lens Pier" that the public doesn't want, and Mayor Foster doesn't want to hear any public input on that project(the last several "public" meetings about the new Pier banned all public comment).

What we are REALLY hearing from Foster is, "I need 'public' input to justify a $13 million tax increase, but I don't really care what you have to say about the new $50 million Pier, just go sit down, be quiet and let the grown-ups decide that one for you."

The Mayor and City Council will soon be voting on whether to move forward with the Lens Pier design, committing to spending $4.69 million, and if the past votes are any indication, they will approve it. This is an extremely irresponsible commitment considering that the vote-on-the-pier group is almost 90% of their way to getting the signatures needed to submit their petition for a vote on whether to demolish the current pier or not. What happens to that $4.69 million if the petition gets on the ballot, and the voters decide to save the current pier? It's just gone, no refunds, and with the budget shortfalls of the last 5 years, our city leaders should be ashamed for gambling with millions our tax dollars like that.

So in a time when one St Petersburg is spending several months and three well publicized public budget summits debating how to raise and/or cut $13 million for one year's budget shortfall, the other St Petersburg will hold no referendums or public summits on the unelected-committee-chosen design for a $50 million project that will dramatically alter our treasured waterfront, and have a major effect on our city for decades. The differences between these two St Petersburgs are startling and worthy of outrage.

Mayor Bill Foster Spreads "Doom And Gloom" About The Budget Shortfall, Ignores His Budgetary Leadership Role and Prepares To Deflect Blame For A Tax Increase

Mayor Bill Foster seems to have been prepping for a tax increase for several months behind the scenes, and now he is talking about all of the things that will happen if the city doesn't find new revenue streams, from laying off "200 to 300 employees" to saying "Some departments might be eliminated entirely" and then there's this horrible Foster gem, "We're in the cremation phase". As Doc Webb points out on SaintPetersBlog, the Mayor knew about the revenue shortfall problem over a year ago, and admits he should have done something about it then. St Petersburg's Procrastinator-in-Chief strikes again.

Council Chair Leslie Curran says "Foster is almost a non-entity," and Councilman Charlie Gerdes says "The mayor needs to be a leader and say, 'This is what I think is the right thing to do'... And he hasn't done that yet.". In fact, Mayor Foster is withholding all recommendations until after the third budget summit in mid-June, leaving a glaring budgetary leadership void at city hall for the next two months. There has been no mention of where the $3 million in budget savings he's talked about will come from, or anything else budget related. He's clammed up and won't say anything specific at all.

He has distanced himself even more from his own budget by saying that it is his goal this year to get as much public input and participation in the budget process as he can, and that "This will indeed be the people’s budget". So let's get this straight Mr. Mayor, the last two budgets you had public forums AFTER you already drafted your budget, and you took almost none of the suggestions offered in the public forums, and now after you have cut the city budget the last two years, as well as raising all sorts of fees to avoid the dreaded "raising taxes", it's not even going to be "your" budget anymore now that you have finally accepted the fact that you HAVE TO raise taxes? So now, when he runs for reelection next year he can say "I didn't raise taxes last year, that was the people's budget, they said they wanted higher taxes, so I just let them have what they wanted", which is a slimy politician kind of thing to do, not something a true leader does, making it exactly what we have come to expect from our stumbling Mayor Bill Foster.

Our St. Petersburg Race For Mayor 2013 Potential Candidates

Peter Schorsch from SaintPetersBlog posted Friday about his list of potential candidates for the race for Mayor in 2013 and asked us who we would support. This got all kinds of gears turning in our heads, and we asked around to see what other people thought, as well as doing some searching to see what past St. Petersburg political contenders have been up to lately.

Unfortunately, Bill Foster announced in February that he would be running for reelection next year. It would really be sadly funny how hopelessly bad Bill Foster is at being Mayor, if we didn't have to live with him being OUR Mayor that is. Even people we've talked to who live in other bay-area cities are baffled and amazed at just how bad he is doing the job. So taking into consideration his horrible performance so far, there is a very real chance that he could lose next year.

As for who we prefer in the 2013 race for Mayor? the short answer is "Anybody But Bill Foster", the city government has stagnated and needs change at the top(both elected and non-elected), and just about anybody else would be better than Foster. Someone who isn't afraid to fire incompetent, corrupt and/or lazy city employees would be a good start.


Here's a rundown of the possible contenders:

Rick Kriseman - A good guy, cares about the city, has called Foster out on several of his blunders, and seems to be preparing for the 2013 Mayor race by not running for the state legislature this year, but we're not sure he has the city-wide support needed to beat an incumbent in a city that has a strong history of reelecting incumbents, even with that in mind, he probably has the best chance out of all of those who will end up running against Foster next year.

Kathleen Ford - She had her chance, and would not win in a rematch of the 2009 race. She also seems more bitter and divisive now than she did 3 years ago.

Leslie Curran - Currently trying to take charge in City Council and fill the leadership gap left by Foster, not sure how good a manager she is though with being sued by her landlord, and we don't think she has "the left" supporting her enough to get out the vote and beat a standing Mayor from the same Republican party that she is in.

Karl Nurse - Seems a bit too far to the left for St Petersburg, and besides, he has another term to go on council.

Charlie Gerdes - He just got on council, he would wait at least another 4 years before he even thinks about running for Mayor.

Jim Kennedy - Too much of a Foster-buddy to run against him, and he's looking for Foster's support when HE runs for Mayor in 2017.

Steve Kornell - Very smart, knows the system and how to run a good campaign, would be a good Mayor. Don't think the city is quite ready for a gay Mayor, although it would be a great race.

Jeff Danner - Let's face it, judging from his committee meeting behavior, he can kind of come off as a jerk, although we don't think he'd have a problem firing people, his lack of people-skills alone will keep him out of the Mayor's office.

Bill Dudley - No way does he run for Mayor, especially against Foster.

Wengay Newton - The "voice of the people" on City Council, is a great guy, very dedicated to St Pete, but hopefully he knows that managing a city with thousands of employees is not something he would enjoy or be very good at.

Ken Welch - He is very happy at the county level for now thank you very much.

Charlie Justice - If he loses his bid for Pinellas County Commission against incumbent Nancy Bostock this year, he may run for Mayor of St Petersburg next year. He is well liked, very active politically and depending on the field of candidates, he might do quite well in the primary.

Scott Wagman - He may have matured in the last 3 years, as Mr. Schorsch suggests, but we don't think he can win the race for Mayor without having any political experience unless he spends a lot more money this time.

Deveron Gibbons - Most people forget that he came in third place in the 2009 Mayor primary, but questions about his personal life and business life would most likely keep him from making it out of the primary once more.

Paul Congemi - The comic relief of our city's last race for Mayor has already declared he will run in 2013, even after he came in tenth out of ten candidates in the 2009 primary. The grumpy, pro-gambling, anti-gay candidate who has been banned from KFC and claims to have his own political party is sure to add to the entertainment value of the 2013 Mayor race.

Larry Williams - Was on the Charter Review Committee last year, still involved in the city political scene, but probably won't run for Mayor again after his fifth place finish in 2009.

Jamie Bennett - He continues to give back to the community by working as the Jobs and Housing Coach at the St. Petersburg Free Clinic's Beacon House, Bennett most likely wouldn't run again for Mayor after his sixth place finish in 2009.

Ed Montinari - We threw him on the list because of the massive man-crush Peter Schorsch seems to have on him, but Montinari most likely wouldn't try to take out a fellow Republican running for reelection(although we wish he would have run against Councilman Dudley last year, and we still don't know how he lost to Dudley in 2007).

Rick Baker - We already know he can do the job a lot better than Foster does, he is still very popular and he could beat Foster easily in a 1-on-1 match as Foster's supporters would flock to Baker once he announced his candidacy. It is unlikely he will run, but there are hints that he may, and the city would be better off with Baker at the helm once more instead of another stumbling Foster term.

Charlie Crist - Would be a wonderful Mayor of St. Petersburg, but only in our dreams would he run. And anyway we need him available to get Rick Scott out of Tallahassee in a couple years.

IBM Watson - We saw this article linked on facebook and immediately thought of St Petersburg, we might even be better off with a computer as Mayor. Heck, Mayor Foster likes automated cameras and computerized parking meters, so why not just replace HIM with a computer?


So there you have it, like it or not, a few of these people are the ones that will run against Bill Foster for Mayor next year. Hopefully a good one will come out of the primary strong enough to win against Foster.

Curbside Recycling Becomes Another Foster Failure

WSI(the company hired by the city to handle the curbside recycling program in St. Petersburg) told the city yesterday that they would not be renewing their contract in October, effectively ending what one CONA representative called "a half-hearted attempt to recycle". The program was pushed by Foster last year as the best option for offering curbside recycling in the city, but only a few months later it was clear that the program was not very popular and was not cost-effective for WSI.

So how did Mayor Foster manage to mess up something so simple and universally successful that every other community in the county does it at a higher participation rate?

The first problem is that the city made it voluntary so each resident had to sign up for it individually. In a process that could take over a month, residents wanting to sign up for the $2.75 a month program had to call in to a phone number during certain hours and wait on hold until they got to someone to take their registration(no web sign-up was allowed). Then they would have to wait a few weeks until the bins would show up at their house, hopefully. Most other local curbside recycling programs are community-wide, spreading the cost as well as making it easier for everyone to participate. In Foster's bid to nickle-and-dime us yet again, he took something that would have succeeded and not cost much money per resident, and made it optional and difficult to sign up for, so it failed.

The second problem is that it was not promoted very well by the city, an insert in the water bill and an advertisement on the city's website does not constitute proper promotion. Why not try putting stickers on the city-owned garbage cans that almost every resident has to use to throw away their trash? There is no better time than when people are throwing stuff away to remind them it can be recycled, but as the Mayor has made painfully clear, he has a hard time thinking outside the box, and public outreach is not his strong suit.

The third problem is that they chose the lowest bidder which offered a substandard service. Complaints of difficulty signing up, bad service and poorly-designed recycling bins dogged the program from the beginning. The low price of $2.75 per month also made it so that WSI would have to have a large number of residents sign up before they would make any money on the program. It seems like the Mayor didn't really take all of the details of how the program would be implemented into consideration before he just chose the cheapest option.

In the end the "green", "tree city" of St. Petersburg, Florida could soon be left without any curbside recycling program again, due to yet another stumble by our incompetent Mayor Bill Foster.

UPDATE: Another quote from CONA member Tim Martin: "I think it is a little bit of a black eye on the city.  I think it is a little bit of an embarrassment".
 

Mayor Bill Foster Advocates For More Taxes, I Mean "Fees"

Only in the warped reality that Mayor Foster lives in are "taxes" and "fees" two completely separate and disconnected ideas. One(taxes) are to be avoided at all costs(even the cost of having to go to a judge to get a new "fee" approved instead of just raising the existing property tax millage rate which would not require judicial approval). The other(fees) are to be embraced in all ways, raising existing fees and created new ones that never existed(like doubling parking meter rates, adding hundreds of new meters, raising activity fees for recreational activities and the dozens of new and raised building fees in the city). Mayor Foster has spent his first two years in office creating all kinds of new fee-based revenue streams in order to avoid touching the dreaded "taxation" third rail of politics. He even got his buddy and co-Mayor on the City Council Jim Kennedy into the act by praising his "bold idea" for a new "fee" for property owners: "Mayor, let me commend you (for saying) that we actually need to raise revenue...".

But in this most recent case that came up just last week, it's time for Foster to face reality, the old proverb "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it must be a duck" clearly applies here to his proposed "fire readiness fee": it looks like a tax, sounds like a tax, and it appears on a tax bill, so it IS a tax, stop calling it a "fee". It's akin to the Mayor putting a plastic trunk on Petey, the city's "First Dog", and calling him an elephant, we just aren't that dumb Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Bill Foster Avoids External Audit Again

The saga of the many-years-long impact fee underestimation problem(which we've covered before), that Mayor Bill Foster seems to be working hard to try to sweep under the rug by doing yet another incomplete internal-only audit, popped up again today. There is a great editorial by Jim Morin appearing in the Tampa Bay Times that does a wonderful job of condensing what is going on into a few short paragraphs, we would highly suggest that you take a few minutes to read it, but here's a summary if you can't wait: Mayor Foster(and a few council members) seem to have amnesia about the external audit that was voted for by council a few months ago(sadly similar to City employee Don Tyre's amnesia of who ordered him to reduce the impact fees so drastically, causing this issue to come out in the first place), and ended up reversing course and voting to wait for an internal audit to be done first.

Another thing that has changed apparently was how much the external audit would have cost. Mayor Foster said back in January that it should "cost about $25,000", yet months later, audit-opponent and Foster-ally Councilman Dudley is saying "$50,000", and the number "$40,000" was mentioned in the workshop. Now we know that Foster "went to school to be a lawyer, not a mathematician", but this kind of math error is ridiculous, even for a lawyer.

One issue we didn't see raised in today's editorial is that back on March 29th, Councilman Nurse said "we're two weeks away from the internal audit", if that is true, where is it? It's been over 3 weeks, meaning it's been over a week since it was supposed to be completed, and we haven't heard a peep about the internal audit report.

So here are the questions we still have no answers for:

    Why are the Mayor and certain city council members now so afraid of what an external audit will show?
    What happened between the time the council voted for an external audit and last month's workshop to change their minds?
    How much would an external audit really cost?
    Where is the internal audit report that was supposed to be finished over a week ago?

The end result of all of this posturing and flip flopping on an external audit is the continued erosion of the public trust in St Petersburg City government. The fact that all of the above questions remain unanswered means that our government is not being transparent and open. Hopefully the voters of St Petersburg will remember this sad episode when these city officials are up for reelection next year.

As a final note, we would like to applaud Councilman Steve Kornell for his integrity and perseverance in pushing for this audit for the last several months, and not trying to sweep this under the rug like several others in city government seem to be trying to do.

CISPA: The End of Internet Privacy, Unless We Stop It

(While this subject is not directly "Mayor Bill Foster related", it is related to the erosion of our privacy, which politicians like Mayor Foster seem too eager to do, and since we don't want these politicians to have even more power over us, we thought it was important to post this alert).

We ran across this article through a link on Facebook of all places, that talks about the new CISPA(Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act HR-3523) bill that is making its way through the US Congress right now. If you didn't like SOPA or ACTA, you really won't like CISPA, which could potentially lead to the sharing of all private Internet activity with the government without the need for a court order, or even notification to you that the government has requested the information. The type of information would include: all of the web sites you go to on your Verizon FIOS connection or your Brighthouse Cable connection as well as all of the emails you send and all of your facebook activity, to name a few.

You can only imagine what government officials that aspire to be Big Brother, like our very own Mayor Bill Foster, would do with this kind of unchecked power. Any governmental law enforcement organization could make these information requests based upon no evidence of wrong-doing, and without having to convince a judge to issue a court order. And what happens if the request was made in error, or there is a case of mistaken identity? Nothing, this bill absolves the companies of all liability for violations of privacy.

So what can you do to prevent this bill from becoming law? Call, write and email your US Congress person and tell them to vote NO on HR 3523, and spread the word on facebook, twitter and the blogosphere about CISPA, and why it needs to be defeated.

St. Petersburg US Congress Representative Websites:
C.W. Bill Young - Florida's 10th congressional district
Kathy Castor - Florida's 11th congressional district

Mayor Bill Foster's "Weekly" Failure

We have been subscribed to the City's of St Petersburg's Events E-Newsletter for a while now. It is a very thorough (but exhaustively long) email sent out every week through the mass-email company Constant Contact with a list of the upcoming events in the city. It's a good resource that helps to remind you of what's going on in the city and what events are coming up, but it is REALLY long and repetitive from week to week. So, we were pleasantly surprised on October 14, 2011 when we started getting "Foster's Weekly Forecast" emails, which are much more brief and mostly contain details on a few of the events happening in the next 7 days. (click to see the archive of Foster's Weekly Forecasts here)

Of course it didn't take long for Mayor Foster to stumble on this one, he missed a week in November(which we can understand, with the Thanksgiving holiday and all), then he missed a week in December, and then things really got bad in the new year where he would skip multiple weeks in a row and then he only sent out one "Forecast" email for the entire month of February(so much for St Petersburg's "first black mayor" making us aware of the various events going on during Black History Month in the city). In all, the Mayor's "Weekly" emails have only gone out 15 out of the last 27 weeks, a pretty bad record for a Mayor that promised to "sweat the small stuff".

This might just be another example of Mayor Bill Foster's broken PR machine, but with the sheer number of stumbles being made by Mayor Foster lately, it has unfortunately come to be what we should expect from him.