Thursday, April 5, 2012

Mayor Bill Foster Attacks Pier Initiative Group

In an open attack on the voteonthepier.com group attempting to get an initiative on the ballot to ask the voters if they want to keep the inverted pyramid structure at the end of the Pier, Mayor Bill Foster said in a Tampa Bay Times article: "The voteonthepier people are doing a great job getting a lot of information out, and none of it is correct". Really Mr. Mayor? NONE of the information that the group is distributing is correct? Are you going to offer up any specific examples of how they are wrong about everything they are saying? Well, no, he's not going to do that, but we are just supposed to trust him on that I guess.

In the same article he also admits that he is letting the City Council take some of the heat for ignoring the initiative and the alternate plans from the voteonthepier group: "I feel that our council members are getting beat up in the community and I haven't properly given them all of the bullets to defend themselves". So you need to give the council bullets to defend themselves from a grassroots-based citizen initiative that you somehow consider a threat? How twisted is that? Watch out fellow citizens, if you oppose Mayor Foster's new Pier he may use Florida's stand-your-ground law against you! And what is the Mayor's excuse for procrastinating on defending his new Lens Pier plan from the onslaught of aggressive citizens asking annoying logical questions about this boondoggle? The voteonthepier organization has been around for almost as long as he's been Mayor, and even though everything they say is wrong according to the Mayor, he hasn't had any time to refute any of their contentions. Either Mayor Foster can't refute any of their points, or he is more incompetent than even we thought. After all, he made the new Pier project a priority above the new police station project which he just canceled.

We recently did a posting about Foster's Folly: The New Lens Pier Design, where we pointed out that mayoral candidate Bill Foster was in favor of a voter initiative on the Pier's future, at least until he took office, where just one year later he said that now he didn't support an initiative and that the inverted pyramid will hardly be missed. Way to flip-flop there Mayor Foster. Do the right thing Mr. Mayor, just put the Pier question on the ballot during the August 14th primary election, if you are right and the people want to build the Lens, then you can consider it a mandate to proceed without the dark cloud of a potential initiative over your head. If you are wrong then the city can stop wasting money on a plan that the voters don't want. Either way the citizens of St Petersburg will be heard loud and clear, the way it should be.

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