By far the most interesting City Council race going on this summer in St. Petersburg is the District 4 contest, where four challengers are trying to succeed a term-limited Leslie Curran later this year.
David McKalip and Darden Rice come from different ideological places, and they certainly present voters a clear choice. But it's not just those two on the ballot. Former Crescent Lake Neighborhood Association President Carolyn Fries joined the contest a short while ago, and they've been recently joined by taxi cab driver Richard Eldridge.
The four candidates participated in a relatively fast-paced hour-long debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the Northeast Park Neighborhood Association Monday night.
"We’re going to cut property taxes $10 million and water bills $10 million," said McKalip, whose ideology is a libertarian/Tea Party blend. "We're going to cut garbage bills down $19 million over five years. We're going to cut our water bill, we're going to cut the tax on what the city imposes on utility bills. We're going to cut the tax the city imposes on phone bills. In other words, we’re going to cut our government down to size. We're going to make them [politicians] live off the same budget that we’ve been living under in the past decade," he boldly declared.
This article appears in Jul 4-10, 2013.