Good day, and welcome to the end of the working week, a week that has included, sadly, a lot of high profile deaths.
We had Whitney Houston, Freddie Solomon and Gary Carter leave this earth sooner than they should, and then there was the news on the website of the New York Times late last night that their star Middle Eastern reporter, Anthony Shadid, had died in Syria from an asthma attack. The 43-year-old writer/reporter was one of the greats writing about the tumult of the Arab Spring over the past year, and his passing is a major loss for journalism.
Meanwhile back at home, Tampa residents are going to have to start ponying up more for city trucks to pick up their garbage. We'll all do so, of course, but I'm still waiting to hear why city trucks that burn lots of gas do so twice a week, when overwhelming anecdotal evidence indicates that a lot of citizens only need their garbage picked up once a week. Like Mary Mulhern, though, who along with Frank Reddick voted against the increase, we'll keep on waiting to hear back from Solid Waste one of these years why that isn't possible. We'd send you to the link but it appears to have disappeared. Anyway, you'll be paying 12 percent more beginning in April with your rates, 12 percent more in October, and 12 percent more in 2013, 2014 and 2015.
Tampa City Council members also heard lots of comments — all negative — from members of the V.M. Ybor neighborhood Thursday on why they don't want the Trinity Cafe to move their new restaurant/feeding center into the 'hood, though apparently there's not much that can be done to prevent that.
And if you haven't had the chance yet, check out our piece in the new CL with Mayor Bob Buckhorn talking about a variety of subjects, including homelessness, which Council members again expressed their frustrations about at yesterday's meeting.
This article appears in Feb 16-22, 2012.