The five candidates in the running for the St. Pete City Council District 7 seat Councilman Wengay Newton is vacating due to term limits fielded questions from a packed room at Childs Park Recreation Center Tuesday night. Most of said questions had to do with worker issues.
The district comprises a large swath of downtown and south St. Petersburg, a predominantly African-American area that’s dealing with disproportionately low income as well as high crime and, as a result, a strained relationship with police. A key question asked of the candidates, of course, had to do with easing tensions between law enforcement officers and the community.
“A lot of our police officers don’t have a relationship ith the citizens here in St. Petersburg,” said candidate Elvert Lewis Stephens. “We have to build a relationship not only back with our officers, but back with our chief.”
Lisa Wheeler-Brown, a community activist who has had the most success of the five candidates in terms of fundraising, said citizens need to know there’s a process of redress if someone feels he or she has been mistreated during an interaction with police.
Other questions dealt with issues like economic opportunity that could stem from a recent community redevelopment area (CRA) set up in the district and affordable housing in the district, which in some areas faces potential redevelopment that could make the area too pricey for locals.
“[We need to] make sure we don’t fall into a gentrification situation where a lot of the development is going to be driven by developers and not by you folks,” said Winthrop “Will” Newton, a veteran firefighter and union leader (who is also Wengay Newton’s brother).
That the event had an emphasis on wages was no coincidence.
The group Fight for $15 hosted the forum.That group has been fighting, as one might imagine, for a $15 minimum wage for all workers and has gained notoriety through its demonstrations outside (and sometimes inside, at least till the cops get there) fast food restaurants. While they’re fighting for an across-the-board minimum wage hike, activists have highlighted the plight of fast food workers, certified nurse assistants, child care workers and home health care workers.
Members of the audience, some activists who frequent Fight for $15 protests, asked several questions dealing largely with wage hikes for those working in the above-mentioned sectors — if they support such wage hike for workers in those fields, how they would push the issue while on council, if they would do so immediately.
The thing is, city council members can really do little when it comes to workers’ wages beyond those of workers the city employs.
In Florida, city councils and county commissions don’t have the authority to hike minimum wages locally thanks to a law passed at the state level preempting such action.
But that didn’t keep activists in the audience from pushing the issue, and the candidates from responding.
“No one who works should have to worry about keeping a roof over their head or putting food on the table,” Brown said at least once, at one point adding she has worked as a CNA and knows how underpaid and at times thankless the work can be.
Newton said while the city can’t raise its own minimum wage, activists and council members alike can push for legislation regarding a living wage in Tallahassee.
“As a council member I support living wage,” he said in response to a question on a wage hike for CNAs. “For employers that work within the city, we can’t force them to do anything.”
Candidate Aaron Sharpe said it is possible to work at the city level on worker-related issues, and used the recent wage theft ordinance Councilwoman Darden Rice successfully proposed this past spring as evidence of that.
Another audience member asked about an economic issue the city can help remedy: low employment for youth.
“We don’t have a youth unemployment problem…we have a leadership problem,” said candidate Sheila Scott Griffin, who was among several to suggest that the city proactively reach out to businesses that can potentially employ the city’s youth, especially during summer, when kids are otherwise born and potentially inclined to cause trouble.
The primary election for the seat is August 25 of this year. Assuming no one gets at least 51 percent of the votes, the two candidates that have the highest percentage of votes in the primary will face off in a Nov. 3 general election.
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2015.
