At the Forest Hills Recreation Center in Tampa last night, 10 candidates for city council and mayor were quite civil, not an attack from the bunch of them. But thanks to some probing audience questions and a helluva moderating job by ABC Action News' Don Germaise, several interesting differences emerged between almost all the candidates (and, often, the audience of neighbors and activists) and Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, who was not present.
When asked to give a "buy it" or "don't buy it" answer to whether they would have agreed to pay $200,000 to purchase the East Tampa nuisance Gene's Bar, as the city did, every candidate said "don't buy it" — except two incumbents who voted for the purchase, Shawn Harrison and Gwen Miller.
Germaise gave the candidates another multiple choice test: the Ybor Trolley — keep it as it is, scrap it, or expand it further into downtown (which is under consideration by the city). Only three would expand it — Miller and Harrison were joined by New Tampa candidate Frank Margarella — and one, New Tampa salon owner Joseph Caetano, said he would scrap it.
Finally, the crushing blow came for Iorio's Riverwalk plans, a $40 million public and private effort to reclaim the Hillsborough River waterfront downtown as a gathering and recreational spot. Iorio has made it a legacy project for her administration. Germaise asked the candidates to answer yes or no to whether the Riverwalk is worth the money. Only one candidate said yes, Julie Jenkins, a travel consultant. Everyone else said no, including the two incumbents, and the audience cheered them in agreement.
This article appears in Feb 14-20, 2007.