Tampa City Council Chairman and mayoral candidate Thomas Scott showed a taste of his other, non political life last week at the end of his presentation before the GaYBOR monthly meeting, where the first time that all six of the candidates for mayor spoke at one time under one roof. Scott, who serves as the pastor at the 34th St. Church in Tampa, concluded his pitch dramatically, showing off a sense of timing and passion that he's not really available to access while chairing council meetings.

Listed below are excerpts from our conversation CL had with him last week on some issues in the race. When referring to the new business projects in the city that he says he was instrumental in reaching fruition, we spoke about the Encore project, the $425 million public-private venture to redevelop the former Central Park Village public housing complex. Although absolutely a big deal, its ambitions are smaller than that of what is known as the Civitas project, a project that one of Scott's mayoral opponents, Ed Turanchik, was involved with earlier last decade.

CL asked Scott, a big proponent of Civitas, how he felt when his colleagues on the Hillsborough County Commission rejected their participation in it, which killed the entire project.

"It was very disappointing, because for me – (Encore) got scaled down now compared to what Civitas was doing. At that time the economy was great, it was booming, so it was a great opportunity, I was trying to get the commission to- in fact I was Chairman, I was trying to get the commission to get that 4^th vote to create a CRA (Community Redevelopment Agency) at that time..it was a very painful experience …here was a great opportunity to help a district that I served. The needs were severe and overwhelming, and then to come up 1 vote short, very disappointing and disheartening."

This article appears in Jan 13-19, 2011.