For anyone who wonders if the tax revolt that swept Florida last fall is having any impact on local elections, witness the candidates forum in north Tampa last week.
Forest Hills is an older, working-class neighborhood that wraps around the Babe Zaharias public golf course west of I-275 and north of Busch Boulevard. The civic association forums held there every two years are well-attended, and this one was no exception.
The crowd of about 70 people that assembled at the Forest Hills Recreation Center wasn’t angry, but it was determined. They weren’t in favor of anything that called for spending tax dollars beyond the basics (unless you ask them about a new clubhouse for “The Babe,” which is pork they fully endorse, but that’s another story).
Take the city’s recent decision to spend $200,000 to buy Gene’s Bar, a longtime nuisance in East Tampa that has been the focus of hundreds of police calls for fights, drug-dealing and other alcohol-related peccadilloes. It didn’t matter that the $200,000 in taxes was collected in that neighborhood and could only be spent in that neighborhood. Or that the city of Tampa tried to shut down the bar for years through legal processes and failed.
In Forest Hills, and many other Tampa neighborhoods, I suspect, that counts for exactly bupkis.
When moderator Don Germaise, of ABC Action News, queried the mayoral and City Council candidates as to whether they would “buy it” or “not buy it,” only two said they would — the only two incumbents on the panel, Shawn Harrison and Gwen Miller.
The other politicians, the ones who don’t hold office, said, “Don’t buy it.” The crowd was with them.
The next fiscal option came when Germaise asked about a proposal to spend $7 million to extend the often-empty Ybor City trolley eight-tenths of a mile, connecting it to downtown offices. Forget that the long-term plan is to run the trolley through downtown and into the emerging neighborhood north of it, Tampa Heights. Germaise gave the candidates a multiple choice for the Ybor trolley: Keep it as it is, scrap it or expand it.
Only three would expand it — incumbents Miller and Harrison were joined by New Tampa candidate Frank Margarella — and one, New Tampa salon owner Joseph Caetano, said he would get rid of it altogether. The rest would vote against the extension, and the crowd was with them, too.
In the third fiscal litmus test of the night, Germaise asked about Iorio’s signature project, the $40 million public-private plan to create a Riverwalk downtown along the east bank of the Hillsborough River. Worth it, yes or no?
Just one candidate, travel consultant Julie Jenkins, said yes. The rest — including the two incumbents who are generally supportive of Iorio — said no, and the crowd cheered them. (I spoke a few days later to La Gaceta publisher Patrick Manteiga, who said he has asked every candidate who has come in for an interview what one item they would cut from the city budget, and they all replied, “The Riverwalk.”)
Whether it is Hillsborough County’s $40 million Champions Park sports complex proposal or $75 million to give to filmmakers to work in Florida, big-ticket projects remain front and center for many governments. More and more, residents fed up with rising taxes are taking aim at them, no matter how good or forward-thinking those proposals may be. The Riverwalk is an easy target since it has no built-in constituency, with the downtown residents who would support it years away from moving in to under-construction condos.
Two nights after that Tampa candidate forum, more than 200 people aired similar sentiments at Hillsborough Community College for a public hearing in front of the Florida Senate’s Finance and Tax Committee. The contentious hearing took four hours.
In the crowd was David McKalip, the head of the grassroots Pinellas County group Cut Taxes Now. He says fixing the tax problem isn’t brain surgery, and he should know: He is a brain surgeon.
McKalip’s group wants tax and spending caps put into the Florida Constitution.
After listening to four hours of speakers, McKalip is more convinced than ever that local elected officials are disconnected from their constituents when it comes to money.
“There were local officials there who didn’t think they could cut one penny from their budgets,” McKalip said. “They don’t get it.”
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This article appears in Feb 21-27, 2007.
