It was a bit mellower mayoral forum between the five candidates running for Tampa today at the Icons room on the 4th floor of the St. Pete Times Forum on Wednesday.

Coming off the most exciting exchange of the season,  Tuesday night’s televised debate, the scene was much more laid back at this encounter, jointly hosted by the League of Women Voters for Hillsborough County, the Kiwanis Club, and the nascent Livable Tampa Roundtable group.

The candidates were asked if they would continue to support (i.e. fund) one of outgoing Mayor Pam Iorio’s signature downtown achievements, the Riverwalk.  In one way or another all of the candidates said they would (and hoped to have the business community chip in as well), except for Ed Turanchik, who said he was going to rely entirely on the private sector to fund it.  He said that his priority downtown would be getting a connection between the high-speed rail line station and Ybor or other parts of the city.

On the question of whether they would retain Chief of Police Jane Castor, Turanchik and Thomas Scott said yes, but not Bob Buckhorn, who said that though he believed she has done a “jam-up job,” he felt it was important that we “not introduce politics to this campaign.”

Politics in a campaign?

Buckhorn followed up with saying that he didn’t think it was appropriate to make such statements in advance of the election. Rose Ferlita and Dick Greco concurred, though Greco’s campaign manager, Cameron Ross, appeared to cringe when her client, trying to show his solidarity with the chief,  said, “I love Jane Castor. We’ve attended many crime scenes together.”

On the issue of bringing green energy jobs to Tampa, Ed Turanchik again talked up the state legislation known as PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) financing, which would allow people to pay for clean energy and energy efficiency retrofits to their homes through a slightly higher property tax over the course of 20 years.  He also talked about his proposal for an energy corridor running from Ybor City to downtown Tampa.

Thomas Scott followed up by discussing a green ordinance that he worked with council members like Linda Saul-Sena (who was in the audience) to get passed in Tampa.  He followed by saying, “Ed talks a lot about Van Jones — go to his website — he’ s gotta lot of creative ideas relative to green jobs and so forth.”

This article appears in Feb 3-9, 2011.