A Times Editorial

In difficult role, Aungst has found success

Brian Aungst had no experience as an elected official when he defeated longtime Clearwater Mayor Rita Garvey in 1999. There was every reason to believe that he would fumble the ball repeatedly as he learned the job of mayor, and that, if he even survived to run for a second term, he would draw strong opposition.

Just weeks into his second term as mayor, we look back and see that Aungst has created a record very different from the one many expected.

It turns out that Aungst had the skills needed to be a strong and capable mayor.

It turns out that he had a clear vision of Clearwater's needs and plans for how to meet them.

And when he announced that he was running for a second term, no one showed up to run against him.

That kind of success is a testament to Aungst, who, it turns out, was the kind of leader Clearwater needed at the time.

For years Clearwater had a reputation as a place that was dead in the water. The decade of the '90s, one of the most prosperous in U.S. history, had passed without Clearwater seeing the burst of development or redevelopment that had occurred in other cities, expanding their tax bases and bringing new jobs, improved transportation facilities and modernized housing. Instead, Clearwater was left lamenting the increasingly shabby appearance of the tourist areas of Clearwater Beach, the continuing decline of downtown, and lack of progress in improving North Greenwood.

City government also had been criticized for bungling public projects. And when Aungst was elected in March '99, the first clues were surfacing that the administration of the city's ambitious new city manager, Mike Roberto, was in trouble.

The news didn't get any better in the year after Aungst, initially a Roberto supporter, was sworn in. There were disturbing revelations about Roberto and the state of the city, and public trust in city government was eroding.

Aungst did what needed to be done. After concluding that Roberto's continued presence would prevent the city from progressing and the city government from regaining the public's trust, he met privately with Roberto and pressured him to resign. Then the mayor became a champion of Roberto's assistant, Bill Horne, to replace Roberto.

At the time, Aungst was criticized by some who said he had gone beyond the city charter-defined role for the mayor. But we won't criticize him for using his influence to end the Roberto era relatively painlessly. And even critics of city government have praised the choice of Horne, whose diplomacy and forthright manner have helped restore public trust in City Hall.

With the disruptions over the city manager behind him, Aungst finally was able to pursue his agenda more than a year after being elected. He was determined that during his term as mayor, there would be progress. He didn't want much -- just the declines in Clearwater Beach and downtown reversed, aging infrastructure replaced, a new library built downtown, new projects initiated in several neighborhoods, and the city's image as a place that progress forgot erased.

Oh, and he wanted the city's various neighborhoods and constituencies to get along better.

Since the mayor can't do it alone, Aungst was fortunate to have City Commission colleagues who generally shared his vision for the city. With their work and support, much has been accomplished during the Aungst era, despite the rather spectacular failure of a downtown redevelopment referendum he supported, a national recession and the Sept. 11 tragedy.

People who watch city government know about the new signature library that soon will be built on the downtown bluff, the new high-level bridge that is being built to carry traffic more conveniently to Clearwater Beach, the new branch library and aquatic center under construction in North Greenwood, the new lake being carved out of the ground downtown, the new baseball stadium planned on U.S. 19, the long-sought flood control projects along Alligator Creek and Stevenson Creek that will now be done, the creative redevelopment plan approved for Clearwater Beach.

They know about the private development projects now planned or under way in various parts of town that will bring new housing and retail stores to areas that needed redevelopment.

But they may not know all the ways that Aungst, who has redefined the mayor's role, has maneuvered behind the scenes to ensure that those kinds of improvements came to Clearwater. Though generally quiet and unassuming, Aungst knows people who have money and influence that can benefit Clearwater, and he doesn't hesitate to seek their help.

When the cost of building a new Memorial Causeway bridge (approved under Rita Garvey's watch in June 1998) began to escalate beyond what the city could afford, Aungst went to Washington, D.C., and met with U.S. Rep. Bill Young, who was the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and brought home federal dollars for the bridge project. The combination of Aungst's personal relationships with Young and with U.S. Rep. Mike Bilirakis, his lobbying on behalf of the city, and his promotion of stronger ties between city staff members and federal officials has brought the city some $31-million in federal appropriations since 1999.

When a proposal to build a new spring training baseball stadium at the site of an abandoned Home Depot store appeared to be faltering because the owners of a Target store next door would not approve, Aungst asked influential shopping mall developer Edward DeBartolo Jr. to call Target's parent company and see what he could do. Almost immediately, the hurdle was cleared.

Aungst, a businessman himself, is often the first point of contact for outside developers and business people who are taking the city's "temperature" before considering an investment here. Those who have unrealistic demands are steered away, but the ones Aungst considers a good fit for Clearwater are given advice they can use before he hands them off to the city staff.

Because he has been a very different mayor from Garvey, Aungst has made some enemies who see him as heavy-handed and unfriendly. But he wants to be liked and is uncomfortable with confrontations, so Aungst sometimes meets with his critics to go over their issues or calls in a third party to mediate a truce. Some of his early critics have become supporters through that process.

At times he has been blamed for things that were not his fault. Aungst, first elected in 1999, gets blamed for that ugly and expensive monolith on the bayfront, the Harborview Center (finished in 1996). He gets branded as stupid for the dysfunctional Clearwater Beach roundabout (approved in November 1998) and an unattractive and overpriced city office complex (approved in 1994).

Aungst does have his faults. He is too easily upset by even subtle criticism of his methods and is a little too quick to bark at residents or commission colleagues who frustrate him in public meetings. We have disagreed with some of his positions, most recently his support for a relaxed sign code. Since the defeat of the downtown plan in July 2000, he has not pushed hard enough for an alternative proposal for downtown.

But those are small criticisms compared with the volume of work Aungst has produced as Clearwater's "part-time" mayor in the last three years. He intends to have an even more productive second term. We're looking forward to watching that.

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