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Commission sews up loose ends
© St. Petersburg Times After years of hand wringing on a host of issues, the County Commission this year finally got closure on the following: a tennis stadium, a new ordinance regulating adult businesses, a gas tax hike, ordinances on signs and landscaping and a new impact fee for libraries and parks. The commission this year also expanded fire service to former volunteer districts. And Commissioners Steve Simon and Pat Mulieri handily won re-election. A few months later, Simon stunned his supporters and switched parties, joining the Republican Party along with Supervisor of Elections Kurt Browning. On a personal note, Mulieri faced more than two-legged foes during the year. Long before the election, a neighbor of Mulieri and her husband complained to police that the couple's potbellied pigs were ransacking the neighbor's property, digging holes in the yard and tearing through trash. Mulieri said the wild pigs were not hers. She and her husband keep one pig in a pen and one on the porch. The rest were wild, storming her property from the nearby woods. The Mulieris had been out of town and unable to chase the pigs away before they got to the neighbor's yard, she said. On a happier note for her, Mulieri easily won a third term with nearly two-thirds of the vote in the general election in November. The Republican commissioner beat Democrat Amye Cox. Simon beat former County Commissioner David "Hap" Clark in the Democratic primary in September. But then in December, Simon and Browning sent shock waves through Pasco politics by switching from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. Both said they disagreed with the direction of the national party. Shortly after the September primary, Simon began pushing alternatives to a tennis stadium on which to spend $5.7-million accumulated from tourism tax dollars. Simon unsuccessfully lobbied for a multipurpose sports facility for several months. In December commissioners ended two years of debate and voted to begin contract negotiations with Saddlebrook Resort to build a tennis stadium. Simon and Mulieri voted no. The stadium will seat up to 5,000 people and be surrounded by 14 other tennis courts and grass parking lots that could double as soccer fields. Saddlebrook owner Tom Dempsey guaranteed that the county would not have to pay more than $5.7-million, the cost to construct the complex. Cost overruns on building the stadium would be paid by contractor Turner Construction Co. A nonprofit company connected to Saddlebrook would manage the complex. Aside from tennis, the commission took definitive steps on other nagging issues. Strip clubs and adult businesses continued to crop up as the commissioners wrangled with a court fight over its two ordinances targeting those types of businesses. The commission voted to drop an appeal of a ruling by a Tampa federal judge that suspended the county's ordinances, calling them too restrictive and unconstitutional. The ordinances sought to move all adult businesses into industrial zones, plus tack on a host of requirements on bookkeeping and rules against lap dances. In December, the commission gave tentative approval to a new ordinance that would allow the 25 existing adult businesses to remain but put future ones in designated industrial zones. It dropped the bookkeeping and lap dance rules. Final approval likely will come in January. Facing loads of road problems, the commission approved a 1 cent-per-gallon gas tax hike this June to pay for an additional maintenance crew to work on roads and ditches and street lighting throughout the county. The commission also passed an ordinance that prohibits pole signs in the future and calls for ground-level monument signs instead; and a new landscape ordinance that will limit the use of St. Augustine turf and other materials. The commission also voted to pass an impact fee for libraries that totals $145 per new house and $97 per new apartment or mobile home. Builders and developers typically pay impact fees directly to the county, then pass the cost onto the buyer in the price of the home. But the library fees won't come close to covering the county's needs. The county's library master plan calls for $17.2-million in buildings and materials, nearly triple what the impact fees are expected to generate. The library impact fee joins an impact fee passed in January for parks. That impact fee charges $892 per single-family home and $627 per unit in a multifamily housing development. The park impact fees are expected to raise $20-million over 10 years. But according to consultants, the county must double that amount to fund what it needs. The library and parks impact fees join an impact fee passed in 2001 for schools. -- Saundra Amrhein covers Pasco County government. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6244, or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6244. Her e-mail address is amrhein@sptimes.com .
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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