DADE CITY - Across the dirt streets where he lost one of his most trusted lieutenants, Pasco County Sheriff Bob White has been walking the rugged roads of Lacoochee to smooth over relations between his agency and a divided community.
In the week after the shooting death of Lt. Charles "Bo" Harrison, White has made several trips to Lacoochee, stepping out of his car to talk to residents he encountered on porches, cars or the side of the road.
White has not been making the day and nighttime trips alone, but neither is he arriving with a convoy of deputies, spokesman Kevin Doll said.
"The people he's making contact with don't believe there is a major problem between residents of Lacoochee and the Sheriff's Office," Doll said. "They think it's a small element of people in the area that doesn't like law enforcement."
Still, community activist Isa Blanford, a community planner with the Pasco County Housing Authority at the Lacoochee Neighborhood Center, said she is pulling out of plans for a community forum, saying White's visits might be "more effective" than a group meeting where tempers could flare.
Hernando commissioners to put their voting records online
BROOKSVILLE - To review the voting records of their county commissioners, residents for years have had to search through voluminous meeting minutes, a time-consuming chore.
Those days are near an end. The commission Tuesday voted unanimously to begin posting voting records in a clear, easily accessible format on the county Web site. The service should be available in three weeks.
"We don't want it to look like we are hiding behind pages and pages of minutes," Commissioner Mary Aiken said. "This makes it easier."
After reviews by office managers and the city clerk, the record will be posted about three weeks after each meeting, available both through the Web sites of each commissioner as well as on the official minutes of each meeting, which are posted on the county Web site.
Report says water supplies safe from contamination
TARPON SPRINGS - One big question about the controversial plan to clean up the old Stauffer chemical plant has been the possibility that the water supply used by most of the state would be at risk.
But a consultant's report released last week says there is a thick enough underground layer of clay to keep the site's contamination from reaching the deeper aquifer that supplies most Floridians with their drinking water. Consultants hired by Stauffer came up with that conclusion in a draft report recently submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
For Stauffer, the several-inch-thick report from Parsons Engineering Science Inc. in Tampa helps clear one of the hurdles of the mound-and-cap cleanup plan.
Not everyone shares that view.
Local activist Mary Mosley said the study is the "same old runaround and the same old coverup," especially the part about the Upper Floridan aquifer being protected from the contaminants.
The Stauffer plant had begun processing phosphate ore into elemental phosphorus in 1947. It closed in 1981. After officials found high levels of arsenic, lead and radium-226, as well as other contaminants known to or suspected of causing lung cancer, the site was put on the EPA's Superfund list in 1994.
If the cleanup plan is approved, contaminated soil would be pushed into mounds and covered with an impermeable cap. The plan also calls for using a cement-like substance to stabilize the underground waste and to prevent water from washing toxic chemicals into the groundwater.
To keep officers, city considers interest-free loans
ST. PETERSBURG - First they received take-home patrol cars. Now St. Petersburg police officers may get interest-free home loans to encourage them to stay on the force.
In another measure aimed at improving officer retention, Mayor Rick Baker is suggesting giving $15,000 loans to members of the department to offset the cost of buying a house in the city.
The loan would be forgiven if the officer stays with the agency for five years. There would be no restrictions on where officers could live as long as it is within city limits.
The Police Department has struggled to keep officers in recent years, raising concerns about response times and officer safety. Last year, 54 officers quit, many for other law enforcement departments in the area.
Council members also agreed to give officers longer shifts with shorter work weeks, increased pay for extra duties such as SWAT patrol and higher salaries for officers who join the force with experience at other police agencies.
Paperwork slipup may cost adult businesses their spot
HUDSON - Adult businesses in Pasco County fought hard to keep their shops where they are by being grandfathered under the county's new strict zoning requirements for sexually oriented businesses.
And there's no doubt the Adult Toy Chest, which sells magazines, videos and lingerie, as well as Love Video in Port Richey and Nite Images, a lingerie modeling shop in Holiday - were in business Dec. 17, 2002 - the date such shops had to be in place to be exempt.
But the stores might not be grandfathered after all because they did not renew their occupational licenses on time.
Without grandfathered status, they could be forced to limit their offerings or move to an industrial zone, where the ordinance pushes new adult businesses.
To be grandfathered, the ordinance says adult businesses must have occupational licenses "in effect" as of Dec. 17, 2002, the county zoning staff said in a May 30 letter. But these three shops let their licenses lapse Oct. 1, 2002, and they didn't renew them until this January or February.
Adult Toy Chest owner Joseph Cavalier Sr. paid a $3.44 late fee when he renewed his license in February. He argues that fee puts his license back into effect, all the way back to Oct. 1.
The County Attorney's Office is researching that point and is preparing a report on the issue.
In short . . .
- TAMPA - The Museum of Science and Industry just got a windfall of federal money to build something a bit more racy than its butterfly garden and solar energy exhibit. "Disasterville," as it's called, is coming to MOSI. Wildfires, hailstorms, erupting volcanoes, earthquakes, lightning, tornadoes, floods and hurricanes - all will be part of a new exhibit, thanks to a $1.58-million grant from the National Science Foundation announced Tuesday.
- TAMPA - State officials this week abruptly canceled a multimillion-dollar contract that would have handed over child abuse investigations to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. The state Department of Children and Families says there wasn't enough money in the budget to pay for the switch, at least for now. Hillsborough would have been the sixth county in the state to make the switch. Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee, Broward and Seminole sheriffs' offices have taken over child investigations since 1999, when lawmakers proposed the idea as a way to break down the huge DCF bureaucracy.
Coming up this week
Legislators return to Tallahassee on Monday for a four-day special session. Gov. Jeb Bush called the session to urge legislators to pass medical malpractice reform. The rancor that existed between House and Senate members during the session doesn't seem to have disappeared.
- Compiled by Times staff writer Sharon Kennedy Wynne.
