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ANNE LINDBERGA fire in a condo exposed the need for more hydrants in this Pinellas community.
CLEARWATER - Residents of an unincorporated Pinellas community where a fire ravaged a condominium in June will get 41 new fire hydrants under a tentative agreement reached by St. Petersburg and the county.
Under the proposed agreement, Pinellas County would shoulder more of the cost of the new hydrants than it initially offered.
The county will pay about $100,000 for the city to install the hydrants on existing pipes in the Lealman area. St. Petersburg would agree to absorb the cost of overtime to make sure the job is done within 15 to 20 weeks, rather than the original estimate of 40 weeks. That will be about $17,000, Deputy Mayor Tish Elston said.
County Commissioner Ken Welch acknowledged Tuesday that the county, which earlier had offered to pay for the hydrants but not the labor, had blinked and swallowed a "bitter pill."
But St. Petersburg blinked, too, Welch said, by agreeing to absorb the overtime costs, estimated at $200 to $400 per hydrant.
"We don't want to continue to haggle for another year," Welch said. "At this point, our priority is public safety. ... We just want to get the hydrants installed."
The County Commission agreed to the deal in a workshop Tuesday. The St. Petersburg City Council is scheduled to discuss it Thursday.
Elston agreed that solving the problem was a priority.
"We committed in the very beginning that we would try to work out whatever we could," Elston said.
It is unclear, Elston said, when the hydrants will be installed. City staff members will begin working out the logistics this morning.
Still in dispute are another 118 hydrants the county says Lealman needs. The problem there is that the pipes and water mains are not of sufficient size to support the hydrants. The county and St. Petersburg, which owns the water system in Lealman, are arguing over which government should bear the cost of upgrading the pipes and mains.
Ray Neri, president of the Lealman Community Association, said he was glad to hear the area is getting some of the needed hydrants. But he worried about the precedent set by the county's agreeing to pay the labor for installation. Other cities that supply water to unincorporated residents could demand that the county pay for hydrants in those areas, even though they have supplied hydrants in the past, he said.
"I still think St. Petersburg is dead wrong," Neri said. "I think that it's just they have a different sense of right and wrong than most people. This is the best deal we can make of a bad situation."
Assistant County Administrator Gay Lancaster, who conducted the negotiations with St. Petersburg, agreed there is a danger of setting a precedent. But it is outweighed, she said, by the county's concern for public safety.
"This may have set a very unfortunate precedent, but I don't think the board was willing to wait it out anymore," Lancaster said. "Who's going to be the good guy here? I think the board just decided to be the good guy here."
The lack of hydrants in the Lealman area, which stretches between St. Petersburg and Pinellas Park from about Interstate 275 to Park Street, has long been considered a problem. But not much was done about it until a June 21 fire devastated the three-story, 54-unit Nautilus building at Town Apartments North. Firefighters were hampered by a lack of nearby hydrants and wound up getting some of their water to fight the blaze from a pond.
It caused an estimated $4.3-million in damage and left the building's mostly elderly residents homeless.
County officials said it would take 160 hydrants to bring the Lealman area up to standard. They looked to St. Petersburg to supply those hydrants because that city provides water to the Lealman area at a 25 percent surcharge. That surcharge, said the county, should be earmarked for improvements to the water system, including hydrants.
St. Petersburg records do not break out Lealman records from other unincorporated areas in its water district. But records show that in the 2001 calendar year, St. Petersburg brought in about $766,000 from the 25 percent surcharge in all the unincorporated areas it serves. In 2002, that amount climbed to about $855,000. From January to June this year, the city earned about $465,000 from the surcharge.
Mayor Rick Baker disagreed that the city was responsible for upgrades and hydrants, despite the surcharge. It was the county's duty to supply hydrants to the system, he said.
County officials decided early on in the dispute to pay for the 41 hydrants. But they argued that the city should pay the labor costs because it is illegal for the county to alter water pipes that St. Petersburg owns.
That changed Tuesday after Baker faxed a letter to the county offering to absorb the overtime costs. With those waived, the county would have to pay $1,890 for each hydrant and its installation as well as a 25 percent surcharge, Baker said. That brought the total cost to the county to $96,862.50.
Baker said in the letter he would have liked to waive the surcharge but "our legal staff has indicated that is not possible."
- Times staff writer Michael Sandler contributed to this report.