Jeb Bush marks the "graduation" of the Florida communities for reaching their revitalization goals.
By BRADY DENNIS
Published August 30, 2003
TAMPA - Amid prayers, dance performances and cheesecake, Gov. Jeb Bush on Friday praised six Florida communities for "graduating" from an urban revitalization program.
The Front Porch Florida program, one of the governor's central campaign promises in 1998, brought a grass-roots approach to urban renewal: Residents, not governments, are supposed to help lift each community.
The program has grown from three communities in 1999 to 16 today. On Friday, six of those were deemed self-sufficient, their revitalization goals realized.
"You're doing the things that really matter," Bush told nearly 300 people at a luncheon inside the Marriott Waterside. "I'm very excited to be part of this quiet movement. The good, quiet success stories don't get enough attention."
Front Porch Florida hasn't always been a success story, at least not in St. Petersburg.
The program's first year was marred by the very problems it was designed to avoid: a chaotic grant-review process, inadequate accounting and oversight, failure to conduct background checks on recipients of state money and infighting. Bush acknowledged the past problems in his speech Friday, saying "every place in our state has challenges."
"You can't have a magic wand" to fix everything, Bush said. "It requires rolling up your sleeves, working with your neighbors."
Bush also announced a new leader for the Front Porch program. Gainesville's Patricia West will replace Tampa's Alison Hewitt.
In the Marriott lobby afterward, as visitors from Massachusetts and Tennessee gawked at him, Bush said he was disappointed that Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge George Greer didn't act on his request to appoint a guardian to review the case of Terri Schiavo.
The brain-damaged woman has been in a vegetative state since 1990, and Bush suggested that a guardian be appointed to review the case before a feeding tube is removed, allowing Schiavo to die. Bush said he has no qualms about the scheduled execution next week of Paul Hill, the anti-abortion activist who killed an doctor and his escort outside a Pensacola clinic in 1994. "I'm not concerned about martyrdom," Bush said. "I'm concerned about upholding the law. This is the case of a murderer who killed two people."
Earlier in the day in Largo, Bush dismissed a complaint filed this week by the Florida chapter of the NAACP, which accuses the state of discriminating against African-American students by perpetuating a system of segregation and unequal education. It wants the state to stop using the FCAT.
"I would challenge them to look at other states to see what state is doing better. I think they would find Florida is really one of the leaders," he said.
- Times staff writer Michael Sandler contributed to this report.
Front Porch communities
St. Petersburg's Greater South Central Neighborhood
