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Members trade off PSTA seat again

Patricia Bailey-Snook, at her own request, is off the transit board. Rick Butler will take over the post they've swapped before.

By ANNE LINDBERG
Published September 25, 2005

PINELLAS PARK - Just five months after rejoining it, Patricia Bailey-Snook has once again asked to be taken off the board of the agency that oversees the county bus system.

As before, Pinellas Park council member Rick Butler will replace her.

The two have played a sort of musical chairs with membership on the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority board. The latest switch, which was official Thursday, is the fourth time Bailey-Snook and Butler have traded the post since 2001.

"I just have too much on my plate" to attend the meetings, Bailey-Snook explained at Thursday's council meeting. This time, Bailey-Snook said, her time is consumed by caring for her ill mother who is hospitalized in Inverness.

The situation enraged activist Marshall Cook, who is Pinellas Park's citizen representative on the PSTA.

"This is a joke," Cook said. "There's no interest. They don't ride the buses. . . . I don't ride a bus either (but) I go all the way up there (to meetings) by wheelchair, rain or otherwise."

Bailey-Snook seldom makes a meeting, he said. And when Butler has sat on the board in times past, Cook said, "It's like he's asleep."

The board, said Cook, is hugely important. The PSTA oversees a budget of $42-million. Pinellas is a heavily populated county and needs to have a better public transit system. But that's hard to get, he said, when officials like Bailey-Snook and Butler do not take the position seriously.

"They're supposed to make the meetings," Cook said. "If they can't make the meetings, they shouldn't run for council. ... It makes me angry."

Butler served on the PSTA from the time he was elected in 1998 until 2001 when he persuaded Bailey-Snook to take his place. Butler jokingly threatened then to toss out of the council chambers a neon yellow, green and rust couch that Bailey-Snook liked unless she replaced him on the board. Bailey-Snook agreed.

But two years later, the PSTA complained that Bailey-Snook had missed 10 of 12 monthly meetings. Bailey-Snook said she had been in poor health.

Butler volunteered to replace her.

But in 2004, Butler wanted off the board. He offered to give up his parking place and suggested the assistant city attorney could go to the meetings. There were no takers, and Butler had to continue serving.

Then in April, Bailey-Snook asked to be relieved of her duties on a different board because the monthly meetings were at an "inconvenient" time. The task force was convened to discuss the county's homeless problem.

Butler offered to sit on the homeless task force if Bailey-Snook would "trade" him for the PSTA seat.

Since then, Bailey-Snook has attended only one PSTA meeting, according to Roger Sweeney, executive director.

[Last modified September 25, 2005, 02:15:40]