They also agree to work on securing more hurricane shelters during a meeting where citizens can make their wishes known to local state legislators.
By GARRETT THEROLF
Published November 2, 2005
NEW PORT RICHEY - If wishes came true, schools would sproutat double the speed.
Special needs shelters would expand to the point where thousands more of the frail could take refuge from a storm.
Early voting hours would extend into the night.
For three hours Tuesday, the lawmakers Pasco sends to Tallahassee listened to the hopes of local government officials and ordinary citizens alike.
The list of dozens of speakers was so long that the lawmakers themselves had little time to speak up.
"It's not that we don't have things to say," said Senate President Tom Lee, the Republican whose district includes southeast Pasco. "There's just so much."
But they did respond with indications that some of the requests could receive the legislation or funding needed to realize them.
After a request from school superintendent Heather Fiorentino, the nine lawmakers unanimously voted to file a bill that would allow the district to more easily issue bonds against future Penny for Pasco revenues.
The bill, affecting only Pasco schools, would give creditors the assurance that future school boards won't renege on the bonding schedule. In return, the school district expects to be able to issue bonds at lower rates than it otherwise would.
Chief financial officer Chuck Rushe said that the district may issue bonds for as much as $80-million of the $150-million the school district is expected to collect over the coming decade from the 1-cent-on-the-dollar tax hike authorized by voters last year.
The bonds would allow seven or eight schools to be finished within six years rather thanthe 12 years it would take without the bonding, Rushe said.
The county government got a similarly quick response to a request for more hurricane shelters.
An estimated 61,893 evacuees would show up at Pasco shelters before a major hurricane hit the county, even though there's only room for 26,000.
State Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, has been working with Gov. Jeb Bush to increase shelter space. At Tuesday's meeting at the Pasco-Hernando Community College's west campus in New Port Richey, Fasano announced that he and Bush are planning a grant program that would make tens of millions of dollars available to Florida counties for shelters.
Because the program would use federal money that restricts grant awards to sites already designated as shelters, Fasano urged Pasco County lobbyist Joe Mannion to quickly designate such sites.
Finally, Supervisor of Elections Kurt Browning, speaking on behalf of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections, proposed eliminating restrictions approved last yearin Tallahassee that limit early voting to eight hours a day. That, critics predict, will lead to voting hours that mirror the standard workday.
In interviews with the Times, the Republican supervisor has said he thinks the Republican-controlled Legislature imposed the restrictions because members think night voters are disproportionately Democrats.
Browning's proposal drew no response from any of Pasco's nine lawmakers - all Republicans - at the meeting Tuesday.
