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Mayor outlines second-term ambitions

"There are very few things I could do after this that I would enjoy as much or I could have as much direct impact as I can in this job," St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker says.

By CARRIE JOHNSON
Published January 16, 2006

Downtown housing going up, the port going deep and economic expansion in Midtown are on his chart.

On Nov. 8, St. Petersburg voters overwhelmingly elected Mayor Rick Baker to a second four-year term. Last week, he discussed his plans and priorities for the next four years and beyond. His comments were edited for length.

During your first term, you helped bring a post office, a grocery store and a bank to Midtown. What is the next project for the area?

The Job Corps training center is obviously a big one (a 16-acre tract at 22nd Street and Second Ave. S). It's a $23-million project, which is going to bring 300 job-training slots and significantly redevelop a chunk of the Dome Industrial Park.

I think the Tangerine Avenue intersection (a new Sweetbay grocery store and SunTrust Bank are there) will become an economic center of Midtown, so we want to get that up and running. ... There seems to be a lot of interest in it.

We also need to identify what we're going to do with the Manhattan Casino. I think there's a desire for the second floor to be a public facility where people can have weddings. ... We're also looking for users for the first floor. I've heard a lot from the public about a desire to have a nice restaurant, maybe a jazz restaurant.

What's the first thing you want to do to increase the amount of affordable housing in St. Petersburg?

We've done lots of loans to try to help people get into affordable housing. We've used state housing money to do subsidies for some projects, like the large apartments up on Fourth Street and others that have been done recently.

We'll continue the programs we've been doing, and the City Council has a task force that's studying this issue. We're also looking at what can be done in other places. ... This is not just a St. Petersburg issue.

I don't think there's going to be a silver bullet on the issue of affordable housing. I think we need to stay very engaged on this and it will work out.

Can downtown St. Petersburg reach a saturation point with condominiums? If so, when? And how would you address this?

I don't think we're near that point right now.

You've mentioned condos, but there's also townhomes, lofts, there's a lot of places people live downtown now. I think it's good that downtown is becoming a residential community and I support it.

Residential development does not put nearly the burden on the transportation system that office development does because, first of all, the building will have much fewer people in it. And they're not all coming and going at the same time.

It's very important to me we maintain the ... character of our downtown. We need to look at things like parks and architecture and historical buildings.

I want to make sure we are doing what we can to protect the historical character of the buildings.

The Ocean Jewel , the casino boat docked in St. Petersburg, fizzled. What's next for St. Petersburg's port?

Some feel we should continue to be a deep-water port with cruise or other industries coming in. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for three years has been working on a dredging study to see if the channel and the port could be dredged. Right now, our channel is not deep enough to accommodate the types of cruise ships that are out there. ...

Some would like it to be a marina. Some have suggested it be a mega yacht marina, while others want it to be a marina for smaller boats so it would be more likely to accommodate people who live in the city.

Another interesting idea is maybe we should take advantage of the marine research industry we have here. Maybe we should utilize the port even more as a place for research-oriented vessels.

There's a lot of great things going on in downtown St. Petersburg, but there's a missing element: a main library. Any thought to creating one?

In the next three to five years we're going to have to do a review of the library on Ninth Avenue, which currently needs the most amount of work. I think everyone agrees the library needs to stay there, but should that become more of a regional library and then create a main downtown library?

Actually, I approached University of South Florida a couple of years ago about a library. If you're going to build a main library downtown, and I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not, it would only make sense to do it as a partnership with USF. ... But our discussions before didn't go very far.

Police Chief Chuck Harmon has been criticized by neighborhood leaders for reassigning officers who used to perform community policing duties. Do you agree with Harmon or should there be a renewed emphasis on community policing?

I disagree with your premise. He has not reassigned anybody. They are still community police officers. We have the same number of community police officers we had when he took over as chief. He has focused them on three areas, which are the areas of highest need as identified by neighborhood leaders: drugs, traffic and prostitution. ... I think he is very committed to the community policing philosophy, as am I.

But now they're working in drug teams and prostitution teams. They're not walking a beat the way community police officers typically do to immerse themselves in a neighborhood, right?

They're still in the neighborhoods and the amount of time they're spending on those teams is not a majority of their time. They're still spending most of their time in the neighborhoods doing community policing.

With so many new developments coming into the city, what are the chances of the tax rate being lowered again to give everybody some relief?

I'm hopeful we can. We've lowered it three of my five years in office. And in the first three years, the budgets were extremely difficult because of 9/11 and the stock market and a lot of other issues.

Even critics would agree you had a good first term and were re-elected by an overwhelming margin. But if you could go back, is there anything you'd do differently?

There's a lot of things I'd do differently but I'm not going to tell you about them (laughing).

I'm sure there are but I haven't dwelled on it. I've learned a lot.

Obviously, after five years of experience you approach things differently. I'm probably better at process than I once was.

When I came into the job, I fully admit that I'm the kind of person who says, "Here's the solution, let's do it." But when you're in this job, you have to vet it through the community process, which I think is appropriate. And I've learned that when you do that, it's a better product at the end of the day.

You are a friend of Gov. Jeb Bush. Has your relationship with him benefited the city of St. Petersburg?

There's no doubt it has. I know there are people of different political philosophies and I respect that. But I consider him to be a person of great character and intelligence and very committed to making things better. I really do believe that at his core that's what he's trying to do.

Virtually all the support for the Davis-Bradley Center (a drug rehabilitation center in Midtown), Jeb was absolutely critical with that. ... We would not have the (Midtown) post office if it had not been for Jeb's assistance. He personally intervened.

He personally called the president of Kash n' Karry when we were trying to get what is now the Sweetbay grocery store in Midtown. He's been extremely supportive of all our school efforts. I call on him often.

Do you have political aspirations beyond the mayor's office? If so, what would you consider running for?

I don't think I'm done here yet and I love what I do. I don't love every day. Some days are hard.

But I think we're making a great difference. The truth is, if I could have this job for the rest of my career, I would do that. Because there are very few things I could do after this that I would enjoy as much or I could have as much direct impact as I can in this job. So that's what I'm going to focus on.

[Last modified January 16, 2006, 06:17:13]