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A Penny pitch in Palm Harbor

If the Penny for Pinellas is extended, a piece of it could mean a higher gym ceiling, a bigger library and an athletic complex.

By NICOLE JOHNSON
Published October 22, 2006

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Scott Keeler] Elena Harabagiu, director and founder of Euro Stars gymnastics class, leads her students at the Palm Harbor Community Activity Center on Monday.

PALM HARBOR - As she stands on the balance beam, 9-year-old Meridian Olimyers' fingertips just about tickle the ceiling.

Gymnastics instructor Elena Harabagiu instructs the girls to straighten their backs as they wobble on the beams.

"Don't do chicken fingers," Harabagiu says. "Arms up tall."

It's Monday night and Harabagiu's Euro Stars gymnastics class is packed. In a year, the Palm Harbor Recreation program has grown to 100 students. In response, Harabagiu has converted two classrooms into a minigym complete with bars, balance beams and floor mats.

Except - the two balance beams are not the regulation height, nor are the uneven bars. With a ceiling about 8 feet high, there's not enough room. When taller students like Meridian get on the beams and stretch their arms up, they can almost touch the ceiling.

"We work with what we have," said Harabagiu, who teaches classes with her sister Maria five days a week.

For months, residents in Palm Harbor have pushed to have projects like a gymnasium for Harabagiu's class and an expanded library added to a list that could be funded if voters agree to extend the Penny for Pinellas sales tax.

Voters will decide in March whether to renew the tax, which raises the local sales tax from 6 to 7 cents on the dollar, for another 10 years.

Palm Harbor is an unincorporated area, which means it has no town government. So members of the Palm Harbor Community Services Agency, Old Palm Harbor Main Street Association and other community groups have come together as the Palm Harbor Coalition to petition the county to earmark Penny funds for their projects.

"We don't have a properly sized library or recreation fields ... because county officials never allotted for this growth," said Jim Kleyman, vice chairman of the community services agency. "They never planned for this, and we shouldn't be going to them asking for this. They should be coming to communicate in Palm Harbor."

The coalition's goal is to get about $19-million from the Penny set aside specifically for Palm Harbor and East Lake projects. The money would go to pay for a new, bigger recreation building, expanded libraries, a 10-acre athletic complex, road improvements and a new building for the historical museum.

Palm Harbor and East Lake combined have about 60,000 residents. About a dozen residents met Thursday night at the Palm Harbor Community Activity Center to discuss the area's needs with each other and Assistant County Administrator Liz Warren.

"We're not going to fix it all; we're not," Warren said. "There's simply not enough money in the county to go around."

But Warren did encourage the group to gather support from residents for the projects. The group plans to begin a letter-writing campaign to solicit support of the Pinellas County Commission.

"Clearwater (would get) $138-million; Palm Harbor is only asking for $19-million," said John Downes, who sits on the Palm Harbor library's board of directors.

Currently, county officials are going through a list of $1.3-billion in projects requested from more than 20 areas in Pinellas and trying to whittle it down to about $800-million.

For now, the size limitations haven't stopped parents from enrolling their children in the Harabagiu sisters' classes. There are recitals planned for the two little classrooms, and students are learning more with each class.

"The instructor is the most important factor," said optometrist Scott Shettle, who drives past a another gymnastics class at a full-sized gym to bring his daughter Channin, 8, to the Palm Harbor class.

Don Carlson agrees.

His daughters Veronica, 8, and Olivia, 6, are enrolled in the Harabagius' classes.

"They could teach a tree stump," he said.

Nicole Johnson can be reached at njohnson@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4162.

[Last modified October 21, 2006, 20:29:21]