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Caetano is bound to shake things up

The newest council member will bring his passion to office.

By DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN and BILL COATS
Published April 1, 2007

TAMPA - Joseph Caetano, newly elected City Council member from New Tampa, sat outside his Java Joe's coffee shop.

He introduced a group of friends who had sat around this outdoor table every morning for months, musing over coffee about Caetano's campaign.

"Here's my chief of staff, my head of public works. And this guy, he handles all the troublemakers," Caetano said, laughing.

His buddies chuckled, just as they had when they read a newspaper editorial saying Caetano focuses too much on New Tampa. They had laughed after each sentence. It wasn't the Caetano they knew.

"I've got thick skin," Caetano said during an interview at the Bostonian Hair Studio, which he owns along with Java Joe's next-door. "It doesn't bother me."

At 73, Caetano is who he is and doesn't seem to mind if he comes across as pushy or angry.

During two periods of protest against City Hall, Caetano rallied New Tampa residents to explore breaking away into a separate city.

He has complained for years that the city treats New Tampa like an ATM, withdrawing property tax revenue and giving very little in return.

"He won't be afraid to speak his mind and be politically incorrect," says state Sen. Victor Crist, a longtime friend who once introduced a New Tampa secession bill in Tallahassee for Caetano.

During his recent campaign against longtime New Tampa civic leader Frank Margarella, Caetano distinguished himself as the candidate more likely to shake things up.

He accused the Police Department of manipulating crime figures. "They're cooking the books!" he told more than 100 people at a Forest Hills forum.

Today Tampa's consummate outsider is preparing for his move to the inner circle, City Hall.

He will bring with him as his aide Tommy Nguyen, a 27-year-old nurse's aide who cared for Caetano's ailing wife before she was placed in a nursing home.

"He's sincere and he's loyal," Caetano said of Nguyen. "That impressed me the most."

Loyalty is a common thread in Caetano's relationships.

To run Java Joe's, he hired the former owner of a dessert place that had been in a nearby shopping center but had to close for financial reasons.

Both his daughters, plus a son-in-law, work at Bostonian.

So did wife of 50 years, Naiva, before she suffered two debilitating strokes. She had been his trusted adviser and confidante before her illness.

Now, he said, he keeps his own counsel.

"I'm pretty self-sufficient," Caetano said. "I don't really rely on anybody."

A long awaited victory

Tuesday's election was the capstone of many political efforts by Caetano.

He has been elected to the Tampa Palms Community Development District, a taxing agency, but failed in two broader campaigns: a 1992 bid for County Commission and a run four years later for School Board.

Caetano has no hobbies, he said. Just working hard. The ex-Marine runs on the treadmill and rides a stationary bike for 45 minutes each morning. He goes by "Joseph" and he likes his coffee black.

Even when the topic is public policy, he is a man driven by personal experience.

Several years ago, Caetano was knocked out in a fall at home. By the time he regained consciousness, his family had been advised by Tampa Fire Rescue to hire a private ambulance company; the city's unit wasn't available. Caetano crusaded until Tampa Fire Rescue added a second ambulance in New Tampa.

"I'm aggressive," he said, "and I get things done."

When he heard on the news about a Texas woman who died from an infection she caught after a pedicure, Caetano, chairman of the state board of cosmetology, lobbied for stricter sanitation methods.

He has become leery about all mass transit, based on the experience of the token bus routes that run to New Tampa's bus stop, in a Lowe's parking lot.

"We can't run HART to get people to work on time," he said. "They pull through Lowe's and don't stop."

In fact, Caetano often sounds skeptical toward government in general. He has accused the city of overstudying projects, such as the widening of 40th Street, and spending too much on them.

"I think they tell them before they do these studies what they want," he said.

That, Caetano thinks, is why the Florida Aquarium didn't achieve the expected attendance. That and the originally proposed art museum - "that art monster down there" are examples of "monuments downtown" that get built at the expense of infrastructure elsewhere, he argues.

Prefers to be called honest

Protesting seems to come naturally.

Caetano moved here from Boston in 1987. Two years later, the assessment on his house rose 27 percent. He began investigating then-Property Appraiser Ron Alderman through exhaustive searches of documents and even a little surveillance, and didn't relent until Alderman was voted out in 1996.

Rob Turner, who won that election, still supports Caetano 11 years later. Several of Turner's top aides contributed to Caetano's campaign.

"Joe doesn't mince words," said one of them, Warren Weathers.

Described as blunt, Caetano prefers the word "honest." He knows some people can get offended when he expresses his opinions, but he makes no apologies

"That's too bad," he said. "Not everybody's going to be happy."

Dong-Phuong Nguyen can be reached at nguyen@sptimes.com or 813 269-5312.

[Last modified April 1, 2007, 00:34:29]