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Oldsmar has boomed as good place to work

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published April 26, 2007

A fine chocolates shop - in Oldsmar. Old-timers in Pinellas County will consider that an incongruous image. They remember Oldsmar as a backwater with small homes, dirt streets and no downtown. A fine chocolates store? No way.

But those people probably haven't visited Oldsmar lately or seen the changes transforming the city. This town that once thought of the Oldsmar Flea Market as its commercial hub now has brand-name hotels, a stadium-seat movie complex, lots of new restaurants, and a developing downtown. And fancy chocolates.

The boom has brought new cash to the city, too, as a St. Petersburg Times analysis reported Sunday showed. Staff writer Tamara El-Khoury found that Oldsmar's property tax collections have doubled since 2001, from $2.47-million to $5-million. That increase is more than 30 percent above the average for other Pinellas cities.

Some of the increase is attributed by local officials to the arrival of Nielsen Media Research in 2003. Nielsen left Dunedin to move into a new $80-million headquarters in Oldsmar, bringing more than 1,600 employees.

But it isn't just Nielsen. The area Chamber of Commerce estimates that some 40,000 people now come to Oldsmar every day to work. The city's population has grown steadily, but still is only 14,000. That 40,000 people work in Oldsmar is proof of the city's popularity with employers, who consider the city's location near the Pinellas-Hillsborough line at the top of Tampa Bay to be a convenient location from which to do business in three counties.

With the influx of so many new people and businesses, Oldsmar city government has had to adjust to rising expectations. It paved the streets, launched a downtown development plan, honed its skills at working with developers. The March election seated a progressive, energetic City Council primed to prepare for the future.

Ironically, the big boost Oldsmar has received in property tax collections could increase residents' demands for tax cuts. In other Florida communities, tax protesters have mentioned the "gift" of rising property valuations and resulting high tax revenues as a reason local governments should lower their tax rates.

Those big increases in property values may be over, but the future still looks rosy for little Oldsmar.

[Last modified April 25, 2007, 23:10:05]