The face of tax cuts

You may not know Gail Eggeman, a dynamo who just lost her job at St. Petersburg’s City Hall, but you’ve seen her projects.

By John Barry, Times Staff Writer
Published July 7, 2007

Gail Eggeman, 55, Manager, Schools and Grants for the City of St. Petersburg poses with kids making funny faces during the quilting class at Youth Art School at the Wildwood Center. Eggeman is one of the 70 city employees who have been fired by St. Petersburg under the tax cut mandate. She has an extraordinary record of service over 28 years. Her proudest accomplishment was winning a $500,000 grant from the state for art studios for kids at the Wildwood Community Center in St. Pete.

[Times photo: John Pendygraft]

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: John Pendygraft] The Wildwood Resceation Center.

ST. PETERSBURG - Gail Eggeman pretty much fit the description "faceless bureaucrat." In 28 years as a public servant, her face appeared in the newspaper once standing in a group. She worked in a little square office. She turned 55 and was 30 pounds overweight. She was among thousands of faceless bureaucrats laid off by cities and counties all over Florida.

In her little office at St. Petersburg City Hall, shy, bookish Gail Eggeman shook trees. Millions of dollars in grants fell on needy neighborhoods. She brought in $17-million in new funding over 10 years. Remember Weed & Seed, the massive community aid program in southern St. Pete? That was hers. Clam Bayou Park? That also was hers. The $450, 000 art wing at Wildwood Community Center? Hers, too.

Eggeman shook trees off the clock. On her own time, she founded the Community Foundation of Greater St. Petersburg. She set it up so wealthy citizens could bequeath gobs of money to charitable projects. It has amassed $5-million in endowments since 1996.

On her own time, she co-founded the Saturday Morning Market on Central Avenue. She and two friends put 5, 000 hours of unpaid labor into making it the largest of its kind in the Southeast and one of St. Petersburg's most touted tourism amenities.

Beverley McLain, a VP for the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay, saves her highest compliment for faceless bureaucrat Gail Eggeman: "She is a woman interested in the highest and best in all of us."

Eggeman made $76, 000 a year. She was among 70 city workers fired about two weeks ago by Mayor Rick Baker under the state's tax-cutting mandates. She was among thousands fired by cities and counties across Florida. All those firings will save the average taxpayer $174 a year.

"I'd feel better, " Baker says, "if it was real tax relief."

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The true image of Gail Eggeman is that of a girl in a Karmann Ghia convertible, trailering her hot air balloon. That was the girl the city hired in 1976 for an internship in the Finance Department while she was studying to be a CPA.

You have to look hard to find that girl today. She looks tired. She has no more convertibles or hot air balloons. (The convertible top leaked; the Karmann Ghia filled up like "a little bathtub.") Her body suffered bureaucratic neglect. "I gained 30 pounds the first year I started writing grants."

Eggeman's exercise was limited to hard-core pencil pushing. From 1987 to 1995, she analyzed water and sewer rates. Picture her in her little office, contemplating sewer flow. "Year after year, " she said, moaning dramatically, "I interfaced with a computer."

She made the best of pencil pushing. "It opened up opportunities for a very rich volunteer life."

Every community group in town scours City Hall for volunteers - especially for volunteer accountants. She started out with Meals on Wheels in 1980, trucking chicken and potatoes in her leaky Karmann Ghia. She went on to serve on myriad boards - for the Junior League, Leadership St. Petersburg, Community Partners With Youth, Louise Graham Recycling Center, many others.

She also sought out Toastmasters for a cure for her shyness. "To do anything, " she said, "I had to give up shy."

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Eggeman came into her own in 1995 when lifted from the sewers to a post as grant writer. Herbert Polson, now a City Council member, was her boss. He tried to scare her. "I told her she'd have to bring in 10 times her salary and benefits in grants, " he says.

"She exceeded that every year."

As shy as Eggeman looked, Polson says, "She just doesn't like to take no for an answer."

She calls the $450, 000 state grant she got for an art wing at the Wildwood Community Center in southern St. Petersburg her proudest accomplishment. It was the first -and last - time the state ever granted arts money to a recreation center.

It took three visits to Tallahassee to get it. "She always sees a door where others see a wall, " says her boyfriend, Mark Johnson.

The wing is now full of summer campers.

The Saturday Morning Market rates only third on her list of proudest accomplishments, behind the Community Foundation she founded.

But the market took longer than any of the others.

It started in 1995 over lunch at a little Fourth Street restaurant owned by her friend, Judy Staunko. Looking over at Williams Park, not being used by anyone but homeless people, Staunko mused how nice it would be to have a Saturday market there.

Muse out loud about anything, and Eggeman forms a committee, Staunko says. That's what she did after that lunch. She formed a Saturday Market Committee.

By February 1996, they had vendors selling fresh produce and a guy playing the guitar for $100. They scraped by on a $1, 000 grant Eggeman got from the Franciscan Sisters of Allegheny, N.Y.

The whole thing collapsed under a cold snap and the racial disturbance of late 1996.

The market lay dormant and forgotten until 2002, when Eggeman sensed better conditions. She got Johnson and Staunko to help her revive it.

The market took off. A hundred vendors participated last season. Annual sales exceeded $1.8-million.

"In a quiet way, " Staunko says, "she has done things that have absolutely altered the lives of people."

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Mayor Baker came to her office to fire her. About four years ago, Eggeman was moved to a job helping him organize and operate his nationally recognized Mentors & More program. It pairs corporate sponsors and mentors with each of St. Petersburg's 47 schools. The two are co-mentors of a senior at Northeast High.

When he broke the news, Baker didn't talk about her past victories as a grant writer, but Eggeman believes she'd still be employed if she had kept that old job. Nobody fires grant writers.

Baker apologized for firing her. She said two words: "Thank you."

Then Eggeman changed the subject. She wanted to ask the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay for money for St. Petersburg. It could make up some losses to the arts from the tax cuts.

Right after being fired, she was asked to come back for a month to help surviving employees understand her job. She's staying until the end of July. Meanwhile, she's practicing yoga, slimming down and inventing a second career.

She's already looking a little more like that balloon-flying, convertible-driving girl she used to be.

"I haven't been to work on time once."

John Barry can be reached at (727) 892-2258 or jbarry@sptimes.com.

[Last modified July 10, 2007, 10:40:39]