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City Hall credibility wrinkling our noses

By Howard Troxler, Times Columnist
Published February 10, 2008

The $450-million waterfront baseball stadium in St. Petersburg might be dead already. But if it isn't, its credibility suffered a deadly blow last week at the hands of the City Council.

Most likely, the city will still go through the motions. But in the end, the decision will be up to the voters.

The trouble is that the voters will have to believe that what the city is telling them is, uh, true. Which is a problem these days.

To paraphrase Hamlet and a bunch of other guys through the ages, after this past week, I smell a rat - but it might not be the same rat you smell. So, let's compare rats.

Let's say the stadium doesn't happen.

What happens then to the waterfront site, now occupied by Progress Energy Park and Al Lang Field?

The future of that site was much on the minds of residents during public hearings last year. Overwhelmingly, they said: Let's designate Al Lang a park, once spring training goes away.

The city balked, saying we should "keep our options open." No one knew then that the city staff had signed a secret agreement on the stadium plan. My friends on the council say they didn't know either. I believe them.

To appease the public, the council said it would reconsider Al Lang when it passed a followup amendment.

Then, whoops, six months went by. And Thursday morning, when it finally passed that followup, the council made sure the Al Lang question will stay open for several more months at least.

So, here is my question:

What's the new secret backup deal for Al Lang? Is it a convention center? Is it a hotel? I hear some of kind of museum, maybe? Is it a new City Hall? Are they gonna use that tax-increment dough for it? Has the city signed yet another secret "economic development" agreement?

I suppose the City Council might have gone back on its word just because calling Al Lang a "park," even on paper, could affect the financing or the developer proposals for the stadium deal.

But they were sure intent on it. Intent, and unanimous.

The plain fact is that members of the City Council told residents in August that they would take up the question of designating Al Lang as a park in the followup ordinance.

They said it in public. They said it in private. I had lunch with council Chairman James Bennett a few weeks ago (it was at Munch's on Sixth Street S; I had the Ruthie Melt) and asked him again. He told me again it was going to be in the glitch ordinance.

At Thursday's meeting, one resident stood up and read back the words spoken by members in the Dec. 20 meeting, the last time they said it.

Member Leslie Curran brushed it aside. That's just what the newspaper says, she replied.

Fortunately, meetings of the council are recorded and preserved. They indeed said they would include it. Member Bill Foster was astonished there was any doubt.

You can watch the video at blogs.tampabay.com/troxler.

Later Thursday evening, Bennett joked with an audience at an event that folks shouldn't believe everything they read in the papers about this.

I respect my friend the chairman. He is a good man with a good heart and I like him a lot. But he was a better outsider than he is an insider. If there is any place to be skeptical of what you hear these days, it is at City Hall.

[Last modified February 9, 2008, 23:37:33]