"We're extremely busy," said Erin Albury, forest area supervisor for the Withlacoochee Forestry Center of the state Division of Forestry, which covers five counties, including Citrus.

Although there is no ban yet, firefighters said they would prefer that people avoid outdoor burning.

Pasco ponders linking tax break to sales tax increase

NEW PORT RICHEY -- Few bay area cities and counties have voted to award a voter-approved tax break for the poorest seniors because of fears over the wallop their local budgets could take.

Pasco County Commissioner Peter Altman says he may have a way to award the tax break and still bring in more money for county projects: Turn it into a carrot on a stick.

Altman suggested the county link the tax break with an aggressive campaign supporting a penny sales tax increase in Pasco. The combination of the tax break and tax increase would deliver relief to low-income seniors while providing additional revenue, Altman said.

The tax break grants low-income seniors an additional $25,000 homestead exemption. But they have to earn less than $20,000 a year to get it.

Pasco budget officials gave a worst-case scenario of $8-million lost if every senior who is a homesteader qualified for the exemption.

But that could be overblown. The state Department of Revenue estimated that Hillsborough County would lose $4-million in tax revenues if it granted the exemption last year. But the county lost only $620,000 after offering seniors a $15,000 homestead exemption on top of the $25,000 exemption everyone else gets.

Studies showed that many property owners either did not apply for the exemption or did not qualify under the rules.

Spring training cities get funds to revamp fields

CLEARWATER -- Two Pinellas cities crossed home plate and collected millions in state funds Tuesday for spring training baseball.

The decision cleared the way for a new $20-million stadium in Clearwater, where the Phillies train, and $6-million in renovations for the complex in Dunedin that is the spring home for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Indian River County, Osceola County and Lakeland also got state money to upgrade their spring training facilities. State Sen. Jack Latvala, a Palm Harbor Republican, drafted legislation to create a $75-million pool.

Latvala said the teams make the local communities a better place to live.

"It's a quality of life issue," he said. "It's an opportunity to see a major league team for a reasonable amount of money, get autographs and take the kids."

Construction finally begins on Pasco nudist resort

LAND O'LAKES -- The cold weather may not be the best time to lure nudists, but a Mediterranean-style nudist village in the heart of Pasco County is finally taking off.

Construction workers spent December bulldozing 97 acres east of U.S. 41 to build Caliente, a challenge to the naked dominance of Paradise Lakes, a Pasco resort that draws about 75,000 visitors a year.

The resort's managing partners struggled for five years to finance the $38-million project, leaving the nudist community skeptical it would ever be built.

The resort's "vacation cottages" and apartment buildings will be constructed first. The rest of the resort, including a planned nightclub, 40-room motel, restaurant, heated pool and lakeside beach, is scheduled for completion by 2004.

That's fine with Sandy Faulconer, president of the Central Pasco Chamber of Commerce.

"Let's face it. Their type of clientele is more affluent," Faulconer said. "They're not building trailer parks."

City's role in Bayfront's fate is again a hot topic

ST. PETERSBURG -- Bayfront Medical Center may be out of the BayCare Health System, but the battle appears far from over.

In the City Council's first public hearing on Bayfront since controversy over Catholic influence on the hospital erupted nearly two years ago, two sides are hardening their positions.

One group, led by religious conservatives, urged selling the city's interest in the hospital, which would allow the hospital freedom to act as it wished.

The other faction, led by women's and civil rights advocates, urged keeping city control over Bayfront to prevent the sort of Catholic-driven changes that occurred at Bayfront when it joined BayCare in 1997.

Sue Brody, Bayfront's president and chief executive officer, said the hospital eventually would like to buy its freedom, but now must focus on rebuilding "a good, strong working relationship" with the city.

History-making supervisor takes office in Hernando

BROOKSVILLE -- Several new faces were ensconced in their newly acquired offices this week as recently elected sheriffs, prosecutors and county commissioners got to work.

Among them was Annie Williams, a 24-year veteran of the Hernando County Supervisor of Elections office, who became Hernando's first African-American constitutional officer, winning election by more than 8,000 votes despite a low-budget campaign.

Sitting behind her new desk, Williams said her rise from No. 2 in the office to the $80,000-a-year supervisor of elections job was no big deal. She didn't celebrate when her tenure officially began at 12:01 a.m., and she didn't plan an elaborate changing of the guard.

She didn't even park in the supervisor's parking space, opting instead for her usual spot on the other side of the government center in Brooksville.

"It's the same job," Williams said. "I just moved up another slot."

Coming up this week

The next legal fight for Palestinian immigrant Mazen Al-Najjar is a deportation hearing Tuesday. Al-Najjar, a former University of South Florida teacher freed after three years in jail as an accused terrorist, will ask an appeals court to let him remain because the U.S. government has made him a "pariah" unable to go anywhere else.

The state's higher education task force meets in Tampa this week to talk about its recommendations on how to reorganize the administration of higher education in Florida. U.S. Sen. Bob Graham last week pledged to take protection of the state's Board of Regents to Florida voters if necessary to ward off "pervasive mediocrity." The task force was formed after the state Legislature abolished the Board of Regents in the last legislative session.

Mark Kennedy, the mediator assigned by the Alabama Supreme Court for the two families vying for custody of 4-year-old Sam Johson, has said he will give a report to the court on Tuesday. That's the last day the nine justices will meet before four of them leave office this month.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights holds hearings in Tallahassee Thursday and Friday to determine whether voting rights were denied in Florida's presidential election. Additional hearings will be held in Miami, Jacksonville and Tampa.

-- Compiled by Times staff writer Sharon Kennedy Wynne

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