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New council starts on positive path
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 8, 2001 St. Petersburg voters will spend the next two years reaping the harvest of political decisions made in March. They got a taste of things to come last week when the new City Council convened for the first time. If that meeting (which, by council's standards, was marked by startling brevity at just under three hours) presages the next two years, positive change could be coming. The council has three new members, two recent appointees who won full terms last month and three incumbent members finishing out their terms. The new council will be led by Chairwoman Renee Flowers, whose tenure has been marked by steadily building expertise and a calm demeanor. Flowers has already taken a firm hand with the chair's parliamentary duties, pacing Thursday's agenda briskly and organizing a retreat for members to coordinate their agendas and get acquainted. By setting up regular meetings with new Mayor Rick Baker and heads of key departments, Flowers has also initiated encouraging efforts to open lines of communication between council members, Baker and city administrators. Flowers' own goals include speeding business recruitment and the purchase of properties in the Dome Industrial District, beefing up the city's work training efforts and using a recent grant to consolidate programs designed to revitalize parts of south St. Petersburg. These issues dovetail nicely with those Flowers' new colleagues identified during the campaign. And that shared focus -- on issues such as infrastructure, water and economic development -- offers an opportunity for the council to put past rancor behind it, revisit old issues with new eyes and craft new solutions for a changing St. Petersburg. The calming of rhetoric over the city's landlord relationship with Bayfront Medical Center is an early heartening example. Because neither Flowers nor her colleagues has shown enthusiasm for protracted legal struggle, the city and the hospital could be moving closer to a mutual understanding. The council also is uniquely situated to speak with a cohesive voice when advising the mayor on Tampa Bay Water matters, and several members promised neighborhood improvements. James Bennett, who served on the City Beautiful Committee, and Richard Kriseman, who served on the Nuisance Abatement Board, will bring experience to public works and code enforcement issues. Virginia Littrell's planning and historic preservation background and John Bryan's experience as a developer have the potential to inform decisions on growth, zoning and quality of life issues in communities. And Earnest Williams' firsthand knowledge of work-force development can help target economic revitalization efforts. New members and old, under Flowers' leadership, have a chance to complement each other and carry out their promises to improve the city.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
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From the Times South Pinellas desks |
