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Deputy mayor is glad to return
By JON WILSON © St. Petersburg Times, published April 22, 2001 ST. PETERSBURG -- Mike Dove said he never really got St. Petersburg out of his blood. So it wasn't that much of a stretch, he said, when newly elected Mayor Rick Baker called three days after the March 27 election with a proposal: Come back to town and do some more of what you did here before. "I couldn't respond right away," said Dove, who had to talk things over first with his wife, Debbie. The Doves and their two young sons had moved last year to North Carolina in part to be closer to Debbie Dove's family in Hickory. All negotiations apparently have worked out. Baker on Thursday named Dove, 47, deputy mayor of neighborhood services, eight months after Dove left St. Petersburg to become planning and development director in Catawba County, N.C. Dove, who worked for 20 years for the city before moving, said he will start his new role either May 14 or May 21. In the city last week for a few days, Dove noticed that a few things have changed, even during his short absence. "It was exhilarating to be through BayWalk," he said of the new downtown development. Dove's new job, for which he will be paid $110,000 yearly, embraces many of his old responsibilities: the Neighborhood Partnership, the N-Team rehabilitation initiative and code compliance, for example. It also includes overseeing the mayor's Action Center, which fields complaints and questions about city government, and a cadre of "public service representatives" who patrol the city and respond to problems such as potholes and broken pipes. But there's also a bigger picture. First, Dove's appointment sends a clear signal that neighborhoods can expect more of the kind of attention that began under former Mayor David Fischer, who made the city's subdivisions one of his administration's priorities. Second, Dove's new job was announced simultaneously with Police Chief Goliath Davis' appointment as deputy mayor for midtown economic development. In some respects, the two jobs share the same goals. "I think they're going to overlap tremendously," Dove said. "All the kinds of funding we're going after are going to overlap." "Midtown" will become the Baker administration's designation for the Challenge area. The Challenge zone was Fischer's name for the area between Central Avenue and 30th Avenue S, between Fourth and 34th streets. When he was here previously, Dove presided over a movement in which the number of neighborhood associations increased from 43 to 102. Perhaps 20 are in the Challenge, or midtown, area. To one degree or another, all are seeking more economic strength. "One of the things that has me excited about this job is working with Goliath," Dove said. Details remain to be worked out, and Dove said one of his first tasks will be to update his neighborhood perspective. Two "summits" will be scheduled soon, he said -- one specifically for the midtown area and another for all neighborhoods. Officials and grass-roots leaders will gather, probably in a venue large enough to accommodate a crowd in the hundreds. The meetings will give all involved a chance to reassess where the city's neighborhood movement should go next, Dove said. And there isn't likely to be total agreement. In a recent article headlined "Hey Mayor!" Neighborhood Times asked association leaders to talk about what they want to see the new mayor do. A few from the city's west side suggested that too much attention has been paid to downtown and the Challenge area, to the detriment of other neighborhoods. Concerns vary; traffic calming, economic development and law enforcement are frequently mentioned. Water, one- and two-way streets, code enforcement and building permits are hot topics, too. So Dove will spend time trying to satisfy many interests that often compete. But, he said, "The special challenge for me is to make people appreciate St. Petersburg the way I appreciate it. Sometimes you have to step back to really know what it means."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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