Front Porch program was bungled, Bush says

In a letter, the governor says the next round of state grants won't be so rushed and a process will be in place.

By LEONORA LaPETER

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 27, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- Gov. Jeb Bush acknowledged Wednesday that his Front Porch Florida program could have been handled better and pledged to establish a process that will prevent the hasty decisionmaking and government inefficiency that marked the first round of grants in St. Petersburg.

Bush said the Department of Community Affairs has added a staffer for each of Florida's six Front Porch communities to make sure state dollars are used more effectively.

"It has become apparent that the recent round of grants was rushed and that a more formal grant and purchasing review process is needed," Bush wrote in a letter to the editor for publication in the St. Petersburg Times. "Our administration will establish such a process designed to prevent hurried decisionmaking from taking place in the future."

Some St. Petersburg residents, meanwhile, are attempting to work on the problems from the bottom up. Chrisshun Cox, president of the Melrose Mercy/Pine Acres Neighborhood Association, has organized a meeting for Tuesday to discuss ways for local folks to have more say in how the money is spent.

Cox said she quit the Governor's Revitalization Council of South St. Petersburg, the group making local Front Porch decisions, because she didn't think it adequately represented the six neighborhoods on the south side of St. Petersburg that have been designated as the Front Porch community. The meeting will be at 7 p.m. at the 20th Street Church of Christ.

"They promised to come in here and bring some money to help six neighborhoods reconstruct, revitalize and get up on their feet," Cox said. "The only thing this money has done is bring people to the table with their own personal agendas."

Front Porch Florida, a program launched by the governor during his bid for state office, was supposed to be a bottoms-up approach to community revitalization -- where government listened to local residents about the needs of the community rather than the other way around.

But the program so far in St. Petersburg has been marked by infighting, poor communication and state inefficiency.

St. Petersburg was to get $500,000 in the first year of the grant program but lost $142,000 of that money because the state Department of Juvenile Justice was unable to spend it before a state budget deadline.

In addition, program administrators failed to conduct background checks of applicants. In one case, they awarded a $30,000 grant to the fledging for-profit recording company of a man with a 12-year history of drug and weapons convictions. The money was supposed to go to established programs that steer kids away from drugs and violence.

Bush said the state was committed to conducting background checks on potential grant recipients but decisions would be made on a case-by-case basis after a review of the information contained in the check.

He also said he thought it was appropriate for faith-based organizations to receive grants.

"These organizations are part of every neighborhood and often have non-religious community programs already in place," Bush said. "Fostering these partnerships is part of the Front Porch philosophy."

Department of Juvenile Justice officials, who administered the $2-million that was distributed statewide, could not be reached for comment Wednesday. They have said they failed to spend the money in a timely manner because they were waiting to see if the Legislature would appropriate money for Front Porch next year. Another $2-million went to the program beginning in July, with about $333,000 of that probably going to St. Petersburg.

Rodney Bennett, chairman of the Revitalization Council in St. Petersburg, said Wednesday that the program may not be perfect but that it helped a lot of groups that traditionally would have been left out of the process. He thinks that's part of the program's growing pains.

"It's a lot easier to work with that which is established versus that which is new," Bennett said.

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