Week in review

By Times staff writer

© St. Petersburg Times, published December 24, 2000

CHARGES SOUGHT IN COUNTRYWAY FATALITY: Authorities recommended criminal charges against a teenage driver who struck and killed a young mother pushing a stroller. Michele Calta was hit Nov. 28 while walking her newborn daughter on Branch Mooring Drive in Countryway. Deputies said Richard David Delrio, 17, a neighbor and senior at Sickles High School, steered a blue Mitsubishi Eclipse around a corner and struck Calta and the stroller. Calta hit the windshield. Kaitlyn Renee, the baby girl, strapped in a car seat propped up in a stroller, was sent flying to the pavement but suffered only minor bruising to the forehead.

Sheriff's spokesman Rod Reder said the chief investigator recently completed the case and submitted his work to the State Attorney's Office with a recommendation to charge Delrio. Reder would not comment on the exact charges Delrio might face.

"It's a very exhaustive report," said Reder. "He is going to do a recommendation to find this kid at fault for possible criminal charges."

Records show Delrio has been cited for three driving infractions in the past year and has seven points on his license.

FUN PASS CREATES MORE HEADACHES: Renewing a Busch Gardens Fun Pass has been anything but fun for the thousands of people who waited until the last minute. People seeking renewals deluged the theme park with calls, trying to beat a Saturday deadline. With calls to the park reaching 6,000 a day, customers had to wait for up to 12 minutes on hold, said Busch marketing vice president Joe Couceiro. The theme park's Internet site crashed a couple of times.

It's precisely what the park's marketing folks hoped to avoid. "We've had the renewal offer out since the beginning of October," Couceiro said Wednesday. "We encouraged them to sign up quickly, not wait until the last minute."

The Fun Pass allows unlimited admission for one year for $46, usually the price of a single day's admission. Introduced in March, its popularity quickly caused headaches. Holders of the annual Passport, who paid $95 for a year's admission, resented the long lines and crowded parking lots caused by the newcomers. The higher price they paid entitled them to discounts on merchandise and free parking, but Busch's 8,000-space parking lots had to be closed twice last spring because of the crowds brought in by the Fun Pass.

Single-day and monthly attendance records were set at the park in March and April.

In 1999, attendance had dropped 9 percent. In October, Busch began notifying Fun Pass holders they could renew their passes for the same price. "We wanted to give them enough time so we wouldn't have to accommodate them all at the same time," Couceiro said.

HEALTH CARE TAX DEBATED: For four hours Wednesday, poor people, doctors and hospital executives pleaded with the County Commission to leave the county's indigent health care tax alone. The quarter-cent sales tax had been set to automatically jump to a half-cent in February. But Commissioner Jim Norman, a Republican from Carrollwood, was opposed, and he suggested keeping the tax at a quarter-cent until perhaps 2002.

In the end, Norman got part of his way. A 4-3 Republican majority voted to hold off increasing the sales tax until next October, saying the tax had accumulated too much of a reserve, $77-million. By next October, it is projected the reserve will have dropped to $39.5-million, less than half the annual cost of the program. "What I am trying to do is validate this program," Norman said.

Most in the crowd of about 125 didn't believe him. Some attacked Norman for opposing health care for the poor while backing tax subsidies for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

In addition to paying for the care of about 29,000 people without private insurance, the health care tax pays to treat indigent inmates booked into the Hillsborough County jail.

With the economy possibly slowing, the money brought in by the quarter-cent tax could decrease at the same time the number of people needing health care will go up. Meanwhile, health care costs have skyrocketed.

"This program is too important to these people for speculation, guessing and especially for politics," warned Isaac Mallah, president and chief executive officer of St. Joseph's-Baptist Health Care.

The health care tax could become a political issue in two years -- when six of the seven commission seats will be open. Several elected officials, including Tampa City Council member Linda Saul-Sena and former county commissioner Phyllis Busansky, spoke at the hearing.

Busansky, a Democrat, told the commission that health care was not a party issue. "There are not partisan people in this room," she said. But in the hallway, Busansky quizzed Republican Denise Lasher, a possible candidate for the commission in 2002, about Lasher's stance on the tax.

After four hours, even Norman had backed down from his original idea of delaying the tax increase for 2 1/2 years. He agreed to a compromise forged by Commissioner Chris Hart to keep the tax at its current level through Sept. 30. Then, the tax will automatically increase to a half-cent.

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