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Shootin' the Breeze
10.04.06
Safety Harbor's City Commission held a remarkable meeting Friday night (Sept. 29). Not only was it held when everyone present should have been relaxing for the weekend, it drew a respectable crowd of 50 or more residents who actively and passionately participated in a discussion of whether the commission should withdraw its contract for Billy Beckett to become city manager. The final vote was 4-1 to stick with the offer, despite the surprise of a federal lawsuit accusing Beckett of racial discrimination while previously serving as city manager of Riverdale, GA, an Atlanta suburb.
The crowd was racially mixed and reflected a broad cross-section of city residents, including a number of city employees. The consensus was clearly in favor of Beckett, although few could have known more about him than what had been published in a local daily newspaper. Published information about the questionable background and apparent political motivation of his accuser, however, was enough to persuade most attendees that the commission should not be hasty to judge.
The most remarkable aspect of the meeting was not the decision, but the fact a public discussion was even held. It is hard to image any city commission of recent years being as willing to open its thinking and decision-making process to such public scrutiny. Commission meetings have sacrificed some efficiency for openess, but the atmosphere is refreshing.
Also of note, as little as a day before the meeting it appeared three of the five commissioners had made up their minds not to execute the contract. Kara Bauer was very outspoken in her concern that the city was inviting trouble by hiring as city manager a man who was accused of discrimination at a time when the city was struggling with its own accusations of a similar nature. Claude Rigsby suggested the city consider appointing a staff member as an interim city manager and postpone a hiring decision until after March elections. Andy Steingold suggested Beckett should have solved the problem for the commission by withdrawing his application as soon as he knew of the pending lawsuit.
Kathleen Earle and James McCormick were not willing to allow a knee-jerk reaction and argued that Beckett was still the best candidate and the person they were ready to hire. With Bauer resigning to move to Texas, Rigsby truly holding his seat on an interim basis and Steingold facing election in March, the commission deferred to the two commissioners who are certain to have to live with the decision. Bauer, however, still cast a negative vote as she had publicly said she would do.
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Meeting as the Community Redevelopment Agency, the Safety Harbor City Commission on Tuesday, Oct. 3 approved a half-million dollar budget for 2006-2007. Notably absent from the CRA's largest budget ever was funding for the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. Even the fourth and final $9,000 installment of a grant approved by a previous city commission toward expanding the chamber's offices was placed on a tentative basis by a requirement that the chamber open its financial records to the city prior to disbursement of the funds. Vice Mayor Kara Bauer and Mayor Andy Steingold have been asking for more than two years that the chamber uncloak its finances as a condition of receiving taxpayer subsidies. The chamber has steadfastly refused, even to the point of turning down city funds rather than open its books. Caught in the middle are downtown merchants who have come to rely on a city subsidy of the monthly 3rd Friday events and weekly Downtown Farmer's Market from October to May. Rather than channel the funds through the chamber, the city budgeted $25,000 which is to be used to directly pay bills submitted by the Downtown Business Council.
The CRA is a tax increment finance district, which is financed by increases in tax collections from an area designated for redevelopment. Safety Harbor created its downtown district in the early '90s and collected only a few thousand dollars each year for about the first 10 years the district existed. Soaring commercial property values and new development in the downtown now are producing tens of thousands of "incremental" tax dollars. Revenue from several new projects, including the three-story HarborPointe retail/office building, is not yet on the books. The prospect of getting a piece of this growing pot of money - all of which is required by law to be spent within the redevelopment district - previously had been of great interest to the Chamber of Commerce.
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Redevelopment continues to be a tricky issue for city officials, would-be developers and local businesses. Safety Harbor this month will complete a 100% change in leadership both on the city commission and in the top staff positions that is almost entirely fall-out from public reaction - mostly negative - to the first big redevelopment to occur in the city. When the condo market was booming (remember just last year?) residents feared a rash of condos were going to replace the quaint cottages of old downtown. The biggest of them all was to be the five-story towers overlooking the Safety Harbor Marina. Unstable soils and limestone voids (Gee, where do you think the springs under the spa come from?) were already driving construction costs past the profitability mark even before the bottom fell out of the condo market. While Olympia Development hasn't officially given up its plans, the clock is ticking on its current approvals. If ground isn't broken by the end of the year, it is almost certain that the process will have to begin all over again - this time requiring approval of a city commission that was elected on substantially anti-development platforms.
The commission has its own redevelopment conundrum. Just as the city hall revolution was reaching its peak, the city approved significant revisions to its community redevelopment plan. This technical document is a critical result of a years-long process required by state law. It has to be approved at county and state levels and controls local zoning decisions. The new city commission doesn't really like some aspects of the new version of the plan - some members want to see more restrictions - but stopping the new plan in progress means the existing plan continues in force, which is more generous with developers. Under the old plan, the city had no choice but to approve a three-story condo building and two-story retail building overlooking its new Baranoff Park. The economy and unstable soils may yet act to protect the parcel and its eight old oaks that were to be removed.
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Low-income, elderly homeowners will get an additional $68 tax break from Safety Harbor. The commission has approved increasing the Senior Homestead Exemption from $15,000 to $25,000. Combined with a standard homestead exemption, a property-owner who is 65-years-old and earned less than $23,462 in 2005 will qualify for at least $50,000 in exemption from property taxes. The county Property Appraiser's office said there were 198 qualifying property-owners in Safety Harbor last year. Cost to the city is estimated to be $13,559.
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Elderly homeowners better be quick in asking for that $68 tax break because the city already wants a piece of it back. The cost of weekly pick-up of recycled materials will more than double to $2.77 per month beginning in November - an increase of about $20 per year. Curbside recycling was only $1.12 per month from when the program began in 1993 until February of this year, when it jumped to $1.23. A second increase this year to $1.34 was already scheduled to take effect October 1. The latest increase resulted when the city put the current contract out to bid. Only the current provider, Waste Management, was even willing to submit a bid and they asked for a 50% increase. The city insists, however, that doubling the residential rate only passes on the city's actual costs. Reserves in the sanitation funds had been making up the difference, commissioners were told. The city is still subsidizing about 35% of the recycling cost, which it justifies by noting that recycling reduces the cost of garbage collection.
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A final lighter note. If you're the consultant to the city who is presenting a progress report on a $4 million project, check to make sure your PowerPoint presentation didn't get corrupted when you transferred it to your laptop. It's embarrassing for your slide to keep saying "Microsoft can not read this file" while you fumble with your equipment.
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