While attending a Tampa City Council session the other night–one that devolved into a welter of confusion over byzantine, anomalous and “patchwork” land-use zoning–I was confronted with this sobering reality. Have we ever had a less impressive City Council? Raw rookies and confirmed lightweights dominate. And Charlie Miranda, more wise guy than elder, too often appeared more enamored of his role as resident, homespun wit than voice of institutional history, reason and common sense.
Speaking of Miranda, his personality shtick also included the off-putting, badgering treatment of Bruce Cury, who was speaking in opposition to a request by residential street-based St. John’s Episcopal Church and Parish Day School to change its land-use designation from residential (R-10) to Public/Semi Public (PSP). Cury wears some other hats. He’s an attorney as well as the unflappable chairman of the Hillsborough County City-County Planning Commission. The PC had already passed along the St. John’s land use-change request to city council.
Cury was trying to explain that he had recused himself in his PC role but was now speaking as just another Hyde Park resident voicing neighborhood concerns. The dyspeptic Miranda did more than not play the professional-courtesy card. He played to the capacity crowd and reveled in a rude, rhetorical, gotcha exchange that used up a good chunk of Cury’s time. He wasn’t granted any additional.
Perhaps the county’s “Bully Busters” campaign needs to look beyond the schools.