Month: August 2007

First, the bad news.

We’re still stuck with a dysfunctional Hillsborough County Commission that can wax blissful over a sports complex but grow combative over mass transit relevance and wetlands protection. Still stuck with a faction that treats public input as a gadfly infestation. Still stuck with an element that seems clueless about the inherent synergy of the county and its economic hub – the city of Tampa. Still stuck with a clique that prompts nostalgia for Joe Kotvas.

And still stuck with the hapless Brian Blair as chairman of the Environmental Protection Commission, which is roughly analogous to Josef Mengele as surgeon general. First, do no good.

Now, the good news. Thanks, ironically, to the publicity magnet that was the wetlands division debacle and ultimate compromise, a lot more folks seem to be paying attention. And in the process, asking themselves: Who are these people — and whose priorities and values do they really represent?

Perhaps a tipping point has been reached in this reign of error. Perhaps Blair, Ken Hagan, Jim Norman and Kevin White have — by outing themselves as riparian renegades and then disingenuously claiming they were catalysts for compromise — will have greased the skids for their own eventual ouster. Perhaps enough voters may have recognized that Blair, for example, does, indeed, have the skill sets — and credibility — of a professional wrestler.

Once you’ve turned a sprinkling of environmentalists into an angry, enlightened constituency armed with rhetorical pitch forks, anything is possible.

And thank you Al Higginbotham, the increasingly assertive Mark Sharpe and the feisty Rose Ferlita. Being outnumbered is never at odds with being right.

And that’s how numbers can change.

Plaudits to the University of Tampa for getting out in front of a serious undergraduate issue – student drinking – that is too often dismissed as a rite of collegiate passage. UT actually requires all its first-year students to complete an online alcohol prevention program, AlcoholEdu for College, immediately upon arrival.

Some sobering statistics underscore the need. According to the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, there were more than 1,700 alcohol-related deaths and 2.1 million cases of student DUIs in 2002. The NIAAA also estimates nearly 600,000 injuries, 97,000 sexual assaults and 159,000 first-year drop outs attributable to alcohol and other drugs every year.

The shakedown cruise is over. First-year Tampa City Council member Joseph Caetano has found a cause. He wants to rid the city of advertising-sign carriers, some in costume, who can be found working some of Tampa’s busier streets – such as New Tampa’s Bruce B. Downs Boulevard. He says they can be distracting to drivers.

And they surely can be, even to motorists on cell phones. And as a priority, it’s certainly more helpful than the secession of New Tampa.

By all accounts, the 5-year-old, Orlando-based Florida A&M Law School has not fared well. Barely half its students pass the Florida Bar Exam; faculty quality is questionable; leadership is a vacuum and full accreditation by the American Bar Association is far from a given.

It’s also worth reflecting on the irony of that site-selection charade back in 2000. Tampa, which was offering free land, finished behind Orlando – and Lakeland – in the running for the ostensible plum that was the FAMU Law School.

But do recall Tampa’s consolation prize: the Tampa Law Center & Campus of the Stetson University College of Law. Not only is accreditation not an issue, but the imposing, 73,500-square-foot, neo-Spanish Mediterranean facility has been a major catalyst for Tampa Heights’ development and revitalization.

And one other thing. Stetson actually bought the 7.7-acre, North Tampa Street (and razed the old Tampa Police Department headquarters) site for $11.2 million.

And one final thing. Regardless of civil rights implications and the pay-back raison d’etre , no, we didn’t need another law school. And, no, we still don’t need more lawyers. Period.