Electric Carts Respond To Marketplace Need

Tampa, as has been well chronicled, has had to shut down its electric-cart operators. To be sure, the city didn’t need this. Especially with a downtown that’s still amenity challenged, pedestrian averse and sans realistic taxi alternatives. Especially during a recession.  

 

Especially with the county, hardly a municipal soul mate of the city, playing a role.

 

The Hillsborough County Public Transportation Commission, which includes both county commissioners and city council members, had an opportunity to help out downtown on the electric-cart issue. It needed to be reasonable, and it needed to be creative. It was neither. It couldn’t reach a sensible consensus on what, if anything, to do about those open-air, shuttle rides around downtown and the tourist-oriented Channel District. So the county PTC pulled the plug after cab attorneys called the carts unsafe and unfair competition.

 

This should never have been a zero-sum matter. Sure, the carts had been unregulated. They didn’t charge fares. But that was a technicality. They made money on ads, and tips were expected. They should have been regulated – with assurances of safety and insurance required. It wouldn’t have been a deal-breaker. It remains eminently doable.

 

Since the county has no formal category for electric carts — and there were no more taxi licenses — the smart move would have been to, well, create a hybrid category. The carts had been a welcome addition to downtown. They had responded to an obvious need. That’s the way the marketplace is supposed to work.

 

The PTC response to the cab companies should have been something other than acquiescence. The only reason there were electric carts transporting visitors and workers around downtown in the first place was because such mini-hauls were a viable, however narrow, niche – one conspicuously unserved by taxis.

Not At Variance With Reality

Common sense ultimately prevailed on the matter of Tampa’s variance board voting to allow Derek Jeter to erect a 6-foot privacy fence around his gigantic new home now under construction on Davis Islands.

 

Put it this way. Once you’ve established the reality of the largest house in the county (at 33,000 square feet) shoe-horned into a residential neighborhood, you’re going to quibble over a 2-foot differential on fencing?

 

But even more to the point, the reality of a mammoth, celebrity-owned mansion is that it will be a beacon to gawkers. Logistically, Bahama Circle is hardly well suited for drive-by voyeurs. Better that the word get out that there will be no gratuitous Jeter sightings.

 

Even though the Davis Islands Civic Association opposed the variance, Jeter’s immediate neighbors, the ones already impacted by ratcheting traffic, lobbied for it – a position that understandably carried the day.

World Cup Redux

Back in 1994, the U.S. hosted the World Cup for the first time. The games were spread across nine cities, and FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, estimated the American economic impact at $4 billion. (It also estimated the impact for the Germany-hosted 2006 Cup at $6.2 billion.) Tampa put in a bid, but with the sub-standard soccer facility that was the old Tampa Stadium, it was an instant also ran. Orlando, however, was one of the nine.

 

Now the U.S. is gearing up again for a bid. This time for either the 2018 or the 2022 Cup. And this time Tampa’s chances are a lot better. Raymond James Stadium is considered a superb facility. The dimensions are right, sight lines perfect and there’s no crown on the field. And it hardly hurts that RayJay’s main tenant, the Bucs, is owned by the same guy, Malcolm Glazer, who also owns Manchester United, the most famous soccer team in the world.

 

Tampa’s bid has already been submitted. Orlando, Jacksonville and Miami are also in the hunt. The USA bid is due next May. FIFA will announce the host nations for 2018 and 2022 by December 2010.

 

Insiders say there’s a much different vibe now, and much of it is attributed to Raymond James Stadium, as well as additional hotels built since the last World Cup courtship. There’s also the credibility that the U.S. has gained – from being a presence on the world soccer stage to having already hosted a World Cup.

 

I can still remember covering the FIFA tour of Tampa Stadium for the Tampa Bay Business Journal in the 1980s. Amid the furrowed FIFA brows came this unsolicited comment from a Brazilian journalist: “America getting the World Cup is like Brazil getting the World Series.” Ouch.

 

No, America is not, and may never be, Brazil when it comes to soccer. But, yes, the U.S. is a major player capable of holding its own against international competition. And, yes, Tampa, which has already hosted three Super Bowls, should be a favorite if the U.S. is awarded the World Cup in 2018 or 2022.  

Bill Gray: “One Of The Good Guys”

When Guggino Family Eye Center on Swann Avenue becomes a de facto overflow parking lot for Blount & Curry Funeral Home on South MacDill Avenue, you know the B&C service was for somebody special. And this was no exception. The memorial service last Thursday was for Bill Gray, 82.

 

In addition to family, this was an eclectic gathering that included bank presidents, politicians and media members. Bill Gray, for those not fortunate enough to have known him, was the Tampa Bay area’s acknowledged public relations’ guru. In a business known more for the clichéd look-at-me shills and damage-control hacks, he was the consummate pro.

 

Bill Gray knew what was truly newsworthy. His credibility was impeccable. If he thought enough of clients to agree to represent them, then they surely had a legitimate story to tell. That’s how Gray — always the well-reasoned gentleman — was viewed by the media, a congenitally skeptical lot — when they aren’t cynical. Gray’s word, his unflappable presence and demeanor of class, his aptitude for synthesis and consensus, and his sense of humor separated him from the professional pitchmen.

 

“He would have made a great secretary of state,” Ed Roberts, former Editorial Page Editor of the Tampa Tribune, told the Daily PRNewser.

 

To use a term uttered by many at the service, Bill Gray was “one of the good guys.”

 

When the global PR firm of Hill & Knowlton opened its first Florida office in Tampa in the early ‘80s, it was through the credibility-assuring acquisition of Gray & Associates.  Gray, a Jacksonville native and University of Alabama alum, had been in Tampa since 1955. His reputation was the gold standard. He gave Tampa PR gravitas.

 

Gray would retire five years after the H&K acquisition, but he would remain a communications force through his commentaries and book reviews in the Trib. He also penned a novel.

 

Final details, including last week’s service, were scripted by Gray and bore his inimitable touch. The music was Gershwin, the mood humorous. He loved “Rhapsody in Blue” as much as he loved a good pun or practical joke. Well, almost as much.

 

And Gray directed that his ashes be scattered – whether over a golf course or a backyard pond or the Gulf. His reasoning was vintage. He didn’t want those inquiring about his final resting place to be directed to a given plot in some cemetery. No, he preferred that the only viable answer be: “We don’t know where the hell he is.”

Begged Questions

  • Why is there a market for dead-on, gun-shaped cigarette lighters?
  • Why would anyone want a pet python?
  • Why would anyone license anyone (who’s not a herpetologist) to have a pet python?
  • Why wouldn’t you permit electric-cart shuttles in amenity-challenged, taxi-shunning, downtown Tampa?
  • Why, during turbulent economic times, wouldn’t a “Benevolent Association” recommend that its (Police) members accept a pay-raise freeze to help save the jobs of fellow city workers?
  • Why does Kevin White keep getting elected?
  • Why does it take a swine-flu scare to prompt the school board to do away with the educationally-indefensible policy of attendance-based exam exemptions?
  • Why would a high-caliber surgeon want a souvenir bullet?
  • Why would you quibble about Derek Jeter’s variance addition of two additional fence feet once you’ve established the reality of the largest home in the county (33,000 square feet) being shoe-horned into a residential neighborhood on Davis Islands?
  • Why wouldn’t parents of Casey Turner’s St. Pete fifth-graders feel creeped out that their kids’ 41-year-old “hip-hop redneck” teacher hosts bikini contests at a local bar and recently participated in CBS’ insipidly suggestive and obnoxious reality show, “Big Brother”?
  • Why wouldn’t a state (for example, this one) ban texting while driving?
  • Why would anyone listen to what the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement has to say about anything, including the sidewalk privatizing at downtown St. Petersburg’s BayWalk?
  • Why do otherwise responsible, intelligent conservatives not see through the shallow sham that is Sarah Palin?
  • Why is it that tort reform isn’t a bigger factor (than, say, the specious euthanasia or socialism scenarios) in the fractious, health-care-reform debate?
  • Why would anyone doubt that the only relevant criterion in Philadelphia for judging the loathsome, arrogant, obviously well-scripted Michael Vick is how the Eagles do this year?
  • Why don’t we focus more on all those prominent people who never needed a second chance because they never hurt anyone or anything in the first place?
  • Why bother putting a morals clause into a contract that includes “willful conduct that could objectively be determined to bring public disrepute or scandal” if you’re not going to apply it to the sleazy conduct of University of Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino?
  • Why would anyone read — let alone buy — the biography “Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the Photographs That Shocked the World”?
  • Why do so many yahoos have to “channel” the Founding Fathers to make the case about the right to buy assault weapons?
  • Why should the U.S., despite improved technology, even consider following the lead of Europe and lift the ban on in-flight cellphone calls — unless lawmakers and regulators actually want to add to the level of flying stress by imposing chronically inane cellphone conversations on captive audiences?
  • Why wouldn’t even New York Yankee fans be embarrassed by their Pinstripers, who could spend more the half a billion dollars on free agents this year but can’t ante up $42,000 for the standard Tampa Water Department fee for installing a bigger meter at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa?
  • Why does Mary Mulhern get grief for tapping into her city council discretionary fund to partly pay for her visit to Cuba in hopes of better positioning Tampa for inevitable trade opportunities, when a similar amount, if allocated for, say, an out-of-town “Best Municipal Practices For Recessionary Times” convention would not have drawn such scrutiny?  
  • Why are those “Welcome to Tampa/City of Champions” signs still up when it’s been, well, a while and there’s not even an Arena Football League anymore?
  • Why would anyone entertain real hopes of USF’s football team finally finishing strong and winning big, pressure-packed Big East games down the stretch when Jim Leavitt, hardly the avatar of sideline decorum and play-calling composure, is still head coach?
  • Why would the International Olympic Committee back any sport (golf most recently) that doesn’t consider the Olympics as its ultimate forum and quintessential competition?
  • Why don’t more people, notably in the service sector, respond to “thank you” with “you’re welcome” – and not “no problem”? — unless, of course, there had been something problematic about doing their job.

Travel Suit

While all eyes are on Washington for the next stage in opening Cuba to American travel, it might be worth at least a glance toward New York. That’s where a lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, is challenging the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control’s right to compel American travelers to Cuba to answer questions about their expenditures while in Cuba. (It’s not illegal, per se, for U.S. citizens to actually go to Cuba. But it is illegal to spend money there absent formal authorization from OFAC.)

 

The suit, filed by the non-profit, legal advocacy group Center for Constitutional Rights, says the policy forces travelers to “incriminate themselves.”

 

Meanwhile, no member of the 27-member Florida Congressional delegation has signed the “Freedom To Travel To Cuba Act,” sponsored by Massachusetts Democratic Rep. William Delahunt – and signed so far by more than 150 members of Congress.

Pay Freezes As A Benevolent Act

Under normal circumstances we would expect there to be this conversation. Faced with a pay freeze, public unions would tell their employer it’s not acceptable. Not even close. No way. The municipal employer, in this case the City of Tampa, would point to budget constraints, which are not exactly rare. Both sides would rhetorically dig in, and some sort of compromise, including the face-saving variety, would result.

 

But there’s nothing normal about these times. It can’t be business as usual when you’re in the midst of the worst economic downturn in three generations.

 

Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio has already presided over more than $40 million in budget cuts the last two years. But more positions than employees were affected. Benefits and raises went untouched. But now the 2010 budget has a shortfall of more than $50 million. The city can’t drain all its reserves and undermine borrowing ability, and it can’t compromise necessary services. Something has to give. And go. That means raises. City worker raises. And that includes firefighters and police. And, yes, those (annual) step raises.

 

This is understandably touchy. But this is not about appreciation or respect. It’s just not understandable — or even good governmental stewardship — to not freeze raises of all city employees.  

 

It’s called taking one for the team. It’s called doing the right thing. It’s also called helping save fellow employees’ jobs. Talk about a benevolent association.

“This Is America”?

What’s beyond disturbing right now is this alarming pattern of town hall meetings over health-care reform metastasizing into anarchic shout downs. This ill serves both health care, the status quo of which is unsustainable, as well as democracy.

 

Maybe we should have seen it coming.

 

These are uniquely partisan, hardly nuanced times. Upon reflection, the town hall meltdowns, including the one in Ybor City that Congresswoman Kathy Castor attempted to speak at, have been presaged on so many fronts.  Health care reform is simply its most high-profile, visceral vehicle.

 

We’ve seen the portents — from Glenn Beck’s ad hominem, “Obama’s a racist” slanders to Sarah Palin’s “downright evil” “death panels” tirade.  We’ve seen the omens in a “birthers” agenda that harbors fears of an elected “Manchurian Candidate.” And we see it in rhetoric that is morphing from “socialism” to “Nazism.”

 

The signs are as manifest – and literal – as swastikas. Apparently one person’s messiah is another person’s Mengele. Suffice it to say, not exactly grounds for compromise and civil debate. Not when you now need metal-detectors for town hall meetings.

 

All we need is Howard Beale chronicling the “mad as hell…not going to take it any more” uncivil discourse.

 

And any wonder we now may have one of our own.

 

Indeed, a Brooksville radio host – with a flair for juxtaposing “Marxists” against good-guy, patriotic conservatives – is now a newsmaker for all the wrong reasons. Bob Haa of WWJB-AM 1450 even warranted a recent visit from the Secret Service. You can imagine how many times Hernando County and the Secret Service appear in the same sentence, but these are not normal times. Not nearly.

 

Seems that an on-air exchange between Haa and a listener included references to ammo, target practice and President Obama. Hence the Secret Service visitation. Haa himself says he doesn’t remember. And, inexplicably, there is no tape, says the station.

 

But Haa did say, in answer to a reporter’s question: “What if I actually had said that? So what? This is America.”

 

So it is these days.

At Home At USF

For anyone who went to USF back in the day, the erstwhile “Sandspur U” is hardly recognizable. From national sponsored-research player to I-4 high-tech corridor anchor to appealing, non-industrial-park ambiance to a Big East football program to serious, on-campus housing.

 

As a USF student – and later as the media relations manager – I was constantly made aware that USF was a “commuter school.” As in “merely” a “commuter school.” As if fulfilling its charge as an urban university with an older, non-traditional student demographic was some sort of pejorative. As if the education offered were of the “drive-thru” variety.

 

Of course our students commuted. We fought the good fight while USF built its way into prominence – and became one of the 20 largest universities in the country.

 

But nothing, including football, helps dispel the “commuter school” label like on-campus housing. USF plans call for on-campus accommodations for approximately 10,000 students. Right now it is more than half way there. With the recent opening of the seven-story, $65-million Juniper-Poplar Hall, which will house more than 1,000 students, USF now totals about 5,400 beds. Incoming freshman, for the first time, will be required to live on campus.

 

Maybe this is the year that USF’s football team goes to a BCS Bowl and gets the campus jacked up like never before. Regardless, nothing energizes a campus like a critical mass of students actually living on it. That means interaction and networking and involvement – from lectures to film series to live theater to sports to – parties. And research has shown that those who live on campus are more successful academically and graduate at higher rates.

 

No, this is not your parents’ USF anymore.