Current Topics
Posted on 07/20/2009
Councilman Nurse’s proposal to shift funds towards a significant increase in foreclosure prevention counseling has been before the Housing Services Committee of City Council. The staff will come back in early July with a plan to do this. City Council will then review it in committee and send it to the full council. Our hope is to kick off a major effort to help those homeowners, who live in their home and took a “teaser rate” mortgage, through the process of refinancing to a traditional 30-year loan that they can afford. We hope to prevent hundreds of foreclosure in St. Petersburg. This helps the homeowner and the neighborhood not have empty houses.
UPDATE - 7/12/08
I attended a foreclosure prevention event today put on by our Congressmember
Kathy Castor in Tampa where over 400 people got help from banks, and non-profit counseling agencies to refinance their homes and prevent foreclosure.
Cong. Castor has agreed to help us put on a similiar event in St. Petersburg
in the fall. Details will follow.
HELP IS ON THE WAY - We have successfully transferred $100,000 in housing funds to be used to staff foreclosure prevention counselors at non-profit
housing related agencies effective August 1st. We hope to save several hundred families from losing homes as a result of this counseling. The experts will be able to steer families through the refinancing process to
avoid foreclosure.
8/5/08 - The first agency to get funding for foreclosure prevention counseling is Tampa Bay C.D.C. Their phone number is 446-6222. Additional
agencies will be funded starting October 1st.
Foreclosure Prevention Workshop is August 16th at 9AM at the Enoch Davis Center, 1111 -18th Ave. S. Banks, counselors and speakers will all be available. Today, I was the guest on the Police and Community show on WRXB
in an effort to spread the word on the workshop.
The City and County will jointed sponsor a similiar event at the Colesium on
October 18th from 9 AM - 1PM. We will have representatives of several banks,
foreclosure prevention counselors, and other agencies available to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.
UPDATE 2/18/09 The President's proposal to help people hold on to their houses was announced today. The details will come out in two weeks. I intend to help spread the word as soon as I learn the details. We may do an
event to get all the banks and financial counselors together for the folks who
need them
UPDATE 7/20/09 I will be participating in another foreclosure prevention event at the Enoch Davis Center on August 22nd. This is being done with Florida CFO, Alex Sink. The Banks will have people there to explain the latest options to rework mortgages. The rules have been changed within the last few weeks to help in places like St. Petersburg where values have dropped.
Posted on 07/20/2009
Councilman Nurse has proposed during the capital budget workshops to speed the implementation of making our city’s buildings more efficient. It appears that about 2 Million dollars of investment will save about $500,000 annually in energy costs at today’s electricity prices. We could take funds from reserves to do this quickly and use some of the savings to repay the reserves. Another area with significant savings is the shift to more efficient vehicles. Karl is advocating the purchase of much more efficient vehicles for the non-911 (chase cars) for the police department. The city currently purchases about 2 million gallons of gas and diesel per year. The opportunities to save your tax dollars, reduce our energy use and reduce air pollution are considerable.
UPDATE - 7/12/08
Please encourage the City Council to fund these energy efficiency efforts NOW
so we can begin saving money and energy immediately.
UPDATE 8/5/08 - Police Cars currently get 10 MPG because the Ford Crown Victoria is the LEAST efficient police cruiser available. I pulled the proposal to purchase 9 more of these from the consent agenda on Thursday. The police department has agreed to form a committee with the Fleet Management
staff to review choices for chase and non-chase police vehicles. A modest change to the Chevy Impalas that the Sheriff's department uses, could save
up to $1.5 Million in gas EACH year. My goal is to be sure that each department orders the most fuel and money efficient vehicles that will work for their job.
UPDATE 9/5/08 - I have found that Jacksonville and Atlanta have converted to
more efficient police cruisers and significantly more efficient vehicles for
non-chase cars. The saving are huge.
Save 30% of home utitities - City Council voted 8-0 yesterday to support my
resolution in support of the proposal to require new homes to be built a minimum of 30% more efficient. The national building codes organization will vote later this month on this proposal. More efficient homes will cost $200
more per year while SAVING $700 in utility bills!
UPDATE - Efficient City Buildings - I reviewed the plans for the three city
buildings in the works. All will be at least 50% more efficient in electricity, water and yard maintenance than traditional construction. All will save us money - after considering the construction costs - from the first
month. The buildings are a new water adminstration building, a rehab of the
Jordon School and a replacement fire Station # 8 on MLK St. South.
UPDATE - 7/20/09 - The City Council approved the first wave of new more efficient police cruisers as a result of the work above. The 47 cars will
save about $350,000 over the first five years of use. This is good for our pocketbook and our air.
Posted on 07/20/2009
I introduced two items this week to promote landscaping with plants and ground covers that naturally grow in Florida. This grew out of the fact that we have used all the cheap water in the Tampa Bay area. All additional water is going to come from rivers which cost twice as much and ground water or the desalination plant which costs 3.5 times as much. The solution is to shift our landscaping codes to promote native and/or "Florida Friendly" plants and grounds.
Please contact your City Council members to educate them on these needed changes.
12/12/08
The City Council PS&I committee will take up this issue on as soon as the committee chair sets a date. The members are Jeff Danner, Leslie Curran, Herb Polson and Jim Kennedy. Please encourage them to support the moves toward plants and covers that use less water, fertilizer, pesticides and maintenance.
UPDATE JANUARY 24th. We did the groundbreaking on the new water department
administration building on 16th St this week. It is designed to use 50% less
water than a traditional building and will only have drought tolerant landscaping and ground covers. It will be an excellent example of how governments would landscape to reduce water use and maintanence costs.
UPDATE: 2/18/09 The front page of yesterday's paper had a banner story about us running out of water. In spite of that, I am struggling to convince
council members that we need to move toward draught tolerant landscaping. This issue will come back to the Public Services & Inferstructure Committee next month.
UPDATE 7/20/09 - City Council will take the final step on Thursday to implement a new landscape ordinance that requires much more water efficient landscapes for new construction. Although the change will have a modest near term impact, as we redevelop our community, it will result in significant water savings.
Posted on 07/20/2009
I am proud that I was the first Council member to advocate that we aggressively seek stimulus funding for the police department. Happily, we have been able to secure a grant to fund 9 non-sworn police employees. We have applied to get another 10 police officers and additional civilian positions funded. It may be September before we know if we succeed in this
effort.
Posted on 06/05/2009
6/5/09 - Water rates for the 1% largest water users should go up significantly
effective October 1st. The PSI committee of council, which I chair, requested the to be included in the proposed water rates for the coming year.
By charging higher rates for the extreme users, we help to discourage them from being water hogs and keep rates lower for everyone else.
4/24 - Update: - Council Committee requests staff to proceed to draft the ordinance necessary to increase the costs for the 1.7% of residential water customers who use at least 20,000 Gallons per month. Average usage is 6,000
Gallons per month. I am requesting that the water hog upcharge be used to help promote water conservation programs such as the efficient toilet rebate
program. This increase will likely not go into effect until October 1st.
3/24 - Post
A small number of homeowners use up to 30 times the water as the average homeowner. As water becomes a more valuable and limited resource, I have proposed an increase in water rates for single-family homeowners who use more
the 20,000 gallons a month. This is compares to 6,000 gallons for the average homeowner. The rate would continue to increase up to 35,000 gallons
a month or 6 times the average customer.
It is important to understand that Tampa Bay uses all the cheapest water which
is pumped from underground. All additional water costs between twice as much
for river water and 3.5 times as much for water from the desalination plant.
This means that as water use goes up, Tampa Bay Water builds ever more expensive facilities to capture, store and desal the water. EVERYONE PAYS MORE AS A RESULT.
One of the ways to control costs for everyone is to discourage the small number of water gluttons from using many times as much water as a normal family.
Posted on 04/24/2009
The Green Jobs Committee that I organized has been working for three months to develop ways to bring green jobs to our community and to make our homes more energy and water efficient.
We have developed a program which will come to the Council Housing Committee on January 29th to bring Green Jobs and Green Houses to our community. The plan is to provide a one stop program so people can reduce their water and energy usage with a package of proven techniques and products. The "phase 1"
package is intended to be a grant and can result in a 20% saving of water and
electric costs. The "phase 2" package is a low interest loan tied either to the water bill or property tax bill and can result in up to a 50% savings in
electric costs and a 20% savings in the water costs.
Details are still in the works. However, we hope to have this in place and
operational by the Spring. If President Obama's green jobs package passes,
we hope to radically expand this quickly to the thousands of older homes across our city. This is the fastest and easiest way to control our energy
costs and provide both entry level and skilled jobs to our community.
The coalition supporting this effort is very broad and includes: the urban
league, Progress Energy, the City's Housing and Water departments, the Pinellas Realtors, USF environmental professors and environmental activists.
UPDATE: 2/18/09
City Council approved of the reorganization and improvements to the energy efficiency programs mentioned above. Combined with stimulus package, this should allow us to help at least a thousand households save significantly on their water and electric bills.
I am working with staff and the Green Jobs Committee to make sure that we take advantage of the full range of energy efficiency programs that are in the
stimulus package.
3/21/09 - See HELP Loans - Home Energy Loan Program.
4/24 - UPDATE - MAJOR VICTORY! A group of 15 volunteers knocked on doors in Bartlett Park on 4/11 to let people know about the free energy and water efficiency upgrades that are available to homeowners in the neighborhood. The
response was so positive that staff agreed to expand this to many other neighborhoods within 60 days. This program is aimed at low and moderate income homeowners. We have identified additional state dollars to expand the
program which should result in homeowners savings up to 25% on their water and
power bills!
Posted on 03/24/2009
The Recovery Act, also known as the Stimulus, includes dozens of opportunities for St. Petersburg to help buffer the impact of the recession. I have spent many hours researching how we can hire police officers, repair our water treatment plants, make our city buildings more energy efficient, bring job training services and help with foreclosed properties. At each council meeting for several weeks, I advocated that we full engage in the effort to help our community deal with rising unemployment.
Happily, the administration agreed and I was named as the Council's person on the stimulus team. I will continue to look for opportunities for our community. Some funds are competitive and require us to send in grant requests. Others will go to our community through other agencies. Since the money will be spent somewhere, I will do all that I can to be sure that help comes here.
The City's new recovery website is: www.stpeterecovery.org It has the status on available funds.
Posted on 03/21/2009
3/5 - City Council passed the ordinance to require crime preventation efforts
at the convenience stores. It passed on a 7-1 vote. We will be a little
safer as a result.
2/20/09 - City Council approved the "1st reading" of the safety ordinances on
Thursday. The Chief of Police approved funds for the stores to add safety locks for evening use to further improve the safety of customers and employees at these stores. The final passage will be on March 5th.
2/18/09 UPDATE
The two ordinances to protect convenince stores will come before City Council
for "first" reading on 2/19/09. They should be passed on March 5th. Our
community will be a little safer as a result.
1/11/09
City Council agreed with my proposal to consider a local ordinance to require convenience stores to remove sufficient advertising from their windows to help
people see into the stores in case of robberies. We have had a rash of convenience store robberies and shootings recently. State law rquires this for some convenience stores. However, the law is adminsistered by the Attorney General's office and he has no staffers in Pinellas County. Studies are very clear, if convenience stores will adopt a series of simple anti-crime
efforts, their chances of being robbed will drop by about 40%.
Workshop is scheduled for Feb. 12th at 2:00PM at City Hall.
Posted on 03/21/2009
My effort to bring the 18,300 households without banking services into the financial mainstream was announced at City Council on January 15th. We will be bringing a program from San Francisco that brought 24,000 households into mainstream banking services and away from the predatory check cashing and
payday loan businesses within 24 months.
This program potentially represents the single greatest thing that a local government can do to raise the standard of living of the 15% of our community that uses the loansharks and predatory cash checking services. Studies suggest that this segment of our community spend up to 5% of their income on
these ripoffs that we can help them avoid.
It will be a coalition of the City of St. Petersburg, the banks and the "wealth building coalition" that will bring these services to the community. The City's role is to make it happen, insure a good product
and get the word out. Ten other cities across the country are also bringing
this service.
UPDATE: Mayor Baker and Council Member Nurse have invited the banks and credit unions to meet on February 2nd in hopes of getting many of them to commit to this program. The offers to help are coming in everyday. The
final element needed to make this work is a financial literacy campaign so people learn to plan and budget their money.
UPDATE 2/18/09 Over 100 people filled a room at City Hall to kick-off the Bank on St. Petersburg program. 22 financial institutions were represented.
Committee will be meeting starting next week to work out the details of bringing this here. Getting the 15% of our community into the mainstream financial community can have more impact than any other program.
UPDATE 3/21/09 - I spent a day in Washington on the 15th with leaders from about 20 cities who are working on the Bank on .. projects. The goal is have the first cities teach the newer onces, like St. Pete, so we can learn from their experience. We are working through the details so we can implement this
quickly with as few problems as possible.
UPDATE 7/20/09 - August will be the launch of the Bank on St. Petersburg program. We have 15 banks and credit unions going through the final steps to
be ready to open their doors to more customers. Everyone wins with this program.
Posted on 02/18/2009
I was honored to be elected Vice-Chair of the City Council Housing Committee for 2009. Many of the stimulus programs will go through this committee.
In addition, I was surprised to be elected as Chair of the Public Services and
Infrastructure Committee as well. About 60% of the issues that I work on have to come through this committee so it will help me move the agenda of change forward.
Posted on 12/12/2008
12/12/08
I am happy to announce that City Council agreed with my request to keep the Enoch Davis utility payment window open for the thousands of customers each month who use it. Additionally, administration yesterday announced that they
were getting out of the contract with Amscot Financial to charge customers to pay their utility bills there. This is a double victory because it continues
a good service for the community and does not lead people in the doors of the
"legal loan sharks"!
12/5/08
This week citizens alerted me to the pending closure of the utility bill payment service at the Enoch Davis Center and the plan to promote citizens paying their utility bills at Amscot Financial. I thought this was a horrible idea and immediately requested City Council to move to stop and closure of the services at the Enoch Davis Center and end the dealings with legal loan sharks such as Amscot.
Payday lenders target those citizens who in a financial jam and offer VERY high interest rates on short term loans. This is exactly what is often called
predatory lending or what I call legal loan sharking. The typical payday borrower pays $793 for a $325 loan! See www.responsiblelending.org for additional details.
City Council has scheduled workshop on Dec. 16th at 3:00 PM to discuss stopping this relationship with Amscot. I am hopeful that the Council will
stand up to the loan sharks.
M
Posted on 12/05/2008
Dec 5th - Update - City Council approved the staffs draft ordinances to lower the maximum building heights on Al Lang, Mahaffey and future Dali Museum properties along the waterfront starting just north of the airport. This now goes to the Planning & Visioning Commission. It will have to come back to city council for public hearings before this is final. Currently, it is the FAA airport regulations that determine maximum building heights in this area
which is not way to zone in my opinion.
Sept.25th - Update.
The City Council met in workshop on Sept 25th to discuss the maximum building heights on the Al Lang, Mahaffey and future Dali Museum properties along the waterfront. Currently, the "height map" allowed buildings up to 300 feet for all these locations. Council directed staff to bring an ordinance to counci
in mid October with a 75' height for the Al Lang property and 125' for the other two frontwater properties. This is another victory to protect our waterfront.
July 2008.
City Council voted to direct staff to draft a zoning change to park zoning for
Al Lang Field on 7/10. This will provide a greater level of protection for our waterfront parks. I proposed allowing the citizens to vote on a similiar,
but stronger, measure a few weeks prior. That was voted down by Council. However, in light of the withdrawal of the Ray's proposal, the Council stepped up protect our waterfront this week!
Posted on 12/05/2008
City Council approved my proposal to televise debates between candidates for Mayor and City Council starting with next year's elections. It will be on the city channel and moderated by the League of Women Voters. As President of
CONA (Council of Neighborhood Associations), I twice attempted to get Council
to agreed to provide this opportunity to citizens. Both prior attempts failed.
Dec 4th - City Council Committees dates, times, places, agendas and backup
material are now on the City website. This was a request of mine because it is in committee where ideas to change things first have to go. Previously, none of these meetings were on the website so people did not even know when issues were coming up. Now, if you go the website and look under City Council and then go to meetings and agendas, you can get this information.
Posted on 10/01/2008
Crime remains the number one issue in most neighborhoods in District 6. I have been meeting with experts and researching how other communities have been successful in driving down crime rates. I plan to organize some events in the near future to share these stories. As important, we need to find a way to foster more co-ordination among the school system, social service and
before/after school services and the police departmnent. A number of people in all these fields have indicated that they want to help. Details to follow.
October 1st.
The police department organized Operation CAPE in 3 higher crime neighborhoods over the last 90 days. After knocking on several hundred doors to engage the residents in Harbordale, police were told of 6 drug houses and
received sufficient information to close down 2 others. More importantly, gunfire and violent crime dropped about 20% The lesson I take away from this
is that the police AND community can reduce crime. We need to find ways to build on this victory.
Posted on 07/12/2008
Sept 25th, 2008
City Council and the adminstration agreed to a series of changes to City Council procedures to make our actions more open generally and in particular
in economic development actions.
All additions and deletes from the City Council agenda will be posted on the City website through the end of the day prior to the City Council meeting. This will apply to all items. The background material will also be available.
The economic incentives approval process will include the above plus it will not be on the "consent" agenda. It will be on the regular agenda and a report will be given to Council prior to voting. This combination will prevent tax breaks being given to companies, in exchange for job creation, without it being an open process.
City Council approved a request of mine to direct city staff to draft a change in the city's TV ordinance to allow us to televise candidate debates in
city elections. This will allow thousands of people to see candidates directly respond to our concerns. As CONA President, I had requested this change prior to the 2007 city elections without success.
A considerable amount of press has occurred in recent days about how the City approved tax incentives to keep and attract business. I have a proposal
before City Council on 7/17, requesting a Council workshop to review the competing needs to attract business and have open government. I hope to convince council members to provide a more open process and not allow these
items to be approved on the "consent agenda" where the subject is not even
announced at the meeting.
CITY ELECTION DEBATES ON THE CITY TV STATION. This is another open government
proposal of Councilmember Nurse. Many cities use their TV station to allow
the League of Women Voters to organize debates which they televise. This allows thousands of voters to directly see their choices in local elections.
This comes before a city council committee on Thursday.
VICTORY FOR TV DEBATES - The city council committee voted to direct the staff to draft an ordinance to provide for one televised debate in the primary and
one in the general election for the 2009 city elections. Thanks to members
Jeff Danner, Leslie Curran and Jim Kennedy for standing up for democracy! -
July 24th,2008
OPEN GOVERNMENT FOR CITY COUNCIL COMMITTEES - Councilmember Nurse requested this week that the agendas for city council committees be posted on the city
website along with the city council meeting agendas. Most proposals go to a
committee first and currently it is very difficult for a citizen to learn the
status of proposals until it reaches the full city council. This brings another part of city government into the open.
OPEN Government Workshop set for Sept 18th. Staff will present the process for the City to follow the state law when providing tax incentives to keep and attract good jobs to St. Petersburg. We will also consider how to make this process more transparent. This can include: tax incentives not on the
consent agenda, putting adds and deletes on the web site (staff has agreed to
this change), limiting last minute additions to the agenda or at least prohibiting putting them on the consent agenda.
Posted on 06/11/2008
Councilman Nurse’s proposal is in response to the 2007 cut in code staffing. The goal is to focus code enforcement on the major problems of a neighborhood and away from the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s type petty cases. This will come before the Housing Committee in July. Karl is working with the code enforcement department as they seek to design a system to implement this refocus.
UPDATE - 7/2/08 - This week the codes department is bringing the the City Council "PS&I" committee a proposal to speed the enforcement of yard parking
and junk, trash and debris cleanups. This will allow us to shift staffing to
the serious code cases that drag down our neighborhoods.
Update - 8/5/08 - The codes department will bring to city council a pilot program to use "citations" for yard parking. This will reduce from 4 months
to days to enforce this violation. Currently, it is almost impossible to enforce this portion of the code. This change will allow the shifting of resources to the more difficult and serious violations.
Progress - 10/1/08 - The codes department will implement a "citation" program
for yard parking and snipe signs effective November 1st. The change in yard parking will allow the codes officer to "cite" a vehicle rather than go through a several month process. The current system has made enforcing the yard parking restrictions very labor intentive and ineffective. We hope to issue a small number of citiations and then, the word will get out and folks will stop parking in their front yard.
Posted on 06/11/2008
Councilman Nurse proposed a change in permitting aimed at preventing the tear
downs of properties downtown unless the new buildings are going to follow quickly. Currently, there are large parts of several blocks downtown where projects were announced,the existing homes and businesses torn down, and then the project went bust. The change is being drafted by the legal department to only allow the tear downs once the developer has approved building plans and evidence of financing.