On 09.27.11, In Blog, By Murman

Posted: 4:00 AM

  • By: Heather Gordon

Hillsborough County officials will hold a meeting Tuesday to discuss the upcoming closure of the Platt Street Bridge in downtown Tampa.

District 1 County Commissioner Sandra L. Murman and other city and county staff will be leading the Community Information Open House Meeting beginning at 6 p.m. The meeting will be held at the Freedman Tennis Court Center at 59 Columbia Drive, Davis Islands.

At the Open House, citizens will be able to hear a briefing and visit information stations to find alternate commuting options and to provide comment.

The Platt Street Bridge will be closed beginning Monday, October 3, and is scheduled to remain closed for 105 days. Officials say the closure is necessary as part of the required rehabilitation of the bridge to allow the contractor to open the drawbridge and perform replacement work on its components. The full project is expected to be completed in the spring of 2012.

For more information on Alternate Routes, call the City of Tampa at (813) 274-8333.

For more information on the Platt St. Bridge Project, call Hillsborough County at (813) 635-5400.

Detailed information can be found on online at www.hillsboroughcounty.org/publicworks/traffic/platt.

Read more: http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/region_tampa/platt-street-bridge-to-close-for-105-days#ixzz1Z9m2yFcE

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

Hillsborough approves new Emergency Operations Center

On 08.31.11, In Blog, By Murman

MIKE SALINERO | The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 31, 2011

http://www2.tbo.com/news/news/2011/aug/31/menewso3-hillsborough-approves-ar-254213/

 

Just days after Irene ravaged the East Coast, Hillsborough County administrators used the proposition of a hurricane hitting the Tampa Bay area to sell county commissioners on the need for a $31.4 million public safety complex.

Commissioners voted 6-0 to build the complex, which will house emergency operations, fire-rescue headquarters and training, code enforcement and the county’s main computer servers, all in a hurricane-hardened building.

The county will borrow most of the money for the complex through a bond issue with annual debt payments of $1.78 million. Payments will be made with receipts from the communications services tax.

County Administrator Mike Merrill had made the complex a priority in his fiscal 2012 budget. He ran into resistance, however, from commissioners who questioned making such a large expenditure during a time of economic hardship.

So Merrill decided to make his case by squeezing commissioners and about 130 county employees into the present emergency operations center for a mock hurricane drill.

Emergency Management Director Preston Cook ran a video that, in faux documentary fashion, showed the impact of a Category 5 hurricane coming ashore in Tampa Bay.

“I didn’t want to dramatize it,” Merrill said, “but I wanted to make it as real as I can because I think it’s important enough.”

The sobering images of destruction in the video and the claustrophobic conditions in the 20-year-old emergency operations center seemed to wilt whatever concerns commissioners still had about the project.

“We’re here to protect and inform the people of Hillsborough County what’s going to happen if a hurricane happens,” said Commissioner Les Miller, who made the motion to build the complex. “The No. 1 thing we need to look at is the 1.2 million people we represent.”

The complex will be on county-owned land on Columbus Drive near Falkenburg Road.

A core building housing the operations center and computer system will be between 74,000 and 90,000 square feet and cover more than 20 acres. An auxiliary building will be more than 18,000 square feet.

The new buildings will be able to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, a storm with sustained winds greater than 155 mph. The current, 16,000-square-foot emergency operations center is built to withstand a category 2 hurricane with winds up to 110 mph.

Commissioner Sandy Murman asked Merrill to look at having a private business build the complex and lease it to the county.

Merrill agreed to look at a public-private partnership, but said the county can borrow money for construction at a much lower interest rate than businesses.

County officials want to have the complex finished when the 2013 hurricane season begins. Cook, the emergency management director, said the commission’s quick action confirmed his reasons for taking the job in June.

“This county understands preparedness,” Cook said. “This confirms that I came to the right place.”

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

Tampa Bay Water agrees to $156 million contract to fix reservoir

On 08.15.11, In Blog, By Murman

By Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer
Posted: Aug 15, 2011 10:27 AM

CLEARWATER — Despite their misgivings about the impact on their rates, Tampa Bay Water’s board voted unanimously Monday to sign a $156 million contract to fix its cracked reservoir and expand it from 15.5 billion gallons to 18.5 billion gallons.

The construction work by a Nebraska-based firm, Kiewit Infrastructure Group, is now scheduled to begin late next summer, with completion in 2014. The work will require draining the reservoir and instead relying on the utility’s other water sources, such as the frequently troubled desalination plant, which produces the most expensive water in the regional system.

One board member, Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman, said she supported fixing the reservoir but worried about the impact on the rates. Tampa Bay Water provides wholesale water to utilities in Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough counties, which pass along any rate increase to their customers.

“We’ve had a series of bad results from big projects,” Murman said. “I want to cross all the T’s and dot all the i’s so we have a smooth landing on this. But I think we’re taking the cart before the horse.”

Murman said she worried about proceeding with the repairs of the reservoir before a trial next month of the utility’s lawsuit against HDR Engineering over the cause of the cracks. Tampa Bay Water contends HDR’s design of the reservoir was flawed, while HDR points the finger at the company that handled construction.

The utility’s finance director, Koni Cassini, told Murman that the worst-case scenario would require a 10 to 15 cents per 1,000 gallon rate hike — but if that happened, she said, she would spread the increase over several years to lessen the sting.

The board voted in June to raise its rates 3 cents a month per 1,000 gallons of water used, or just under a quarter for the typical user of 8,000 gallons a month. The increase is to cover the cost of running the desalination plant harder than usual during the two years when the reservoir is being repaired. That will require spending more on power and chemicals for the desal plant.

In addition to the $156 million for the repair and expansion, Tampa Bay Water is putting aside about $6 million to cover any unforeseen expenses during work, which is expected to be completed in 2014.

In addition to hoping to recoup some of the costs of the work from its lawsuit against HDR, Tampa Bay Water’s board is asking the Southwest Florida Water Management District to cover half the cost. But that state agency is facing a 36 percent budget cut mandated by Gov. Rick Scott and the state Legislature.

The utility opened the $144 million C.W. Bill Young Regional Reservoir in June 2005 to store water skimmed from the Alafia River, Hillsborough River and Tampa Bypass Canal. The reservoir, named for the longtime congressman from Pinellas County, covers about 1,100 acres in Hillsborough County.

The reservoir’s walls consist of an earthen embankment as wide as a football field at its base, averaging about 50 feet high. An impermeable membrane buried in the embankment prevents leaks.

The embankment’s top layer, a mixture of soil and cement to prevent erosion, began cracking in December 2006. Some cracks were up to 400 feet long and up to 15½ inches deep. Workers patched the cracks, but the patches didn’t last.

An investigation found water is getting trapped between the soil-cement lining and the membrane. As long as the reservoir is full, the trapped water remains stable. When the utility draws down the reservoir, though, pressure increases on trapped water in some areas, producing cracks and soil erosion.

The cracks have not been deemed a safety hazard to the structure, but utility officials say if they don’t fix their underlying cause then conditions could get worse. But HDR officials contend the problem is not that serious, and could be solved with a simple monitoring and maintenance program that would cost less than $1 million a year.

Kiewit’s proposal called for digging out and replacing the soil cement and the membrane beneath it. The reason, Kiewit’s design manager, Trent Dreese, said earlier this year is that they believe the cracks showed a weakening of the reservoir wall and “additional failures are likely during drawdown” of the water for the repair.

As for the expansion, Kennedy said the only change that would be visible was that the walls would be about 10 feet higher.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

After confusion, Tampa and Hillsborough officials try to improve economic incentive process

On 08.02.11, In Blog, By Murman

By Richard Danielson and Bill Varian, Times Staff Writers 

In Print: Tuesday, August 2, 2011

TAMPA — Last week’s confusion over a $1.2 million incentive package for Pricewaterhouse­Coopers had local officials talking Monday about creating a process that is more clear, consistent and unhurried.

“This last one did not go as smoothly as everyone would like,” said Bob McDonaugh, Tampa’s acting economic development administrator.

So officials met to discuss ways to refine the process for the future.

On July 25, several days after the Tampa City Council and Hillsborough County Commission approved the incentives, a top PricewaterhouseCoop­ers executive said the firm never considered moving its operating center out of Tampa.

That disclosure surprised several council members and commissioners who said they were led to believe that a then-unnamed financial services firm needed incentives to keep 1,633 jobs in Tampa.

State law allows the identities of companies to remain confidential while local officials negotiate incentives, but PricewaterhouseCoop­ers identified itself as the company after the subsidies were approved.

At Monday’s meeting, officials from the city and county met with executives from the nonprofit Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp. and came up with at least four potential improvements:

• Giving city and county elected officials the same information in a standard format.

• Putting such requests on regular meeting agendas, giving elected officials time to review them in advance, instead of walking them on to the agendas just a day or two before the meeting as happened with the PricewaterhouseCoopers package.

• Having a staff member from the Economic Development Corp. on hand to answer questions. (EDC representatives were at the County Commission’s meeting, but didn’t speak.)

• Having the Economic Development Corp. provide elected officials with a briefing on the economic development process and how it works.

Those steps would help, City Council member Mary Mulhern said, but they wouldn’t have necessarily given elected officials the information they should have had on this project.

“We still don’t know whether they were planning to move or not,” said Mulhern, who has said that elected officials were misled.

Mulhern said local officials also need to work through other questions, including whether they should even offer incentives to companies for retaining existing jobs — as opposed to creating new ones — and whether the identities of the companies should remain confidential.

The City Council has asked its staff for a report on the process used to consider the incentive package. On Wednesday, the County Commission is expected to discuss the Pricewaterhouse­Coopers project at the request of Commissioner Sandra Murman.

After Monday’s meeting, county chief financial administrator Bonnie Wise would not say whether there will be a recommendation to proceed with the subsidy.

“Part of the problem is that we’re still under a confidentiality agreement right now,” she said.

“I think where we ended up is: This is still a good project, still a good company, good jobs.”

McDonaugh agreed, saying the proposal requires Pricewat­erhouseCoopers to invest in a new building with an estimated cost of $78 million to receive the incentives. Not only that, but the particulars of the incentives will come back in a detailed agreement for another vote.

The firm plans to move into the building, being constructed in West Shore, in 2013.

McDonaugh noted the city wouldn’t pay any incentives until 2017.

“We would have three or four years of property taxes before spending the first nickel,” he said. “The taxpayers are protected.”

Without saying the process broke down in this case, Wise said she expects officials involved in Monday’s meeting will sit down again at some point.

“We all want to coordinate and communicate better, which I think is always a good thing,” she said. “There’s always room for improvement.”

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

Times: Parks Budget scales back programs

On 07.28.11, In Blog, By Murman

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Times article on Parks budget:

Hillsborough commissioners approve controversial scaling back of after-school programs

By Bill Varian, Times Staff Writer

In Print: Thursday, July 28, 2011

http://www.tampabay.com/news/localgovernment/hillsborough-commissioners-approve-controversial-scaling-back-of/1182693

TAMPA — A divided Hillsborough County Commission voted Wednesday to dramatically scale back after-school parks programs, a budget cut that has drawn spirited condemnation from parents.

But commissioners left open the prospect of revisiting the issue, planning to talk next month about whether they can keep the programs operating at more parks than were approved Wednesday.

“I think we’re probably far away from a resolution on this,” said Commissioner Sandra Murman, saying she thinks a broader board discussion on how it serves children is needed.

The vote came as commissioners met to make some of the main unresolved budget decisions needed to set a tentative property tax rate for next fiscal year. Commissioners agreed to shave a tiny fraction from the current rate, reducing the county’s portion of the tax bill on a $200,000 home with a $50,000 homestead exemption by 72 cents.

The rate tentatively set for unincorporated areas is about $10.76 for every $1,000 of taxable value. Commissioners can lower the rate before September when they pass a final budget, but can’t raise it.

The parks dispute has represented one of the thornier decisions on their plate as they wrestle with a $3 billion budget.

For now, the commission vote means that after-school programs operating at 42 county parks will be consolidated at 11 regional recreation centers. The vote was 4-3, with Commissioners Ken Hagan, Les Miller and Victor Crist opposed.

Prevailing commissioners said the county can no longer afford the $7.5 million service that has seen its enrollment dwindle since fees were introduced in an attempt to recoup costs.

Hagan said he agreed. He nevertheless is floating a proposal to keep the programs operating at 30 parks. He also wants to see an analysis of whether fees could be lowered to draw more kids and bring in more paying customers.

“It would be fiscally irresponsible to ignore the reality,” Hagan said. “I think we can do better.”

Under the plan approved Wednesday, children who don’t live near one of the regional parks would be encouraged to use the HOST program, an after-school program offered at more than 130 elementary and middle schools. It costs the same as the county service, $48 per week for each child with discounts available to low-income families.

The county used to offer its after-school programs for free. When property tax revenue began declining in recent years, county officials targeted the programs for elimination as a luxury they could no longer justify.

Parents rallied on their behalf, agreeing to fees that were implemented and then increased. Enrollment declined from a high of 6,200 in 2007 to 1,800 currently, with average weekly fees collected per child at $23 after low-income discounts.

At a public hearing last week, the after-school program was the prevailing topic. Among other things, speakers argued that the county service, with multiple structured offerings from athletics to crafts and tutoring, is far superior to the school district’s HOST program.

Gwen Luney, an assistant superintendent for Hillsborough County schools who oversees the program, noted it has 8,000 children enrolled. She said supervised outdoor activities are offered as well as homework assistance and access to school media centers.

“We try to make sure we work with every parent … to give (them) a safe, wholesome opportunity for their children,” Luney said.

Bill Varian can be reached at (813) 226-3387 or varian@sptimes.com.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

Sandy launches Small Business Job Creation for Hillsborough Co

On 03.16.11, In Blog, By Murman

Sandy launches part of her Job Creation plan for Hillsborough County today.

HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY NEWS
March 16, 2011
 
 
Incentive Program For Small Business Job Creation Approved

By Hillsborough County Commission
 
An incentive program proposed by County Commissioner Sandra L. Murman, District 1, to reward small business owners who create jobs was green-lighted today by the Board of County Commissioners.

 
The small business reimbursement incentive program is designed to promote job creation in Hillsborough County by offering a wage reimbursement to small businesses owners. The reimbursement would pay small businesses up to 50 percent of
three months’ total salary of new jobs created, capped at $3,900 per new employee.  It is estimated that this program will encourage the creation of approximately 200 jobs, offering a total of $500,000 to local small business owners.
 
“Hillsborough County needs to grow our economic base and we need to improve the opportunities for businesses and entrepreneurs within our region,” said Commissioner Murman. “This initiative will have a real impact on the opportunities for
local growth of the small business sector.”
 
To qualify, small business owners would have to attend a minimum of four hours of business workshops and/or counseling sessions and meet specific requirements such as having 10 employees or less; jobs created must be full-time and last the required three-month employment period; new employees must be residents of Hillsborough County and businesses must be located in Hillsborough County; and businesses may be reimbursed for up to three created jobs. Additional requirements will be listed on the program application.
 
The incentive program will start on March 21, 2011.  On that date, small business owners will be able to download an application and more information from the Hillsborough County Small, Minority Business Development Section’s Web page at:
www.hillsboroughcounty.org/econdev/.  The applications will be accepted on a first-come/first-serve basis until the program funding runs out.

 
For additional information, contact the County Small, Minority Business Development Section at (813) 914-4028.
 
XXX
 
Media: for more information, contact Commissioner Sandra L. Murman’s office at (813) 272-5470 or Gene Gray, Utilities and Commerce Administrator, at (813) 272-6210.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • •
 
0 Comments
Leave A Response

Go To Top »