On 08.25.11, In Blog, By Murman

By TBO.com
Published: August 24, 2011
Updated: August 24, 2011 – 5:08 PM

 

Tampa — Hillsborough County’s after-school program may get a reprieve.

Commissioners agreed unanimously this afternoon to have county officials draw up a plan that would add 19 parks that would provide recreational programs after school – more than the 11 regional centers commissioners had approved for their 2012 budget after agreeing to discontinue full-time staffing at 31 recreation centers.

County officials will come back to the commission on Sept. 8 with standards to determine the success of the program – including having a minimum of 25 children per site — and how they will communicate to parents that the program, which they were told was being discontinued, is back on.

Under the plan, commissioners would receive a 6-month report on how the program is performing and would re-evaluate the program after the end of the school year, in time to inform parents so they can make plans before the start of the next school year.

The maximum cost for attending the program would be reduced from $48 to $38 with a $20 fee for children who meet income guidelines for free or reduced cost school lunches. Commissioner Ken Hagan, who proposed continuing the after-school program at 30 recreation centers, said lowering the fee will attract more participants.

County administrators and parks director Mark Thornton have argued the current program is too expensive at $7.5 million, and declining enrollment has exacerbated the problem. Participation has shrunk to about 1,900 kids from 5,600 enrollees in 2008. The slide started after commissioners approved a sliding fee scale for what had been a free program.

Hagan argued that if the county can increase numbers, the program will be self-sufficient.

But commissioners Kevin Beckner, Sandy Murman and chairman Al Higginbotham wanted some benchmarks to determine whether the plug should be pulled on the program.

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

Tale of Two Republicans manifested at HART meeting

On 08.01.11, In Blog, By Murman

Commissioner Murman mentioned in this Creative Loafing article on HART:

Posted by Mitch Perry on Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 11:46 AM

As we’ve noted on various occasions, last November’s rejection of a transit tax in Hillsborough County not only killed the possibility of a light rail system being built anytime soon, but nine months later, there aren’t any plans now over the next 10 years to revisit the issue.

However, members who serve on Hillsborough County’s transit agency, HART, have said that what they can do for now is to concentrate on what they do best – efficient bus service.

But when it came time on Monday to vote to approve a maximum millage rate that the board will consider, which meant voting for a minimal increase in taxes to alleviate a large reduction in service, one Hillsborough County Republican chose to eschew the no-taxes mantra of his party and supported the modest measure, and one did not.

The millage increase would go from .4682 to .5. When the issue came before the board two months ago, both Sandy Murman and Mark Sharpe voted against it.

Murman said again Monday that she couldn’t support the raise, saying she would look like a “hypocrite” after supporting a decrease in the millage last week with her position on the County Commission. “I think we have to dig a little deeper,” she said, adding that asking all of the taxpayers in Hillsborough to raise their millage when only a small percentage utilize their services would be unfair.

But commissioner Kevin Beckner warned that a failure to raise the millage would interfere with the stated goal of the board to increase its basic services, not cut them. He then asked Katharine Eagan, the chief operating officer for HART, what would happen if the board ultimately voted not to increase the millage?

She recited a litany of service cuts that would include, eliminating weekend service in south Hillsborough on weekends, no service out to Brandon hospital on weekends, no Christmas or Thanksgiving service, and fewer rides from Brandon to MacDill Air Force Base.

HART has already cut 1.4 percent of its bus routes since March of 2010, but another reduction would eliminate two to three percent of current routes, or roughly twice as much as what has already been cut.

It was also revealed that the millage increase, which would add $1.8 million to HART’s coffers, would break down to about 41 cents per month to Hillsborough citizens via their property taxes (that’s based on the average household value of $90,420 in 2012).

After listening to Eagan, Hillsborough County Commissioner Mark Sharpe said that he had changed his mind, and would now vote for the tax increase. Calling Commissioner a “kindred spirit,” Sharpe said he understood where she was coming from, but said he couldn’t go along with her in not approving the raise, adding,”My concern is we’d be entering into a death spiral, we’d be fulfilling a prophesy,” by eliminating service routes.

Today’s vote was on setting the maximum millage, but not the final vote locking in the new millage rates.

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

Go To Top »