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Bowen: A town hall talk flooded with discontent

 
Published Feb. 25, 2016

Pasco County Commissioner Kathryn Starkey forgot a few things at her town hall meeting last week in Lutz.

Like telling the audience her name.

"Welcome to my town hall," Starkey said, beginning the evening a few minutes after the planned 6:30 p.m. start. I never did hear her identify herself.

"Our" town hall probably would have been a better introduction, too. More inclusive.

The site, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on Leonard Road, is just a smidgen west of U.S. 41. Starkey told the audience — 85 people had signed in by 7 p.m. — that this was the farthest east she had held a town hall meeting.

Actually, it wasn't. She ventured several miles farther eastward to Wesley Chapel for a September 2014 town hall meeting at Seven Oaks Elementary School.

This was hardly a freewheeling exchange of dialogue. It was a heavily scripted attempt to bring county personnel closer to the public. Fourteen county staffers, a Pasco Sheriff's Office lieutenant and representatives from the Florida Department of Transportation were all on hand to give quick briefings to the crowd on topics ranging from local road projects to code enforcement and drainage.

Starkey likely lost points by telling the entire audience to hold most of their questions until the end; she also delayed talking about the U.S. 41/State Road 54 intersection (see related story) and emitted guffaws from the people sitting in the rear of the hall when she told one woman her message to the commissioner "must've gotten lost in the shuffle."

Here are some highlights:

• Matt Armstrong, executive planner in the county's long-range planning department, mentioned some of the new businesses, like a microbrewery, coming to Land O'Lakes.

Hungry Howie's franchisee Georgina Gillanza reminded people of existing businesses, like her's. She plugged her Hungry Howie's restaurant, which has been in Mariner Plaza for 25 years — not to be confused with Hungry Harry's barbecue restaurant just up the road.

• After a briefing on code compliance, audience member Sandy Graves tried to talk transportation, specifically the U.S. 41/SR 54 intersection. Planning, a sense of place, code compliance and transportation are all interrelated, Graves said.

"It all goes together. What's our future on that road?"

She had to wait for an answer.

• Justyna Buszewski started speaking at 7:22 p.m. and received the first applause of the night at the conclusion of her presentation. Buszewski, a county planner, spoke about the year-old park master plan that calls for new parks and improvements to existing facilities.

• County Engineer Margaret Smith previewed improvements to Lake Patience and Bell Lake roads. Gillanza asked about eminent domain proceedings, then plugged Hungry Howie's again.

• Diane Konitz of the Sierra Pines neighborhood attempted to move the conversation to local flooding. She was successful.

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"What are we doing about the current residents who are getting flooded out?" she asked. "How are you going to come up with this money?"

Others joined in.

Is there any realistic expectation of anything being done? a man asked.

It's all about money, said another, and Sierra Pines doesn't have enough tax base for the county to care.

Starkey admitted the commission hadn't identified the source of funding to address as much as $300 million worth of drainage improvements across the county to avoid a repeat of the 2015 floods that crippled western Pasco County.

A unanimous commission already voted down the idea of forming special taxing districts in the event commissioners wanted to use property taxes to start financing the work. At the time, however, Starkey told her fellow commissioners they were delaying the inevitable.

"That will be an issue this year for the County Commission, trying to figure out how to pay for it," Starkey said to the town hall audience.

It is a similar theme to expanding the county parks system. Impact fees from new construction are projected to cover less than half of the anticipated $149 million cost and also can't be used for ongoing maintenance. Two days before her town hall meeting, Starkey was unable to persuade her fellow commissioners to bolster park spending. Commissioners, instead of making a decision, instructed their staff to hold a series of community meetings to determine public support (and build political cover for themselves) for a potential 2018 referendum on paying for parks.

Perhaps they should have paid closer attention to Buszewski. She repeated to the town hall audience the same information a consultant already had shared with commissioners.

A survey of county residents, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent, found 70 percent of the respondents supportive of paying more taxes to better maintain Pasco's parks. Only 10 percent opposed the idea, and 20 percent said they weren't sure.

Consider those numbers again. Seven out of 10 people are willing to pay more for a better park system.

Now, you know why they were applauding.