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Pier survey's value to be determined

 
Prospect Pier was one of the choices available to St. Petersburg residents in a nonbinding referendum on a new pier.
Prospect Pier was one of the choices available to St. Petersburg residents in a nonbinding referendum on a new pier.
Published March 8, 2015

ST. PETERSBURG — For weeks, the city nudged residents to complete an online survey to choose up to three of seven pier proposals they like best.

Hours before Friday's midnight deadline, city officials declined to say how many of St. Petersburg's 229,780 residents eligible to do so had participated in the nonbinding poll. But figures released earlier in the week indicated that only a tiny fraction had done so.

Success shouldn't be measured in numbers, said Ben Kirby, spokesman for Mayor Rick Kriseman.

"The success is the work we did in reaching out to the public," he said, mentioning promotion efforts such as newspaper inserts and television public service announcements.

"We have done a lot of work to make sure that people knew that they had the opportunity to weigh in. I think we've done a great job of making sure of that."

Results are scheduled to be released Monday.

Though the survey findings will be one measure used to determine which of seven design teams will renovate the closed 1973 inverted pyramid or build its replacement, it is not clear how much value the mayor's selection committee will allot them.

State law requires that government agencies hiring architects and engineers — the professionals competing for the $46 million project — must make their selection based on qualifications. Criteria for the pier project include experience as well as how proposed concepts conform to the $33 million construction budget and project schedule. Permitting issues, operating and maintenance costs and suggested amenities also will be examined.

Assistant City Attorney Macall Dyer said that no weights or percentages will be assigned to any of the criteria, including the survey.

That frustrates Robert Neff, who worked with the group that succeeded in getting the last pier design thrown out. Further, he is upset that residents were not allowed to rank their three choices.

"If one group votes for only one, that one is going to get the most votes, versus if you went for three," he said.

"The city should have done this as a ranking. I don't know what they are going to do with that data. Our voice has no clout. It has no bearing, because the city is not going to weight our answers. It's going to be nonbinding, so why are we voting?"

"I think the point was not to rank three, but to select three," Kirby said. "The purpose of selecting three was so that the selection committee wouldn't necessarily be bound by a ranking."

Bruce Jacob, professor and former dean of Stetson Law School, sees value in the survey.

"I think you want to know which design is acceptable from an architectural viewpoint and you also want to know which is the most acceptable to the average layperson. That's something worth knowing," he said. "That may not be the determining factor, but should be one of the factors that the decisionmakers take into consideration."

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He added, however, that "the selection committee, as far as I can tell, can ignore the public" if voters choose an option that it is convinced is not the best solution for the city.

The committee will make its decision on March 20. Under state law, it must rank no fewer than three concepts. The City Council then will be asked to authorize negotiations with the top-ranked team.

Contact Waveney Ann Moore at wmoore@tampabay.com or (727) 892-2283. Follow @wmooretimes.