Barbara Behrendt, Times Staff Writer
Barbara Behrendt is based in Brooksville and covers Hernando County government, growth, development and the environment for the Tampa Bay Times. She joined the Times in 1983. Born in Chicago, she grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and earned her degree from the Ohio State University.
Phone: (352) 848-1434
Email: behrendt@tampabay.com
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Hernando Aviation Authority refuses to speed up process of leasing airport facility
05/23/13 Local GovernmentBROOKSVILLE — The Hernando County Aviation Authority on Thursday unanimously declined the County Commission's request to speed up the process of leasing the site of the old Brooksville Air Center at Brooksville-Tampa Bay Regional Airport.
Earlier this month, the authority asked for detailed proposals by interested companies by June 3 so board members could read them, prepare questions and hear full presentations by their June 13 meeting....
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Pasco woman cited, charged with abandoning 53 animals in a U-Haul in Spring Hill
05/22/13 Local GovernmentSPRING HILL — Authorities believe Frances Terry Evans thought she could fool Pasco County code enforcement officials by hiding a truck full of cats and dogs in Spring Hill. But her plan was foiled, and Evans now faces 53 counts of animal cruelty and has been cited for 53 counts of animal abandonment.
Evans, 52, packed 50 cats in plastic containers with air holes drilled in the sides and three dogs into the back of a U-Haul truck and attempted to hide them behind the Publix store at Mariner Boulevard and County Line Road on Tuesday afternoon....
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Hernando's Chinsegut, technical education center land state funding
05/20/13 Local GovernmentBROOKSVILLE — County business development manager Michael McHugh couldn't be happier with the word this week out of Tallahassee.
Hernando County landed $3 million in state funding for two of McHugh's pet projects: startup funding for an adult technical education program and money to help restore the manor house at Chinsegut Hill, north of Brooksville.
The projects are key to Hernando County's economic and tourist development goals....
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Official denies that company wanting to lease Hernando airport facility is being discouraged
05/17/13 Local GovernmentBROOKSVILLE — The impromptu presentation at Tuesday's Hernando County Commission meeting normally would have been a commissioner's dream.
Bradley Dye stood at the microphone, saying he wanted to expand his successful and growing business into Hernando County, spend money and hire more employees.
He wanted to lease the now-defunct Brooksville Air Center site, which the county recently purchased at Brooksville-Tampa Bay Regional Airport....
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With incentive, RF Micro Devices will bring jobs to Hernando County from China
05/16/13 Local GovernmentBROOKSVILLE — George Simpson says he saw the value in bucking the trend.
While other companies have been farming portions of their operations out to foreign countries, Simpson believed that bringing jobs back from his company's manufacturing facility in Beijing would be good for the company and good for Hernando County.
This week, it turned out to be good for his company's bottom line as well....
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Hernando commission will speed up process of leasing facility at airport
05/14/13 Local GovernmentBROOKSVILLE — Bradley Dye wants to expand his Clearwater company, Corporate Jet Solutions, to the empty Brooksville Air Center building at Brooksville-Tampa Bay Regional Airport.
"We want to bring jobs. We want to spend money. But we've found it very difficult to do so,'' Dye told the Hernando County Commission on Tuesday. "We've been discouraged to be a fixed-base operator.''
Dye spoke after county Commissioner Wayne Dukes asked other commissioners and county staffers whether Dye's company was being shut out as some "good old boy thing.''...
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Hernando commission says no to separate tax units for various services
05/14/13 Local GovernmentBROOKSVILLE — The Hernando County Commission on Tuesday rejected the idea of creating separate taxing units to pay for various county services, including law enforcement, parks and recreation, and economic development.
The only service the commission said it might be interested in funding with a taxing unit was fire-rescue. Commissioners said they supported that idea because the county has yet to determine how it will finance the combined Hernando County/Spring Hill fire-rescue service....
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Hernando County administrator grades himself tougher than his bosses
05/14/13 Local GovernmentBROOKSVILLE — For his one-year anniversary as Hernando County administrator, Len Sossamon received the gift of a positive evaluation from county commissioners.
His evaluation earned him a numeric score of 4.09 out of a possible 5 and none of the commissioners scored his qualities as below the standard of "meets expectations'' in any category. The ranking is slightly higher than he gave himself in his self evaluation, which averaged out to 4.07....
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Hernando planning board approves hunt camp despite neighbors' worries
05/13/13 Local GovernmentBROOKSVILLE — After facing a crowd of angry neighbors and hearing 2 1/2 hours of emotional discussion, the Hernando County Planning and Zoning Commission on Monday approved a permit for a hog-hunting camp near Ridge Manor.
Chairman Ron Caldi told unhappy residents that they could appeal the decision to the County Commission.
The camp's neighbors say they will.
Since early 2011, Ron Ritter has been running a hog hunting camp on an 80-acre property south of Cortez Boulevard and west of McKethan Road. During that time, neighbors have reported hearing gun blasts in the middle of the night, and seeing drunken hunters on or near their property and butchered hog parts littering the Withlachoochee River....
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Hog hunting camp fires up Hernando neighbors
05/10/13 Local GovernmentBROOKSVILLE — A flashlight beam shone through the sliding glass doors of Tracy Brown's Ridge Manor home about 11:30 p.m.
She rushed outside to make sure no one was disturbing her horses and found something even more alarming — a man who appeared to be drunk wandering along her fence line.
"The man could hardly stand up with a shotgun in one hand and a flashlight in the other,'' Brown said, recalling a night several months ago. When she confronted him, he argued that he had paid to hunt in the area and was just following feral pig tracks....
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Potential tenants show interest in Brooksville Air Center
05/10/13 Local GovernmentBROOKSVILLE — Late last month, amid controversy, the Brooksville-Tampa Bay Regional Airport spent $1.25 million to buy the office building and hangar of a failed aviation business.
It hoped to lease the defunct Brooksville Air Center to a new tenant, bringing vibrant new business into the airport.
It didn't take long to attract not just one potential tenant but two, the Hernando County Aviation Authority learned late Thursday....
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Air control tower busy enough to keep FAA funding, commission told
05/09/13 Local GovernmentBROOKSVILLE — Despite persistent claims to the contrary, the control tower at the Brooksville-Tampa Bay Regional Airport is busy enough to maintain its funding from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Airport manager Don Silvernell delivered that news to the Hernando County Commission this week. If the tower had not met the FAA standard, the county would have either had to close the tower or find another way to pay its air traffic controllers....
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Commission approves contract with Hernando County employees
05/08/13 Local GovernmentBROOKSVILLE — Cheryl Marsden used the word "delighted'' when asking the Hernando County Commission this week to give final approval to a new contract with the 400 county employees represented by the Teamster Union.
That's because this pact has been a long time coming.
Talks started in April 2011 but bogged down as county administration pushed the idea of furloughs and other cost savings....
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Hernando commissioners vote to keep trapping stray cats
05/07/13 Local GovernmentBROOKSVILLE — The Hernando County Commission on Tuesday voted to override the recommendation of their Animal Services veterinarian, who had urged ending the practice of loaning out traps to capture stray cats.
Veterinarian Lisa Centonze told commissioners in two previous meetings that the trapping program didn't work, that it was expensive and that it was forcing employees to euthanize hundreds of feral cats each year....
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Hernando seeks to plug tax drain from unrepaired sinkholes
05/07/13 Local GovernmentBROOKSVILLE — Frustrated by the property value and tax revenue that is lost to unrepaired sinkholes, county commissioners on Tuesday discussed a number of dramatic solutions.
They considered declaring unrepaired sinkhole homes uninhabitable until homeowners fix them. They talked about reducing the discount on the appraised value of these unrepaired homes from 50 percent to 30 percent. They discussed requiring all new homes in the county to be built with the underpinning to prevent sinkhole damage....
