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Greenlight Pinellas

Barb Haselden: Reject Penny for Pinellas unless it all goes to infrastructure

in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by

When the St. Petersburg City Council sent the Pinellas County Commission a breakdown of Penny for Pinellas projects, they listed $15 million for affordable housing. Although the funds from the one-cent county sales tax — set for voter reapproval this year — were described by some officials as a “drop in the bucket,” it would give Council members some options to deal with the increasing problem of developers eating up more properties, especially in the downtown area. However, not everyone…

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Pat Kemp wants public to put pressure on Hillsborough County Commissioners to fund transit now

in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by

Pat Kemp lost her battle this week to redirect approximately half of the $812 million in public funds toward transit and not just roads in the next decade. But Kemp says she will continue to advocate for the county to directly fund transit projects over the course of the next four years. During the debate about the Go Hillsborough half-cent sales tax proposal last year (which a majority of County Commissioners ultimately deemed unworthy of inclusion on the ballot), County Administrator…

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Tampa Bay Tea Party transit critics get their say at forum

in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by

Whatever adjective(s) you may wish to use to describe Sharon Calvert, Tom Rask and Barb Haselden, “effective” has to be one of them. The three Tea Party-aligned citizen activists have led the opposition to the two major public transit initiatives that have gone down to defeat over the past seven years, and contributed strongly to a third never making it to the ballot in Hillsborough County in 2016 (they also proudly add the failed referendums in Polk County in 2010 and…

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Janet Long lashes out at transit critics

in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by

Pinellas County Commissioner Janet Long was not happy. Last Monday, the board of the Hillsborough County Area Regional Transit Authority (HART) inserted revised language into a proposed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with PSTA to ensure that the agreement did not mean that the two transit agencies would be merging or preparing for a sales tax referendum pending because of it. That rankled some board members, who said that the agreement is simply to officially collaborate on more issues going forward. Upon…

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Pinellas Tea Party group endorses every local Republican except for David Jolly and Chris Latvala

in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by

The Tampa Bay Times isn’t the only local organization David Jolly didn’t receive an endorsement from this weekend in his race for re-election to his 13th Congressional District seat against Democrat Charlie Crist.  The South Pinellas 912 Patriots has produced a voters guide for next month’s election, and the group’s list of candidates noticeably omits Jolly — one of only two local Republicans on next month’s ballot who isn’t getting the group’s backing. The group has been a member of the national tea party movement since 2009. It’s most successful entry into…

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Top public affairs firm Tucker/Hall sues ex-partner Tony Collins

in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by

Tucker/Hall, the Tampa-based public affairs firm, is suing the company’s former senior vice president, Tony Collins, for breach of contract and nonpayment of a promissory note. Collins worked at the PR firm — which, among other projects, was involved in the Greenlight Pinellas initiative — from 2001 to 2014, and had moved up in the company to ultimately become a shareholder and senior vice president of the firm. However, he was fired by Tucker/Hall in February 2014, the same year the Greenlight Pinellas initiative…

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Transit tax foe to Pinellas County commission: Reprimand or fire county administrator — or else

in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by

Two anti-transit-tax activists fired off emails to Pinellas commissioners this week demanding that County Administrator Mark Woodard be disciplined for discussions he held with Mike Merrill, the Hillsborough county administrator. They were reacting to a report in the Tampa Bay Times that Woodard had met with Merrill to discuss, among other things, regional transportation issues. According to the May 3 article, the two had discussed simultaneously asking voters in both counties to approve a half-cent sales tax to pay for…

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