As a growing center of arts and culture, a booming mecca of craft beer and gastropubs and an emerging epicenter of millennial life, St. Pete is churning out headlines quicker than it ever has before.
The city find itself a growing part of regional and even national conversations with a progressive mayor on the forefront of new policy ideas aimed at lifting people in poverty, promoting diversity and increasing sustainability.
Because of the city’s emergence as a regional powerhouse, it seems only appropriate to give St. Pete a special spotlight. Ladies and gentleman, we present to you my new weekly column: Toast of the Bay/Dump in the Bay.
It’s a weekly rundown, basically, of each week’s winner and loser. It can be a person or an issue; an organization or a place. It’s the good and the bad that stands out against all others each and every week in the Sunshine city.
We’ll be publishing our take on the what was hot and what was not each Friday. Some will agree. Some will disagree. Someone will probably get offended. But that’s OK, that’s what the comments section is for, right?
So here it is – our inaugural edition of Toast of the Bay/Dump in the Bay.
Toast of the Bay
Mayor Rick Kriseman is an absolute winner this week. The guy may have experienced more wins in one week than he has throughout two years in office.
First of all, Kriseman got to watch Lisa Wheeler-Brown be sworn in as a City Council member replacing Wengay Newton. Newton has served as one of the most vocal checks on Kriseman and his policies and the first term Mayor is now rid of him for the rest of that term and at least the first half of a second if he’s re-elected. That’s a toast to Kriseman in and of itself.
But then there’s the really important implication that comes with a Wheeler-Brown council – the Tampa Bay Rays. Kriseman wasted no time in meeting with the new council – returning members and the rookies – to discuss a new deal with the Rays to let the team look for alternative stadium sites outside of St. Pete.
The discussion has been ongoing since voters rejected a waterfront stadium proposal in 2008. Kriseman was crushed by a deadlocked council in previous attempts to get a deal approved, but this time his victory is all but sealed. General consensus is that council will approve his deal this time around.
Then there’s another of Kriseman’s babies – the downtown water ferry he’s been pushing hard to implement. It would connect downtown St. Pete to downtown Tampa. Kriseman successfully convinced council to approve using a small amount of BP settlement funds for a pilot project. Now it appears he’s probably going to get support from Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and the Hillsborough County Commission. And the Pinellas County Commission put it on their agenda to discuss next week. Cheers to that, Mayor.
Kriseman can also do a victory lap for the first win in his quest to divest in fossil fuels. City Council unanimously voted Thursday to discuss the matter further in a committee meeting.
This week has likely made Kriseman’s New Year one worthy of celebration. Have a glass of bubbly Mr. Mayor.
Dump in the Bay
Not coming out so hot this week is Baltimore Reverend Jamal Bryant. What’s he got to do with St. Pete? He’s slated to speak at the MLK breakfast later this month leading into Black History Month.
The outspoken African-American leader has made no secret of his contempt of the LGBT community. He’s compared being gay to drug and gambling addictions.
State Representative Darryl Rouson came out against the anti-gay preacher’s invitation to speak at an event after he had initially defended it. That’s a big deal not just because Rouson shifted his tone on the issue, but because his wife is behind organizing the event.
Whether or not Bryant will end up speaking at the January 18 breakfast isn’t clear yet, but Bryant’s clearly the loser here no matter what.
Mayor Kriseman is against him. So too is Deputy Mayor Kanika Tomalin. When asked whether or not she’d go to the breakfast if Bryant was a speaker, openly gay City Council woman Darden Rice answered with a resounding “hell no.”
In a city that proudly raises the Gay Pride flag and whose mayor lovingly married a gay couple on the first day such unions were legal in the state, divisive rhetoric is just simply not tolerated.
Sure there are a handful of people in St. Pete on the same wrong side of history as Bryant, but they’re the minority.
Whether Bryant ends up speaking in our city of diversity or not, he still gets this week’s Dump into the Bay.
