Thursday, July 31, 2014

GETTING THE WORD OUT ABOUT GREENLIGHT - You Can Help



A majority of people when they hear the facts about GreenLight decide that it is a bad deal for Pinellas County and indicate they will vote NO.

The problem is the only serious effort to get the facts out is taking place right here where you're reading... Social Media.

Big news organizations are reluctant to go against powerful advertisers like the Board of Realtors, and the Chamber of Commerce with all their members.. Big media needs the ad revenue.

Quite frankly No Tax for Tracks is out gunned in the money department by several fold.

The Polls consistently tell the story. As pollsters ask more detailed questions about the sales tax increase, reluctance turns in to opposition.

So here is what you can do.

Up there in the picture are three icons that are the key to getting the word out.

Somewhere on every Blog page and on-line newspaper article  are a series of boxes with those ICONs. If you click the one that looks like an envelope you can mail the post your reading to up to five e-mail addresses. So every time you see something about the sales tax that you think is good information, click the e-mail envelope and send it to 5 friends.

You can click the envelope and send to as many groups of 5 as you want.

While you're at it, ask your e-mail contacts to forward the post to five of their friends. That will spread the word.

Use Facebook and Twitter to like Posts you think are relevant and let your friends see them.

Give it a try.

Check out my video Post GreenLight - It's a Bad Law . If you agree with my thinking, e-mail the post to everyone in your contact list and ask them to do the same.

Help save this county from the biggest tax grab boondoggle in Pinellas County History.

E-mail Doc at: dr.webb@verizon.net. Or send me a Facebook (Gene Webb) Friend request. Please comment below, and be sure to share on Facebook and Twitter.
Disclosures: Contributor to
No Tax for Tracks.

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Sunday July 27 - GreenLight - The Train Wreck Continues



Greenlight Polling turns negative
Take a look at this Poll by St. Pete Polls as presented in the Blog Eye on Tampa Bay: Poll Shows Opposition to Greenlight Pinellas. Those Voting NO 55.2%, those Voting YES 34.7%, Undecided 10.1%, Margin of error 3.5%.

In the meantime, PSTA paid a vendor $48,125 of your property tax money to host three conference calls to "inform" you about the benefits of adding a $100 million dollar tax load to Pinellas County; mostly for a train that goes nowhere near where the 2% of Pinellas County residents who actually use public transportation live or work.

You might want to dial into the next call and express your opinion.

Most uninformed quote of the day: Brad Miller PSTA CEO, "No one looks at sales tax rate before hitting that buy button for a vacation on Expedia."

You can rest assured the states and even Florida counties competing with Pinellas for those precious tourist dollars will be sure to mention their lower tax rate in their tourism ads. And it's the ads that cause those "buy" buttons to be pushed. Welcome to the real world Mr. Miller.

As seen on TV
Also queued up by the folks out at PSTA is TV pitchman Anthony Sullivan.  In addition to some very humorous TV ads, you may remember Mr. Sullivan signed on to the St. Pete LENS issue with great gusto as a supporter. Another really bad idea.

Either Mr. Sullivan is deeply enamored by large, expensive non functional public projects or he just can't resist the opportunity and the challenge to sell something to people they don't need, won't use and costs too much.

In any event Mr. Sullivan does bring some clarity to the Greenlight issue.

If your are so desperate to get something past the voters that you resort to infomercial style marketing, the voters, many of whom have probably had the "as sold on TV" experience, should now know the value and durability of the train to nowhere. You can read the whole debacle in Christopher O'Donnell's St. Pete Tribune Article: Pitchman throws support behind Green Light.

The people in St. Pete figured out and the LENs is history. Such should be the fate of Greenlight.

The PSTA Honey Pot
Just in case you don't believe my comments about Greenlight being the biggest redevelopment plan in Pinellas County history take a look at this Tampa Bay News Papers Article: Developers present Seminole Mall vision.

If you read down far enough in the article you will find this quote: "The project would also require cooperation from the county. Other funding possibilities include Penny for Pinellas money, community grants, Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority participation, utility taxes and franchise fees."

Every developer in Florida is looking to dip into the PSTAs $130 million dollar revenue flow to help fund their next massive Pinellas County public project. Really interesting since the train goes nowhere near Seminole Mall and the real objective is to move retail, and residential to the train stations.

Watch My Video Green Light - It's a Bad Law before you vote.

E-mail Doc at: dr.webb@verizon.net. Or send me a Facebook (Gene Webb) Friend request. Please comment below, and be sure to share on Facebook and Twitter.
Disclosures: Contributor to
No Tax for Tracks

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Kriseman Anoints a New Police Chief and Blows His Credibility

Anthony Holloway New Police Chief


There is not enough paint in Pinellas County to color the spectacle of Rick Kriseman and his dream team anointing Antony Holloway St. Petersburg's new Police Chief a pretty picture.

After all those campaign and inaugural promises of transparency and listening to the people, a national search, interviews, Council briefings and a public show, Kriseman and his inner circle decide on their own who the new police chief will be.

Kriseman is right, it is the Mayor's prerogative to appoint the Chief, but why promise one thing and do the opposite?

Rick Kriseman Mayor
Did they have a plan? Well actually yes kind of.....

You can find it an article in the Weekly Challenger by Goliath Davis. St. Pete’s next police chief.

Notwithstanding the likely influence of former Chief Davis, Kriseman and his high paid inner circle screwed this up to a degree few can remember in St. Pete.

E-mailing the outside candidates, and calling in the local candidate 3 days before the proposed announcement to tell them they were not getting the job was serious lapse in judgment to say the least. They had to know there would be a leak and the media would go crazy.

And a side note to the Mayor, all of those police cars that drive by City Hall each day, they don't just look for homeless people.

In addition, it would appear that the Kriseman team has not learned in 6 months how porous the St. Pete City Government fabric really is. It is akin to sieve.

In the Baker administration, the staff would frequently find out what we were doing AT the press conference. It didn't take Baker long to learn there were few secrets or confidences kept at City Hall or anywhere else in the administration for that matter.

The political consultants, former and current candidates I have talked to are all shaking their heads.

Kevin King Chief of Staff
It is hard to tell who was the architect of the weekend disaster.

Kevin King, Kriseman's Chief of Staff, who views himself as political "operative", and Ben Kirby, Kriseman's long time communications expert and adviser, are likely at the center of the storm. 

King and Kirby have been parked at City Hall in high paying jobs most likely until the Mayors' next campaign. Neither has been particularly affective and this weekend is a glowing example.

Ben Kirby Communications Director
Several phone calls and texts to Kirby as things began to unravel on Saturday were responded to by a simple text, "No comment over the weekend."

The objective all along has been to keep Assistant Chief Melanie Bevan out of the Chief's office; because Bevan in the Chief's seat spells the end of the Coalition.

It's not that Bevan is too close to the union that is dumbest excuse on the planet, it's because Bevan is one of the very few people that scares the hell out of Goliath Davis.

If Kriseman was going to follow the Goliath Davis plan as outlined in the Challenger piece, he should have followed it completely, including the "go outside for another search" recommendation. Why worry about time now. It's already been 8 months.

Now the whole police chief thing is Kriseman's and his alone.  

The folks on the Pier Task Force should go into high alert because this is exactly what happened the last time. A lot of public effort was garnered then ignored by the administration.

In the Pier issue keep your eye on large campaign contributions. 

Kriseman has burned a lot of political capital in just a few days.

The administration looks inexperienced, disorganized and confused. And in fact they are.

Kriseman may finally be learning that old friends, political hacks and former campaign workers really don't know much about running a City.

Antony Holloway may be a great guy and an outstanding police chief, but my guess is he is here for all the wrong reasons and he has no idea of how alone he is going to be at 1300 1st Avenue North.

E-mail Doc at: dr.webb@verizon.net. Or send me a Facebook (Gene Webb) Friend request. Please comment below, and be sure to share on Facebook and Twitter.
Disclosures: Contributor to
No Tax for Tracks