Minor Pushback

Host

Joshua Black

Description

Some residents object to the tyrannical acts of the local government

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Transcript

Welcome to the 12th edition of the Saint Petersburg Florida Area News podcast for the year 2019. I’m your host, Joshua Black, and today’s episode will cover the full day meeting of the Saint Petersburg City Council for April 4.

Councilman Ed Montanari (district 3) was not in attendance, due to illness. Please pray for his recovery.

Councilmember Lisa Wheeler-Bowman (district 7) was back in attendance after dealing with a death in her family early last month. It was revealed later that she had left the council committee meetings on March 28th to attend the board meeting of the Saint Petersburg Housing Authority. She gave a report at the end of the council meeting. It wasn’t good.

But, before we go there, the city council began with its usual hoopla, including the approval of the agenda and of the consent agenda. I rose to object to the consent agenda, because of the millions of dollars reflected in the contracts without discussion or debate. Because I used the word “irresponsible,” Charlie Gerdes (council chair, representative from District 1) chose to respond to my complaint by stating that most of the consent agenda items that day represented renewals of contracts, not brand new projects. He also said that they were already anticipated in the budget since they are usually multi-year projects. Steve Kornell (district 5) pointed to the $800,000 item for water meters and said that there really isn’t room to debate on items like that.

In my mind, there is, but we’d have to change the way we do government.

During the open forum, many members of the community spoke against the government’s lack of openness and communication with regard to the execution of both the Complete Streets project and the Bus Rapid Transit program. Their words largely fell on deaf ears, but they could indicate a lawsuit in the works.

For my time in the open forum, I stated that seeing that none of them were elected unanimously, they should refrain from pushing their own ideas on other people, especially since the Bible says that governments are established by God to get justice for victims, not control the way we live our lives. Of course, that went unheeded, too.

The city moved on to public hearings for new ordinances. The proposal to name the Sanitation Department Administration Building after the late Benjamin F Shirley, Sr., passed unanimously. So did the granting of a “public utility easement” to Duke Energy within Booker Creek Park. I didn’t rise to object to the existence of a government protected monopoly at this point, but I wanted to.

Next, the new tenants of the Manhattan Casino gave their yearly update to their landlord. The review from the report was mixed, with administration giving praise, but with council members concerned that the promises made by the tenants in order to get the lease weren’t being realized.