Above the Fray in a Corvair

Here's a question: Can a stock 1964 Corvair be every bit as safe, comfortable, and reliable as 2006 car?

Having just completed a jaunt from the counrty into the wilds of the city traffic in and around an area known as 'New Tampa', replete with monster SUVs, distracted soccer mommies and desperately late Yuppies on cellphones, I began to consider what I had just done and how I had done it in my 1964 Corvair convertible.

With no more pressing business than returning a book to the library, I quickly got into the mindset that I was driving something special in a challenging environment. No way could the designers of the Corvair have anticipated the madness that exists on a big city's highways. But, those designers had provided me with a capable, workable and safe-for-its-time automobile. It would stay that way if I just drove it the same way I drove its sisters 43 years back.

I didn't rush up to stoplights, jamming on the brakes in such a way as to stop within millimeters of the bumper in front. No, brakes applied in plenty of time for a gentle stop with at least a half carlength from the car in front. We stayed pretty much at the speed limit and pretty much in the same (right) lane. Admittedly, I didn't waste time getting off the line at stoplights when all was clear in front, not to show off, but because this is how the car likes to be driven -- with some authority.

When the lady in the giant SUV tried to pull around me in a left-turn media turnoff all she got was a quizzical look and not one inch of space. I knew where my natural line was, so did the Corvair, and we took it. When she again tried the same stunt, this time inside the library parking lot, we followed the same strategy. For some reason she ended up with two wheels over the curb in a fire lane. Miz Corvair and I wondered about this, but it was a fleeting wonderment. We were back on the highway, riding with traffic, keeping to our lane and just makin' time down the road. Despite the fact we were in the 21st century, on a 21st century highway, we conducted ourselves just as we would have had it been 1964 and it felt just right.

It reminded me of the guy who sells ice cream at car shows. He has an off-and-on ignition gas engine that turns the ice cream freezer via a wide leather belt. The engine knows its job and does it well. It doesn't know or care that it's obsolete as a machine -- the task it has is not obsolete, so it just does its job without complaint.. Same with the Corvair. Driven within her limits and with a supreme distain of highway flotsam and jetsam around her she does her job and we're both happy. Isn't that what life is all about?
Arjay

Maybe More Guns?

Sad as the Virginia Tech shootings were, it comes to mind the answer to such occurrences may be more guns rather than fewer guns.

Think of it this way: If it were, say, in Texas, where carrying guns is common, the Korean shooter may well have been greeted with a few students packing guns themselves instead of classrooms full of cowering victims. One of the quickest ways to stop a mad dog is to shoot him. Same with deranged students.

It would have been a completely different scenario if Cho Seung Hui had begun his rampage, only to have been confronted with a few rounds whizzing past -- or through -- him. Yes, there would have been deaths, but probably a lot less of them. A handgun in the hands of a skilled, and sane, user is a good thing. Same gun, in the hands of a maniac, is a terrifying thing. One can balance the other. If we fear the irrationality of the average college freshman, then put the guns in the hands of wiser heads, the professors.

Of course, hindsight is always 20-20, but one wonders why nobody tackled this guy? I mean, c'mon, a skinny little Korean dressed up like a Boy Scout. Doesn't VT have any guys named McGurk who play football and who love to get physical? Or, has the present atmosphere of Political Correctness reduced the college population to helpless wimps, more worried about their Facebook profiles than staying alive?

Arjay

Hometown Newspapers

I like hometown newspapers. Sometimes they're maudlin, often full of typos, some hilarious, but they are the spine of the small town. You read them to learn who has died, who has had a baby and who is putting up the best strawberry preserves on the continent.

We seem to have one here in Zephyrhills....it's called, aptly, The Zephyrhills News, and it has been around close to 100 years. It's owner is a quirky guy named Scripps who hails from the famed Scripps-Howard newspaper clan.

Lately, he's had the paper running on the blood sweat and tears of one man,
Gary Hatrick. Gary takes the pictures. Gary writes the stories. Gary writes the editorials, Gary writes the police stories and the feature stories, and he does it for a pittiance, but he does it each and every week, and as a result of a single soul's labors there is a newspaper on Zephyrhills doorsteps every Thursday.

Then, last Friday, Scripps let Hatrick go. I think the word is 'fired.'

Since then there has been but one word from Hatrick. He feels as if a load has been removed from his shoulders, as well he might.

In just 24 hours the newspaper is due on the street. That will be the first clue of whether the paper is still with us. A drive by the office Tuesday revealed no burnings of midnight oil, so whatever is to come about, if anything, it won't be done in haste.

Were this an ordinary town there would be a group of local businessmen scrabbling about trying to see what they could do to keep the paper (and their advertising vehicle) alive. Not in Zephyrhills, or so it seems.

Nothing would please us more than to see a local white knight ride out of the darkness to rescue the old girl, but it takes fistfulls of money to do that.

What's really strange about all this is that small, weekly newspapers seem to be the moneymakers in the present publishing climate. It causes me to wonder why a paper that so neatly seems to fill the bill is teetering on the brink.

If the paper is left to die, more's the pity, and the city will be less well off for the loss of it.

Arjay

Pages of the Past: Chilean Grape Scare

March 1989 Cyanide Laced Grapes



Early on the morning of Thursday, March 2 Capt. Surabayo
Nogouchi was nosing his ship into the Humboldt Current which flows
like a silent river in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile.
The captain's ship, the Bungo Reefer, was fully laden with a
cargo of Chilean fruit -- peaches, plums, nectarines, apples,
pears, grapes -- 175,000 cases in all, bound for Tampa, Florida.
Noguchi was looking forward to an uneventful passage. His Japanese
officers got on well with the Phillipino crew, the engine was
running well and even though the Bungo Reefer was in need of paint
here and there, mostly down by the waterline, she was a sound
ship.

Yes, thought Noguchi, it would be a pleasant voyage. It would
be like the other two voyages to Florida this shipping season.
Having loaded his cargo in Valparaiso he would sail north, taking
advantage of the Humboldt Current past Lima, Peru; Guayaquil,
Ecuador and swinging wide of that drug port, Medellin, Colombia.
From there it would be through the Panama Canal and into the
Caribbean Sea. Thence through the narrow passage between Cuba and
the Yucatan, then an easy sail across the southern Gulf of Mexico
to Tampa.

In his voyage Capt. Noguchi would cross three major
cartographic lines; the Tropic of Capricorn, the Equator and the
Tropic of Cancer. His voyage, all things being equal, would take
about 15 days, give or take a day or two.

His sailing plan firmly in mind, Capt. Noguchi gave night
orders to his deck officer and settled down in his cabin. A little
reading, maybe watch a videotape, then a good nights sleep, that
was to be the routine for the next fortnight.

Capt. Noguchi did not know that events half a world away were
going to make his voyage anything but normal.
Just about the time the Bungo was approaching the Equator
phones were ringing in the U.S. and Japanese embassys in Santiago.
anonymous callers were saying that Chilean fruit would be
poisoned.

Steadfastly, the Bungo churned on. The Panama Canal was just a
few days ahead, the weather was already equatorially warm, but
inside the air conditioned deckhouse it was business as usual in
air conditioned comfort.

Below decks the fruit was riding comfortably in refrigerated
comfort. The chief engineer reported daily that the tons of
refrigeration generated by the dozen compressors in the engine
room were keeping the average temperature in the holds at a steady
38 degrees.

The Bungo log of the passage shows nothing out of the
ordinary. A pod of pilot whales heading north to their breeding
grounds in the Gulf of California along Mexico's Pacific coast one
day; a bundle of strange looking debris on another. Nothing out of
the ordinary for the passage of a commercial freighter.
Entry into the complex of locks and lakes that make up the
Panama Canal was routine. Pick up the Canal pilot and do what
you're told was the routine.

Meanwhile, far to the north and east in the Port of
Philadelphia a U.S. food inspector was equally immersed in his
routine -- inspecting an incoming cargo of Chilean grapes.
Then things became decidedly un-routine, both for the
inspector and for the unsuspecting crew of the Bungo Reefer.
As the Bungo was transiting Lake Gatun the results were
coming back from the lab. The two grapes that caught the
inspector's eye were indeed laced with minute amounts of deadly
cyanide.

Things were about to change for American consumers, Chilean
agriculture, even the whole of the Chilean economy and, of course,
for the Bungo Reefer which, hour-by-hour was drawing closer and closer to it's destination – Tampa, Florida.

At the other end of the passage, Lloyd Rosen was about to take a $3-million gamble.

Rosen manages the Tampa, Florida operations for Oppenheimer
California, Inc., one of the nation's largest importers of Chilean
fruit.

Rosen had a problem.

The problem was the Bungo Reefer, a refrigerated freighter with
$3-million worth of Chilean fruit in its holds.

The ship was inbound to Tampa when the embargo on Chilean fruit,
triggered by the discovery of two cyanide-laced grapes in
Philadelphia, was announced.

The horns of Rosen's dilemma were whether to accept delivery and
run the risk the fruit would never be cleared for distribution or
whether to turn the ship back, thus losing any chance of marketing
it.

That was on Tuesday, March, 14. Rosen decided to wait. He ordered
the Bungo Reefer to anchor outside Tampa's harbor.

The Bungo wasn't Rosen's only problem. He not only had 175,000
cases of Chilean fruit -- grapes, peaches, plums, nectarines,
Granny Smith apples and pears sitting 40 miles out in the Gulf of
Mexico, but he also had $750,000 worth of fruit in cold storage at
dockside.

Worse yet, negotiations between U.S. authorities and Chilean
authorities were dragging on, and the waters were further muddied
when Chile seized five Japanese fishing boats in reprisal for
Japan's closing of its market to Chilean fruit.

The Bungo Reefer swing lazily at anchor on Wednesday, its captain,
Tadashi Shirashi and his crew of 20 keeping busy with routine
shipboard chores.

On Thursday Rosen took a gamble.

He had checked with anyone who might know anything about the
ban and learned that its lifting probably was imminent,
although he couldn't be sure when.

He also didn't know exactly what the procedures for clearing the
fruit would be.

Rosen gambled and ordered the ship into port. He also
called a news conference.

"I might as well give 'em away, I can't sell 'em," he joked,
inviting reporters to join him in eating the large mound of
grapes piled on a table in the conference room.

More seriously, Rosen said, "needless to say, the last number of
days have been very stressful and trying, and we're elated to say
this controversy is just about resolved.

"In anticipation of the forthcoming clearance our company has
decided to accept delivery and therefore has ordered that our
vessel, the Bungo Reefer...come to port tomorrow."

Rosen explained that the fruit already in the coolers couldn't,
because of when it was shipped, be involved in the cyanide
incident. The item of negotiation was what percentage of the fruit
would be inspected.

Before the Port of Philadelphia incident 2% was the inspection
percentage, under the new guidelines a 5% to 8% figure was agreed
upon.

Mindful of the marketing problems he faced, Rosen promised that
when the fruit once again was on market shelves, "the biggest
thing we have to do is convince the consumer that we have a value
for her to eat." One of the plans was, "frankly and bluntly, we
plan on making our goods a value in the shopping basket. That;s
the only thing we can do. We have a perishable product that needs
selling, and we plan on selling it aggressively."

By 5:00 a.m. Friday, March, 17 the Bungo Reefer was tied up and by
8:00 a.m. unloading had begun.

By Wednesday, March 22 dozens of trucks were loaded with the fruit
and were enroute to southern supermarkets.

As serendipity would have it, the Bungo Reefer was the first ship
carrying Chilean fruit to dock at an American port following the
embargo.

Rosen was seen shepherding the unloading operations, his face
wreathed in smiles. His $3-million gamble had paid off -- the
fruit passed muster and was ahead of the competition on its way to
store counters.

Capt. Shirashi and his crew prepared to turn the Bungo around and, in the end, the Great Chilean Grape Scare turned out to be a farce.

###

Tom Bigler: Mentor, Boss, Friend

It's not that I expect any of you, dear readers, to know of, or care about, Tom Bigler who died this week at age 85. He was a singular man whose sphere encompassed the gritty anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania known as Wilkes-Barre. Even though you may never have heard about Tom you would have been a better person had you known him for he was a true gentleman in a very ungentlemanly game -- broadcasting.

I came to know Tom before I was a teenager. He was the voice of the news at my family's radio station, WILK. That was back in the 1950s, ancient history in these never-look-back times. He had a radio voice and inflection that even today would rate a network slot --- smooth, cultured, evenly paced. That voice, as I later learned, was backed by both a humility and an intellect that's seldom found in the broadcasting fraternity.

By the time I turned 16 my voice had changed and my father, patriarch of the station, deemed it time to put me on the air. He turned the job of making his wacky kid a radio announcer over to Bigler. Tom, no fool he, gave the onerous task of teaching the boss's kid the arcane art of radio broadcasting to probably the most talented and, thankfully, patient announcers on the staff, Dave Teig.

We spent hours going over the multitude of switches and volume controls, called 'pots' on the old Collins console in the Control Room. Dave would stand across the room and have me talk to him, not yell at him. It was called 'projecting' one's voice. He drilled into me the Golden Rule of broadcasting that was simply that you may have been reaching many, but you spoke to one (imaginary) person every time you opened your mike. He even managed to get my voice down a tone or two and he taught me how to speak in commas and periods. I've never forgotten. When Teig said I was ready, Bigler assigned me to an air shift: 5:15 in the afternoon to 1:15 the next morning. Then he had the great sense to let me sink or swim.

As it happened, I ran the consoles each and every night at 6:00 p.m., when Bigler was doing his half hour local news program. Yes, I did the mechanical stuff and ran the commercials, but I also listened and learned the newsman's craft, perhaps by osmosis, from Bigler. He used no canned wire copy, he wrote every word himself on a mechanical Remington typewriter on yellow copy paper. When the broadcast was over the script went into a bin for filing later. As the evening wore on and I was tasked with being Arjay the DeeJay, spinning mindless rock'n'roll tunes I'd steal over to the copy bin and pluck out that night's script for some serious reading. I learned how it was that you typed out sentences that looked a bit odd on paper, but sounded just right when read. Believe me, it's an art not easily learned by one who was schooled by rigorous grammarians.

The scene shifts. We got television. I became a cameraman, Bigler became an anchorman. Of course, in those early days all he had to anchor was himself and whatever local accident or fire film that happened to be in the queue. We were learning as we went.

Time went on and I left broadcasting for print journalism....and writing as I spoke became my style. The WILK TV station was sold, Bigler became News Director of a former competitor. I found myself back at the radio station, this time as News Director. Got Bigler's old office and, best of all, his old Remington typewriter. I also inherited his local news broadcast. I thought I was pretty darn good at it too, but given more sober reflection lo these years later, I realize I wasn't half as good as I thought --- more a mud slinger than the thoughtful, progressive, positive guy I'd replaced.

Our paths diverged widely. I went back to newspapering and writing magazine articles and lots of other stuff to keep body and soul together, he continued on to become Dean of the newspersons in Wilkes-Barre, college professor and newspaper columnist.

Now that he's gone my last connection to those early, idealistic, times is gone. But, I'll sign this piece with his tagline...."And that's the news till now."

Arjay

Ya Gott be proud of Da Kid

When you have a son who is smart enough to get a PhD on his own and who then goes out and receives acclaim in national magazines you gotta be proud of him. That's the deal with this post...my son, John, and his wiley experiments with eBayers and their buying habits....Read on, he's the John Morgan mentioned about 2/3ds of the way down the story. Read the link to see the whole story.

Arjay

Herding the Mob

On the Web, we let strangers tell us who to trust, what to read, and where to go. Which means your good name can be worth real money. And reputation hacking can be big business.

By Annalee NewitzPage 1 of 2 next »

Related Stories
I Bought Votes on Digg A sneaky web service offers to get you to the front page of the popular news aggregator for $1 per digg. We'll see about that. By Annalee Newitz.
Hunting Down Digg's Bury Brigade Members of the social news site's community meet resistance as they attempt to out an anonymous group of no-goodniks. By NewAssignment.Net's David Cohn.

John and Nina Swanson run a business selling vintage postcards on eBay. To keep customers happy, the Swansons reply to buyers promptly and ship on time. This policy is reflected in their eBay feedback score — a rating based on responses to prior transactions. Positive comments are scored as one point. Neutral and negative remarks are recorded as zero and negative one, respectively. The Swansons have a score of over 2,000.

Six years ago, University of Michigan information studies professor Paul Resnick asked the couple to participate in an experiment. Resnick wanted the Swansons to continue selling postcards through their established profile, but also to offer the same goods and services through seven fake identities. Initially these bogus profiles would have no reputation; later they would be given negative scores. The Swansons agreed.

After 470 auctions, Resnick found that the Swansons’ main account, with its high customer rating, earned an average of 8.1 percent more per transaction than the fakes. It was the first hard proof that a feedback score — a number generated by a collection of unrelated people — carries quantifiable real-world value. “What we’re seeing here is a new kind of trust,” Resnick says. “It’s a kind of impersonal trust geared to situations with lots of interactions among strangers.”

In other words, the crowd matters. Today we harness the masses for everything from choosing the next pop star on American Idol to perfecting open source software and assembling Wikipedia articles. But perhaps the most widespread and vital uses for group input online are in scoring systems. In addition to eBay feedback, these are the customer ratings that Amazon.com and Yahoo Shopping post with product reviews. They’re the feedback scores that Netflix tallies to help subscribers decide which movies to order. And they’re the up-or-down votes that sites like Digg and Reddit (part of the Wired Media Group, which also includes WIRED magazine) rely on to determine which stories to feed Web surfers.

But as rating systems have become more popular — and, as Resnick shows, valuable — there has been what some would say is a predictable response: the emergence of scammers, spammers, and thieves bent on manipulating the mob. Call it crowdhacking.

In some cases, crowdhackers are looking to boost sales or increase traffic to their Web sites. In other instances, they’re simply ripping off unsuspecting consumers. Either way, the more we base decisions on the wisdom of crowds, the greater the incentive to cheat.

The feedback system on eBay was the first widely used community-scoring program. Launched in 1996, it was a way for people to feel comfortable buying things from strangers. Under eBay’s rules, only people involved in a given transaction can rate it, and eBay won’t remove remarks once they’re posted.

This scheme quickly became the gold standard, serving as a model for user-rating systems everywhere from Amazon to Yelp. But people soon realized that the setup was easy to manipulate.

Cheats on eBay typically work like this: A scammer builds up a positive profile by selling hundreds of low-end items, then uses that high score to burn customers on big-ticket sales. That’s what police say an Arizona woman named Nancy Dreksler did in 2003. According to police reports, once Dreksler had acquired positive feedback by peddling inexpensive CDs and DVDs, she sold over $100,000 worth of nonexistent items and fled with the money, leaving more than 500 buyers empty-handed. Arizona authorities say they may yet file charges; meantime, Dreksler has pled guilty to theft and securities fraud charges in a separate Nevada case.

John Morgan, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, says reputation gaming is surprisingly common on eBay. Morgan recently published a study in which he found more than 6,000 examples of buyers and sellers engaging in transactions solely to boost one another’s scores. These auctions frequently had titles like “100+ Feedback” and a price of 1 cent. Often, the item for trade was a booklet explaining how to increase feedback by reselling that same booklet.

“We saw a number of sellers who used sham transactions to build reputation, laid low for a period of time, and then reentered high-value markets as apparently ‘reputable’ sellers,” Morgan says.

eBay says it constantly hunts for cheaters. According to spokesperson Catherine England, the company uses sophisticated fraud-detection tools to spot suspicious activities and “individuals who may be attempting to inflate their feedback.” She declines to identify these tools but concedes that they are “not 100 percent perfect.”

Other commerce sites have even fewer controls. Yahoo Shopping, for instance, lets anyone post a review, making it easy for merchants to boost their ratings by submitting multiple reviews under false names.

A glaring example of this was disclosed last year, when then VP of Yahoo Shopping, Rob Solomon, admitted to Forbes that the company’s merchant-rating system had been “rigged” by a Brooklyn-based company called PriceRitePhoto. Somehow this shop had managed to get stellar Yahoo ratings, despite many negative reports from disgruntled customers. Blogger Thomas Hawk wrote a post detailing how he’d been threatened by PriceRitePhoto’s owner after writing negative comments about his experiences ordering a camera. Yahoo finally banned the store, but it returned within months under the name Barclays-Photo, according to the Better Business Bureau. After several more complaints, Yahoo removed BarclaysPhoto from its listings. As of late January, it continues to operate (with suspiciously excellent ratings) on eBay.

Over the past few years, crowd scoring systems have made their way to news and article aggregators. Instead of recommending products or services, these sites solicit community rankings to help steer readers to interesting online stories and postings.

The biggest and best known of these is Digg. Members submit articles, along with a short description and link, to the Digg system. Other members can then look through these articles and choose either to “digg” or “bury” the stories. Articles with the most diggs make it onto the site’s widely read front page.

Page 1 of 2 next »

Sonny on Taxes

My friend, Sonny, a retired fireman knows exactly how he feels about government and especially the taxes it levies. And, he's not shy. So, we'll share just exactly what Sonny thinks about Florida's tax scheme.

I predicted the County's would balk at the idea of Governor Crist campaign promises of property tax reform. I, a long with most Floridians support him and his property tax relief plan! But the county's are not willing to take the hit for property tax relief because they have already over spent.

Our county commissioners here in Pasco must step up to the plate on this issue for the people they represent as the Governor has asked. "Do a better job of cutting expenses."

The 1st step is for them to learn how to control there spending and 2nd is to start today controlling growth. And 3rd is consolidate our County government into one county and not three as we have today, West Pasco,Central and East Pasco. We have offices from one end of the county to the other.

For those of you that don’t know the Impact fee in Pasco County is now at around $10,000. Very small compared to other Counties but I do not have county water/sewer or street lighting and nor do I want them. I paid Pasco County almost $12,000 to have my street paved. Larger land owners paid more.

I feel as most, "what do I get for my tax dollar"?
The Banks are now Repo 25-40 homes a month here in Pasco County (Fox 13 News reported), but building continues.

Commissioner Hildebrand: if you have lowered our property taxes why is it that mine doesn’t reflect that? And why should the property taxes be any different if the house is already there. If there is no house on the land you get hit with an impact free of $10,000 and higher tax rate. It's very difficult for me to justify having it both ways. Is that double taxation even though one is called an impact fee? Do developers pay that impact free too and if so were is that money going?

Commissioner Mulieri: Are you losing sight of Pasco County's Heritage "Agriculture"? And yes everyone uses county services in some form or the other, but people in rural community "what's left of it" are less of a load on the county and pay maybe the most taxes because of our land size. We don’t have the niceties such as water/sewer and lighting enjoyed in the more populated areas. And no Pat I don’t want to see businesses flourish though out the county, please let rural areas stay as such! I have said this to you before "everyone doesn't want to live in a subdivision."

You put the burden on who ever is the biggest load on the County. As tax payers we depend on our elected leaders to make good decisions for us. Please Pat continue to do so as you have done in the past.

The article below is from the Tampa Trib. A few weeks back

Palmer "Sonny" Lefstead
7700 Bay Pines Dr.
Wesley Chapel, Fl. 33544
813-973-1119
Ret. City of Tampa Fire / Ret. Vol. Fire Chief of Pasco County

T

During the past several years, Dudley Saunderson has watched as rising property taxes, insurance premiums and other homeowner costs have eaten away at his bank account and retirement funds. Like many of the elderly residents who live in the Heritage Pines subdivision, a 55-plus community in Hudson, Saunderson lives a frugal life on a fixed income. Every year, he said, his property tax bill and other expenses get larger."It's like I rent my home from the government for $200 a month," the 76-year-old said. "What happened to the American dream?"The problem, as he sees it, is rampant overspending and overtaxing by the county government."They've got to stop the spending and reduce taxes," he said. "It's totally out of control."

Stories like Saunderson's resonated with Gov. Charlie Crist on the campaign trail, and he made a promise to bring property tax relief to Florida residents. Now, they say it's time for Crist to deliver.

The governor on Wednesday disbanded a tax reform committee appointed by former Gov. Jeb Bush, saying the state needs a quick fix to its tax woes. Crist told committee members in an e-mail he can't wait for their findings due in December. He suggests a special election to change the constitution to allow counties to double homestead exemptions to $50,000 and permit homeowners to carry Save Our Homes caps on assessed property values with them when they move. Crist also wants to impose a 3 percent annual cap on assessments of business and rental properties.

That sounds great on the surface, county leaders say, but they fear the residents Crist intends to protect will be hurt in the end.

Who Will Benefit?
Pasco's county and municipal leaders view sweeping tax reform as a "feel-good" move that ultimately will create further strain on services. Some say residents' complaints are based on perception, and most calling for reform are not eligible for homestead exemptions and therefore will not benefit. The leaders surmise tax reform will exacerbate inequities and shift the burden to business owners, whom the county depends upon to build the tax base.

"I know the governor campaigned on this, and folks are saying, 'I need another break,'" Pasco County Commission Chairwoman Ann Hildebrand said. "We are one of the few states that doesn't have a state income tax … our county has been very proactive. We have lowered our [tax rate] every year for the past six years. By and large, somebody who has been homesteaded is paying less. It's the new guy who moves in next to you who is paying more."

Pasco leaders predict they and other Florida counties will have to raise property taxes and other fees to make up the difference if the laws change. That, they say, will bring residents like Saunderson back to square one.

"Everybody uses services, and in turn you have to pay some for them," Commissioner Pat Mulieri said. "If you want businesses to flourish, where are you going to put the burden? Do we move it over to the business community?"

Michael Nurrenbrock, Pasco's director of management and budget for 24 years, said proposed changes do not consider the varied circumstances of Florida counties, let alone differences in rural east, urban west and suburban central Pasco. Statewide reform also does not account for differences in the way counties assess taxes or cut costs.

Nurrenbrock argued Pasco has been fiscally conservative, steadily reducing its tax rate in recent years as property values have gone up. Residents with continuous homestead exemptions are paying less in property taxes this year than they did in 2001.

Doubling homestead exemptions would mean counties would have to cut expenses more or make up the difference in some other way. That won't be easy for counties in the Panhandle that already charge the maximum property tax rate of $10 per $1,000 of valuation, Nurrenbrock said. It also is unfair to counties such as Pasco that have put off building projects and charged higher construction impact fees to lower the tax rate of $6 for $1,000 of valuation.

"There are 67 different counties and 67 different situations," Nurrenbrock said. "If these laws come down, they will come down and make it difficult for some. People who have been fiscally conservative in the past will be asking why they were fiscally conservative."

Find A Way, Governor Says
Crist has responded to counties' and cities' concerns by saying they need to do a better job of cutting expenses.
Pasco officials argue they have been frugal, but the costs of construction, fuel and other supplies have increased, making it more difficult to build parks, libraries, courts and jails.

The county has taken other cost-cutting measures, among them dramatically reducing the amount of insurance it carries for public buildings, Nurrenbrock noted. Still, premiums skyrocketed. Pasco also for many years has set aside money for construction. That allowed officials to pay cash for the West Pasco Government Center in New Port Richey. An additional $12 million is to be applied to the cost of a jail expansion project.

"People have a misunderstanding about how," the county budget works, Nurrenbrock said. "They think all the spending is paid for with property taxes, and that's not true."

The county budget is supported by state and federal funding, gas taxes, sales tax and fees, among other sources. About 20 percent comes from property taxes. Between 16 percent and 36 percent of the city budgets are comprised of property taxes.

"People always say, 'There's a lot of fat in there.' It's subjective what people think we should cut," Nurrenbrock said. "We have three diverse areas of the county. We are building a park in Wesley Chapel, which some people may think is not a good idea, but those are the same kind of benefits people in west Pasco have enjoyed for a long time."

Same In The Cities
Pasco cities are facing similar struggles.
City Manager Harold Sample of Dade City said Crist's proposal would be crippling.
"I think the governor's recommendations are ill-timed," Sample said. "The state has shifted the burden to locals for years. To say, 'You can do better' is, I think, hypocritical. I am concerned when we are pushing this ill-advised plan when we should be looking at the whole picture … many people will vote for it without realizing the ramifications of it are horrendous."

Sample argued homestead exemptions - created to entice new residents to Florida when it was mostly a swamp and to boost the economy - have outlived their usefulness. In Dade City, for example, while longtime residents are saving on their tax bills, the city has been struggling to keep services afloat.

Dade City in recent years disbanded its fire department and put off improving or replacing decaying city buildings to save money. The city has little new revenue coming in, Sample explained, because many residents have lived in the same homes for many years and are protected by Save Our Homes. Governments gain revenue when homes are sold and property values are reassessed at market rates.

"There is a huge difference between appraised values and what they are paying," Sample said. "It has shifted most of the burden to businesses."

Zephyrhills City Manager Steve Spina agreed the state should look at its own spending before asking local governments to tighten budgets.

'Do It On Their Dime, Not Ours'
"If they want to cut taxes, cut [them] on the state level," Spina said. "Do it on their dime, not ours."
He called Crist's plan to cut local taxes irresponsible.
"He's thrown out sound bites on local government being bloated and overspending. Show me some examples," Spina said. "Our sanitation trucks are $150,000 a pop. Our police cruisers are $20,000 to $25,000. Those are legitimate expenses."

If the state forces the city to cut local taxes, Zephyrhills would have to come up with other ways to get revenue. Already, the city charges impact fees on new home construction. Those fees likely would have to go up if the city cut taxes. In the end, Spina said, there would be no savings.

In Port Richey, city officials have tightened their belts during the past year by cutting back on spending and reducing the property tax rate amid a challenge to its sovereignty from a group of tax reformers.

Port Richey City Manager Jerry Calhoun said a reduction in property taxes flowing into the city's general fund would mean cuts in services, most likely from the police and fire departments.

"If that's the mandate from the taxpayers, then everyone will have to bear the burden," he said. "It will mean making some really difficult decisions as a municipal government."

Calhoun said the governor's criticism of overspending by municipal and county governments is misguided.
"It rings hollow in the face of what the state does," Calhoun said. "Clean your own house first and then come talk to us about everyone else. Not every city and not every county wastes taxpayer dollars."

In New Port Richey, where a portion of property tax dollars collected by the county are redirected to city coffers for redevelopment, officials are equally worried.

In 2001, New Port Richey became one of the first cities in Florida to declare itself blighted. The move allowed it to keep money from an increase in county property taxes generated within city limits for the next 25 years. The money is earmarked for redevelopment projects, including downtown, neighborhoods and park improvements, all of which is aimed at boosting the tax base.

City Manager Scott Miller said a reduction in county property taxes could weaken the city's redevelopment efforts.
"It certainly will have an effect on the redevelopment funds that we obtain from the county," he said. "We'll just have to scale back the projects. Instead of doing a $100,000 project, we would narrow it down to a $60,000 project."

Ultimately, Miller said, the ball is out of the city's court.
"I know the public wants to see tax relief, and if that's what they are demanding, we just need to do it," he said. "It's going to be a challenge for us. But other cities and states across the country have done it before. And so can we."

Reporters Nicola M. White and Karen Branch-Brioso contributed to this report. Reporter Julia Ferrante can be reached at (813) 948-4220 or jferrante@tampatrib.com.

Sonny

Little Comfort from the Chief

Chuck Harmon, St. Petersburg, FL. Chief of Police, interviewed on Tampa's Channel 8 TV, said he took responsibility for his officers slashing the tents of a group of homeless folks last week.

Did the Chief offer to replace the personal property his officers vandalized?

You guess.

Arjay

Cops as vandals

Over in St. Petersburg, about 35 miles from here, a group of homeless, living in tents, thought they had an agreement with the city to live, at least for a while, under an Interstate overpass.

Wrong.

The cops showed up today (Friday) armed with box cutters which they used to slash the tents into ribbons. Said ribbons were then carted away as trash.

The point here is that those tents actually belonged to people. Granted, the people were homeless and poor, but it was still their property. The tents may well have been their only property. And the TV showed the cops gleefully using their box cutters to cut them into shreds.

It is indeed sad that our "Land of the Free" has come to the point that cops with box cutters can destroy private property just because a city's administration doesn't like where they're pitched.

You might want to think about that next time you see a cop car with the motto, "To Protect and to Serve." You might want to think about that next time you see a cop eyeing your property. Check out his box cutter.

Uh, did I say the St. Pete cops did their vandalism with impunity. Maybe not, there is a homeless advocate group that's threatening to sue.

Arjay

A Little Ebay Tale

There seems to be less and less honesty in business (we won't mention government), and here's a little example.

Ebay says shill bidding, which is simply a matter of using a third party or a fake party to enter fraudulent bids in an effort to raise the selling price, is just not permitted. Here's what it would look like if it were permitted:

	Bidder	Bid Amount	Date of bid
	heppard123( 4 )	US $16.50	Jan-18-07 23:22:57 PST
	shalene1971( 15)	US $16.00	Jan-18-07 17:01:56 PST
	niagaradeals( 44)	US $16.00	Jan-18-07 19:31:43 PST
	rufus192854ci( 0 )	US $15.00	Jan-18-07 19:23:51 PST
	rufus192854ci( 0 )	US $13.49	Jan-18-07 19:19:34 PST
	rufus192854ci( 0 )	US $12.49	Jan-18-07 19:18:45 PST
	rufus192854ci( 0 )	US $11.49	Jan-18-07 19:17:46 PST
	rufus192854ci( 0 )	US $10.49	Jan-18-07 19:15:48 PST

Did you notice the five bids, all from the same person, rufus19285ci? What that means is that he was bidding against himself. Is that reasonable behavior? Of course not, and what you are looking at is some really obvious shill bidding.

Ebay on its website publicly decries such shenanagens and urges its customers to report bad behavior. Of course, finding the method of doing the reporting isn't easy, and if you do find it you'll notice Ebay insists on identifying you as well. And, no, they don't have a Witness Protection Program.

If/when you spot such goings-on you have a few choices: don't play the game and don't bid; try to report it to Ebay; use it as blog material.

Arjay