South Seminole Hts News
From Les Berty
Please remember two important events this Saturday, November 18th
The Annual Mayor’s River Cleanup will take place beginning at 8:00 am Our team will work on the area at Rivercrest Park . Volunteers may meet at Lowry Park , where there will be coffee and donuts and tee shirts, or you may meet at the Gazebo in the park around 8:15-8:30
The second event will be a Code Enforcement Workshop, to be held at the Seminole Heights Methodist Church , at the corner of Hanna and Central Ave. It will be 9am to Noon. Supervisors and Inspectors who work in the Seminole Heights Area will be present to discuss quality of life issues affecting the neighborhood. You are invited to attend and bring your questions and concerns. This will be an excellent opportunity to sit down with “Management” and help work out solutions to problems that affect us all.S
14 comments:
Code will be discussing the SH Task Force, too. Legal will be there to answer quedstions on why nothing has ever been foreclosed...regardless of the fines. Come and learn the process and ask your questions.
Oh, like that is not a typical Code Enforcement Tactic. Let's plan an event the Saturday before Thanksgiving. That will Guarantee a huge turn out.
amen
I would suggest rescheduling to January. I think you will have a better turnout and more focused meeting.
There's an article in today's St. Pete Times on the lack of action by Code Enforcement (and I use that term loosely)on a house in Hyde Park.
So SH isn't the only neighborhood affected by Code's indifference/ineptitude.
Don't talk about code's indifference. We had more code people at the meeting this morning than we had residents. And, that includes all 3 SH neighborhoods. Complaining seems to be what the residents do well - - particularly when it comes to code. Action is what is sorely needed - - even when it comes to code.
I think maybe the problem was getting the word out the event was even happening at all. I didnt find out about it until yesterday. There are an awful lot of meetings held for various neighborhood endevours, but the word doesn't circulate very well.. so we have meetings attended by the same few highly dedicated people. Why can't the civic associations work on setting up phone trees or something? The email list doesn't seem to do it.
Anon 3:55
sounds like a great project - are you stepping up to help those few dedicated people???
Bungalowlady, first of all, Until the city of Tampa gets new leaders, especially in code, I will never step foot into the same room and waste my time. These clowns have made every excuse in the book for their ignorance and quite frankly, I am tired of hearing "what they are going to do!" When are they ever going to "Git R Done." They have yet to accomplish one positive outcome from this office. Instead, they wait til the citizens scream, form a group so that everyone has to quiet down, then they sneak back to doing nothing. How many groups/taskforces have they had since the incompetent mayor has been in office. I will not support or attend any function that they put on, sponsor or attend!
Amen..
Randy is running for office so he is trying to schmooze any votes he can get right now.
Even if it means selling his soul to the devils in code.
Its a shame I missed the event but I couldnt see wasting a perfectly good Saturday listening to the same crap I have heard over again.
They cant enforce the law, they cant foreclose, what are we paying them to do if they cant do anything??
this code meting was sponsored by South, SESH and OSHNA - it was not a Randy production.
So sorry you are angry about someone trying to make a difference.
If you talk to the hooker patrol gang you will find that the police were pretty nonresponsive when they started even a little bit combative at first but now the police work with the group and even call them to tell them not to worry about patroling on specific nights ie: sting in process. If no one wanted to push the police on the hookers then no actions on their part would happen.
I guess your "I've paid my money now what can you do for me" is the best way to go.
Like most problems it is not caused by a single thing. I have never been a supporter of the code department as it stands now, but I took the time to attend the workshop and was not dissappointed. It did not change alot of my opinions, but I learned quite a bit. This actually surprised me because I consider myself a person with a pretty good deal of information on how things work and why, in code.
The fact that zoning, and legal were there was very helpful and informative.
One thing I came away with is like most governmental processes,it is not exactly as simple as it seems. One of the main problems is the support that code gets from judicial. It is not that I was not aware of this as a problem, but I was reminded.
For all of you who chose not to go because you thought it useless, I guess that is as good an excuse as any for apathy.
First of all CODE itself, has no actual control over judicial. Actually the people who have the ability to affect judicial are us.
Code is a big time broke department. But the answers are not simple. Government is indeed a big, slow moving wheel, that once moving in a direction, can be very difficult to change. I am not making excuses, but rather taking a realistic look at all the reasons it does not work.
One of those, and one that makes a pretty big difference is legal. If you manage to gear code up to pursue a case to the bitter end, it gets to legal and is dissolved. Code has no control over it once it is handed over. So common sense says, if this happens repeatedly over years, then people stop trying so hard. Code definitely got apathetic. We all know that. And apathy is a very hard thing to change.
Unfortunately for the citizens change occurs much more slowly than is reasonable. But I firmly believe that ONE of the areas that needs the most revision is the legal area of code. I honestly believe that it is can be fairly easy to motivate code to high performance, but it will make no difference, if legal remains unchanged.
Some where, some how, Legal (an code) must make a stand on some of the most egregious cases. If they do, the citizen apathy that is now the standard response to code will be drastically cut. People now know they can do what ever they want, So they do. The professional code evader knows every trick and uses them all.
They need to loose their property if it is not homesteaded. And if it is, they need to be helped if needed, and fined and haunted, if not!
When judges interpret laws in ways we don't like we call them "activist" or some other derogatory name. Judges rule on the laws *our* representatives write. If you don't like what an honest, hardworking judge does you simply need to give him new laws to work with.
We only have finger pointing right now. If Code would correctly follow up, document, and forward cases to the judiciary like they are supposed to, we'd have a clear picture of what the judges are or are not doing right.
Given how sloppy Code is, especially in cases like the SESH boarding house or the porchless house in Hyde Park, how can the judiciary assume the homeowners were dealt with fairly and according to the law? One day the boarding house is in violation, the next it's not. If I was a judge, I'd look at that and think there was something else going on and have a bit of sympathy for the poor homeowner being put through hell by a bungling code enforcement office.
That said, the code meeting was arranged by OSHNA in large part due to all the yelling here on this blog. Code apparently spent a great deal of time gathering up material to support their case (right or wrong). The neighbors didn't show up. Message? This isn't that important to most of them. Who cares how invaluable their excuses might have been? If 50 angry homeowners showed up and made a huge fuss, that might have started things moving faster. Nothing gets public servants working harder than being politically embarassed. That's how we got TPD to move on the hookers.
Most of the people active in the various SH associations are too nice to say this, but y'all need to get off your fat lazy asses and do something more than reply as anonymous in a blog. And I say this as someone that spent years of Friday nights chasing down Johns and hookers on Nebraska avenue at 4am and ended up in court as a witness against a violent hooker.
If all you can be counted on to do is anonymously complain in a blog, why should the SH association presidents spend time and political capital arranging opportunities for you? Give your opinions legs and make change happen.
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