After some ups and downs and a few hurdles thrown in front of it, the Seminole Heights Foundation has been granted official 501c(3) status by the IRS. This means that you can make donations and write them off as charitable contributions. There are those in this community who have said they are interested in a multitude of projects, now you get a tax deduction and keep the money in your community!
Click to visit the Seminole Heights Foundation site
This is the product from the "form based zoning" discussions to revitalize the commercial corridors in Seminole Heights (all of Seminole Heights: southeast, south, and old). It is important for neighbors to turnout. It is important for the leaders of ALL three neighborhood groups to be there. If our leaders aren't there and neighbors also don't show up we have no voice in the city's decision making.
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Please join us for a Stakeholder Review and Open House which is scheduled for Wednesday, October 29, 2008, 6:30 - 8:30pm (presentation at 7:30pm) at City Hall, 315 East Kennedy Boulevard, to review the draft Vision Plan and provide input on the Vision Planning exercises for this project. City staff will be presenting findings and documenting public comments.
For additional information regarding the Greater Seminole Heights Form-Based Code project, you can visit our web site at: www.tampagov.net/ldc or contact us at (813) 274-8405.
Thanks,
Samantha Fenger
Urban Planner II
Land Development Coordination
City of Tampa
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IMPORTANT MEETING with Tampa Police Department and the residents of greater Seminole Heights!
DATE: SEPTEMBER 29, 2008
TIME: 6:30 PMPLACE: TPD DISTRICT III @ 3808 North 22nd Street ~ Tampa, FL
SUBJECT:PROSTITUTION, DRUGS AND CRIME IN GREATER SEMINOLE HEIGHTS,PARTICULARLY, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE NEBRASKA AVENUE CORRIDOR.
WHO: ANY INTERESTED SH RESIDENT OR BUSINESS OWNER. BRING YOURINFORMATION, YOUR QUESTIONS AND ISSUES AND YOUR WILLINGNESS TO WORK TOGETHERTO MAKE CHANGES.
If you have had issues and have been vocal in your concerns, then it is important for you to attend this meeting.
a repost from Hampton Terrace.org post by Greg Barnhill
Hello, my name is Jim Kwid and I am running for a Trustee position on the Executive Board of the Old Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association. While this is my first attempt to be elected to the OSHNA Board, I have been a homeowner in Old Seminole Heights for over 14 years. I love this neighborhood a great deal and if elected, I will do all in my power to make sure it remains the friendly, helpful and neighborly community it was when I moved here.
Over the past 14 years, I have been very active on various OSHNA activities and committees. I had the honor of being allowed to participate in the 2004 Home Tour. I was very proud to show my 1927 Bungalow to so many wonderful people and let them see one of the charming homes and the wonderful way of life here in Seminole Heights. I have also been involved in the Historic renovation of two commercial buildings in West Tampa over the last 20 years.
I recently volunteered and was appointed to work as Chairperson for Code Enforcement here in Old Seminole Heights. While it is a monumental task and very time consuming, it has allowed me to see some of the nagging problems we face as residents in this wonderful community. I have enjoyed working along side the City of Tampa’s Code Enforcement Director and the Code Inspectors for our area. They have told me they appreciate my help and are very impressed with how OSHNA handles the very intense problems of code violations. We have a lot of work we need to continue to do, but good, reasonable code enforcement is making our neighborhood a better place to live!
Also, I am very proud to be involved with the fine group of people in this community who put in countless hours on the annual Library Book Sale. The book sale is a wonderful OSHNA activity and provides all of us the opportunity to raise money for such worthy causes year after year. Another long hour, heavy lifting and “frantic” sales day event, the opportunity to make our Seminole Heights Library the fantastic Library that it is, and it shows what volunteering time in this community can do! I am happy to be associated with this fine OSHNA event!
I am running for the OSHNA Board because recently, there seems to be a non connection, a misunderstanding, as to who is responsible for what happens in “Our Neighborhood”. I need to show every one of our great neighbors that it isn’t what I as a neighbor wants…It isn’t what the OSHNA Board as a whole wants… and it isn’t what a group, small or large, of neighbors want……it is what the majority of OSHNA homeowners want that should be considered! I promise to uphold that standard and I would appreciate your vote for Trustee of The OSHNA Executive Board.
Thank you for your vote!
Jim Kwid
The above was posted on behalf of the candidate running for the OSHNA board elections. The comment section has been disabled. The content except for a few grammatical changes is as provided by Mr. Kwid.
Greetings Old Seminole Heights neighbors, allow me to introduce myself to you. I am Gail Davis and I am running for the position of Secretary of board of our association. This is the first time in my life I have ever attempted to run for any kind of office although I have been a long time resident of Seminole Heights. My husband and I moved to Seminole Heights 23 years ago and love living here in our 1923 bungalow where we also started a business here. Being a resident here during these many years, I have witnessed first hand many changes in the area seeing how Seminole Heights has grown to be the friendly, diverse, important community it has become. I became one of the first members of OSHNA 20 years ago when the association was just forming with a small group of concerned residents who wanted to join together to try and make a difference so our area of Tampa would be a more positive, safer, place to live. I am very proud to see how far our small band of original neighbors has grown and what our organization has become.
I have worked for the same family owned business in Tampa as a Purchasing Agent for the past 34 years. I deal extensively with vendors throughout the U.S. on a daily basis possessing people and office skills that will surely be a benefit as your Secretary. I am a very dedicated employee who started as a youngster out of high school and worked my way to being a highly regarded professional within my company helping to make it the success that it has become over the past 87 years it has been in existence.
As a general member of OSHNA, I attended the general membership meetings and kept abreast of the progress and changes however I recently decided to be more active than I ever have in aspiring to be on our association's executive board. It is my belief that our neighborhood could benefit further with a change. A change where a voice will be at the board table who will represent EVERY homeowner in Seminole Heights regardless if that homeowner is a standing member or not, we all live here and deserve to be heard. The direction of OUR association must consider our ENTIRE neighborhood and their concerns with the decisions and direction it takes which has been lacking of late. I want our association to come back to where it once was 20 years ago connecting with everyone in our neighborhood as well as being transparent and open with all the board’s business which effects everyone’s lives and how they live in this great neighborhood of ours.
I believe I can make that difference and I have the experience and compassion to help make our association even better than it already is by considering all parties and all people who live here.
As your Secretary, I will listen to everyone and work with everyone because the board should always represent the homeowners as a whole and never forget that. If elected, I promise that my voice will represent what the majority of homeowners want to see in their neighborhood association and what their association can do for you.
If you agree, I would appreciate your vote to become the next new board member as your Secretary.
Thank-you,
Gail Davis
The above was posted on behalf of the candidate running for the OSHNA board elections. The comment section has been disabled. The content except for a few grammatical changes is as provided by Ms. Davis.
In my July posting on the Hampton Terrace debate, I took issue with the the Creative Loafing article about the HTPRO spokespeople residing in the neighborhood (see the link).
This morning at Starbucks Gail confront me and challenged my assertions and challenged me to make a retraction. I will gladly accept that challenge, if what I post is shown to be inaccurate I have no problem retracting anything. So I again went looking in regard to the property owned by Gail Davis.
For whatever reason the property appraiser's site does not pull it up under her name but when I search Mohawk I did find the homestead under her and her husband's name.
Gail consider this my retraction.
Over on the Official Unofficial Seminole Heights blog, the post on OSHNA nominations has become more of a debate on the by-laws. My blog already states my views. That post is restated below.
There is an extensive revision to the Old Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association (OSHNA) by-laws. Naturally I have some opinions here. I strongly encourage a NO vote for the long term health and vitality of the organization.
I have reviewed the by-laws in detail. I still have a saved copy of the by-laws from when I first went on the board. Packed away in boxes notes on the first major re-write was back in 1994. I have copies of subsequent revisions. It is one thing to make corrections of spelling, grammar and such was a comprehensive revision. It is quite another to ram through a variety agenda driven changes in one big package. That is the kind of BULLSHIT Congress does to pass what could never stand on it's own merits. That is, in my opinion, what the By-law Committee and it's Chairperson have done.
Honorary membership is the one I have the most fun with; you see in the 1994-95 revisions Honorary Members included past Presidents who were given life-time voting privileges. In 1996-97 there was this rush to take away the voting privileges from those lifetime Honorary members. I was the only one that was the target for that little change, it too was mingled with other revisions to hide the agenda. Now we come full circle, now it is proposed that those rights are to be restored. Well I thought it was unnecessary then and I still do. There was no compelling reason for the first change and there is no compelling reason for the current proposal. But hey if I am wrong, and the members pass the revisions, I can save $10 a year and still have the benefits of running for office and voting.
But back to the serious side. All the bitching about no body wanting to get involved is bullshit. Yet that is the smoke screen for 2 year terms. That is the compromise for term limits.
Two year terms will prove to be a disaster and lead to a board out of touch and filled with their own self-importance.
Term limits are unnecessary. When people have choices they can choose to limit terms. Simply ask the one sitting board member who lost their trustee position in the fall of 1994. There may be people on the board that have been there far too long in my opinion but it should be up to them or the membership when their time on the board is up.
Why is it suddenly necessary to require one year of membership before being able to be a candidate? OSHNA has been in existance for 20 years. Has there been a crush of newbies storming the palace gates? It is yet one more BAR put forward to impede participation.
Why the prohibition against a sitting President running for any other position? Maybe there would be a President who still wish to serve but who because of a change in circumstances wanted a less demanding position (as a past President, I could see that happening). This also masks an unstated agenda.
In the guise of "the selection of a diverse and experienced board" the complete re-write of Article V, Section 2 "Eligibility" becomes self-serving of the incumbents.
The last time I checked it is the membership that is responsible for the selection of their governing Board.
On a 9 member board there is no sound reason to prohibit a President from voting. No President in OSHNA has ever had the sway over the Board to dictate outcomes of votes. Some have voted, some have abstained, some have selectively voted. In my time on the Board as President or as chairperson, I selectively voted but did not make motions in acting in the capacity of chair person.
There is no justification neutralize the President. The board has restricted the President's setting of meeting agenda's and speakers, and some would go so far as to say the President cannot express a view that has not already had the blessing of the board. This is to proscribe from the President the one tool or option at his or her disposal. Another hidden agenda masquerading as reform.
The board has the power to expel members from the association and remove other board members without the membership having any say but the members have no authority to recall board members before the next election???
National Register District is okay? So why not a local district? This is a question before the folks in the Hampton Terrace historic district. There are those who will oppose it until hell freezes over. Then there are those who moved in and invested thousands of dollars since that initial organizing meeting and canvassing in the spring of 1995. There is a small group wanting no part of it and bent on derailing the efforts made by others over the past 13 years. My perspective is drawn from my motivation back in 1995. I haven’t had significant discussion with either side in the current debate. What I would challenge both sides to look at what has happened since the effort to gain national district designation first began. Don’t dismiss it as the effect of a real estate bubble, the area lagged behind the Seminole Heights district on the west side of 275 both in prices and condition of the area today designated as Hampton Terrace.
National districts don’t endure forever. With enough alterations; with structures lost or destroyed the area can be undesignated. When the quest began, there were those who doubted the area had the density of contributing structures to even come close. In the years since, some that were not contributing have been restored to be contributing. Mohawk, a street that when I move to the neighborhood was the most blighted street, rivaled the streets near the old Riverview Terrace housing project. The south side of the street was all zoned commercial. Looming over the street was a two story iron I-beam structure. The south side was on a slide to low rent apartments mixed with commercial/industrial uses. Those who owned on the south side of Mohawk didn’t really care about what impact their decisions had on people who actually lived in the neighborhood. (more about this later)
That spring day back in 1995 didn’t meet opposition. Volunteers came out to help as soon as they heard what we were trying to do. At the time, I had doubts that we could meet the density goal by including Mohawk but it was the boundary between what had been lost and what was barely salvageable. . Today that seems to still be a threat.
Creative Loafing ran an article about the opposition to local district designation. The article talks about the Hampton Terrace Property Rights Organization and names three people who claim to be residents and all for preservation but totally opposed to a local district. Now help me out here, I might miss one person searching the Property Appraiser’s website but NONE of those 3 individuals have homesteaded property in Hampton Terrace. That goes back to commercial property owners who live elsewhere and really don’t have a vested emotional attachment to the area. We have encountered those folks time and again, they don’t care because they go home somewhere else.
The goal in 1995 that motivated me was neighborhood stabilization and attracting homeowners willing to invest in the neighborhood. In numerous studies from all over the country, local districts have been determined to have benefits far greater than the costs. Local districts protect the investments of owners and residents. Without some type of local regulation/ordinance, owners of properties designated as historic continue to have every right to renovate structures any way they like, including destroying them. Local districts encourage better design. Rebuilding and reconstruction, as needed for historic areas, uses local materials, local labor, and usually higher paid labor. Money stays in town. Local districts help the environment. The protection of local historic districts can enhance business recruitment potential. Preservation districts usually increase property values, and the worst you get is no different than the same area without a historic district.
So who should be calling for a vote, the folks that don’t have a homestead in the neighborhood? Should the objections of an absent, live elsewhere, property owner thwart countless hours of hard work by resident homeowners? Just as taxes are the price we pay for civilization, so too are limits on property rights.
So how many homesteaded property owners in Hampton Terrace are actually opposed? The question Creative Loafing never asked...
What if you had a meeting and nobody came? Well that seems to be par for the course with Tampa. They schedule a meeting about the future of the 22nd street parkland. Much like they did when planning to locate a dump there (oops, I'm sorry, "transfer station") they forgot to tell the folks that live there. Oh to the city's credit they did notify Old Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association which promptly did nothing to get the word out.
Here we go again. Let me see, OSHNA can send out "alerts" announcing the new chair for the library committee (yawn) but can't send an alert affecting riverfront parkland in the neighborhood. (my personal editorial comments are on my personal blog) As an update/clarification: Susan Long, OSHNA's president did send Diane Jenkins to represent the neighborhood and association at the meeting and received a report back. Something that was not clear when we first spoke about this issue. While I think email alerts would have reached a broader audience, Susan's commitment to making sure the Association was represented is greatly appreciated. So if my comments were in any way misinterpreted as directed at her specifically or in general it was not my intention. However, I continue to believe there is room to improve communication within OSHNA's boundaries. More importantly, there is an even greater need for the city communicate with residents and with enough time for neighborhood organizations to get imput from the areas affected.
Now back to the park issue. Where does the city hold the meeting....in Temple Crest...a 15 minute drive out of the neighborhood affected. That is even better than when they held the meeting for the speed tables in Seminole Crest at Osborne and 22nd St.
Once again the City and the Neighborhood Association have failed to communicate with the people most impacted. I myself did not learn of the meeting until the association president was looking for contact information for the only Seminole Crest neighbor to attend. Kudos for Carlos for attending.
After the transfer station, I would have thought there would be a greater effort. No one can say there are no members in the Seminole Crest area because quite a few joined at the meeting that discussed the transfer station.
There is really no excuse why OSHNA can't get word out about matters such as this with a bank account climbing to the 50K mark....crying lack of resources doesn't work. There are about 350 homes in the Seminole Crest. Last year the transfer station flier cost me $46, shoe leather and 4 hours of walking. OSHNA could have sent a postcard to all 350 homes for under $150 (that's including postage). Or maybe even sent an e-mail alert to all members. Maybe the turn-out might have been the same. Maybe it would have been higher. Maybe the OSHNA could have pushed the city to hold the meeting in the neighborhood (there are multiple locations on the east side of 275 that could have accommodated such a meeting).
