As a followup to
a topic we've covered before: In another show of contempt for the people of St Petersburg,
Mayor Bill Foster has said that he is still not interested in getting to the bottom of the impact fee short-change that occurred under his predecessor Mayor Rick Baker related to the Hilton Hotel in Carillon. Mayor Foster says he has "a lot of faith in my auditing staff", but they never did conduct a full audit of the situation, it was an informal investigation that was conducted almost entirely by phone with very little documentation and it never reached a conclusion. So why the resistance to finding out the truth of who really ordered the reduction of impact fees? Who are you protecting Mr. Mayor? This was a $160,000 mistake that we the people of St Petersburg had to pay for, and that is just the one instance we know of.
A big THANK YOU to councilman Kornell for requesting a full audit of all impact fee and tax collection by the city for the last 7 years, we might find out that this is just the tip of the iceberg, Steve Kornell is looking more and more like a good candidate for Mayor himself every day.
Of course, Foster lap-dogs councilmen Kennedy and Dudley side with Foster on this one by downplaying the problem. As usual, they are going along with whatever Foster tells them, always taking his word and never questioning his actions or motives.
If Mayor Foster wanted to show his constituents that he isn't just an incompetent, push-over boss, maybe some firings at the Development Department would help with all of the selective amnesia that is going on over there.
UPDATE: The
St Petersburg Tampa Bay Times
editorial on this subject
UPDATE 2: Doc Webb's take on this
from The Patch
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