Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune editorial on cruise ships:

Editorials

Protect Tampa Bay and cruise ship industry

Published: July 6, 2014

With the cruise ship industry now building massive megaships that won’t fit under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, Port Tampa Bay officials rightly want to explore ways to keep from being squeezed out of the market.

But it’s essential they don’t allow that effort to justify ventures that would wreck Tampa Bay, which after decades of pollution and abuse has made a remarkable comeback.

At least one of the proposals that may be considered — the construction of a new cruise ship terminal on submerged land near the mouth of the bay — we fear would be hugely destructive.

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, a member of the Tampa Port Authority, is justifiably worried.

“You’re talking about a dredge and fill project in relatively shallow water that’s prime fish habitat. I don’t see how you can do that without tremendous impact,” Buckhorn says. Alas, sometimes in the quest for business, such ecological consequences — which could forever damage the region’s appeal and quality of life — are minimized.

The Florida Department of Transportation, in preparing a report for the port on how to deal with the Skyway issue, lists four options: constructing the new terminal in the bay near the Hillsborough-Pinellas line; replacing the Skyway; building a drawbridge at one end of the Skyway with a new channel for the large ships; or doing nothing.

Other than doing nothing, all the options likely would have some adverse impact, which is to be expected when maintaining the infrastructure — including channel dredging — necessary for commerce.

But when environmental damage is necessary, it’s vital that it be minimized and every precaution be taken against enduring harm.

It is not reassuring that DOT officials, in what they call a “pre-feasibility study,” do not address the possibility that the terminal could cause overwhelming damage to Florida’s largest estuary.

It seems to us this critical resource should have been accorded more concern before proposing projects that might be pursued.

Thanks to a coordinated state, local and federal effort over the past 30 years, the bay is in better shape than it has been in generations. Water quality is vastly improved, seagrasses are returning to the once-barren bottom, and fish numbers have rebounded.

It would be disgraceful if leaders, in the quest to appease one industry, turned the clock back to the days when Tampa Bay was treated as a worthless dump and it lost more than 80 percent of its seagrass beds and nearly half of its mangrove forests.

Without question, the community should strive to sustain and grow its cruise ship industry. As The Tampa Tribune’s Yvette Hammett reports, Tampa’s port served 854,000 passengers in fiscal year 2013, and a report last year found the local cruise ship industry was providing 1,984 jobs and represented $379.7 million in economic activity.

Such numbers are the reason Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman, a member of the Tampa Port Authority, is excited about the potential of a new terminal west of the Skyway. She sees the cruise ship industry as a “tremendous tourist driver” and believes a terminal that would accommodate the larger ships could put passengers’ numbers well over 1 million

Even so, she also acknowledges, “We have to be cautious. I am not going to do anything that will hurt the environment.”

Though we’re skeptical, perhaps there is a way to develop a new terminal on the bay’s bottom without causing an environmental disaster. Tampa Bay’s welfare needs to be a central concern as port officials determine their course of action.

Buckhorn is dubious that a new terminal would attract much more business. The smaller — the term is relative — cruise ships are not going to suddenly disappear. And Buckhorn wonders if over time the port’s cruise ship facilities might more profitably be transitioned into waterfront residential complexes.

There is a lot to study and debate. The port is an economic engine — $15 billion in annual economic impact — and its continued success should be a regional priority. But so should the health of Tampa Bay.

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on THHI:

Politics

St. Louis advocate named new Hillsborough homeless director

By Keith Morelli | Tribune Staff
Published: July 4, 2014   |   Updated: July 5, 2014 at 01:14 PM

TAMPA — Less than two years after taking the helm of homeless advocacy in Hillsborough County, Maria Pellerin Barcus is calling it quits and a new director is coming on board.

Barcus, 62, is retiring from the directorship of the Tampa Hillsborough Homeless Initiative in August, giving way to Antoinette Hayes Triplett, currently head of homeless services for the city of St. Louis.

“She’s done an incredible job in St. Louis,” said Kathleen Beach, executive director of Gateway 180, a shelter in St. Louis for homeless women and children. “You guys have a good one there.”

Beach said Triplett, during her 13-year tenure as head of homeless services, has changed the culture of how the city deals with people on the street.

“It came during her time here,” Beach said. “It used to be you had to be a city of St. Louis resident to get services from the approved housing agencies, and about four years ago Antoinette met with other (care providers) in the metro area, and they decided people should not have boundaries. If they come to us and need help, we will take care of them no matter where they come from.”

St. Louis, Beach said, now takes care of its homeless population.

“I would say the city is very friendly,” she said. “People come here from other jurisdictions, where it may be illegal to be homeless. Here, nobody goes to jail. A homeless mom sleeping in her car with her kids isn’t put in jail. Outreach teams get help for that family.”

Beach said St. Louis’ loss is Tampa’s gain.

“I see her as a visionary,” Beach said of Triplett. “She takes a concept and pulls it together with so many large pieces to make things happen.”

She said this summer Triplett is spearheading a push to get homeless veterans into apartments as soon as they are identified. She’s more than a bureaucrat, Beach said.

“It’s easy for somebody to be in an administrative position, to be in a government office and stay in that government office,” Beach said. “But Antoinette actually goes out and does outreach. In encampments along the riverfront, she knows them by name.”

Triplett was mentioned in a federal Housing and Urban Development newsletter last year, which praised her BEACH (Beginning of the End: Abolishing Chronic Homelessness) program that coordinates the efforts of governmental, charitable and for-profit businesses to cut into homelessness in St. Louis.

“Our case managers and other partners … are doing amazing work towards ending chronic homelessness,” Triplett said in the article. She said 73 percent of the chronically homeless counted in St. Louis in January 2013 were a part of the program and more than a third of those had been placed in apartments.

The program, funded through a $1.25 million HUD grant, uses 20 agencies to provide mental health services and a stable place to live for the chronically homeless in St. Louis. The Tampa Hillsborough Homeless Initiative funnels $7 million from federal, state and local funds to front-line vendors who provide services and homes for those on the street.

Triplett did not return messages left last week for an interview.

In St. Louis, she oversees the distribution of grants to a network of about 50 nonprofits, according to an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Triplett does have her critics in St. Louis.

The Rev. Larry Rich, a homeless advocate with the New Life Evangelistic Center in St. Louis, said Triplett may be good at her job, which is getting money and distributing it, but she’s no real advocate for the homeless.

“If you talk to the people who get that money, they will tell you what a wonderful job she is doing,” he said in a phone interview this week. “She’s a wonderful, good person, a dedicated person, but when it comes down to being an advocate, she’s not an advocate. She’ll be a CEO like she is here. She’s trying to get federal money, but there’s a big gap between the money from the federal government and the homeless.”

He cited a homeless hotline in St. Louis. “It’s wonderful on paper,” he said. “You call and get placed. But three-quarters are not getting the service. They are turned away by hotline operators because the providers are not able to find a place for them. It takes six months to get into housing.”

Officials in Tampa say they have made a good choice in hiring Triplett.

Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman, who serves on the board of directors for the Tampa Hillsborough Homeless Initiative, said Triplett’s leadership will bring the local program to the next level.

“When Maria announced her retirement, the timing just happened,” Murman said. A group from the initiative went to St. Louis to learn about the programs there and met Triplett, she said.

“The group,” she said, “met this wonderful person, Antoinette, and her staff that had just turned around St. Louis, how they work with homeless and develop partnerships in the community.

“We all agreed that was something we were looking for in the next phase of our operation,” Murman said. “I think it’s a great opportunity to align ourselves with a great community like St. Louis, Missouri, that really takes care of its homeless, which is what we want to do here.”

Barcus, who came to Tampa 17 months ago to usher in sweeping changes in how the city was addressing the homeless issue, helped enact mandates from the federal government that switched the focus from providing services to placing homeless into transitional and permanent homes. Her job was to persuade the local advocates and governments to buy into the new philosophy.

“We get people housed,” she said, “and then work with them to sustain that housing.”

She is retiring to spend more time with family, she said. She will continue to live in Tampa but plans more visits to her children and grandchildren in Atlanta and Chicago. She will continue to consult on homeless issues, she said.

There is still work to be done, she said, mentioning two goals she was unable to achieve.

One is the creation of an organizational chart for all the advocate agencies; the other is the finalization of the community plan that lays out the existing strategy and includes all the agencies and advocates.

“I’m confident it will be completed before too long,” she said. “There are a lot of components there, but I think it’s close. It’s a question of pushing over the finish line.”

In the short time she was in charge of the initiative, formerly known as the Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County, Barcus made many changes, the effects of which may not be known for years.

“Yes, I am pleased,” she said. “I think some major things were put into motion, though it will take a while to see the results. I think the community as a whole will see the benefits of what we started by the 2016 count.”

Her methods have met with some success. According to a homeless count earlier this year, the number of people living on the streets of Hillsborough County dropped from the year before and 188 chronically homeless people were placed into apartments or houses in 2013 under the housing-first program.

The Tampa Hillsborough Homeless Initiative in February sent out 300 volunteers who tallied 2,243 homeless men, women and children. The number was down slightly from 2,275 counted in 2013.

Barcus took over amid controversy about the count in 2011, which tallied more than 10,000 homeless in Hillsborough County. But that count became suspect after it was revealed that discrepancies in the method greatly inflated the numbers. The surveys in 2013 and 2014, under Barcus’ watch were more realistic.

This year’s count, she said, was meticulously undertaken.

“We were able to shed some light on the number of homeless we have and get rid of some major misconceptions there,” she said.

“The upside was that there weren’t 10,000 homeless in Hillsborough County. That was an overwhelming number. Now there’s a sense of, ‘We can deal with this.’ ”

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on Tampa cruise industry:

Study: Skyway to hobble Tampa cruise industry

By Yvette C. Hammett | Tribune Staff
Published: June 30, 2014   |   Updated: June 30, 2014 at 07:23 AM

TAMPA — Port Tampa Bay’s cruise ship business could go from thriving to shriveling without a plan to get the newest and largest of these floating cities past the limitations of the Sunshine Skyway.

The Florida Department of Transportation is preparing this week to release the results of a study examining four options to address the issue: do nothing, replace the Skyway, build a cruise ship terminal near the Hillsborough-Pinellas county line in Tampa Bay to avoid the bridge issue, or build a drawbridge at one end of the Skyway with a new channel for the giant ships to navigate.

The decision will likely be based on return on investment, transportation officials say. And that has yet to be studied.

“The Tampa Bay region has enjoyed a significant amount of cruise ship traffic through mainly the facilities at Channelside in Port Tampa Bay,” transportation department spokesman John O’Brien wrote in an email. “This business generates a significant economic impact for the region and the State of Florida. For many years, however, the cruise industry has been building ships which no longer can enter Tampa Bay …”

The state agency sanctioned the study in April 2013 to review the options and get input from stakeholders, O’Brien said.

The transportation department’s seaport manager, Meredith Dahlrose, would not release the report in draft form last week under a public records request, saying the agency wanted to wait until it had finished compiling stakeholder comments.

Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman, who sits on the Tampa Port Authority Board, said she is eager to see the new study.

She said she hopes it finds that the best option for keeping cruise ship business growing here is to build a new cruise ship terminal on submerged lands Hillsborough County owns in Tampa Bay, west of the Skyway.

“We are getting close to a million passengers right now, and that is a very significant increase over recent years,” Murman said. “We’ve got a great relationship with the cruise companies. I know ships are getting bigger and I don’t want to lose that momentum, because it’s a huge economic driver for our area.”

Port Tampa Bay is the eighth-largest cruise port in the U.S., said Andrew Fobes, director of public affairs for the port.

He wrote in an email that the area is appealing to cruise ship companies because of its proximity to Caribbean cruise destinations, Tampa International Airport, a strong market in people driving to the port, and the attractions in the area.

Fobes said Tampa’s cruise business is robust.

Royal Caribbean International will add a second ship in Tampa in November, he said, and AIDA Cruises will use Tampa as a port of call beginning this December. AIDA will bring in a larger vessel the following season.

The port served 854,000 cruise passengers in fiscal year 2013 on five ships representing the world’s largest cruise lines: Carnival Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean International, Holland America Line and Norwegian Cruise Line.

A report titled The Local and Regional Economic Impacts of the Port of Tampa, completed in 2013, states that the cruise ship industry was, at the time, providing 1,984 jobs and had a “total value of economic activity” of $379.7 million.

Local businesses and suppliers to the cargo and cruise industries at the port, according to the 2013 report, made $933.1  million in local purchases and were responsible for generating $90.9 million in wages and salaries.

This is no time to slow down, Murman said.

“We have the potential, if we do an off-site terminal, to increase our cruise passengers to up to 3 million,” she said. “I am hoping the study reveals that this would be a good move for us.”

Because Port Tampa Bay is updating its master plan, the timing is ideal, Murman said.

O’Brien said any future use of the study’s findings would have to be coordinated with the state Department of Transportation.

It is likely that the cruise ships would invest in any new infrastructure built for their benefit.

In discussing the issue in 2012 when the Port Authority began studying a Pinellas-area terminal, a Carnival Cruise Line spokesman said Carnival would be interested in a port that avoided the Skyway.

He also said it is unlikely that any new Carnival ships would be able to operate from the current Channelside facility.

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Bay Business Journal article on EDC:

Jun 5, 2014, 5:51pm EDT

County: EDC communication issue is ‘fixable’

Chris Wilkerson

Deputy Editor- Tampa Bay Business Journal

Note to Tampa Bay executives and elected officials: When Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp. CEO Rick Homans has a lot of appointments to make at once, he starts texting at 6:22 a.m.

Homans reached out to all seven members of the Hillsborough Board of County Commissioners to set up individual meetings after the EDC and he personally were harshly criticized during Wednesday’s commissioner’s meeting.

“I got the message loud and clear from the commissioners that I need to do a much better job of communicating with them as a board and individually,” he said from the EDC’s new offices in Bank of America Plaza in downtown Tampa.

“First of all, all of this is fixable,” said County Commissioner Al Higginbotham after a Thursday lunch meeting in Tampa. “Rick is doing a good job and getting big wins.”

Higginbotham reiterated that he felt like Homans and the EDC needed to do a better job of communicating with the commissioners so they understand where the EDC is spending its time and resources.

County Commissioner Sandy Murman agreed that the situation is not unresolvable. “It can be fixed,” she said

“Somewhere along the way [Homan’s] attention has been diverted,” she told the Tampa Bay Business Journal. “The communication has not been there. We are just not getting it.”

Murman echoed Higginbotham’s concerns about cross-county partnerships that would divert the EDC’s attention from growing and recruiting companies and creating new jobs.

“It seems like, in the past six months, we haven’t heard about any new wins. We’ve been hearing about regionalism,” she said.

She likened the EDC’s actions to those of a child who stops bringing home his report card. “You know when they are hiding the report card, there’s something wrong,” she said.

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on Bus Rapid Transit and managed lanes:

TRANSPORTATION

Study explores toll lanes for faster commutes in Tampa area

By Yvette C. Hammett | Tribune Staff 
Published: June 3, 2014   |   Updated: June 3, 2014 at 10:16 PM

TAMPA — A study exploring whether express interstate toll lanes are the key to a faster commute could be complete — at least in draft form — by summer’s end.

The Florida Department of Transportation is driving the study, assisted by other regional transportation agencies looking for ways to maximize the existing road system and loosen gridlock. It is considering express toll lanes on Interstate 275, on I-75 and on I-4.

Bus Rapid Transit — or running buses on managed highway lanes — is a big part of the study, said Scott Pringle, an FDOT consultant, who updated the Metropolitan Planning Organization on the study Tuesday.

“We’re focusing on long-distance commuter trips,” like bus rides between Wesley Chapel and downtown Tampa, Pringle said. The study looks at key destinations, ridership-heavy areas, station placement and cost.

Express toll lanes are already in use and successful in various cities around the country and local transportation planners are tapping their knowledge to determine how to tackle issues like bus station placement along or on interstates and how to handle parking for those using the bus service.

“We are identifying projects that are like Tampa, reaching out to other cities and asking what they would do differently,” Pringle said. So far, he said, a common theme is parking issues. Not having enough space for commuters to park and catch a bus is “an indication of success, because demand is greater than expected,” he said. And this area needs to consider that.

When the study group looked at what Miami-Dade is doing on Interstate 95, Pringle said, they saw that just adding the express toll lanes increased bus ridership by 30 percent, due to guaranteed speed and allowing buses to bypass congestion.

“I’m so excited about this,” said Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandra Murman, who represents the fast-growing South Shore area of the county. But, she said, she was disappointed that the proposed express toll lanes didn’t extend further south, where most of the county’s new affordable housing is going in.

Murman said she would at least like to see the express lanes go as far south as the Selmon Expressway, if not to Big Bend Road, where rush-hour traffic is a daily nightmare for commuters.

Lee Royal, government liaison for FDOT, said future plans for the toll lanes will include south Hillsborough County. She said the study will first look at areas with the highest bus ridership.

“If we had more (bus) service, we know we would have more ridership,” Murman said. She urged the study group to consider traffic traveling north from South Shore on I-75, in planning the toll lanes.

“I’m a big fan of this concept,” said Steve Polzin, an MPO board member and director of the University of South Florida’s Center for Urban Transportation Research. Public input will be critical, he said, because commuters need to know what areas will be served.

Tampa City Councilwoman Lisa Monteleone, another MPO board member, urged the study group to get more public input on the front end of the study. County Commissioner Mark Sharpe agreed, saying public input on the front end is important.

Joe Lopano, chief executive officer of Tampa International Airport, called the presentation “a good first step. We all recognize that we have a problem today, but we need to look out 20 years when the airport will have double the number of passengers.”

And young people will want to use this express bus system, he said. They much prefer sitting and having access to wifi for texting, twittering and emailing than driving, he said.

“Other communities are roaring forward” with similar express lane plans, Sharpe said. “The public wants this and it takes a long time,” so roaring forward is the way to proceed.

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Bay Times story on Metropolitan Ministries:

New housing program offers hope to the homeless

• By Zack Peterson, Times Staff Writer

Monday, June 2, 2014 6:22pm

TAMPA — Three months ago, when she was homeless, Danielle Price would wake up in the front seat of her car and check her baby for bugbites.

At the time, she was struggling with alcohol. She was sleeping in random parking lots, alienated from her oldest son, Mason. She was afraid that child protection services would take Maddox, her 6-month-old.

Price, 28, finally sought refuge at Hope Hall, a $1.2 million partnership between Hillsborough County and Metropolitan Ministries. Completed May 1, the program provides free emergency short-term housing for 48 families and single women.

It comes in the wake of embarrassing revelations last year about the county’s Homeless Recovery program, which for years funneled millions of public dollars to slum owners while placing families in unsafe living conditions. The Tampa Bay Times received a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the program, and its eventual shutdown by the county.

A roomful of officials gathered Monday at Metropolitan Ministries for a tour of the new facilities. They listened to Price’s story and applauded the nonprofit’s breadth of resources, which include GED classes, a guaranteed three meals a day and workforce preparation.

County Commissioner Sandy Murman acknowledged the Housing Recovery debacle, which she coined the “dark cloud” hanging over homeless services in Hillsborough County. She said Hope Hall will be a “bright light” that restores confidence among families trying to get back on their feet.

“It’s really going to take us forward,” Murman said. “This partnership is going to enable people to do so many things.”

Tim Marks, president and CEO of Metropolitan Ministries, said tenants can stay at Hope Hall for up to four months. He said several factors will keep the program high-quality: 24-hour staffers, counseling and child care, case workers who help families locate new jobs and housing.

Despite being short-term housing, Hope Hall should generate healthy outcomes, Marks said. If families need more time, they can graduate to Uplift U, a program that allows families to stay another six to nine months.

“What we’re finding,” Marks said, “is that one year after leaving that program, 97 percent are living in stable housing.”

After three weeks living in room 156 at Hope Hall, Price said she’s already noticed a difference. She found work at the Salvation Army near University Mall and stopped abusing alcohol. She communicates regularly with her sons. Once she nails down housing, she plans on leaving the center as soon as next week.

“All I’m waiting for,” Price said, “is my bus card.”

Zack Peterson can be reached at (813) 226-3446 or zpeterson@tampabay.com.

Commissioner Murman mentioned in this Creative Loafing article on transportation:

Hillsborough

Hillsborough County group on transit votes to reconfigure HART

Posted by Mitch Perry on Wed, May 28, 2014 at 5:26 PM

Although all indications had been leading in this direction, there still appeared to be some surprise in the room when the members of the Hillsborough County Transportation Leadership today voted unanimously to reconfigure HART to make it the central transit agency for the county moving forward.

But the execution is complicated, said Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill, who introduced his plan toward the end of the two-hour meeting held at the County Center. Among the thorny details are exactly how the individual votes of each member will be weighted — the Leadership group consists of the seven Hillsborough County Commissioners and the mayors of Tampa, Temple Terrace and Plant City. 

The current HART board includes seven members representing Hillsborough County (including three County Commissioners), three members representing Tampa, a Temple Terrace representative, and two members representing the state.

Merrill said the plan to remodel HART is similar to what the county did a year and a half ago with what used to be called the Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County, and has now been into the Tampa Hillsborough Homeless Initiative. “We’re using the existing organizational governing structure and then rearranging some of the pieces to make it more effective for the customers that we serve,” Merrill told CL after the meeting. 

And in an interesting twist based on Commissioner Victor Crist’s suggestion, the plan would incorporate the county’s troubled Public Transportation Commission, something that met the initial approval of Mayor Bob Buckhorn, a critic of the agency.

As to what this means for the current HART board? Well, it means that it could be dissolved at some point in the near future. But Merrill says that the new agency would maintain the two members appointed by the governor, allowing the reorganization to occur without involving the state legislature. 

Always hovering around the subject of expanded transportation choices in the county is the eventuality a referendum of some sort in 2016; Merrill, in creating this remodeled agency now, would give it plenty of time to craft such a plan, nearly two-and-half years in the future.

Commissioner Kevin Beckner said it was important that members of the County’s MPO literally be seated at the table. Merrill agreed, but said they would be non-voting members. 
“I’m a little concerned,” said Tampa Tea Party co-founder Sharon Calvert after the meeting. She said that the fact that the board will now be made up of elected officials, as opposed to HART’s current board structure, could bring cronyism and corruption. 

The vote on reconfiguring HART came after a meeting that was dominated by discussion about reconfiguring or expanding roads in Tampa and Hillsborough County. One of the more interesting suggestions made to Jean Duncan, the city of Tampa’s Transportation Manager, came from County Commissioner Sandy Murman, who said she believed that busy Howard Avenue in South Tampa should have its lanes increased from two to four. “Something’s gotta give,” she said, referring to the increased congestion in the area due to its centrality to so many amenities.

And Hillsborough County Strategic Planning Director Eric Johnson presented the findings of a recent survey taken of County residents regarding transportation. The one finding that created the most discussion was the over 70 percent of those surveyed that said they never use public transit. The next-highest poll ranking was 11 percent — for those who do so only on special occasions. 
BOCC Chairman Mark Sharpe said that was why transit needed to be changed in the county. “My frustration is that it wasn’t designed for the choice rider but it was created as the last option,” he said about the current level of service in Hillsborough. “You redesign it, the numbers will change,” he added.

Commissioner Murman mentioned in this Tampa Tribune article on the Entrepreneur Collaborative Center:

POLITICS

Hillsborough plans business center to aid startups

By Mike Salinero | Tribune Staff  
Published: May 21, 2014   |   Updated: May 21, 2014 at 05:03 PM

 TAMPA — Hillsborough County is planning to create a new small-business help center which will emphasize technology-oriented startups.

 County commissioners voted 6-0 to create what will be called an Entrepreneur Collaborative Center, where enterprising residents can meet to share ideas and get help in starting new firms or growing existing businesses. Assistant County Administrator Ron Barton said the center will require doubling the county’s small-business program budget to nearly $1 million. Part of that money will be spent on leasing a building, probably in Ybor City. But Barton said he also wants to fund a “entrepreneur in residence” position, which could be an individual or group with experience in starting new businesses and raising venture capital.

“This is where we bring in folks who are serial entrepreneurs,” Barton said. “This is really the mentoring aspect.”

The new facility came out of Commissioner Sandy Murman’s request that the county find a centralized location for its Small Business Information Center.

The county provides workshops and one-on-one consulting for small businesses at the center, 7102 N. 56th St., but several nonprofit partners have left for other sites, citing the inconvenience of the location north of Sligh Avenue.

Barton said the center’s budget is significantly funded by nonprofit organizations connected with business development. The county’s share is between $400,000 and $500,000, he said.

He asked commissioners to double that amount for the new entrepreneurial center.

In addition to providing space and mentoring, Barton broached using public money to support a loan pool for small businesses. That idea drew fire from Commissioner Kevin Beckner, who said he could not support appropriating taxpayer money for loans to private businesses.

“I would have deep concerns about government entering into venture capital and funding that type of idea. … That would take some convincing,” Beckner said.

In response, County Administrator Mike Merrill said Barton had not discussed the loan pool idea with his boss.

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Bay Times article on County Administration:

Hillsborough government adds another to its six-figure execs

Will Hobson, Times Staff Writer

Wednesday, May 21, 2014 9:31pm

TAMPA — A lucrative year for Hillsborough County government’s top brass continued Wednesday.

County commissioners confirmed the latest six-figure addition to County Administrator Mike Merrill’s executive team — Liana Lopez, the new chief communications administrator, who will earn $165,000 a year.

Her hiring comes after the March hiring of Deputy County Administrator Greg Horwedel at $180,000 and pay raises for Merrill (to $217,350), County Attorney Chip Fletcher ($212,175) and Merrill’s entire executive team.

This new era of county government largesse is a massive shift from years past, when executive raises prompted heated, hours-long discussions among commissioners and contributed to the ouster of Merrill’s predecessor.

The executive hires and raises do not require adding to the county’s budget, Merrill has said, because of the elimination of vacant positions and other cuts. The executives oversee a county workforce of more than 4,500 and a yearly budget of about $3.5 billion.

“There’s a much higher level of trust for Mike than there was in 2010,” said Commissioner Sandy Murman. “He was kind of under the shadows of the old administration for a while.”

Lopez, 40, will oversee the county’s communication efforts, including marketing, the county’s website, social media, citizen complaints and media relations. Most recently director of communications for Visit Tampa Bay, the county’s tourism agency, Lopez previously was director of public affairs under former Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio.

Two ongoing stories from last year that generated negative attention for the county — problems at the animal shelter and a scandal that ended the Homeless Recovery program — prompted Merrill to start looking for someone else to run the county’s communication efforts.

“I always felt like we were not proactive enough,” Merrill said. “We need to be getting out ahead of stories … or at least not being behind the curve.”

Lopez’s job duties were formerly done by a few different people, but she effectively replaces Helene Marks, Merrill’s chief administrative officer.

Marks, who earns $165,000, will leave the county by the end of the year, Merrill said Wednesday. Merrill is still looking for someone to fill another new position — chief information officer — which will finish out his new six-member executive team, up from four.

The quick, unanimous votes to approve Merrill’s hires this year stand in stark contrast to the first time he tried to reorganize his executive team.

In 2011, commissioners lengthily debated the team of four he wanted to hire and promote, questioned whether one position was necessary, and nixed raises.

Much of the angst then was probably due to circumstances surrounding County Administrator Pat Bean’s firing the year before.

In the midst of the recession, Bean had given several executives raises — and, secretly, one for herself — while other county government employees lost their jobs or saw their wages frozen.

This year’s raises, meanwhile, were not held secret and came in an improved economic climate.

“I don’t mind paying a person well, as long as that person performs,” said commission Chairman Mark Sharpe. “He’ll pay them (executives) well, … but he’s not shy about moving people if they don’t perform.”

For Merrill, the reason for the raises and well-paid hires is simple: He wants good people working for him.

“Its been important to me to be able to hire and keep good people,” he said. “You get what you pay for.”

Will Hobson can be reached at whobson@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3400.