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Here’s one example…

“Florida lawmakers seek to delay Clearwater’s Drew Street overhaul”: So reads the headline of a recent news story published in the Tampa Bay Times (Tracey McManus, April 28, 2023).

McManus tell us in her news story, “When the Clearwater City Council reaffirmed its support for a safety overhaul of Drew Street on April 4, it was the only approval the Florida Department of Transportation needed to advance design work on the east-west corridor notorious for crashes.

On Friday (4/28/23), state Sen. Ed Hooper, R-Clearwater, intervened with language in the state budget to withhold funding until the department conducts another study on how the lane reconfigurations would impact traffic.”

Those of us who live in Clearwater and who also try to pay attention to shenanigans in and around City Hall have been kept very, very busy recently.

Following about 2 decades of leadership failures evidenced by clear signs of significant deterioration in management efficiency, the City of Clearwater reached a new lower limit of performance around mid-2020.

Following a mayoral election in March 2020 which returned a former political hack to the office of Mayor, the City has operated in a morass of “Chaos and Crisis” where malevolent leadership led to insider decisions and some bad outcomes which are evidenced by observable:

1. Excessive and continual management and supervisory turnover;
2. Rising levels of overall employee dissatisfaction;
3. Measurable decreases in critical employee productivity measures;
4. Poorly executed public projects, including unexpected delays (Marina, The Bluffs, and more…);
5. Extreme cost overruns on public projects (Imagine Clearwater, and many more);
6. Unusual and/or abrupt failures of existing programs (Trees, anyone?);
7. Unexplained or poorly communicated public sector programs and/or projects;
8. Decision making ‘in darkness’ where the entire case is not presented to the public in a fair and honest fashion.

A recent comment from Whit Blanton at Forward Pinellas summarizes the whimsical and erratic behavior of some Clearwater elected officials we — the taxpayers, voters and stakeholders of Clearwater — have sadly become accustomed to,

“The City of Clearwater has voted three times for this project, the Forward Pinellas Board has voted 10 times,” Blanton said. “The neighbors have been clamoring for this for years going back to 2004. We finally got momentum and there seems to be forces that are unhappy with the outcome.”

I recently heard a politician say, “Let’s not let perfect be the enemy of good.”

Another study? More delays, deaths and despair on Drew Street?

It’s well known that Tammany Hall disappeared from the NYC political scene sometime after WWII.

What was not known until very recently:  Tammany Hall didn’t really disappear, it just moved to Tallahassee to help support people like Senator Hooper and his backroom cronies.

All this time we thought Florida was the Sunshine State, a place where important decisions are made in public….

Or, as the infamous Governor DeSantis tells us, “Florida is where WOKE goes to die.”

Well, I just got abruptly and rudely awakened by some really bad behavior by some Florida politicians, so call me WOKE!

And I’m certainly not here to die!

Here’s a call to action to all of my neighbors who are just fed up: Please join me!