Recapping What a Week it Was

Wow!  What a week this has been and another Blog Friday self-imposed deadline missed.  Okay let's recap this week.

First of all you might have seen some changes taking place.  Clearwater Patch contacted this blog and asked to simulblog onto their site.  This is a great opportunity for the Clearwater Neighborhoods Coalition as we are a non-profit entity that serves to promote positive changes for neighborhoods in Clearwater Florida.  THANK YOU Clearwater Patch!  Please be sure to bookmark  this site as you will find a lot of local news and other information that other outlets miss.

First of all our on-line poll from, "What’s the Plan with Pinellas County Emergency Medical Services?" that asked if Pinellas County's EMS and fires services should be consolidated showed that 83% of the respondents answered "Yes" and 17% responded "No."  While this discussion is not even close to taking place it seems clear that our Pinellas County administrators need to start steering the discussions in this direction.

Next we blogged "Those Mathematical Minds in Tallahassee" that reviewed the rush to privatize some of Florida's prisons.  WHOOPS!  This story is unraveling by the second and it is far from over.  This blog will definitely address this item next week with some theories about what is going on.

The next blog, "Money for Nothing and Your Power Plant for Free" was about the mysterious nuclear power plant that may or may not be built in Levy County.  There's no rush to build it but there was a big rush to get money from you.  The blog also talked about  Governor Scott's plan to throw some of the utility costs that businesses pay onto the accounts of residential consumers.  In fairness to our governor that plan hasn't surfaced in a while but you can be assured something else is in his mind and YOU will probably get stuck with the bill.

Our last blog, "One Fine Mess in Clearwater" talked about the Church of Scientology asking for a reduction of the City of Clearwater's Municipal Code Enforcement Board fine that was levied in 2006.  Judging from the e-mails and comments on that blog it seems apparent some readers didn't get it.  So, here's an outlined summary:

• The Church of Scientology should at the very least pay what it believes it owes
• If the Church of Scientology wants to contest the remainder it has every right to do that
• The City of Clearwater should not have let this project, or any other project, continue for this amount of time without either getting fines paid up to date or permits extended
• The blog alluded to making some changes like,
• If fines aren't paid up to date like, every 90 days for example, or if an approved permit extension is not requested for example THEN eminent domain, or some other adverse possession procedure takes place and the site gets a date with a bulldozer or an auctioneer, or both - Maybe Criss Angel might help out on future problems
• Although not expressly written in the blog, the city could require a performance bond to maintain compliance with these these kinds of projects in the future

So in other words what was learned from this situation?  How will it be prevented in the future?  That was it, really.  Did you read something else?

Contact us to find out more about the Clearwater Neighborhoods Coalition.  You can comment about this blog below or you can take this to our forum.