Title

Archive for the 'North Pinellas County' Category

Taste of Palm Harbor

I mentioned a day or two ago that the annual Taste of Palm Harbor event would be held today (Sunday). Bill and I stopped by, walked around, and sampled some of the food that was made available by a number of local participating restaurants. We had a great time and enjoyed the food.

The above picture looks up Florida Avenue, which usually gets blocked off to traffic whenever events are held in Old Palm Harbor.

Tags: Palm Harbor, restaurants

Take a walk on the Pinellas Trail

The Pinellas Trail is one of Pinellas County’s greatest assets. It is a walking and biking trail that runs for more than 30 miles from south Pinellas County to North Pinellas County. It gets lots of use in Dunedin, Palm Harbor, Tarpon Springs and throughout the northern part of the county, but South County people love it, as well.

The trail began in the early 1980s, when the CSX Railroad didn’t know what to do with a 34-mile right-of-way that ran north-south through the county. The line was no longer viable for train service.

That led to the Pinellas County Metropolitan Planning Organization and then to the Bicycle Advisory Committee and the Pedestrian Safety Committee, groups which thought the railroad right-of-way would make a great recreational trail.

The Pinellas Trail started out as a five-mile section in Largo and Seminole. It grew rapidly from there.

Now, the trail is hugely popular and is used by about 90,000 people every month, linking parks, coastal areas and residential neighborhoods. There are eight overpasses that allow walkers and bikers to avoid busy intersections. There are refreshment stops and strategically-placed bike racks.

Like most things, there are rules. Here are some of them:

– Alcoholic beverages are prohibited
– Pedestrians and handicapped have the right of way
– Bicyclists must obey all traffic controls and signals, and are not permitted to wear headphones.
– Under 16 bikers must wear helmets
– Motorized vehicles and horses are prohibited
– Pets are allowed, but must be kept on a 6-foot leash.

To learn more, visit http://www.pinellascounty.org/trailgd/about.htm

Tags: pinellas county, pinellas trail

Orange season once again in Pinellas County

 
It wasn’t too many years ago that North Pinellas County was nothing but orange groves. If you lived in St. Petersburg or some other nearby community, a nice weekend jaunt might be a drive up US19, which back then was little more than a two-lane road, and perhaps stop at a roadside citrus stand for a bag of oranges or grapefruits.

Almost all of those orange groves have given way to housing developments, car dealerships and other businesses. But one roadside stand, Citrus Country Groves, has managed to survive to the present day.

Located on US19 in an unincorporated part of Pinellas County at the corner of Belleair Road between Largo and Clearwater, Citrus Country Groves has soldiered on, offering small cups of free orange juice, bags of citrus fruit and all kinds of touristy gizmos to send back or take back to the friends and neighbors up north. There is even an active orange grove of several acres out back, lcated on what now is pretty expensive real estate.

This year, the owners of Citrus Country Groves took the signs off the building, and people were worried that Citrus Country Groves might have finally decided to sell out. But the owners say the signs were removed only to make it easier to paint the building.

The seasonal business is set to open on schedule, on Oct. 23.

Citrus Country Groves is a Pinellas County landmark. Stop by for a glass of orange juice, and take some home with you while you’re at it.

Counters

Tags: florida oranges, pinellas

… And even more on taxes

 In my last post (about property taxes in Dunedin) I mentioned that Pinellas County property tax revenue will go up this year by $148 million simply because property values have gone up so much.

Now, Pinellas County has taken steps to reduce property taxes in response to pressure from county taxpayers.

Yesterday (that would be Tuesday, Sept. 19), county commissioners agreed to lower property tax rates to a level that hasn’t been seen since around 1990. The action came during a County Commission meeting that was attended by more than 250 taxpayers, some of them a bit irate.

The commission agreed to lower property taxes by 10.3 percent. Many of the taxpayers in attendance said they wanted even deeper cuts, but the commissioners said it was too late in the budget cycle to reduce taxes more than that. They said the state of Florida will have to get the message from angry taxpayers if property tax rates are to go down any more — the state has dealt with its own tax revenue problems by pushing a lot of revenue requirements down to the local level.

What the lower tax rate will mean is around $36 million less in revenue for Pinellas County. Commissioners say they will have to make budget cuts and make cuts in programs and staff to meet the new spending limits.

Still, the Pinellas County budget stands at $1.926 billion for 2007. That’s Billion, with a “B”.

Small business owners have been particularly hard-hit by increasing taxes. If you have a small business that owns property, you don’t enjoy the benefits of the annual cap on property assessments that apply to homeowners who occupy the homes they own.

-0-

If you’d like to see what area people are saying about taxes, go to www.itsyourtimes.com and scroll down to “taxes are killing us.” Itsyourtimes.com is a blog run by the St. Petersburg TIMES.

Tags: North Pinellas County, taxes

More taxes, this time from Dunedin again

Now, the City Commission has reduced the tax rate even more, in response to angry local taxpayers who are upset (like everyone else) about increasing property taxes.

Throughout Tampa Bay and across Florida (and beyond Florida, as well), taxpayers are getting up in arms about property tax rates. In this area, at least, the culprit is exploding property values. Home valuations have shot up, and that increase in value results in higher property taxes.

Here’s an example of what that means locally; Pinellas County will rake in $148 million more in tax revenue this year without having to increase tax rates one bit — the huge increase in property tax valuations is at fault.

Anyway, back to Dunedin: A few days ago the City Commission voted to drop the millage rate by 5 percent in response to angry taxpayers. Scores of taxpayers showed up at a commission meeting and pleaded with commissioners to provide some relief. And the commissioners said at the meeting that they will consider additional tax rate cuts, even thought the result may be cuts in city services.

Across the region and the state, it is looking more and more like a full-fledged taxpayer revolt in the making. Stay tuned.

Tags: Dunedin, pinellas county, taxes

Baby Boomers will still come to Florida

Florida’s real estate market may have slowed up, but it still has an undeniably rosy future. That according to Richard Hokenson, a former Wall Street economist who spoke last week in Tampa Bay.

Hokenson stated the obvious during his speech, saying that the huge tidal wave of Baby Boomers coming up on retirement will ensure a healthy real estate marketplace in Florida over the long term.

“There’s a baby boom tsunami and a fixed supply of coastal land,” Hokenson told his audience.

What’s the biggest threat to retiring baby boomers’s plans for the future? Hokenson says it’s their ability to get rid of what he called “NIKES” — No Income Kids with Education.

Tags: baby boomers, Florida

Good news from Tampa Bay’s other airport

The downside of all that praise is that it tends to overshadow Tampa Bay’s other airport, St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport, which sits in Pinellas County on the other side of the bay at the western end of the Howard Franklin Bridge, in St. Pete.

St. Petersburg-Clearwater is no slouch when it comes to size — it sits on about 2,000 acres, is fully-certified and has three runways, including one 8,500-footer. It is also home to the most active Coast Guard station in the world.

Things were going really well for St. Petersburg-Clearwater, and the facility hosted 1.3 million passengers in 2004. But then, the airport losat its two biggest carriers, and that number has declined drastically, to about 400,000 passengers this year.

But now there’s good news for the airport. Allegiant Air, a discount airline that serves travelers mostly in the Midwest and East, has agreed to bring a number of new flights to St. Petersburg-Clearwater, starting in November. The first flights will come from Allantown, Pa., Lansing, Mich., and Rockford and Peoria, Ill. There will be more flights from other smaller cities after that.

The new Allegiant flights are expected to swell passenger numbers at the airport by about 250,000 flyers per year.

Tags: airport tampa bay clearwater

Property taxes UP in Pinellas County

I’ve written recently about property valuations going up in nearby counties. But I haven’t been able to report anything about Pinellas County because county tax officials hadn’t released any figures.

That’s changed. As expected, the property valuation numbers for Pinellas are up. WAY up.

According to Property Tax Appraiser Jim Smith, the value of property in Pinellas County has risen 20.3 percent over last year. That means that property in the county is now valued at $75.7 billion.

In 2005, property values rose 14.6 percent; in 2004, the increase was 10.7 percent. So this year’s valuation increase is huge.

Over in neighboring Hillsborough County (that’s where Tampa is located, for all you out-of-staters), the property valuation is up even more than in Pinellas — 22 percent.

Property owners may not be too happy about the sharp increase, because it will undoubtedly mean higher property taxes. But county budget officials are smiling, because the increase in valuations will mean about $45 million in additional county tax revenues. According to the County Commission, at least some of that increase will be returned to the taxpayers as part of a property tax cut.

That cut might total $10 million – $11 million off the $45 million increase.

Tags: pinellas, taxes

Take a dog to lunch

I guess Gov. Jeb Bush likes dogs, because late in June he signed Florida’s new “Doggie Dining Law,” which allows dogs to accompany their owners to restaurants that have outdoor dining areas.

Now, there is a lot going on in Florida right now — issues like offshore oil drilling or what to do about skyrocketing homeowners insurance rates — but a lot of public attention has been paid recently to whether people should be able to take their dogs out to dinner.

I have a Golden Retriever, Max, who likes to eat everything in sight (see the accompanying picture of Max begging for a lobster shell), but I guess I don’t have a strong opinion about whether dogs should be allowed in outdoor eating areas. I do believe that I’ll be leaving Max at home when we go out to eat, though.

Here’s more details on the new law: It is a three-year pilot program that lets local governments decide whether to exempt restaurants from rules forbidding dogs from entering restaurants, as long as the restaurants have outdoor eating areas.

Officials in both Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties say they have other work to do that is more important, so they have no immediate plans to adopt the new state law.

Tags: dogs, pinellas county

Pinellas Schools choice program

Sometimes people will look at new homes with me and say something like, “I see there is a nice elementary school right around the corner. Is that where my kids will be going?”

The answer is always, “Well, maybe — or maybe not.”

Here’s why:

Pinellas County has something called the Choice Plan, in which parents have to apply for their childrens’ admission to a particular school. Any student who is a resident of Pinellas County can apply for admission to any school in the county, no matter where it is.

Parents name schools that are their first, second and third choices. If there is room at the first choice school, that’s where the kids go. If not, they go to the second choice, or occasionally the third choice.

This seems like sort of a complex system, but here is why it is in place:

Up until 2000, Pinellas County had forced busing, a program that had been put in place to force the integration of public schools. In 2000, the school board came up with a plan to do away with the forced busing, and the Choice Plan was a major component of that. That plan finally went into effect in August of 2003.

All this is a bit complex, but it is not as bad as it sounds. Students stand a very good chance of getting into the school nearest to them, if that is what they want. If that school is full, chances are still good to get into a nearby school. Also, if you want your child to go to the very best rated school, there’s a good chance of that happening, too, although the best-rated schools are often in great demand, as you might expect.

There are also magnet schools, and you can apply to those as well. I’ll probably talk about the magnet schools in another post.

Meanwhile, if you want to learn more about the Choice Plan, you can go to the website at www.pinellaschoice.org.

Tags: pinellas county, real estate, schools