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Archive for the 'Towns' Category

Palm Harbor Fire Rescue

Because Palm Harbor Fire Rescue was celebrating its 50th anniversary at the same time as the Taste of Palm Harbor festivities, there were plenty of old fire trucks in attendance. This was one of them.

Tags: north pinellas, Palm Harbor

Eagle from the Lowry Park Zoo

 
This American Eagle looks so perfect that he almost doesn’t look real in this picture, but he was very much alive and regal looking. The Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa sent this fine eagle over to the Taste of Palm Harbor, and he got quite a reaction from the crowd.

Tags: taste of Palm harbor

Taste of Palm Harbor

Here’s another view of the crowd that showed up at the taste of Palm Harbor event this afternoon (Sunday, Oct. 1)

Tags: Palm Harbor

J.J. Gandy’s pies

J.J. Gandy’s Pies was on hand, offering up samples of their famous Key Lime pie and other flavors. We tried the chocolate cheesecake pie, and it was great. We’ve written on the website before about J.J. Gandy’s — they are a Palm Harbor company that makes some of the best Key Lime pie anywhere. Many of the best restaurants in the area don’t even try to match J.J. Gandy’s quality — they just buy their pies from J.J. Gandy’s and sell them to their own patrons. You can also buy pies over-the-counter from the J.J. Gandy’s location at 3725 Alt. 19, Palm Harbor. Look for more about J.J. Gandy’s in the “Local Partners” section of my website at www.bethfrederick.com

Tags: j.j. gandy's pies, key lime pie, Palm Harbor

The Melting Pot

Here’s the crew from The Melting Pot — a happy and very helpful bunch. If you’ve never tried The Melting Pot, you definitely should. They offer meat and cheese fondue dishes, as well as out-of-this-world chocolate fondue dessert specialties, to name just a few. The company operates 85 restaurants around the country, but the one that should interest you is at 25822 US19N, on the west side of the road just south of Enterprise.

Counters

Tags: Palm Harbor, restaurants

Taste of Palm Harbor

One of the most enjoyable local events of the year is coming up this Sunday — the annual Taste of Palm Harbor, which will be held from noon to 6 p.m. in historic Old Downtown Palm Harbor, which is centered around Florida Avenue between Alt. 19 and County Road 1.

This year, 20 local restaurants will be taking part, offering samples of their best dishes in exchange for tickets that you buy for 50-cents each. Most of the dishes cost three to six tickets, but a few are a little more.

Half of the money raised goes to the restaurants; the other half goes to the sponsor, the Palm Harbor Women’s Club, which dispurses the money to such charities as the the Humane Society of North Pinellas, Hospice, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and a number of others.

This year a second event is piggybacking on the Taste of Palm Harbor. Palm Harbor Fire Rescue will be celebrating 50 years of service to the community at the same time. An open house will be held between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. at Station #66, 1123 Illinois Ave.

A fish fry will start at 11:30 a.m. and there will begames, rides, exhibits and an antique fire truck exhibition.

Tags: North Pinellas County, taste of Palm harbor

More Dunedin tax news

Dunedin officials seem to have gotten the property tax message. Just a couple of weeks ago, city commissioners agreed to a five percent reduction in the millage rate after local property taxpayers demanded some action on tax relief. Now, they’ve bumped that reduction to 7.5 percent.

That means a an overall tax reduction of $411,742. The city’s budget will be $57.9 million.

The city says it won’t have to cut services, but it will have to dig into several city reserve funds, especially the Capital Improvements Fund, the Facilities Maintenance Fund and the Leisure Services Capital Improvement Fund.

Tags: taxes Dunedin North Pinellas County

Can you stand another tax story?

I don’t know whether I can or not, but people are sure interested in what’s going on around here property tax-wise.

Anyway … the city of Clearwater isn’t avoiding the great property tax debate. Tonight, city commissioners will meet (that’s Thursday night, September 21) to talk about budget issues for the coming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. And they are likely to lower the tax rate a bit more. Earlier, the commissioners lowered the millage rate from 5.75 to 5.42, and it looks now as though the council will be lowering the rate some more, this time to 5.25.

The council is expected to meet again in the near future to discuss whether some city services will have to be cut because of the property tax cuts. City officials have pointed out that the city is dealing with increased costs like everyone else, costs that include higher fuel costs, higher insurance rates and increases in city pension contributions.

Tags: Clearwater, taxes

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

No tax cut in St. Pete?

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve seen several stories about how rising property valuations have increased property taxes, and how some counties and municipalities have been at least thinking about cutting the mill rate to provide some property tax relief.

Of course, the trouble is that cuts in the mill rate are seldom (never?) substantial enough to get property taxes down to where they were before the property values began to rise. Some government jurisdictions find the prospect of “found money” just too tempting to ignore. It’s like getting a substantial tax increase without having to actually vote on raising taxes.

The latest story appeared today in the St. Petersburg TIMES, headlined “Rising fees may cancel tax cut.” St. Petersburg recently announced a 5 percent tax cut for 2007. But now the city is saying that increases in water, sewer and trash pickup fees will go up an average of $4.15 per month, and that will effectively wipe out any of the tax cut benefits.

The St. Petersburg City Council will consider the fee increases during their two meetings in September.

This has been a tough year for homeowners and prospective homeowners in Florida. As I write this, the latest tropical storm/hurricane (Ernesto) is heading our way, and all the hurricanes of the past couple of years has driven home insurance rates way up. Also, the hot real estate market of the past two years has pushed up property values, and that has led to great increases in property taxes.

Counties and municipalities need to have the political will to return a portion of that new-found money to the taxpayers. I read recently that Pinellas County will enjoy an additional $140+ million this year just because of new tax revenue resulting from higher property values.

I realize that the cost of running government goes up, and that someone has to pay for the services that we demand. Still, county and municipal commissioners shouldn’t look at all this additional revenue as “found money.” The people who pay these taxes are in serious need of some relief, and our elected officials need to deliver it.

Tags: St. Petersburg, taxes