Cleanup Marks Iorio's 1st Term
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By ELLEN GEDALIUS The Tampa TribunePublished: Feb 25, 2007
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TAMPA - Basking in victory four years ago, newly elected Mayor Pam Iorio met with outgoing Mayor Dick Greco in a city hall conference room.
Greco laid out the city's financial problems. The parking fund was short; wastewater and solid waste accounts were in the red.
Beyond that, the city was on the hook for millions of dollars for the struggling Centro Ybor retail complex, and a kickback scandal had rocked the housing department.
"There was some cleaning up to do after eight years of the Greco administration," said former city Councilman Scott Paine, now a government professor at the University of Tampa.
Iorio set out to make the administration her own.
She replaced Greco's top administrators, found fault with an art museum deal well in the works, and told her staff to make neighborhood concerns a priority.
As she heads into the final days of her campaign for a second term, Iorio defines her success in terms of responding to neighborhood concerns and practicing fiscal responsibility.
"She's a breath of fresh air for neighborhoods," said Bill Duvall, president of Tampa Homeowners, an Association of Neighborhoods. "She pays attention."
Unlike her predecessor, she won't commit financing to projects until she's certain they will succeed.
But that fiscal responsibility is sometimes at odds with taxpayers.
Despite property tax windfalls the past four years, she has refused to recommend a lower rate, and she ultimately lost a battle to prevent the city council from cutting the rate. She has raised fees on almost every city service.
She also stumbled with communications gaffes, both in her pursuit of a new art museum site and in imposing an impact fee on developers to improve aging water pipes.
As for major projects that could be her legacy, she can't yet point to one - although late in her term she has tried to lead the region with a push for mass-transit solutions.
Overall, though, Iorio's political defeats have been few.
"Sometimes she might come on a little strong," Councilwoman Mary Alvarez said. "She has conviction - she wants people to buy into what her ideas are. It's a hit or miss, but most of the time, it's a hit."
Iorio As Mayor
Iorio's staff says she is cranking by 6:30 a.m., often sending e-mail.
Her official calendar brims with appointments, usually starting at 8 a.m. She meets regularly with administrators and government officials and attends ribbon-cuttings, groundbreakings and speeches.
Several evenings a week she appears at neighborhood meetings, dines with some of the area's most powerful people, gives speeches and attends receptions. Her Saturdays can be booked with three or four appointments: parades, community events and the like.
Iorio, 47, saves Sundays for watching football with her son and bicycling with her husband.
Her speeches are off-the-cuff.
"She grasps complicated concepts quite readily, but she makes it a point to speak in a way that's understandable," City Attorney David Smith said. "She tells you what she thinks. She won't sugarcoat it for you. You kind of have to respect that honesty."
Parks And Potholes
Iorio said she focuses on the basics: neighborhood concerns that improve quality of life.
She has put money into street-level improvements, spruced up many city parks and created a stormwater fee in an attempt to fix flooding problems. She created the Clean City division to focus on picking up litter.
In fiscal year 2003, the city spent about $2.6 million on neighborhood improvements such as street resurfacing and sidewalks. When Iorio took office, she bumped up that spending to $4.2 million. The city now spends about $6.2 million on neighborhoods.
Neighborhood leaders are pleased.
"We find we're getting most of the things we're asking for," said Gary Ellsworth, president of the South Seminole Heights Civic Association. "The quality of life in the neighborhood has certainly improved."
Ask Iorio to list her accomplishments, and many of them focus on neighborhood concerns.
She talks about a decrease in crime and about the Heights project to redevelop a blighted part of the city. She talks about investing in east Tampa and Drew Park, areas long neglected.
And she talks about downtown redevelopment, the redesigning of Curtis Hixon Park, the Riverwalk, and the explosion of proposed condo towers there and in the nearby Channel District.
"What I would like to do is leave a better Tampa, a well-rounded Tampa," Iorio said.
Art Museum And Property Taxes
Although her political setbacks have been few, they were quite public: a long squabble over where to put the new art museum and a fight with the city council over lowering the property tax rate.
The Greco administration and the Tampa Museum of Art board hired architect Rafael Vinoly to design a building along Ashley Drive and the Hillsborough River. The price reached $76 million, including a $30 million commitment from the city.
After Iorio took office, the museum board couldn't secure the loans to finance the project with deadlines set by Iorio. Iorio extended the deadlines, but frustration mounted. The deal collapsed, and museum leaders blamed the mayor.
Weeks later, Iorio proposed locating the museum in the old federal courthouse downtown. Art museum leaders didn't hide their disdain for the plan, and before long Iorio did an about-face and sought yet another site.
She should have lined up support for the courthouse plan before announcing it publicly, said Paine, the former council member.
"When you're mayor, you can't do trial balloons that often," Paine said.
Iorio accepts the criticism.
"I probably underestimated the ill will that had been generated by the fall of the Vinoly," Iorio said. "I think nothing I had suggested at that point would have been accepted. Nothing."
Although she failed politically on the art museum issue, Iorio is generally praised for handling it well financially. She didn't move forward with a project that taxpayers could have had to bail out in years to come.
But when the city council wanted to lower the property tax rate, Iorio refused to go along.
Iorio presented a budget that kept the tax rate stable for the 18th consecutive year. The city council balked and cut the tax rate by 2 percent, saving the owner of a $200,000 home about $23 a year.
Iorio was forced to retreat and find ways to trim about $3 million from her budget, in part by reducing the funding for nonprofit agencies. The city council protested again and found other areas to cut.
Councilman John Dingfelder called the process unhealthy and said the mayor should have taken a more collaborative approach.
"At a certain point, when she saw the council wanted to reduce the millage rate, she should have met with us and got onboard," Dingfelder said. "She needed to respect that it's council's role to reduce that millage."
Iorio said the property tax cut wasn't significant enough to be meaningful, and she hears time and again from residents who want more city services, which cost money. True property tax reform, she said, must come from the state.
Paine said Iorio was right from a financial perspective, but he, too, said she should have handled it differently.
"You have to look at it as a failure," Paine said. "It came out as a loss, and that just hurts politically."
Money Matters
Iorio's reluctance to move forward with the art museum project - and her more recent demand that the museum have a healthy endowment before she releases tax money for the building - exemplifies what she describes as her fiscally conservative style.
She socks money away in emergency reserve funds, terrified of the literal rainy day and how devastating a hurricane could be on the city's finances. She wants to build a $15 million emergency reserve to help cover costs during storms or other disasters.
Yet despite a windfall in property tax revenue, average taxpayers pay more for city services than they did before Iorio took office.
She has raised rates and fees for parking, trash pickup, wastewater and water, some by as much as 20 percent. She has created at least two fees - a stormwater assessment and an impact fee to some developers to finance a water pipeline.
Iorio said she has done what she needs to do to keep finances on track and to pay to fix and replace aging infrastructure. But she pushed through a $15,000 raise for the mayoral position, boosting the salary to $150,000, effective in April. She gave bonuses to some of her top administrators, some as much as $6,000.
She negotiated 9 percent raises for the police union but angered Amalgamated Transit Union employees when she proposed slashing their raises in half.
"We are the stepchildren of the city," said Martha Stevens, president of the union that represents about 2,500 city employees. "I don't know the reason."
Development Interests
In contrast to neighborhood leaders, developers have had their complaints with Iorio. Since she took office, developers have said the permitting process is slow.
"We're still challenged there," said Joseph Narkiewicz, executive vice president of the Tampa Bay Builders Association. "It's a tough nut to crack. It's still slow. It's still not quite up to where it needs to be."
Nevertheless, the association is endorsing Iorio in her re-election bid, pleased with her regional approach to land-use and transportation issues.
John Lum, co-owner of LIST Group, a development group, is less satisfied. Permitting and other development tasks take at least twice as long as they should, he said.
"It's frustrating," Lum said.
Developers, too, were outraged when the mayor proposed a $1,500-per-unit fee to help finance the distribution of more water in some parts of Tampa. They said they were blindsided by the fee.
Iorio said she regrets the poor communication.
Ybor City
Iorio wants to rid Ybor City of its wild reputation and replace it with a family-friendly atmosphere with lively restaurants and strong retail shops. She points to the increase in residential development as a success.
She reopened Seventh Avenue to traffic on weekend nights to remove partiers from the street. She created a curfew to keep youths away from the Ybor City party scene late at night and pushed through a tougher noise ordinance to rein in loud music.
She also wants to restrict reduced-price alcohol sales but has met resistance at the state level.
Ybor City business owners often complain about Iorio's priorities there.
Thomas Kopian, who runs Creatures of Delight art studio, said Iorio is hurting Ybor.
"The whole district is suffering because she might be antibar," Kopian said. "The bars are suffering. The restaurants are suffering. We are suffering."
Looking Ahead
Iorio knows she has a strong shot at being re-elected.
Her challengers are former fire Chief Aria Green and former police Capt. Marion Lewis, both mounting their first campaigns for public office.
She won't talk about what she might do beyond another term in the mayor's office. Her name has been floated as a likely contender for a proposed county mayor position, but Iorio said the position doesn't exist, and if it is created, she's not sure she would be interested.
Her name also is mentioned as someone who might make a statewide run, but again, Iorio won't speculate.
If she is re-elected, pushing the region to develop a mass-transit plan will be among her priorities. She has asked local agencies to dust off old rail studies to assess how rail could be constructed here.
She hopes to see more progress on the Riverwalk and the redesign of Curtis Hixon Park. And she wants to see the art museum move into a new home.
Bob Buckhorn, a former councilman, predicts Iorio will fare well in her second term.
"In the beginning, she had to pay attention to the details," Buckhorn said. "Now that she is comfortable in the job, you're going to see more legacy-type projects in the second term than in the first term."
Reporter Ellen Gedalius can be reached at (813) 259-7679 or egedalius@tampatrib.com. Keyword: Politics, for the Road To City Hall blog.
WHAT IORIO HAS DONE
Since becoming mayor in 2003, Pam Iorio has:
•Extended health benefits to unmarried partners - homosexual and heterosexual - of city employees.
•Angered some Ybor City business owners by reopening Seventh Avenue to traffic on weekend nights, creating a curfew to keep youths away from the party scene, pushing through a tougher noise ordinance and trying to outlaw reduced-price alcohol sales.
•Hired the city's first black fire chief, then ousted him 15 months later.
•Defended gay rights after the Hillsborough County Commission voted to refuse to promote, acknowledge or participate in gay pride events.
•Developed a $60 million stormwater plan to fix flooding problems.
•Oversaw a master plan design for the Riverwalk, which will link Tampa Heights with the Channel District.
•Moved forward with a redesign of Curtis Hixon Park.
•Bickered with art museum board members over where to locate a new building.
•Lost her effort to prevent the city council from lowering the property tax rate.
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