Courtesy of Carley Lewis At his May 24 retirement party, the city gave Dayton Saltsman a print of “Macbeth and the Three Witches,” an 1855 painting by Théodore Chassériau.
By NANCY McCANN USFSP Student Reporter
SOUTH PASADENA – When city commissioner Gail Neidinger wants to know something about Shakespeare, she knows where to turn.
Dayton Saltsman, who just retired as the city’s fire chief and director of public safety, has a bachelor’s degree with a concentration in philosophy, a master’s degree that included study abroad at the University of Oxford, and a passion for the bard and his plays.
So when Neidinger asked Saltsman when Ophelia dies, a question from her crossword puzzle, he had a quick, correct answer: “Hamlet, Act 4.”
And when she pointed to figures on the box top of a puzzle on Shakespearean characters, he correctly identified every one of them.
“I am drawn to Shakespeare because he has insight into human behavior and all its manifest ways,” said Saltsman.
As something of a Renaissance man, Saltsman, 68, might seem out of place in a firehouse. But when he retired May 31, he had spent 36 years in fire service in Pinellas County, the last 10 as chief in South Pasadena.
“I didn’t think I would have a long career in fire service,” he said. “I thought I would eventually be teaching philosophy.”
Nancy McCann | USFSP The city’s fire station, built in 1978, needs to be updated or replaced.
Saltsman grew up in St. Petersburg. After graduating from the University of South Florida, he became a firefighter and paramedic and worked in intensive care at Palms of Pasadena Hospital while earning an associate degree in nursing. He also led tours at the Salvador Dali Museum.
In 2014, he earned a master’s in liberal studies through the online program at Excelsior College in Albany, N.Y. His studies took him to England for short courses on Shakespeare and novelist Jane Austen at Exeter College at the University of Oxford.
His master’s thesis was titled “The Tragedy of Hamlet: Shakespeare’s Response to Plato.”
In South Pasadena, a city of 5,000, the fire chief is also the director of public safety. In addition to fire protection and emergency medical services, the department is responsible for hurricane preparedness, various safety programs for residents, and coordination with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, which handles policing inside the city.
The firefighters, who are also paramedics or emergency medical technicians, responded to an average of 277 calls a month during fiscal year 2016, including some from outside the city limits when aid was needed by other fire departments. About three-fourths were EMS calls, mostly for falls.
“My job has been challenging because there is more to handle with less resources and more cross responsibilities in a small city,” said Saltsman. “We have fewer people to accomplish a task and fewer people with a wider range of responsibilities.”
Twenty-three applicants made the deadline to be considered as Saltsman’s replacement.
Emery Culverhouse, the deputy fire chief for the last two years, will be acting chief until the position is filled. Culverhouse did not apply to be chief because he thinks he needs more experience, said Neidinger, the city commissioner who oversees the fire and public safety department.
Courtesy of Dayton Saltsman In high school, Saltsman (second from left) played saxophone and keyboard and sang in four-part harmony with The Rhodes VI.
One of the new chief’s biggest tasks, she said, will be exploring the construction of a new fire station. The department’s longtime home at 911 Oleander Way was not built to accommodate female firefighters, and its exercise area is not air-conditioned.
“We don’t want to throw money into an old building,” said Neidinger. “We have to start making plans.”
The outgoing chief, meanwhile, said he has “no concrete plans for retirement.”
Saltsman said he will spend more time with his two daughters and his fiancée.
He will be playing a new Selmer Mark VI tenor saxophone – a throwback to his teenage years, when he played sax and keyboard in a rock band called The Rhodes VI.
Jeffrey Zanker | USFSP Many of the lines connecting private property to the city’s sewage system need replacing, council member Yolanda Roman says.
By DEVIN RODRIGUEZ USFSP Student Reporter
GULFPORT – When heavy rainfall overwhelmed Gulfport’s antiquated sewage system last year, the city was forced to dump partially treated wastewater into Clam Bayou and surrounding waterways.
That prompted legal action by the state and a federal lawsuit against the city by a coalition of private nonprofit groups.
The state response came from the Department of Environmental Protection, which fined the city $144,000 for illegal dumping.
The federal lawsuit, filed by Suncoast Waterkeeper and two other nonprofits, alleges that the city violated the federal Clean Water Act. Earlier this month, a federal district judge declined the city’s request to dismiss the lawsuit.
Gulfport “is aggressively defending the cases, which is a disappointment,” said Justin Bloom, the executive director for Suncoast Waterkeeper. “We are open to settling.”
The city of St. Petersburg, which also saw its sewage system overwhelmed by the heavy rains, has been sued by the coalition of nonprofits, too. The city was fined $820,000 by the state.
The Clean Water Act, which was enacted in 1972, is designed to regulate dumping by government agencies and private business and protect clean drinking water and the environment. It is administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but nonprofits like Waterkeeper can file civil lawsuits against local governments for alleged violations.
Gulfport has entered into a consent agreement with the state DEP to settle that agency’s case against the city. But Bloom said he doesn’t think that the agreement goes far enough.
“We are trying to come up with some agreement that will be enforceable under the federal court,” Bloom said. “These consent decrees don’t work in the long run.”
The consent agreement came after the FDEP fined the city $144,000 in civil penalties for the waste.
“When enforcement is necessary, the department takes corrective action and uses every tool at its disposal to hold offenders accountable,” said Shannon Herbon, the external affairs coordinator for the DEP. “If regulated entities do not comply, the department does and will take enforcement actions.”
But now Gulfport is asking DEP for permission to use the $144,000 it owes in fines on a pollution prevention program to improve the city’s wastewater infrastructure.
A consent order drafted by City Manager James O’Reilly would give the city permission to invest $127,500 in the program. The city is seeking public feedback before its submits the proposed order to the DEP.
City Council member Yolanda Roman said she hopes the city can use the money in a grant program designed to encourage residents to upgrade their home sewage systems.
Buildings in the city are connected to the city’s wastewater system by so-called “lateral lines.” The grant would help replace many old lateral lines, which sometimes become overburdened during the rainy season.
Lateral lines are owned by the privately property owner, not the city. Replacing them can be expensive, especially if they are old and lengthy.
If the city could provide grants to help offset the cost, Roman said, it would encourage property owners to participate.
Nancy McCann | USFSP Greg McCreery, 39, has to cobble together several philosophy courses on two campuses each semester to make an average annual salary of $35,000. “There’s always a risk I won’t make enough money” to support his family, he says.
By NANCY McCANN USFSP Student Reporter
One of the last things college students expect to learn is that their instructor is living below the poverty level.
Or can’t afford to take a modest vacation.
Or is working three jobs.
But that is the reality for many of the temporary, part-time teachers around the country known as adjuncts.
In the Southeast, they are typically paid between $1,800 and $2,700 per course each semester, although some make significantly more, depending on the individual and institution.
Consider the numbers at USF St. Petersburg:
Almost half of the faculty in 2016 – 128 of the 269 teachers, or 48 percent – were adjuncts. In 2015, it was 138 of the 280 teachers, or 49 percent.
Adjuncts taught 39 percent of all undergraduate student credit hours and 68 percent of all undergraduate course sections in 2015, according to numbers collected by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. In graduate programs, adjuncts taught 25 percent of the courses and credit hours.
On average, USFSP adjuncts earned around $8,180 per year by teaching about 25 to 30 percent of a full-time load, according to a 2015 university report. The average annual salary for full-time USFSP faculty was $79,496.
Greg McCreery, 39, an adjunct who teaches philosophy on the St. Petersburg and Tampa campuses, said he usually has six classes in the fall, five in the spring and one in the summer. His average annual salary? About $35,000 for a married man with two young children.
A few years ago, he said, he lost health care benefits because he came just short of the required teaching load.
“I’m a full-time teacher who has to grade and take care of students, but every semester I have to find classes to teach,” said McCreery. “There’s always a risk I won’t make enough money or have benefits. We (adjuncts) have no guarantees.”
After years of complaints, some adjuncts like McCreery are beginning to take action.
On April 20, a group representing adjuncts on the three campuses in the USF system – St. Petersburg, Tampa and Sarasota-Manatee – filed a petition to hold a union election sometime in the months ahead.
If a majority of USF adjuncts approve, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) would become their agent in seeking better pay, benefits and job security.
“Right now, adjunct faculty cannot earn job security, even after many years of dedicated service,” union organizers told USF adjuncts in an email last year.
“Pay is out of step with Florida’s cost of living, there is a ceiling on opportunities for advancement, and it is routinely unclear whether our classes will be offered in the upcoming or subsequent semesters. These working conditions are detrimental to our efforts to teach effectively, to develop as professionals, and to contribute to the intellectual life of our campus communities. Also, these conditions force some of us into poverty, unable to afford our living expenses.”
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Nancy McCann | USFSP Peter Golenbock, 70, a nationally known sports author, acknowledges that he could – and would – teach his classes on sports and American history for free. But he says the campaign to unionize adjunct teachers at USF’s three campuses is a just cause.
Around the country in recent decades, the number of adjuncts has been rising as college administrators seek to hold down costs, including student tuition and fees.
Adjuncts (not including graduate assistants and other non-tenure track employees) now make up more than 40 percent of the faculty in schools across the United States. In 1975, it was 25 percent.
Part-time faculty typically fall into four groups: Graduate students; retired academics and other professionals; people working in government and private business who like to teach on the side; and teachers striving for a career in higher education by piecing together jobs each semester, sometimes at multiple schools.
At USFSP in recent years, adjuncts have included high-profile figures like Melanie Bevan, a former assistant police chief in St. Petersburg who is now police chief in Bradenton; the late Terry Tomalin, the longtime outdoors editor at the Tampa Bay Times; and Fred Bennett, a former Tampa business executive who helped oversee a program linking the College of Education to youngsters at some of St. Petersburg’s struggling elementary schools.
They typify the group of adjuncts who teach for emotional fulfillment and the chance to give back to the community.
“Don’t tell the administration, but I could do this – and would do this – for nothing,” said Peter Golenbock, 70, a nationally known sports author and law school graduate who teaches classes about sports and American history. “These kids are wonderful, and I enjoy the hell out of it.”
But Golenbock was one of the names on a recent email urging fellow adjuncts to support the union campaign.
“Every other type of faculty (at USF) has a union, including teaching assistants,” he said in an interview. “The cause is just and I can’t imagine anyone disagrees with that.”
He said his support for the union drive “simply has to do with fairness” – adjuncts must be able to “make a living” so the best teachers can be hired.
“I’m rooting for ‘em,” said Golenbock.
But for every financially secure adjunct like Golenbock, it seems, there is an adjunct like McCreery, the philosophy teacher on the Tampa and St. Petersburg campuses who is struggling to make a satisfactory income.
“Did you know that a definition of the word “adjunct” is “an inessential part of something”? he asked.
McCreery said he has no interaction with other philosophy professors, and since he must share an office on the Tampa campus with other adjuncts he can’t leave books and other material there to share with students.
“Right now, we (adjuncts) have no voice,” he said. “Everyone else at the university has union representation. It makes sense that full-time professors make higher salaries (than adjuncts), but we deserve more.”
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Courtesy of Rebecca Skelton Adjuncts “are floating out there alone,” says Rebecca Skelton, who teaches art on the St. Petersburg campus.
Some of the adjuncts around the country who struggle to make ends meet consider the growing, low-paid work force a crisis in higher education.
That has helped spur the drive to form unions – a drive that is gaining momentum.
In the last three years, adjuncts at schools like Duke, Georgetown, Tufts and the University of Chicago have joined SEIU, the union says, and adjuncts at more than 50 other schools are considering it.
The union has already had an impact on some campuses.
According to SEIU, the “median pay per course was 25 percent higher for part-time faculty that had union representation.” The union says that part-time faculty at Tufts now make at least $7,300 per course; adjunct pay at George Washington University increased 32 percent in one department with the first union contract; and Antioch adjuncts now have defined workload expectations and protected health care insurance.
In November, part-time faculty at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa voted 2 to 1 to join SEIU. The victory was announced as the first for adjuncts at a public school in the South.
Courtesy of Jeanette Abrahamsen “There are a lot of people who want to get behind” the union drive, says Jeanette Abrahamsen, who teaches broadcast news and beginning reporting on the Tampa campus.
HCC adjuncts are now seeking a collective contract to improve pay and working conditions.
Rebecca Skelton, a USFSP adjunct who teaches art, and Jeanette Abrahamsen, an adjunct who teaches broadcast news and beginning reporting at USF Tampa, were guests this spring on WMNF’s call-in show, “Radioactivity,” to talk up the union.
Abrahamsen, 31, who has a master’s degree in digital journalism and web design from USFSP, said she had met with other adjuncts to talk about banding together.
“It helped us just to meet and talk about it because a lot of times you don’t know a lot of the other adjuncts. We are working at different times and people are driving around to different campuses,” said Abrahamsen. “Once we started talking about it, we realized there are a lot of people who want to get behind this.”
“We are floating out there alone,” Skelton, 64, told The Crow’s Nest. “You can feel from some of the professors that you are not as good as full-time faculty.”
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Nancy McCann | USFSP Adjuncts are “a great resource” who complement full-time faculty well, says College of Business chief Sridhar Sundaram.
At USFSP, the pay for adjuncts is set by the college they teach in – Arts and Sciences, Business, or Education – and the philosophy on utilizing adjuncts seems to vary from college to college and department to department.
For example, adjuncts make up about half the faculty in the Kate Tiedemann College of Business, and exact numbers can vary from semester to semester, according to Dean Sridhar Sundaram.
Because of their expertise in specialized topics outside the university, he said, adjuncts are paid $3,500 to $5,000 per course. They teach 30 percent of the credit hours in the college, he said.
USFSP business adjuncts include professionals working in government, accounting and investment firms, and health services administration.
The majority of core and introductory courses are taught by full-time faculty, while adjuncts teach electives, Sundaram said.
“The spirit of using adjuncts in my college is that we want someone who is an expert in their area,” said Sundaram. “Adjuncts are a great resource to tap into, and they complement full-time faculty well. It would be difficult without them.”
Courtesy of Lisa Starks Adjuncts with doctorates make more than those with master’s degrees, says Lisa Starks, chair of the Verbal and Visual Arts Department.
The portrait of an adjunct in the College of Arts and Sciences can be quite different.
In the English program, there are eight full-time faculty and 19 adjuncts, said Lisa Starks, chair of the Verbal and Visual Arts Department.
Adjuncts taught 56 percent of the classes this semester in the English program – 40 percent of the classes on campus and 81 percent online.
The adjuncts with master’s degrees make $2,500 per course per semester, said Starks. Those with doctorates make $3,000.
“It would be wonderful if we could use full-time faculty only, “said Starks. “If the budget allowed, it would be a dream come true.”
Morgan Gresham, the department’s creative writing program coordinator, said the department utilizes guidelines published by the National Council of Teachers of English for the working conditions of adjuncts.
The guidelines include making teaching appointments in a timely manner, providing office space with access to computers and telephones, and including adjuncts in faculty meetings and on committees.
“Many of our adjuncts have been here for years,” said Gresham. “I would love for them to have an opportunity to be full-time.”
One of the two full-time professors added to the department a couple of years ago was an adjunct who was “given the chance to move up,” said Starks.
Starks said she was an adjunct herself “a really long time ago,” teaching five classes in a semester when she was a graduate student. She also taught aerobics and GRE prep.
“We are doing the best we can to make the lives of our faculty and students the best for everyone,” she said.
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Although adjuncts are often described as talented and popular teachers who can bring outside experience and a love of teaching to the classroom, the cost savings may have a downside for students, at least according to one study.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a nonprofit association of academics that strives to maintain quality and preserve academic freedom in higher education, issued a report in 2016 repeating its 2003 conclusion that “the dramatic increase in part-time faculty has created ‘systemic problems for higher education’ that have … diminished student learning.”
The AAUP report says that “while many faculty members serving in part-time positions are well qualified and make extraordinary efforts to overcome their circumstances, researchers have found that having a part-time instructor decreases the likelihood that a student will take subsequent classes in a subject and that instruction by part-time faculty is negatively associated with retention and graduation.”
The report says that “every 10 percent increase in part-time faculty positions at public institutions is associated with a 2.65 percent decline in the institution’s graduation rate.”
Part of the problem, according to AAUP, is that many adjuncts are less available to students than full-time faculty are. The reasons for this include the paradox that adjuncts sometimes teach more courses than full-time faculty due to the low wages they receive per course, they are less integrated into the institution, and they do not have access to as many resources.
AAUP also mentions that adjuncts are assigned to “crowded group offices” or do not have one at all, making it more difficult to meet with students.
Courtesy of Vincent Tirelli A glut of adjuncts diminishes the influence of full-time faculty, says Vincent Tirelli, an adjunct at City University of New York.
Vincent Tirelli, 58, an adjunct for over 25 years who teaches government and politics at the City University of New York, said “one of the most important things research has shown is that students need contact with their professors and their peers.”
Tirelli wrote his doctoral dissertation – “The Invisible Faculty Fight Back” – on what some call “precarious faculty” and was one of the founders in 1998 of the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor. He said a university with a lot of adjuncts can have consequences for full-time faculty.
“In the past, the idea that our colleges and universities were governed by both the administration and the faculty was a thing – shared governance,” Tirelli wrote in an email to The Crow’s Nest. “Less and less is that the case, and with the growth in the use of part-time faculty the idea is pretty much a joke. Thus, we have the corporate university.”
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What about students – and their parents? After all, they are the consumers at USFSP.
Students sometimes do not know their class is being taught by an adjunct. Some are not even familiar with the term. But interviews suggest they do have opinions on what makes a good teacher.
Take Zack Batdorf, 22, a senior majoring in psychology. Asked if it concerns him that an instructor is not a full-time professor or does not have a doctorate, he said these things don’t matter to him.
“Certainly, for me, it’s the quality of the experience that’s important,” said Batdorf. “How can I relate to the teacher?”
Samantha Ortiz, 18, a freshman majoring in criminology, said she knows exactly what an adjunct is because an “honest and passionate” instructor last semester talked about his financial hardships and explained to her class that adjuncts like himself were “not being treated as equals.”
Ortiz said the instructor “made me think outside the box,” and although he was not available all the time, he “tried to make the most of helping his students.”
“Being a good teacher has to do with how much they involve themselves with you, not their Ph.D. or whether they work full time,” said Krista Evans, 21, a junior in mass communications. “Adjuncts deserve a shot, too.”
Nancy McCann, a graduate student in journalism and media studies, has taught as a graduate assistant and adjunct at USF Tampa and USFSP.
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Information in this article was obtained from the following reports:
“Higher Education at a Crossroads: The Economic Value of Tenure and the Security of the Profession (2015-16),” American Association of University Professors.
https://www.aaup.org
“Statement from the Conference on the Growing Use of Part-time and Adjunct Faculty” and “Position Statement on the Status and Working Conditions of Contingent Faculty,” National Council of Teachers of English.
http://www.ncte.org/positions/workingconditions
“This Was Our Movement in 2016” and “SEIU Contract Highlights: The Union Difference,” Service Employees International Union.
http://www.seiu.org
Dr. Lauren Friedman, Director of Institutional Research, USFSP Office of Academic Affairs, provided data reported to the National Center for Education Statistics through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Devin Rodriguez | USFSP Incumbent Michael Fridovich says city spending in his district is proof that he has delivered.
By DEVIN RODRIGUEZ, RYAN CALLIHAN and TYLER GILLESPIE USFSP Student Reporters
GULFPORT – To the outside world, Gulfport is a charming waterfront community with quaint restaurants, popular street festivals, and a mod mayor who tends bar and sings in a rock band.
The south Pinellas town of 12,000 is also home to the Stetson University College of Law, a picturesque marina, and a gated waterfront neighborhood and country club.
And then there’s Ward 4. There’s nothing glamorous about that gritty, northeast quadrant of Gulfport, where some residents feel like out-of-favor relatives at the Thanksgiving dinner table.
They describe themselves as the red-headed stepchild of the city. The neighborhood with an inferiority complex. The home of the 99 percent. The only ward without a catchy nickname like “marina district.”
Michael Fridovich, who has represented Ward 4 on the Gulfport City Council since 2013, says the city has spent $1,520,269 in his district over the last four years. But he has three opponents in the March 14 election, and all three contend Fridovich has not done enough.
There’s Richard Fried (pronounced “freed as in freedom,” he says), a self-proclaimed Bernie Sanders-style activist who once wore an elf costume to a council meeting and appeared at a candidate forum last month in an orange T-shirt and black fedora.
There’s Bobby Reynolds, a military brat and Navy veteran who graduated from Stetson Law and works for a Largo security company. The low-key Reynolds notes that many people “would probably recognize me as the guy walking the boxer (around town). His name is Raiden.”
And there’s Ernest Stone, a former ambulance driver, police dispatcher and Stetson security officer who is now retired. He has lived in Gulfport for 40 years.
No candidate is harder on the incumbent than Stone, who points to photos of broken fences and derelict houses and says, “I just don’t see him (Fridovich) getting anything done.”
And no candidate has a background with more smudges – or an explanation more unusual – than Stone.
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Devin Rodriguez | USFSP No candidate is harder on the incumbent than 40-year resident Ernest Stone.
According to Pinellas County court records, Stone, 69, had several brushes with the law in the 1980s and 1990s. They included arrests for disorderly intoxication and resisting arrest without violence in 1980 (which resulted in six months’ probation and a fine) and DUI and misdemeanor criminal mischief in 1985 (10 days in jail, six months’ probation and a fine).
He was also arrested – but not prosecuted – on charges of misdemeanor spouse battery and aggravated assault in 1990 and misdemeanor domestic-related assault in 1995.
When Stone was asked about his record during an interview last month, his wife, Pamela Ann Stone, broke into the conversation.
“For most of my life, I have suffered from bipolar illness,” she said. “I’ve struck my children, I’ve struck my husband, and Ern took the fall when the police were called. He didn’t want the mother of his children to have that on my record.”
The Stones have two sons, one a police commander in Gulfport and the other a security officer at Tyrone Square Mall. Mrs. Stone also has two other children, one of whom Stone helped raise.
In two interviews, Mrs. Stone, 68, said she has publicly acknowledged her mental illness. But she said this is the first time she has identified it as bipolar disorder – a manic depressive illness that can cause unpredictable changes in mood and behavior – and described its impact on her husband and family.
She and Ernest have been married for 46 years. At times during the marriage, “I was difficult, but he never hit me,” said Mrs. Stone. “If he would have hit me, I would have killed him.”
According to court records, Mrs. Stone was charged with misdemeanor battery in 1987, felony aggravated assault in 1995 and domestic battery in 1997. Two of the incidents involved one of her sons; the third involved a neighbor, she said. All three charges were dropped.
Mrs. Stone said she is now under the care of a psychiatrist and on medications that have dramatically improved her life.
It is liberating to talk about her illness now, she said. She and her family have a better understanding of things, she said, and she wants others to know how supportive her husband has been.
“I’m a big girl now and can face it,” she said. “I don’t want him (her husband) dragged through the mud when he stood by me all this time … I am very pleased with the person I am today, and I thank Ern for that.”
Ernest Stone’s boss at Stetson was its chief of public safety, Don W. Howard. The school was aware of Stone’s record when it hired him as a security officer, Howard said.
“We all make mistakes and we can’t allow our mistakes to define us,” said Howard. He called Stone “a truly decent Christian man” with “a deep and abiding love for this community.”
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As the campaign enters its final days, the incumbent – Fridovich – seems well-positioned for a strong showing.
He has been on the council and a fixture at community events for four years. His campaign signs dot the district, and he has been endorsed by Mayor Sam Henderson and former Mayors Michael Yakes and Yvonne Johnson.
Fridovich, 69, is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War and graduate of Georgia State University. He draws income from Social Security and disability payments and a part-time job as a telephone salesman.
In his campaign, he stresses the $1,520,269 he says the city has spent in Ward 4 during his four years in office – proof that he has delivered.
“Anyone who says that he hasn’t done anything for Ward 4 hasn’t been paying attention at the council meetings,” said Henderson.
But Reynolds, 49, disputes that positive assessment of the incumbent. He says Fridovich stepped it up only after deciding to seek a third term.
Exhibit A, said Reynolds, is the city park near his home. Improvements there are finally under way, Reynolds said, but “they should’ve been done earlier.”
Devin Rodriguez | USFSP Ward 4 needs a forceful advocate, not a “tweaking,” says Bobby Reynolds.
“Ward 4 needs help,” Reynolds told the Gabber, a weekly newspaper that serves Gulfport. “It doesn’t need ‘tweaking.’ It doesn’t need a ‘team player.’ It needs someone who will truly advocate for its residents.”
He calls for consistent code enforcement, improvements in infrastructure, vigilance on spending and better communication between City Hall and the people it serves.
Reynolds, a Navy veteran, has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut and a law degree from Stetson. He and his wife have three small children.
Stone, a retiree and 40-year resident of Gulfport, says he has the time and experience to represent Ward 4 effectively.
“Serving the People” is his campaign pledge. He calls for improving the city’s infrastructure, consistent enforcement of codes, careful spending, and improved parking options along the beachfront.
The police department should use its patrol boat more often, he said, and the city should add another code enforcement officer.
“I’ve got ears; I listen. I’ve got a mouth; I talk,” he said. “If you’ve got a problem, then bring it to me.”
Devin Rodriguez | USFSP Richard Fried says he would bring Bernie Sanders-style activism to the council.
Fried, 51, the most colorful candidate in the field, appears to face the longest odds.
The election of Donald Trump helped propel him into the race, said Fried, who calls himself “a Bernie Sanders kind of guy.”
“I’ve elected to run (for office), not protest,” he said.
He lists his duplex and a job at a St. Petersburg assisted living facility as his sources of income. He said he has attended Pinellas Technical College, the University of Southern Maine, Florida International University and Miami Dade College.
Fried calls for solar power on all city buildings, tighter oversight on city spending and staff, and more authority for the office of mayor, which is a largely ceremonial position.
Fried frequently speaks at City Council meetings, but Mayor Henderson said some of his remarks – while passionate – are not factual. “His comments at the podium make me think he is unqualified,” Henderson said.
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As president of the Gulfport Democratic Club and a former unsuccessful council candidate in another ward, April Thanos follows community politics closely. She says the four-way competition in Ward 4 is good for the city.
“It makes people talk about things and think about things,” she said.
When she moved to town, she was warned not to live in Ward 4, Thanos said, and it does seem to have more petty theft than other neighborhoods.
But the housing stock in Ward 4 is “not that different” from other neighborhoods, she said, and she sees “people coming in and fixing things up very rapidly.”
The City Council and city administration have not always treated Ward 4 as well as other districts, Thanos said, and the people who live there “need to stand up for themselves.”
That goes, she said, for their council member, too.
Information from the Gabber, a community weekly that serves Gulfport, was used in this report.
By RYAN CALLIHAN, TYLER GILLESPIE and DEVIN RODRIGUEZ USFSP Student Reporters
GULFPORT – When voters go to the polls on March 14, they will decide whether to reward two City Council incumbents with another two-year term.
One of the incumbents has drawn token opposition. The other has drawn a crowd.
Linda Bailey filed paperwork to run in Ward 2 in November, then essentially disappeared.
She did not attend two candidate forums and did not respond to questionnaires that the Tampa Bay Times and a community weekly paper sent to all candidates. In an interview, she said she is running just to give people “another name” on the ballot.
That suggests clear sailing for incumbent Christine Anne Brown, a community activist and teacher who is seeking a third term in Ward 2, which covers the southeast quarter of the city.
In Ward 4, however, incumbent Michael Fridovich has three active opponents. They all criticize him for poorly representing the district, which stretches across the city’s northeast quadrant.
Although candidates must live in the districts they seek to represent, voting in City Council races is citywide. The council sets policy and the annual budget for the city, but day-to-day management belongs to a city manager appointed by the council.
Here’s what you need to know about the six candidates:
Ward 2
Devin Rodriguez | USFSP Christine Anne Brown
Christine Anne Brown (incumbent)
In her campaign, Brown stresses her leadership and community involvement, calling herself “enthusiastic about the future, compassionate about the issues.”
Her husband is a descendant of a founding Gulfport family, and her community activism includes two decades at the Gulfport Historical Society, where she is now chairperson.
Brown, 56, a longtime math teacher at Boca Ciega High School, has a bachelor’s degree from Eckerd College, a teacher certificate from the University of South Florida in Tampa and a master’s from the University of Florida.
She lost campaigns for the City Council in 2005 and 2007, but ran unopposed for the Ward 2 seat in 2013 and 2015.
She ticks off the strides the city has made – in sewers, streets and parks and along the waterfront – and projects that are in the works, like a mooring field along the waterfront and improvements to Shore Boulevard.
“I find the hardest part of all the great stuff that’s coming is that it takes so long,” she said. “I didn’t know the wheels of city government churn so slow.”
She also said she would rather postpone or cancel a project than raise fees or the property tax.
Devin Rodriguez | USFSP Linda Bailey
Linda Bailey
Not much is known about the elusive candidate who filed papers to challenge Brown, then dropped out of sight.
Bailey is 41. She said she moved here from Virginia a year ago, when she and her husband built a big house on 54th Street S. She identifies as a Republican and her email address has the words “LindaKTrump.”
In her filing papers, she says her husband is her sole source of income and his principal business activity is sales.
She used to be a tennis instructor and still plays a lot of tennis and pickleball, a cross between tennis and badminton that is played with a paddle and plastic ball with holes in it.
In an interview, Bailey acknowledged she is an unconventional candidate. “To be honest, I’m just putting my name (on the ballot) as another name” to vote for, she said.
She has no platform, she said, but if she wins she will develop one. “I plan to go around talking to people, as far as the community, to see what they want.”
Bailey also said she does interior design work and would like to help beautify the city.
“I want to overhaul what Gulfport needs; there are a lot of ugly homes,” she said. “I’d love to go through the neighborhood and put my vision on it.”
Ward 4
Devin Rodriguez | USFSP Michael Fridovich
Michael Fridovich (incumbent)
This is the first time Fridovich, 69, has drawn opposition. He ran unopposed in 2013 and 2015.
A combat veteran of the Vietnam War who has lived in Gulfport for seven years, Fridovich said his income comes from Social Security and disability payments and a part-time job as a telephone salesman for a cigar company. He and a business partner are starting a small technology company, he said.
“I’m not ready to retire (from politics) and there are things I want to see get done,” said Fridovich, who has a bachelor’s degree in urban studies from Georgia State University.
He said he is aware that some residents of Ward 4 consider it the red-headed stepchild of the city and that his three opponents contend he has not done enough for the district. He doesn’t buy it.
During his four years on the council, he said, the city has spent $1,520,269 in Ward 4. That spending includes improvements to Tomlinson Park, alley and road work, sidewalk replacement and storm water repairs.
He has endorsements from Mayor Sam Henderson and former Mayors Michael Yakes and Yvonne Johnson, he said.
If re-elected, he hopes to continue efforts to establish a mooring field along the waterfront, improve the city’s infrastructure and make government buildings more energy efficient.
His involvement in the community gives him an edge over his opponents, Fridovich said.
“I work with the constituents,” he said. “People don’t endorse you because you’re a nice person, and yard signs don’t vote.”
Devin Rodriguez | USFSP Richard Fried
Richard Fried
Richard Fried, 51, says he got lost in Gulfport on his way to Tampa and decided to stay.
“I had a feeling that this was it,” he said. “There’s a certain energy – a funkiness – to Gulfport.”
The self-styled progressive has lived in Gulfport for nearly 10 years. He decided to make his first foray into local politics after Donald Trump was elected president.
“I’ve elected to run (for office), not protest,” he said. “I’ll do my bit at the local level.”
In campaign filings, he lists his duplex and job as a medical technician at a St. Petersburg assisted living facility as his sources of income. He worked previously in the fast print business and retail pet food industry, he said.
He said he has attended Pinellas Technical College, the University of Southern Maine, Florida International University and Miami Dade College and studied health care, communication theory, hospitality management and liberal arts.
Fried, who describes himself as a “Bernie Sanders kind of guy,” is a former activist and street performer who brings a certain theatricality to his campaign. He has drawn attention by wearing an elf costume to a City Council meeting and reading from “Horton Hears a Who” by Dr. Seuss.
Fried said one of the main issues he wants to address is tenant rights for the people who live in an apartment building that would be displaced under a proposal to put a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through on the southwest corner of 56th Street S and Gulfport Boulevard.
Asked how he’s different from Fridovich, Fried said, “I’m less establishment, I think. If I have an opinion about something, I’m going to tell you no matter who you are.”
Fried does not seem well-versed on city issues, however.
“His comments at the podium (at City Council meetings) make me think he is unqualified,” said Mayor Henderson. “A lot of the things he’s stated … are impassioned but have no basis in fact.”
Devin Rodriguez | USFSP Bobby Reynolds
Bobby Reynolds
Reynolds’ campaign grew out of his concerns about the park near his home.
Tomlinson Park, at 54th Street S and 19th Avenue, is a jewel of Ward 4. But a skate park there was closed by the city, and Reynolds contends that more than $200,000 in improvements in playground and fitness equipment was slow to arrive.
“The plans have been in the works for a while, but that’s not the issue,” said Reynolds, 49. “They should’ve been done earlier.”
He contends that Fridovich didn’t begin to stress improvements in Ward 4 until he decided to seek re-election.
“Ward 4 needs help,” he told the Gabber, a weekly newspaper that serves Gulfport. “It doesn’t need ‘tweaking.’ It doesn’t need a ‘team player.’ It needs someone who will truly advocate for its residents.”
If elected, Reynolds said, he would speak up for his ward during budget meetings. His ideas for Gulfport include increased beautification efforts, speeding up sewer system repairs and improving recreation opportunities.
Reynolds, a self-described military brat as a boy, spent six years in the Navy. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut and a law degree from Stetson.
He is married with three young children and works for a Largo security firm. He also runs a virtual law practice from his home. He has lived in Gulfport for 11 years.
Devin Rodriguez | USFSP Ernest Stone
Ernest Stone
No candidate has lived in Gulfport longer than Stone, a resident for 40 years.
He settled in the community a couple of years after graduating from high school in Jacksonville. Over the years, he drove an ambulance, served as a dispatcher for the Largo Police Department and worked as a security officer at Stetson University College of Law. In retirement now, he lists Social Security as his source of income.
Stone, 69, who ran unsuccessfully for the council in 1985, 1999 and 2001, said he got into the race out of frustration with the performance of Fridovich, the incumbent.
“I just don’t see him getting anything done,” Stone said, pointing to photos of broken fences and derelict houses. “There’s been a lot of infrastructure problems and I don’t want to see us spending our money stupidly.”
Stone said he wants to step up the city’s code enforcement and add another officer to respond to complaints. He also wants to see the police department utilize its patrol boat more often.
“I’ve got ears; I listen,” he told voters in a recent meeting. “I’ve got a mouth; I talk. If you’ve got a problem, then bring it to me.”
In the 1980s and 1990s, Stone had several brushes with the law, according to Pinellas County court records. In 1980, he was sentenced to six months’ probation and a fine after arrests for disorderly intoxication and resisting arrest without violence, and in 1985 he got 10 days in jail, six months’ probation and a fine after arrests for DUI and misdemeanor criminal mischief.
Stone acknowledges problems in the past, and Don W. Howard, the public safety chief at Stetson, said he was aware of them when the school hired Stone as a security officer.
“We all make mistakes, and we can’t allow our mistakes to define us,” said Howard. Stone, who worked at Stetson for nine years, “is a truly decent Christian man who has a tremendous sense of community and family,” Howard said.
Information from the Gabber, a weekly newspaper that serves Gulfport, was used in this report.
Commissioners are “relentless in trying to destroy me,” says former Mayor Dan Calabria.
By NANCY McCANN and EVY GUERRA USFSP Student Reporters
SOUTH PASADENA – For months, the tension had been building between South Pasadena city commissioners and Mayor Dan Calabria.
They bristled at the way he treated them and the city clerk.
They hired an outside attorney whose investigation concluded that the mayor “has a capacity to be snide, petty, condescending, sarcastic, belligerent and unnecessarily combative.”
And several times they walked out of meetings to protest his interruptions, raised voice and banging gavel.
In March 2015, the four exasperated commissioners even considered, then dropped, an attempt to oust Calabria for “malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty and incompetence.” But the voters sent him packing when he ran for re-election a year later.
End of story? Hardly.
Now Calabria, 81, is mounting a comeback as one of three candidates for two City Commission seats on the March 14 ballot.
The former mutual fund executive said he would bring budget vigilance and professionalism to the tiny town of 5,000 and stay above the “petty politics” of other commissioners, whom he calls a “social group.”
He chided the commissioners for excessive spending and said the city should consider hiring a part-time city manager and giving tax breaks for five to 10 years to businesses that move to South Pasadena.
If he wins, Calabria would serve with three of the commissioners who clashed with him – a prospect he said he does not relish.
Although the commissioners are “relentless in trying to destroy me,” he said, he would not change a thing about his style if he wins.
“I have a job; I do it,” he said. “I’m not in a popularity contest. If you want me to be Mr. Smiley Face all the time, you’re out of luck.”
* * * * * * * * *
A “constructive environment” is important, David Magenheimer says.
Calabria’s attempted comeback overshadows the campaigns of the two other candidates – one a veteran of local government, the other a novice.
David Magenheimer, 44, is a rarity in a town where the median age is about 70. He grew up in South Pasadena and lives there now with his wife and three teenage children.
He is new to politics, but says that his love for the city and his business experience in insurance auditing work make him a strong candidate. He stresses the importance of public safety, low taxes, business development and common sense.
In a candidate forum Feb. 8, Magenheimer said he would bring fresh ideas and an open mind to the commission.
“I think it’s important that the commission gets along with each other and that it is a constructive environment rather than a negative environment,” he said.
Gigi Arntzen served six years on the Largo City Commission.
Gigi Esposito, 67, worked in secretarial, office manager and administrative positions for Pinellas County government for 30 years and – as Gigi Arntzen – served on the Largo City Commission from 2006 to 2012. She remarried and moved to South Pasadena in 2015.
“Government is in my blood,” she said. “I’ve missed it.”
At the candidate forum, she said that South Pasadena needs to market itself better to attract “vital businesses” that would make the city more than “a pass-through point” between the beaches and St. Petersburg.
Esposito also said the commission must stress public safety, “work as hard as we can” to maintain services while holding down taxes, and improve the city website to make government more transparent.
* * * * * * * * *
Nancy McCann | USFSP A sheriff’s deputy attended commission meetings because of Calabria’s “combative personality,” says current Mayor Max Elson.
Unlike most of Pinellas County’s smaller towns, South Pasadena does not have a professional manager to run the day-to-day operations of the city.
Instead, those duties fall to the mayor and four commissioners, who each oversee a city department. The commissioners make $7,599 a year. The mayor, who makes $10,000 a year, presides over commission meetings and serves as the city’s official representative.
Calabria has lived in South Pasadena since 1992, six years after he moved to Pinellas County as president and CEO of Templeton Funds Management Corp. in St. Petersburg.
Calabria left Templeton after it merged with Franklin Resources, then sparred in court with the merged company over the size of his severance. In 2009 the self-styled industry maverick published a book on mutual funds that offers a “less-than-charitable description” of industry practices, according to one review.
Meanwhile, Calabria got active in South Pasadena politics as a gadfly and occasional candidate for office.
He ran unsuccessfully for the City Commission in 1996, then in 2000 founded the South Pasadena Voters Watch, which he calls “a nonpartisan citizens’ organization … that focuses on what is best for all residents.”
He lost another campaign for a commission seat in 2011 but was elected to a three-year term as mayor in 2013.
It was during his time as a citizen activist that things first got prickly between Calabria and the South Pasadena government.
Calabria was a frequent email and letter writer to city officials and a regular at City Commission meetings. He had a reputation for being tenacious.
In 2010, the city’s director of public safety requested that a sheriff’s deputy be assigned to commission meetings because of “a citizen” who used “language that can be interpreted as containing some vague threats … and has caused concern to our attorney and City Hall staff.”
The citizen was Dan Calabria.
The language that concerned city officials came in an email to the city complaining about the city attorney.
“If you do not take appropriate steps to correct this error, then you must accept full responsibility for whatever happens in the future,” Calabria wrote. “Thank you for your time and attention and I again urge that you read the foregoing for your own personal protection – because you can no longer claim ignorance of the facts.”
“It’s common knowledge that a sheriff’s deputy sat in on all meetings of the commission because of concern about Dan’s combative personality,” said Max Elson, a veteran commissioner who became mayor after defeating Calabria last year. “This started well before he was elected and continued through the time he was mayor.”
Calabria had been mayor for 19 months when his peeved commission colleagues hired an independent attorney – W. Russell Hamilton III of Port St. Lucie – to investigate whether he was abusing his office and mistreating city staff members.
In his report, Hamilton called Calabria’s treatment of the city clerk “inexcusable, unprofessional, demeaning and possibly discriminatory.”
The mayor is “a very bright well-educated individual with abundant business and management experience,” Hamilton wrote, but he could also be difficult and argumentative, with “an almost manic need to pursue personal vendettas.”
In Calabria’s view, “anyone perceiving his conduct and actions as being inappropriate or unacceptable is … either a fool or out to get him,” Hamilton wrote.
In an interview last month, Hamilton said he saw another side of Calabria. “Away from that (the tense relationship with commissioners), Dan’s a good guy,” he said. “I could have enjoyed sitting down and having a beer with him.”
Oddly, Calabria had joined in the vote to hire Hamilton. He did it “so that the truth could come out,” Calabria said last month, “but that didn’t happen – it was a setup from day one.”
Citing Hamilton’s report, which cost the city about $11,500, the four commissioners met on March 16, 2015, to decide whether to try to remove Calabria from office.
After two hours’ debate, they stopped short, opting instead to consider mediation with the mayor.
That fell apart, however, and the often-fractious relationship continued.
Calabria sued the city, seeking to block future recall efforts and recoup nearly $22,000 in legal fees. The city refused to pay his fees, and the suit was dismissed by a circuit judge. The litigation cost the city at least $30,000, according to two commissioners.
The tension between Calabria and the commissioners came to a head again during a meeting on Nov. 15, 2015.
A video of the meeting shows that Calabria would not shift gears when commissioners repeatedly asked him to stop talking about an invoice for attorney services that Calabria thought was inflated.
One by one, the commissioners told him the item was not on the agenda, the bill had already been approved, the correct staff people weren’t there to address his concerns, and it was time to return to the day’s business.
Commission meetings “were like the Jerry Springer Show,” says commissioner Gail Neidinger.
When Calabria persisted, three of the commissioners abruptly walked out, ending the meeting.
“Our meetings with Dan (as mayor) were like the Jerry Springer Show,” said commissioner Gail Neidinger, who used an open hand to fiercely pound the table when Calabria got going with his gavel. “You couldn’t believe it unless you experienced it yourself.”
Lari Johnson, who was then vice mayor, wrote a memo after the walkout, saying Calabria’s comments “quickly escalated to a tirade against our city attorney … and our law firm … with unsubstantiated accusations of fraud, double billing (and) lack of objectivity.”
When Calabria objected to what was being said, Johnson said in a recent interview, he would repeatedly bang his gavel.
“He used his gavel as a device to make it impossible to have a responsible and educated conversation,” she said. “He behaved like a child when he wasn’t getting his way.”
When Elson defeated Calabria in 2016, his campaign slogan was “leadership, not controversy.”
“Dan can be pleasant as long as you don’t disagree with him,” said Elson, “but when you did he would bang his gavel, not follow Roberts Rules of Order, and sometimes raise his voice.”
Some of the commissioners would raise their voices as well, Elson acknowledged. And sometimes they would try to find humor in the situation.
For Christmas one year, one commissioner gave each fellow commissioner a red-and-blue toy gavel.
Katherine Wilcox | USFSP Gary King of King Marine Engineering says he would welcome a mural on his building at the corner of 49th Street S and Ninth Avenue.
By KATHERINE WILCOX USFSP Student Reporter
GULFPORT – Gulfport has a thriving arts community, just like St. Petersburg. It has arts festivals, like St. Petersburg. And it has regular art walks that feature the work of local artists, like St. Petersburg.
So why doesn’t Gulfport have large, colorful murals adorning the exterior walls of some of its drab buildings? St. Petersburg does.
That’s what Rosalie “Roz” Barbieri, a longtime resident and arts advocate, wants to know.
Twice in recent months, Barbieri has appealed to the Gulfport City Council for help in touching up the city’s look.
“We’re an artsy community, a community of color, so why not make it an endeavor to have murals in the city?” asked Barbieri. “I have a list of addresses along 49th Street and also a list of all the artists who participated in St. Petersburg, and I’d like to go forward with it.”
Gulfport council members sounded supportive, but indicated they’re not sure exactly what they could do to help.
“I think the murals (in St. Petersburg) are beautiful, but I don’t know what that has to do with me,” said council member Christine Brown. “The murals will be on private buildings. I don’t understand what Roz wants us to do, but we’ll support her because I think it’s a good idea.”
Vice Mayor Michael Fridovich suggested that the council could encourage the owners of buildings to let street artists convert their dingy exteriors into tapestries of colorful images.
“We, as the City Council, can say, ‘We encourage you if you have the opportunity’ or, ‘Let’s get colorful’ or something,” said Fridovich.
But perhaps the council could do more.
Wayne Atherholt, director of cultural affairs for the city of St. Petersburg, said the city gave $25,000 in seed money to the art activists who orchestrated an impressive effort last fall to paint large, colorful murals along the city’s Central Avenue corridor.
The SHINE Mural Festival was coordinated by Leon Bedore, a mural artist known as Tes One. He had the help of the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance, volunteers and art-friendly businesses that donated marketing, paint, lodging and meals to the artists.
In recent years, murals – also called street art – have become fixtures in cities around the world.
Philadelphia has a mural arts program and more than 3,000 murals, according to USA Today, and the street art in New York City, Los Angeles and Miami has become a point of civic pride and a draw for tourism.
Atherholt, who lives in Gulfport, said 49th street would be a good place for murals, noting that the community collaboration would be great for Gulfport and St. Petersburg.
There are two ways to get the project started, said Atherholt. There’s the informal way, which is what the Gulfport council members proposed to do by encouraging property owners. And there’s the formal way.
“The structured, government sort of way would be to have the City Council allocate money to the project, put a call out to artists, and then come up with a proposal for the property owners (of buildings) to approve or reject,” he said.
Some Gulfport residents sound receptive. Even the city’s Teen Council has put plans together to put murals on some community spots in the past.
“We had a plan and an artist ready to paint a mural on the (public) beach bathrooms,” said Elizabeth Brown-Worthington, former chair of the Teen Council, “but the (city) council wanted to relocate those bathrooms at the time so it never went through.”
Katherine Wilcox | USFSP Margaret Tober of Gulfport Neighbors says the building beside the South Georgia Meat Market at 49th Street S and 16th Avenue has blank walls that could use some sprucing up.
Cities that have murals have found that they tend to discourage the graffiti that often mars building exteriors.
In St. Petersburg, so-called “graffiti tags” – the scribbled signature of artists who illegally decorate anything from alley walls to dumpsters – have gone down dramatically since murals starting popping up downtown.
Where would murals go in Gulfport?
Its downtown district is much smaller than St. Petersburg’s. The businesses that would likely participate in the project have limited space on their exterior walls. And many businesses don’t own the buildings they occupy.
Jay Clark, a longtime employee at the Low Tide Kava Bar at 2902 Beach Blvd. S, said it might be an extra hoop to jump through, but the bar’s landlord has been receptive to community art projects.
“When we first opened this place we invited a load of people to come paint on the walls,” said Clark. “So if we asked to paint something big on the outside of it, he would probably be pretty cool about it.”
Low Tide has a half-finished mural on the back wall inside the bar, which Clark said should be finished soon. He said he hopes it sparks a trend among other shops inside the Art Village Courtyard.
However, Barbieri seemed to be focused on another part of Gulfport – the tired looking stretch of 49th Street S that separates Gulfport and St. Petersburg.
Margaret Tober of the Gulfport Neighbors civic group said a “collaboration between the two cities would be a welcome experience” – especially after the friction that arose last August when St. Petersburg dumped raw sewage into Clam Bayou after heavy rains overwhelmed its sewer system.
Tober suggested the businesses at 49th Street S and 14th Avenue would be a good starting point for the project. “I would love to see a mural on that dirty wall that covers those businesses.”
Another building on 49th Street with potential would be King Marine Engineering off Ninth Avenue. Gary King, the business and property owner, expressed support for the idea.
“I think anything that adds artistic value to an area is extremely valuable for a multitude of reasons,” he said. “I love the art district downtown; I know people with murals on their buildings (in St. Petersburg). I’m 100 percent in favor.”
King said his building, a World War II airplane hangar that is 2 stories tall and 55 feet long, is “gigantic” and “basically a canvas.” If he were presented with an artist and an idea, he said, he would participate.
Other buildings down 49th Street that have large, blank walls or storefronts that could serve as a canvas are the South Georgia Meat Market off 16th Avenue, the Quick Stop Beer and Wine complex off 15th Avenue, and empty buildings nearby.
By DEVIN RODRIGUEZ and DEVON BONNELL USFSP Student Reporters
ST. PETERSBURG – The numbers were damning.
At five predominantly black elementary schools in St. Petersburg, standardized test scores were dismal and student suspensions were soaring.
Courtesy Tampa Bay Times Fitzpatrick and her colleagues won a Pulitzer Prize.
But when the Tampa Bay Times created a team to investigate the story behind the numbers, the timing could not have been worse for schools reporter Cara Fitzpatrick.
She was nine months pregnant.
So it happened that on the day she gave birth, the man she fondly calls “my manic husband” – investigative reporter Michael LaForgia – was at her bedside, asking her, between contractions, to recount the history of segregation in Pinellas County schools.
After three hours, Fitzpatrick gave birth to a baby boy.
The newspaper’s investigation took a bit longer. But after 18 months, the Times began a five-part series on the five schools, which it called “Failure Factories.”
After analyzing mountains of data and conducting hundreds of interviews, the newspaper concluded that the schools, all serving predominantly black neighborhoods, performed satisfactorily until the Pinellas County School Board ended its decades-old desegregation policy in 2007.
The board had promised to provide more money and staff to the schools, which would now serve a poorer and higher minority population. But it failed to follow through.
As a result, the newspaper found, the schools were now plagued by plummeting test scores, chronic violence and crippling staff turnover.
Since the stories were published last year, the U.S. Department of Education has begun an investigation. The school district has hired a turnaround specialist and announced changes in policy, including a longer school day and increased teacher pay at the failing schools. Principals at four of the five schools are being replaced.
Courtesy Tampa Bay Times Gartner noticed disturbing trends in school data.
Meanwhile, Fitzpatrick, LaForgia and fellow reporter Lisa Gartner won journalism’s highest award – the Pulitzer Prize – for their work.
The team, which also included photojournalist Dirk Shadd, data reporter Nathaniel Lash, computer-assisted reporting specialist Connie Humburg, and investigations editor Chris Davis, was recognized for what the Pulitzer board calls “a distinguished example of reporting on significant issues of local concern, demonstrating originality and community expertise.”
The three reporters and Shadd also won first place reporting and photography awards from the Florida Society of News Editors.
Fitzpatrick, 36, has been an education reporter for a decade.
She grew up in a three-stoplight town in Washington state and got a bachelor’s degree in international studies and journalism from the University of Washington in 2002.
She worked at the Tri-City Herald in Kennewick, Wash., from 2003 to 2005, earned a master’s in journalism from Columbia University in 2006 and then came to Florida.
After stints at the Palm Beach Post and South Florida Sun Sentinel, she joined the Times in 2012.
The “Failure Factories” project started with Fitzpatrick and Gartner, the paper’s education beat reporters.
School system data showed that disciplinary action seemed to fall hardest on black elementary students, Fitzpatrick said, and black students here were performing far worse on state tests that black students in other Florida counties.
Since she had covered school districts elsewhere in Florida where black youngsters did better, she said, she found it strange that local school officials weren’t talking about it.
That prompted a long memo to editors, who eventually decided to create the team to investigate.
Fitzpatrick had intended to take four months’ parental leave. She took two instead.
There were mounds of public records to request and analyze: Standardized test scores from Pinellas and other large school districts in Florida. Statistics showing how often students were disciplined and suspended, compared to other schools in the county. Police reports showing how often officers were summoned to the schools to deal with unruly students. School employee databases and other records showing how many teachers had transferred out of the troubled schools.
In requesting public records from the sometimes balky Pinellas school district, Fitzpatrick said, the newspaper sought to find patterns over several years.
“We needed five to 10 years’ worth of information,” she said. “If you have one year, then you don’t have enough … You can have an off year, but not an off 10 years.”
Courtesy Tampa Bay Times LaForgia and the team spent months reporting the story.
The Times team reached out to hundreds of people, especially teachers and parents with children in the five schools.
Teachers and administrators who were still employed by the school district were reluctant to talk, Fitzpatrick said, but retired teachers were generally forthcoming about the daunting challenges they had faced.
“These elementary schools had more violent (disciplinary) referrals than 17 of the high schools in the area,” she said. “Teachers had fled from the schools because they were working in hazardous environments.”
The newspaper, she said, “had to be fair with teachers … while asking, ‘Are students truly getting their education?’”
Just as important to the story were interviews with students and their parents, who were, in effect, victims of the school district’s indifference toward the five failing schools. And that’s where Shadd, the Times’ photojournalist, played an important role.
“One of my major take-aways from ‘Failure Factories’ is how important it is to go door to door and speak with people,” said Fitzpatrick. “We interviewed hundreds of people for the story.”
Courtesy Tampa Bay Times Shadd’s people skills helped win the confidence of black parents.
The three reporters are white. Shadd is black. At the paper, he is admired for his affability and people skills, which Fitzpatrick said helped the Times win the confidence of some of the black parents.
“Dirk spent hours with families, showing up at homes before children went to school, riding city buses with some, and hanging out after school,” said Fitzpatrick.
On important stories like this one, said Fitzpatrick, “there is no one who is not worth listening to. You should speak to as many people as you possibly can, especially those outside of the power structure.”
Journalists know that, during a lengthy project, their personal lives will be disrupted.
This project was especially challenging for Fitzpatrick and LaForgia, who had a toddler and newborn at home.
“We spent so much time at the office on weekends that my daughter started to think it was a fun place to go,” said Fitzpatrick. “She asked me on Christmas Day if we were going to the office to see Mr. Chris (Davis, the project’s editor).”
The project may be over now, she said, but her work as a Pinellas schools reporter is ongoing.
“I think that it’s essential for the community to know we didn’t just come in for a great big story and then leave,” she said. “They still see me at meetings and, hopefully, I will write about the (five) schools being better places for kids someday.”
Courtesy James Previtera When Previtera was sworn in, former teacher Jim Royle pinned on his badge
By SAMANTHA PUTTERMAN USFSP Student Reporter
ST. PETERSBURG – When James Previtera was a senior at St. Petersburg Catholic High School in 1983, his American government teacher gave the students a choice.
They could write a paper, spend a day in court or go on a ride-along with a St. Petersburg police officer.
Previtera chose the ride-along, and it changed his life.
“I guess I never realized there was this whole different world in St. Pete I had never seen,” said Previtera, 50. “And it wasn’t the discovery of that world that motivated me to go into law enforcement. It wasn’t the excitement of it.
“It was just the realization that somebody has got to step up and do this.”
So three years after the ride-along, Previtera became a deputy at the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, the first step in a career that includes 11 years with the Pinellas sheriff, eight with the U.S. Secret Service, and nine with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. He has also been a security consultant for Major League Baseball since 2007.
Then in December 2014, Previtera joined the agency that inspired him 31 years earlier. He became an assistant chief at the St. Petersburg Police Department and supervisor of more than 140 detectives and 30 civilians in the agency’s Investigative Services Bureau.
And when he was sworn in, he asked Jim Royle, 78, his old American government teacher, to pin on his badge.
* * * * * * * * *
Previtera was only 19 when he became a Pinellas sheriff’s deputy – old enough to patrol the county but too young to buy bullets for his off-duty gun, he said with a laugh. His dad had to buy them.
His first night on patrol, Previtera said, he got a rude welcome to law enforcement: He had to pull his gun on a man who threatened him with a screwdriver.
A year and a half later, he was knocked unconscious while trying to help a deputy make an arrest in Safety Harbor.
In a scuffle, the deputy accidentally struck him in the face with a flashlight. Then the suspect’s brother hit him in the back of the head with a bicycle. He spent several days in the hospital.
As he lay in bed with staples in his aching head, Previtera said, he wondered – briefly – if he should take off the badge and do something else.
He didn’t.
In late 1997, Previtera joined the U.S. Secret Service. In eight years there, he taught hand-to-hand combat to new agents at the agency’s training center in Beltsville, Md., and served in the detail that protected then-Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003-2005.
Previtera was no longer with the Secret Service when Cheney famously peppered a quail hunting companion with birdshot in 2006. But the accident mystifies him.
“I really don’t understand how that happened,” said Previtera. “They are very safety conscious out there because there’s Secret Service agents walking with them.”
Caitlin Ashworth | USFSP Running Hillsborough County’s jail operation was a real education, Previtera says.
Previtera returned to the bay area to join the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in November 2005, first as a major running the Training Division and then as a colonel in command of the county’s 5,300-bed jail facilities.
The jail role, he said, was “probably the best part of my career in terms of development as a leader and as a law enforcement manager.”
It was also an education. To his surprise, he said, he learned that many mentally ill people are criminalized and left untreated by the criminal justice system.
One Hillsborough inmate was so ill he pulled an eyeball out of its socket and handed it to a deputy through the food slide, Previtera said.
At the time, Previtera said, about a quarter of the jail’s daily population took daily psychotropic medication.
To address the issue, he said, he did two things. He started a diversion program to get some inmates out of the detention system and into treatment. And he shook up his management team to bring in a fresh, outside perspective.
“I had to surround myself with the right people,” said Previtera. “I needed a new mentality because I knew that, with the deputies, I couldn’t change theirs if the management above them didn’t mirror my philosophy and my mandates.”
He took charge of the detention facilities six months after video surfaced that showed a deputy at the Orient Road Jail dumping a quadriplegic inmate out of his wheelchair.
Amid a public outcry, the deputy resigned and was charged with one felony count of abuse of a disabled adult. An independent jail review commission established by Sheriff David Gee concluded that eight other deputies violated sheriff’s office procedures.
At a news conference held by the commission, reporters asked Previtera to take questions.
He wasn’t scheduled to speak, he said, and he was unprepared for what followed.
“I went up to the podium, and they proceeded to ambush me – and it was brutal.”
But one television reporter, who was reading the commission report, asked Previtera to explain some of the positive changes he had made in training while commanding the department’s Training Division prior to the incident.
“I remember thinking, “Oh my god, I love this woman.’”
He didn’t see her again until late 2012, nearly five years later.
When he did, he got to know her. Friendship eventually turned into love.
And in the fall of 2015, Previtera and the reporter – Laura Moody, a morning anchor at WTVT Fox 13 – were married.
* * * * * * * * *
With the marriage came the sometimes awkward melding of two families. Previtera has four children and Moody, one. It also united a police officer and a journalist – two professions that often clash.
While their careers make for an interesting relationship, the couple said, they manage to keep their professional and personal lives separate.
“She’s very dedicated to her career, and I’m very dedicated to mine,” said Previtera. Sometimes there are stories that are critical of law enforcement and she reports them and I disagree with her. But the good thing about us is that we tend to communicate very well, so even in disagreement we still can communicate effectively.”
Previtera said Moody never asks him about work. If he gets phone call when they’re both in the car, he often calls back later or pulls over and gets out.
“She’ll just look at me and smile because she knows I’m not going to put her in a position where she has to hear something,” he said.
“The fact that he’s a law enforcement officer and I work for the press, that makes for an interesting dynamic and our lives intersect in a lot of ways,” said Moody. “But we keep our professional lives separate. We manage because we love each other and work together.”
A month after he joined the St. Petersburg department, Previtera got a phone call at 2 a.m.
A call at that hour is never good, he said, but he was jolted by what he heard.
“I went outside the room and was talking on the phone,” he said. “I immediately went into the spare bedroom and got my uniform and started getting dressed.”
Moody arises at 3:15 a.m. to prepare for the morning newscast. She sat up in bed as he rushed back in the room.
“I knew that whatever it was, it was bad,” Moody said.
“She asked, ‘Am I going to be talking about this soon?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you are.’”
Then he left.
It was Jan. 8, 2015, the night police say 5-year-old Phoebe Jonchuck was thrown to her death off the Dick Misener Bridge by her father.
Moody texted Previtera when she got to the station.
“Dear god, tell me this isn’t true.”
* * * * * * * * *
Courtesy Laura Moody Previtera and wife Laura Moody say they try to keep their personal and professional lives separate.
Shortly after Anthony Holloway accepted the position as St. Petersburg’s police chief in 2014, he asked Previtera to be an assistant chief and run the department’s Investigative Services Bureau.
“We had dinner together and talked, and I agreed to come over and join him,” said Previtera, who by then was running the Hillsborough sheriff’s Department of Operational Support. “I had no reason to leave Hillsborough. I enjoyed it. But it was a chance to come back to my hometown and be part of something exciting.”
As head of the Investigative Services Bureau, Previtera oversees all of the department’s detectives and investigative functions, including vice and narcotics.
On a typical day, he said, he will be discussing a narcotics investigation and switch to an attempted homicide within 20 minutes.
“I’m kind of all over the place,” he said with a laugh.
Previtera said he tries to leave the office as much as he can. Under Holloway’s “park, walk and talk” policy, all 550 of the department’s sworn officers must get out of their cars and interact with the community for at least an hour a week.
“When I used to supervise deputies on the street, I called it ‘get out and play football’ because I would get out and play football with the kids, talk to them and get to know their parents,” Previtera said. “In my opinion, that’s the only way we, as a profession, are going to be able to re-establish ourselves to a level of respect in all communities.”
But he said he’s had tough days, too.
“There are days when this is a pretty intense seat to sit in,” said Previtera. “There are days I feel like there’s somebody on the other end of my office with a pitching machine just unleashing fast balls at me all day long.”
Although December will mark 30 years since Previtera began police work, his old American government teacher still checks up on him.
“We might talk a couple times a month; I know his job is so intense so I try not to bother him,” Royle said. “But I worry about him, especially in his field. You don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Royle saw a slew of students come and go over the years. Many went on to successful careers and stayed in touch.
Jeffrey Zanker | USFSP Roman is known for her meticulous preparation
By JEFFREY ZANKER USFSP Student Reporter
GULFPORT – There was a time, decades ago, when Gulfport was like a lot of Pinellas County communities – a mean place where people with dark skin dared not venture far from home at night.
Yolanda Roman has heard those stories, of course – heard them and dismissed them as a long-ago chapter in the history of a quiet, waterfront community that is better known nowadays for embracing diversity.
“If that existed before, you would not see it today,” she said.
In fact, Roman personifies the town’s current image. When she was elected to the Gulfport City Council in 2014 with almost 59 percent of the vote, she apparently became the first person of color to serve there. She was re-elected without opposition this spring.
Roman, 58, has dark skin, but she identifies as Hispanic, specifically Puerto Rican. Puerto Ricans have a diverse heritage of Spanish, African-Americans and indigenous Indians, she said, but “we are Americans first.”
Blacks make up about 10 percent of Gulfport’s population and Hispanics about 5 percent, according to U.S. Census estimates for 2015.
The city of 12,100 has a nice mix of people by age, occupation, race and sexual orientation, Roman said. “You won’t find much separation. We respect one another and that adds to the richness.”
As a member of the five-person City Council, Roman is known for her meticulous preparation and outspoken style – a style that sometimes leaves other commissioners bristling.
During a council meeting on Feb. 16, Roman and Mayor Sam Henderson clashed over her remarks about the city’s response to St. Petersburg’s decision to dump raw and partially treated sewage into Clam Bayou after heavy rains overwhelmed the St. Petersburg sewer system in August.
For months thereafter, Gulfport repeatedly closed its beachfront, marina and Clam Bayou Nature Park because of high bacteria counts.
Roman introduced a proposed resolution holding St. Petersburg more accountable for the dump and questioning the effectiveness of Gulfport’s response.
That drew a heated response from Henderson, who had met several times with St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman.
Henderson called Roman’s assertions a “bald-faced lie” designed to advance an agenda marked by “political spin and offensive grandstanding” and hurt his re-election campaign. His opponent was Barbara Banno, Roman’s friend and former campaign manager.
In a lengthy written response, Roman denied that she was in cahoots with Banno. She said she would not be intimidated by accusations of grandstanding.
“It has become apparent that other council members also question the integrity of my work,” she wrote. “They are free to their opinion. I know my own truth.”
Henderson, who was easily re-elected a month later, said he now realizes his fiery comments were unprofessional. He still disagrees with Roman, he said, but “we need to demonstrate more professionalism as city representatives.”
Roman grew up in Philadelphia. She graduated from Chesnut Hill College, a private Catholic school in the city, with a bachelor’s degree in biological science in 1979 and then spent 36 years in the pharmaceutical field.
Much of her career was at Johnson & Johnson, the giant health care company, where she worked in research, sales and state government relations, helping the company keep track of health care legislation in state capitals.
Her last job, she said, was working at home as a regional director post at Alkermes, a Dublin-based company that manufactures Vivitrol, an injectable medicine for patients with opioid and alcohol dependence.
She retired in 2015 – “a good stopping point,” she said – but thinks about starting a small pharmaceutical consulting firm.
Roman and her husband, a biochemist, had three children, all college graduates. They divorced in 1995.
Roman, who lived for years in the Philadelphia suburb of Laverock, said she got acquainted with Gulfport when her mother and brother moved here in 2003. She bought a vacation cottage near Clam Bayou two years later, and over time grew to love the community.
“In Gulfport, you have everything a small town needs,” Roman said. “You can walk down the streets and feel right at home.”
She became a Gulfport resident in 2008, bought a bigger house and sold the cottage.
“I did not want to become a landlord,” she said.
When Roman decided to seek a City Council seat in 2014, she and friends knocked on a lot of doors to introduce herself and hear what residents were saying about the city.
One of those friends was Banno, a restaurateur and council member in 2011-2013 who helped manage the campaign and raise $7,468.
Roman “knew how to take initiative” as a leader, said Banno.
During the campaign, Roman said, she and friends heard a few comments about her dark skin but never considered it a concern.
As a new council member a few months later, Roman struck a blow for diversity by sponsoring a resolution expressing support for changing the state ban on same-sex marriage. The council unanimously approved it.
As a council member, she said, her main duty is getting current issues on the council agenda. She meets regularly with City Manager James O’ Reilly and residents for their input.
During her spare time, Roman likes to garden and stroll Gulfport beaches.
She lives with two dogs, a German shepherd named Duchess and an English fox hound named Ms. Bella, along with a cat named Maddy and two betta fish.
