St. Petersburg mayoral candidate and former mayor Rick Baker at Café con Tampa

Photo by Joey deVilla. Click to see it at full size.

Every Friday morning at 8:00 a.m., some of Tampa Bay’s most engaged citizens come to the main room in Oxford Exchange’s Commerce Club to attend Café con Tampa, a weekly gathering where guest speakers talk about issues that the Bay and the world beyond. It’s attended by an interesting audience that’s often a mix of movers and shakers from the worlds of arts, business, academia, and government, and put together by local heroes Del Acosta, President of the Historic Hyde Park Neighborhood Association, and Bill Carlson, President of the communciations agency Tucker/Hall. Over the past little while, I’ve had the chance to attend, enjoy Oxford Exchange’s delicious breakfast buffet (it’s part of the $12 admission), and see some interesting speakers, including:

Yann Weymouth, architect and designer of the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Pete, and chief designer for I.M. Pei on the Grand Louvre Project in Paris
Michelle Royal, CEO and founder of RIDG (Royal Innovation Design Group) and creative consultant and idea-generator
Peter Scorsch, political consultant, political journalist, and editor of SaintPetersblog and FloridaPolitics.com

Tomorrow’s (Friday, August 18) speaker is Dr. Todd Willis, and he’ll be talking about the Physician’s Assistant Program at the USF and the expanding healthcare workforce. If you’d like to attend, the admission is $12 (cash only), and it includes a nice breakfast spread including fruit, Oxford Exchange’s fantastic bacon/egg and egg sandwiches, bread, a really good granola cereal, coffee, and tea. There’s even a deal for students or other grassroots community leaders who can’t afford the meal; talk to Barbara at the door for details.

Rick Baker. Creative Commons photo by BAJohnson — click to see the source.

Last Friday’s guest speaker was Rick Baker, mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida from 2001 to 2010, and one of the two leading candidates for St. Pete’s 2017 mayoral election (the other is the current mayor, Rick Kriseman, making this election the Battle of the Ricks).

At the time of writing, the election’s going Baker’s way; the polls from last week say that he has a 6-point lead over Kriseman, and in their July 28th editorial, the Tampa Bay Times endorsed him for mayor. Bill Carlson introduced him by talking about times when he and Baker went for neighborhood walks around St. Pete. “Where most people see the empty lot,” Bill said, “Rick would point out the newly-renovated house, or the fixed sidewalk.”

Here are my annotated notes from his talk:

I was first elected mayor in 2001 — elected on a Tuesday and sworn in that Sunday
I had to sell my stocks and do the transition from my firm in a very short time
On Monday, my first day on the job, I was already at work, talking about a drug rehab center in St. Pete
Soon after, I had to fly to [Florida state capital] Tallahassee on short notice, and it was suggested that I fly there with Mayor Greco [Dick Greco, Tampa mayor from 1967 – 1974 and 1995 – 2003] on Tampa’s plane
My thought was “Tampa has an air force?”
So I flew to Tallahassee with Mayor Greco and Bob Martinez [Tampa mayor from 1979 – 1986], who are two friends that I keep in touch with to this day

Photo by Joey deVilla. Click to see it at full size.

I’m running for mayor of St. Pete
I come from the business world, and I’m a strategic planner
I believe that if you’re going to run something, you must start with a strategic plan
That strategic plan should start with a mission statement
My mission statement: Work to make St. Pete the best city in America
People used to say “Best city, really?”
My goal has to be “best city” — If I set the goal to be the “Work to make St. Pete the 4th best city in Florida”, who will follow me?
People are naturally drawn to quests for excellence
If you have the right vision, you won’t fail for lack of resources
If you stay laser beam focused on a big goal, you’re going to do fine
The number 1 job of any mayor is public safety
After that, another big job is to improve the economy of the city
If you have great things going on in a city but no jobs, it’s no good
I want to promote not just new businesses, but also existing ones
80% of new jobs coming into city are going to come from existing businesses
I try to go around and ask businesses these questions:
- What is the city doing well?
- Where are we falling short?
- Are you thinking about expanding?
- Are you thinking about leaving?
People that can’t get work can’t buy houses, cars, and other necessities, and they don’t stay

Photo by Joey deVilla. Click to see it at full size.

I’m a new urbanist
I believe in pedestrian scale: a walkable city with dog parks, skate parks, the arts
I wants St Pete to be the cultural center of Florida
Under my administration, we brought the Dali into the core of downtown
I spent a couple days with Chihuly and brought him in [there’s a Chihuly gallery in St. Pete]
We rebuilt the Mahaffey Theater to be what is it today
- If you went to the old one and went inside, you’d have it idea it was right by the water because it didn’t have the nice windows facing the bay like it does now
Brought St. Pete College downtown
Midtown is the most economically depressed part of the city
- It needs more investment
- I saw to it when I was mayor, but there’s not as much investment in midtown since I left office
- It’s one reason why I’m running again
I see St. Pete’s community and business leaders volunteering their time even though they’re busy people
- It’s a very important asset to the city, and I have great respect for that
There were no dog parks when I came into office
- I signed the city’s first one into existence
- The lawyers told us not to do it — too high liability
- The day before our first dog park, we broke ground on library (I built 5 as mayor) and it had the attendance you’d expect
- Then we built dog park next day for a mere $9000, and 200 people showed up for the opening — the crowd was so big that locals initially complained: “Get these people out of park!”
- Everybody loves them, they’re really cheap, we’re going to build lots of them
- People make friends at dog parks
- They contribute to socialization and quality of life in the city
- You feel differently about a place when you walk to it and through it
Also important: playgrounds, for the same reasons as dog parks
Also important:
- Skateboard parks
- Libraries
- Rec centers
- Athletic centers
- Public schools
All of these make for better neighborhoods

Photo by Joey deVilla. Click to see it at full size.

Started the Mayor’s Doorways program, which awards prepaid Florida scholarships awarded to at-risk kids if they maintain mid-level grades, good conduct, and stay away from drugs and crime
Instituted program for recognition and incentives for school principals whose schools showed high standards or improvement
Developed the A+ Housing program for interest-free loans for down payments for teachers who bought a home in St. Pete with an additional incentive: “If you stayed a teacher, the loan was forgiven”.
There were many improvements in public schools during my term
I don’t take credit for them, but the mayor has a bully pulpit to press things forward
I want to work with association of builders and contractors to create apprenticeship programs, where you can learn a trade, get paid to go to school and work

Photo by Joey deVilla. Click to see it at full size.

You may be surprised to hear that the number one complaint made to the city was about sidewalks
Before I came in, it would take 30 months to get a sidewalk fixed
Before my time, the 911 response times in St. Pete was 7.1 minutes. The national average was 7. I brought it down to 5.8.
Not only did I request performance reports on many city services, I had them put online in graph form, explained in non-bureaucratic language

Q&A

Photo by Joey deVilla. Click to see it at full size.

You have repeatedly said the mayor is a non-partisan position. Will you state for the record that you won’t campaign for the Republicans if you become mayor?

[This question was asked by an attendee who introduced herself as a member of the local Young Democrats]
That question is an attempt to inject partisanship into the race
Our charter says it’s not partisan
I support the Republicans, but I did not operate as a partisan mayor

St. Pete has been a welcoming place for the LGBT community. What will you do to continue support of that community as part of the city’s economic development?

[This question was likely asked because Baker avoided attending it during when he was mayor]
I participated in Pride with the Rowdies [in an event that took place separately from St. Pete’s main Pride parade, a couple of weeks prior]
I believe in seamlessness, and not seams dividing us, whether it’s gender, sexual orientation, or race…or even if they live in St. Pete
I judge on people on my team based on their ability and willingness to make St. Pete the best city
I had LGBT members on my cabinet

Note: Baker’s use of the word “seamlessness” is most likely a reference to an idea he put forth in his 2011 book The Seamless City: A Conservative Mayor’s Approach to Urban Revitalization That Can Work Anywhere.

How will you increase taxes to improve public transportation?

So you’re asking me to make a political commitment to raise taxes? That won’t happen.
I think your real core concern is transportation
Needs to be looked at regionally
We don’t just live and work in St. Pete — some of us commute from St. Pete to Tampa, Clearwater, and other places, and some people commute to St. Pete from outside
Worked hard in 1999 to get a better north-south corridor
Trying to make US 19 a controlled access corridor, and same for 118 to connect it to I-275
I would like to be able to go from downtown St. Pete to Dunedin without stopping for a light
I’m also big on bike paths
In 2000, St. Pete was bad for bikes and pedestrians — it was deadly
As mayor, I created city trails, built new sidewalks, shortened sidewalk repair time, and built the largest bike trail system in the Southeast

What will you do to keep St. Pete affordable for small businesses and homeowners?

It’s important to support small businesses, especially creatives
This is especially true in places like the emerging Warehouse Arts District and EDGE District
I do not support the current mayor’s move to make chain stores illegal on certain streets
Instead, I’m looking at ways to mix big and small businesses — I’m looking at New York City’s model
The key is to get support of small businesses

Would you commit money to continue the Cross-Bay Ferry pilot project?

I will not commit money to a specific project here
I rode it, and it was quite nice, but I would need to review it from a city perspective

Assuming Tropicana field became available, how would it fit with your plans for the city?

I’m very careful about assumptions like that
I was on the baseball committee at the Chamber of Commerce back in the 1990s
My first job as mayor would be to work with the Rays and find a solution
I’d already had discussions with the Rays, even before I announced my campaign
And if Tropicana Field became available, you’re looking at 85 acres in the core of one of the hottest cities in the Southeast

How do you view light rail?

It could be a solution between Tampa and St. Pete
It’s like food, it’s gotta be the right thing
We’d need to evaluate it; I do think it’s a good thing

I don’t want to make this a partisan question, but back in the 80s it never occurred to me to ask what party a mayor belonged to. But with the current political situation and St. Pete’s “strong mayor” system, and a largely Democratic city council, it does. If you become mayor, there will be hard feelings. How might you end the divide?

Your premise is that you don’t want to suck me into a partisan question, but this is one
You worked with me on [St. Petersburg Mayor from 1991 – 2001] Dave Fischer’s campaign [apparently the person who asked this question and Rick Baker know each other — Joey], and he was a Democrat. Yet I ran his campaign for mayor.
When I was mayor, a newspaper did a survey of everyone I appointed to office and checked their registrations. It turned out that there were more Democrats than Republican. I didn’t know that, because I never checked.
- This has not been the case in the last 4 years, but that’s the way I would run my office

One-on-one

Photo by Joey deVilla. Click to see it at full size.

Café con Tampa runs on a fairly strict 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. schedule since in takes place within a private club, and as the organizers like to say, “the lease runs out at 9”. This means that the Q&A ends at 9 and most attendees file out and make their way to the rest of their day, but there are always a number of stragglers who stick around to network and ask the guest speaker one-on-one questions. Between my recent attendance and the accordion, I’ve gotten to know some of the regulars, and stayed to catch up with them as well as ask Baker a question. While waiting to have a moment with him, I listened as other people asked him their questions.

Having come from the city that elected Rob Ford, who used to rails about “the war on the car” and against cyclists, it’s unusual for me to hear a conservative mayoral candidate talk about the importance of walkable cities, and how people really come to appreciate places that they walk to and through. To one person, he recommended that they read Richard Florida’s writings on the Creative Class and the value they bring to cities. To another, he talked about how it wasn’t always obvious to taxpayers that putting money into cultural and liveabilty was actually economic development. He also talked about how municipal governments more often can’t change a city for the better through direct means, but often do so indirectly by putting the right elements into place.

I asked him one question: With your involvement and influence in the community as a private citizen, why run for mayor again? I’ve talked to a number of people who’ve had similar positions, and while they enjoyed their leadership stint, they say they’d do it only once, and never again. His answer was simple: there’s only so much he could do as a private citizen, and that current mayor Rick Kriseman’s mishandling of a number of issues — including the sewage debacle, in which 200 million gallons of sewage was dumped into Tampa Bay — inspired his run.