Luis Viera lives in New Tampa and his son attends school here. Now, the Hunter’s Green resident and Tampa attorney says he may be interested in representing New Tampa on the Tampa City Council.
Viera told the Neighborhood News that he is exploring whether or not to challenge for the District 7 seat currently held by Lisa Montelione.
Since Montelione has filed to challenge Shawn Harrison in the House District 63 race (see pg. 8), state law requires that she resign and vacate her council seat by Election Day (November 8, 2016). Tampa will hold a special election to replace her.
In the meantime, Viera is on a fact-finding mission to decide whether or not to pursue a job that he admits intrigues him.
“Its a really unique seat,’’ says Viera, an attorney with Ogden & Sullivan, P.A., a civil trial practice firm in Tampa. “It’s the only seat for the City of Tampa that represents North (and New) Tampa. I’m lifelong from this area. I grew up in Temple Terrace, right next door, and have lived in New Tampa for the last 10 years or so. My son goes to school at Lawton Chiles Elementary. I’m a stakeholder in this area.”
Viera has no timetable for declaring his candidacy for the city’s nonpartisan elections, and is hoping to line up bipartisan support before doing so, even though he can’t run as a Republican or Democrat.
Having lived in New Tampa during the seemingly endless construction work on Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd., Viera says one of the main issues he would tackle would be transportation.
“I’m not saying that by getting on Council and making efforts its going to be a panacea, a heal all. It’s not,’’ Viera admits. “But, you can certainly make targeted (transportation) investments that I think will make things better.”
Some other issues mentioned by Viera include strengthening the link between North and New Tampa, fighting for more assistance for the city’s police and fire departments and ensuring that New Tampa gets its fair share of the city’s tax pie.
Viera helped found and is the President of the Lawyers Autism Awareness Foundation, which has raised roughly $40,000 for children with autism and other developmental disabilities, and does an annual “Sensory Friendly Santa” event for children with autism and other developmental disabilities.
He has served on the Board of Tampa Bay Best Buddies (2011-15), is presently the chair of the City of Tampa’s Civil Service Board (which hears the appeals of city workers who have been terminated or disciplined and wish to appeal). He also is the incoming president of the Tampa Hispanic Bar Association.
“I’ve always been involved in civic issues and always had an interest in politics,’’ Viera said. “(Running for City Council) would be an extension of that.”
Wesley Chapel artist Alan Metzger didn’t sell any of his original art all weekend, but when he packed up Sunday at the conclusion of the 11th annual Suncoast Arts Festival (SAF) at the Shops at Wiregrass mall, he did so with plans to return.
“I thought it was a real good event,’’ said Metzger, who did sell 20-40 prints of his work, including a commemorative poster for the International Polo Club of Palm Beach for which Metzger won an award and some acclaim. “The (SAF) event was really well run, and I was impressed.”
The SAF, held on Paseo Dr. down the heart of the mall the weekend of Jan. 16-17, got a perfect day of weather on Saturday for its biggest crowds, and then survived a major overnight storm to once again pull off a successful event.
Artists came to the area from places like Satsuma, FL, Aurora, CO, and Eastham, MA, selling all kinds of fine art, jewelry and other crafts.
“I’m really pleased with how everything went,’’ said Jennifer Douglas, who owns Jennifer Lee Events, which managed this year’s SAF. “Even the bad weather (early Sunday morning) did very minimal damage. The skies cleared just in time for another gorgeous day.”
Proceeds from the festival are donated to Pasco County schools through the Fine Arts of the Suncoast’s grant program.
Eleven grants were awarded Sunday to Pasco County art students, including Wiregrass Ranch’s Darcy Fermin.
Fermin was awarded the grant so the school could work with its printing press to making etchings and linoleum carvings and create one-of-a-kind prints. Students there are researching the pros and cons of different printing press art.
Douglas said that while she wouldn’t have official attendance figures for a few weeks, in recent years the event has drawn roughly 100,000 visitors over the course of the weekend and this year’s crowds were similar to those in the past.
The festival had a free, hands-on art garden and art “makerspace,” where kids could create their own works of art. In front of the Dillard’s at the mall, sidewalk artists used chalk to create drawings of colorful frogs, a large octopus, a 3-D rendition of BB-8 (the droid from the latest “Star Wars” movie) and others.
This also was the first year the street art was a commissioned exhibit, which was sponsored by Tampa Bay Business for Culture & the Arts.
Metzger said the rough overnight weather did scatter the tent and some of the artwork of one of the artists across from him, but the festival’s staff did a great job of retrieving the tent and art and restoring it to its proper place.
Some artists did choose to leave before the bad weather arrived on Sunday to be safe, Lee said, because their art was more delicate, but she also noted that there was a total of 125 booths set up by artists and sponsors, and 116 confirmed artists, as well as seven sidewalk chalk artists, and that business was as brisk on Sunday as it was the day before.
On the main stage across from Macy’s, De Lei’ed Parrots (photo on next page) provided musical entertainment on Saturday and the popular Florida-based band the Black Honkeys played on Sunday.
The 2016 SAF’s Best of Show Award went to Maitland, FL artist Rolly Ray Reel, who has been exhibiting at art festivals all across the country for 45 years and has appeared at this event before. His booth featured mixed media pieces that toed the line between painting and sculpture, incorporating found items like chains, stones and metal with acrylic and oils into some very interesting art that caught the eyes of many those passing by.
Former USF football star Jay Mize, who already has four successful Irish 31 restaurants (in Hyde Park Village, Westshore, Westchase & at the Amalie Arena), says he hopes to open his fifth & sixth locations by the end of 2016.One of those new locales is on Clearwater Beach & the other is in The Shops st Wiregrass mall, in a shared building that just began site work next to Panera Bread.
Mize says the Irish 31 at Wiregrass will be 2,800 SF & will feature the same great chef-inspired (I call it ‘Irish-plus-gourmet’) cuisine as the other Irish 31 locations.
“It’s sort of a race to see which of our new stores opens first,” Mize says. “But we hope both will be open by the end of 2016.”
Mize noted that he couldn’t disclose the business that would share the building at our press time, but, “we know it’ll be good for us because we’re compatible with everyone.”
Congratulations to Tampa Palms resident and Liberty Middle School sixth grader Christian Breslin, who sparked the idea for the bill Rep. Shawn Harrison selected as his favorite in his recent “That Should Be A Law” contest.
Rep. Harrison says he was proud to present House Bill 1143 on Jan. 6, a proposal that will regulate the use of e-cigarettes and “vaping” devices under the Florida Clean Indoor Air Act. Thanks in part to Christian’s presentation before the legislative committee (photos), the bill passed its first committee by an 11-2 vote.
“The best part is that this idea came to me from a young constituent in my District as a result of my contest,’’ Harrison said. “And, it’s actually good public policy because there currently is no regulation (in Florida or the U.S.) about what chemicals can go in these things.”
Harrison also noted that many of the proposed bills he considered for the contest were about smoking, “but Christian’s was the most innovative. Until they (e-cigs) are regulated by the Federal government, I think it’s best to err on the side of caution and regulate their use (in Florida), just like regular cigarettes.”
We’ll keep you posted about the bill’s progress in the legislature.
Dr. Navdeep Jassal, M.D. (left) and Dr. Maulik Bhalani M.D.
Dr. Maulik Bhalani M.D. knows that when people hear of pain clinics, some think of the so-called “pill mills.” He understands that after years of headlines about abuse of certain pain medications, particularly in Florida, the reputation is tough to shake.
But, at Dr. Bhalani’s Florida Pain Medicine on Windguard Cir. (across from Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel, or FHWC, where he moved in May from his former location on Ashley Oaks Cir. in Seven Oaks), he says the perceptions are not even close to reality.
“The typical working class person doesn’t want to see a pain management doctor because they think that doctor is going to get them hooked on medication,’’ says Dr. Bhalani. “Little old ladies, grandmothers, will come in and tell us…I know those stories that are out there on the news. But, when they come in here, from minute one, it’s a totally difference experience.”
The office is clean and lively, the doctors are open and friendly and the approach to managing your pain, which employs the latest technological advances, is always, they say, measured and restrained, yet effective.
“There’s not a bunch of guys outside in the parking lot smoking, looking disheveled, looking for pain meds,’’ Dr. Bhalani says. “That’s not the kind of practice we are.”
The kind of practice Florida Pain Medicine is, Dr. Bhalani says, is one that focuses on interventional pain management. “Start-to-finish pain care,’’ he says.
Sometimes, in the best cases, that means opioid management, ice and injections until the patient can complete physical therapy.
“Then, we wean them off pain meds, hopefully with the goal of we never see them again, which means they are doing great and back to living their life,’’ Dr. Bhalani says.
Florida Pain Medicine also offers Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) and ultrasound therapy.
In other cases, like patients with terminal cancer, Dr. Bhalani says his goal is not to let them live out their last days in misery.
Whatever the malady, “We never force anything on anyone,’’ Dr. Bhalani says.
Pain management means different treatments for different people. Every patient is unique, but the main goal for Dr. Bhalani and his associate at Florida Pain Medicine, Dr. Navdeep Jassal, M.D., is to help their patients return to a normal way of life. Their motto is “Restore Function, Relive Life.”
“We want to get you back to where you can live your life the way you like living it,” Dr. Bhalani says.
A Little Info About The Doctors
Dr. Bhalani, a huge local sports fan and 10-year Tampa Bay Buccaneers season ticket holder who dons a Jameis Winston jersey for home games, has followed in the footsteps of his father, who is a pain medicine doctor in the Ormond Beach area of Florida, as well as several of his uncles and aunts.
In fact, Dr. Bhalani is one of 13 cousins in his family – and all are physicians.
“We don’t know how to do anything else,’’ he says, chuckling and joking that he might raise his kids, who are ages 3, 1 and 10 months old, to be NFL punters.
Dr. Bhalani received his M.D. degree from the Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, NE. He also spent two years as a resident at Maryland General Hospital in Baltimore in 2005; was the chief resident at the University of South Florida’s Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Residency Program; and completed an Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Pain Medicine Fellowship in Interventional Pain Medicine at USF in 2010. He is Board-certified in Interventional Pain Medicine and in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation.
Dr. Bhalani’s credentials also include sitting on the Board of the Florida Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (FSIPP) as a Director-at-Large, and he is proud of the work the FSIPP did in helping craft the so-called “Pill Mill Bill” in 2011, which forced clinics to register with the state and banned doctors from dispensing opioid prescription painkillers like Vicodin and Oxycodone from their offices. The Prescription Drug Monitoring Program also was implemented, which Drs. Bhalani and Jassal reference to look at a patient’s prescription drug history.
Dr. Jassal says he heard about all the “wild wild west stories” about Florida’s pill mills when he was studying in New York.
“I didn’t believe it until I came down here,’’ he says. “But, it’s improved dramatically (since 2011), thanks to the efforts of Dr. Bhalani and others.”
A car enthusiast and avid runner who sometimes puts in 15 miles on a weekend as a way to relax, Dr. Jassal joined Dr. Bhalani in July after completing a Pain Medicine Fellowship at USF, where he was a student of Dr. Bhalani’s. Before that, he was a resident at North Shore-Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Health Systems and Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine in Great Neck, NY.
Most patients Drs. Bhalani and Jassal see are what you might expect — those suffering from back, neck and joint pain. Others have more serious conditions, like poor recovery from back surgery, painful diabetes and even cancer. Each treatment plan varies.
The doctors at Florida Pain Medicine say they prefer a conservative approach. Patients generally will not be prescribed any controlled pain medications on the first visit. The doctors are careful to give a full exam — surprising to patients who have been to other pain medicine doctors — and look over X-rays and other images and notes from the referring doctor. as well as run a urine drug screen.
Dr. Bhalani said he and Dr. Jassal will sometimes suggest a smaller dose of medicine than the patient is currently taking. Others are often offered alternatives to stronger prescription drugs, like local anaesthetic injections (epidurals, for example), anti-inflammatory drugs, physical therapy or even weight loss to relieve pain.
“If that doesn’t work, we’ll use more aggressive measures,’’ Dr. Bhalani said. “We really try to be kind of conservative initially.”
Dr. Jassal says that since joining Florida Pain Medicine in July, he has seen as many patients in six months as he expected to see in nine months or a year. On average, Drs. Bhalani and Jassal see 25-27 patients a day, a number they think is perfect to give them time to give each patient individualized care.
Business has been so good that Dr. Bhalani, who opened his second Florida Pain Medicine on Arbor Ridge Dr. in Zephyrhills on Nov. 16, says he hopes to open another this summer or in early 2007, in Brandon.
The expansion speaks to the popularity of the doctors and the office’s friendly, comfortable environment cultivated by Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner (ARNP) Louann Brown and office manager Stacye Ciegler.
Dr. Jassal thinks the office’s reputation, which includes strong relationships with local pharmacists and doctors, comes from the way the patients are cared for at Florida Pain Medicine. Dr. Bhalani says he recommends for his patients the same things he would for his own parents: “Literally, that is how we treat every single patient,” he says proudly.
A soft, personal touch and firm recommendations are something Dr. Jassal thinks patients appreciative. Sometimes, an injection, which can relieve pain for months, is suggested instead of a prescription. “Sometimes, they are like wow, I wish someone had recommended this 4-5 years ago.”
Dr. Bhalani says he recently treated a 90-year-old patient who told him, “Well, Doc, if this works as good as the last one, that’d be great,” to which Dr. Bhalani replied, “Oh, the last one helped you?,” and the patient told him that was the reason he hadn’t been back for seven months. “And I’ve been golfing the whole time!,” he said.
Not to be outdone, Dr. Jassal has a 97-year old patient who receives periodic injections, which he says, “keeps her happiness, and her happiness is dancing with her son,’’
Most of the office’s business, Dr. Bhalani says, comes from referrals. He thinks he treats as many local physicians and their family members as anyone in the area.
Dr. Bhalani can do procedures at Florida Hospital Zephyrhills, where he is the director of the Intervention & Pain Program, and at New Tampa Surgery Center on Cypress Ridge Blvd.
However, state-of-the-art pain management procedures are often performed in his Wesley Chapel office, as opposed to the hospital or at ambulatory surgery centers, which helps save patients money.
“The whole spectrum of care gives us flexibility,’’ says Dr. Bhalani.
 To reach either the Wesley Chapel Florida Pain Medicine office (at 2553 Windguard Cir.) or the Zephyrhills’ location (38011 Arbor Ridge Dr.), call 388-2948.
