“Small, but Mighty.” I’m almost positive my friend and former Rotary Club of New Tampa Noon president Valerie Casey first coined that phrase about the Rotary Club to which both Val and I belong.
Our club, which meets every Wednesday at noon for lunch at Mulligans Irish Pub at the Pebble Creek Golf Club, has never had as many as 30 members and currently has around 20, but somehow, thanks to the often-tremendous efforts by our small “family” of club members, we’re still able to accomplish a lot.
Although we also have partnered with other Rotary Clubs — including the New Tampa “Breakfast” Rotary (which meets at Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club for breakfast on Fridays at 7 a.m.; see story on the facing page) — the fund raisers and projects our club is able to put on with just a little effort have been pretty incredible.
Case in Point: Our annual “Cycling for Vets” Bike Ride through Flatwoods Park, which has raised thousands for U.S. Military veterans organizations and our local first responders (police, fire and emergency folks).
This year, with a committee of three — local dentists Dr. Steven Dau and Dr. Greg Stepanski and commercial real estate agent Scott Hileman — doing most of the leg work and just a few other club volunteers, this year’s ride on April 13 (I missed it for another kind of ride; see page 3) attracted a record (for us) number of 80 registered riders (some of those definitely found out about the ride from the Taste of New Tampa & Wesley Chapel less than a month earlier). The 2018 ride raised $3,000, with portions of that amount to benefit the Fisher House residence for families who have family members who are active duty and military veterans being treated at the Tampa Veterans Administration Hospital on Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. and for Support the Troops, a Wesley Chapel-based nonprofit that mails out hundreds of “care packages” every week to active military stationed overseas.
Dr. Dau, who basically celebrated the birth of his first child with his wife Monika a couple of months before he started planning this event, was quick to share the credit on May 9, when our club donated $1,000 of those proceeds to Fisher House Tampa director Paula Welenc (above left, with Dr. Dau, right, and Noon Rotary president Belvai “Vinnie” Kudva).
Our committee did a great job,” said Dr. Dau. “As always, it was a true team effort.”
The club also thanks the event’s sponsors — Dau Orthodontics-Dr. Steven Dau; Children’s Dentistry-Dr. Greg Stepanski; Gentle Care Dentistry-Dr. Tom Frankfurth; AllState Insurance-Gary Lefebvre; State Farm Insurance-Joyce Coleman; Suncoast, Tax & Accounting-Angie Garrett; Kiran Indian Grocery, AAA-Novelette Johnson; Stifel Financial-Mike Wallace; Goal Commercial-Scott Hileman; The Bantner Firm-Adam Bantner; Minerva Indian Restaurant, Thai Lanna & Sushi, Little Greek New Tampa, Peabody’s Billiards & Games, Tabla Indian Restaurant ,The Gift Box Boutique, Oliver’s Cycle Sports, Neighborhood News & WCNT-tv.
New Tampa Brewfest?
Fresh off that outstanding bike ride, the New Tampa Noon Rotary Club will host its first-ever “New Tampa Brewfest” on Saturday, November 10, 4 p.m.-8 p.m. (the time may be subject to change) at the Venetian Events Center at St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church on Cross Creek Blvd.
The Brewfest will be another great event featuring craft beers, a variety of food trucks and entertainment. Look for details in these pages and future episodes of WCNT-tv.
Tampa Fire Department Station No. 20 in Tampa Palms needing a little sprucing up and it just so happened that a platoon of community-minded residents was looking to do some sprucing.
On Earth Day (April 20), the two came together with single goal in mind — to help beautify the first fire station built in New Tampa.
“Our Rotary International President Ian Riseley wanted to plant 1.2-million trees all over the world to call attention to environmental issues,” Rotary Club of New Tampa (which meets Friday mornings at Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club) president Karen Frashier said. “There are 1.2-million Rotarians worldwide and Earth Day was the deadline. We added 18 to that total today.”
It was a collaborative effort. Rotary Club of New Tampa Noon (which meets Wednesdays for lunch at Pebble Creek Golf Club) president Belvai “Vinnie” Kudva came up with the idea after District 7 Tampa City Councilman Luis Viera approached him during a recent Rotary Club meeting.
“(Luis) Viera came to our club to talk about this project, doing something for Station 20,” Kudva said. “(Neighborhood News publisher) Gary Nager guided us, but we all wanted to both do something good for the community and also celebrate Earth Day.”
The original idea to improve Fire Station 20 by the Rotarians was to paint it. Built in 1988, the station is in need of a fresh coat of paint. That undertaking proved too cumbersome for the strict rules regarding which entities are allowed to make improvements to the physical building at a City of Tampa fire station.
“Like everything else in New Tampa, there are deed restrictions for improvements like painting,” Fire Station 20 Captain Stephen Suarez said. “There are also complications about which contractors the City can allow to make improvements like that. We found a project for the Rotarians that would beautify the station and when they suggested crepe myrtles, it was a natural fit.”
Kudva contracted with Cypress Creek Landscape Supply in Tampa to purchase and deliver the different color crepe myrtle trees.
To his surprise, when the crew showed up on Sunday to plant them, the holes had already been dug, with the trees already placed in them. All the crew had to do was water them and fill in the topsoil.
Rotarians, along with Capt. Suarez, Viera and his son Luis, set to work straightening the trees, filling the holes and building berms around the base of the trees to trap water so that it does not run off. It was a worthy project that more than a dozen volunteers took part in.
“We decided it was a good thing to do to serve the community, especially with it being Earth Day,” Noon Rotary Club member Scott Hileman said. “We want to show an example that we are all one community and we help each other out.”
Hileman brought along his children Ella (16), Drew (14) and David (11) and they all grabbed shovels so that the project was completed less than 30 minutes into the planting.
“It’s our way of saying ‘thank you’ to the men and women who work here,” Viera said. “They help us, they leave their families to help ours. It’s just a small way to show them we appreciate the work that they do.”
Catherine Weng says she’s never been interviewed before. She has, however, conducted plenty of interviews, as the editor of Freedom’s school newspaper, Revolution.
That’s far from her only role, however. The Class of 2018 Freedom High valedictorian is the definition of well-rounded.
She loves to dance and has studied at the Jansen Dance Project in Tampa Palms since middle school. She’s president of Freedom’s math honor society, Mu Alpha Theta, and has participated in competitions for that club since she was a freshman. She’s also the president of a club she created at Freedom for students who want to learn American Sign Language. Catherine also says she loves to bake, especially cookies and birthday cakes. Oh, and she has a part-time job as a tutor.
Catherine has finished her high school career with an impressive GPA of 8.9. She boosted her GPA well above a “perfect” 4.0 with a combination of honors, Advanced Placement (AP) and dual enrollment (DE) classes, which varied from computer programming classes to astronomy, to American Sign Language, which she really enjoys and isn’t offered at Freedom.
She says she got her first B this year in AP Spanish, where the challenge of being the only non-native speaker has made it hard to understand the wide variety of accents and vocabulary among those in her class. But, she says she doesn’t regret the hard class, “I really like linguistics,” she says. “I speak English and Chinese at home.”
Catherine is part of a large, blended family, and she says she’s especially close to her older sister Diana, who has earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Florida in Gainesville. Diana is still a student at UF, now working toward her Ph.D. in Accounting.
Knowing Catherine’s love of baking, Diana tried to sweeten the deal to get her sister to choose her school.
“She promised me a stand mixer if I came to UF,” Catherine laughs.
Despite exploring options as far away as New York and Seattle, Catherine ultimately decided to join her sister at Florida. She is a Bright Futures scholarship recipient, National Merit Scholarship finalist and a recipient of the Benacquisto Scholarship, which provides incentives for high- achieving students to go to a state university in Florida.
“I have such a good opportunity at UF,” she says. “I’m proud to say I’m a Gator.”
Given Catherine’s love for such a broad range of activities, it shouldn’t be surprising that she hasn’t quite nailed down what she’ll major in at UF. She’ll be in UF’s Honor College, and says she’ll most likely be a business major.
As Catherine leaves high school, she says she will take with her a philosophy to try to absorb the best things from the people around her.
“I’ve made a lot of amazing friends,” she says. “They have different skilIs and virtues and amazing things about them. I don’t know if I just got lucky to be at Freedom or if people are amazing everywhere.”
She’s about to find out about the people in Gainesville, at least.
“I’m happy to go to a ridiculously big school,” she says. “I’ll never run out of people to meet or things to do.”
Salutatorian Alejandro Michel
Freedom’s Salutatorian is Alejandro Michel, who had a GPA of 8.8. Alejandro also is a well-rounded student, who has excelled in both academics and athletics.
On Saturday, May 4, Alejandro graduated from Hillsborough Community College in the morning, after earning enough credits through dual enrollment classes — while a student at Freedom — to receive his Associate of Arts (AA) degree.
After the ceremony, he traveled to Jacksonville for the Florida Class 4A High School Track & Field State Championships, qualifying this year for the first time. He is primarily a cross country runner, but found success running track this spring, as he moved on from excellent finishes at the District and Regional meets to run in the State meet, too.
Before attending Freedom, both Alejandro and Catherine attended Liberty Middle School and before that, both attended Chiles Elementary, also in Tampa Palms, since kindergarten.
They have something else in common, too. As Alejandro heads off to Florida State University in Tallahassee, he is choosing to go to school with his brother, Max, who graduated from Middleton High and HCC this spring, as well.
“We plan to have our own apartment together, close enough to ride a bike to campus,” Alejandro says. “I’ve been riding my bike to school since Chiles and I want to keep doing that.”
Alejandro says he has two main loves — running and math. At FSU, he plans to major in statistics and minor in computer science. He is on an accelerated track so that he will finish both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in just three years.
He says for his junior and senior year, he’s taken three math classes every semester, including AP Statistics, AP Calculus A/B and B/C, Calculus II and III and others. This year, he needed one more class at Freedom to keep his full-time status, so he chose Honors Trigonometry. “The teacher knows the level of math I have and lets me teach the class sometimes,” he says.
Alejandro intends to become an actuary — a mathematician who specializes in risk and probability. “Really, I would have loved to be a math teacher or professor,” he says, “but there’s a work/life balance you can get with being an actuary, working only 40 hours a week.”
He thinks that will leave him with enough time and financial stability to also pursue a career as a professional runner, with the flexibility to continue to train and run.
He says that on his journey so far, he’s learned about pursuing his passion and how that leads to success.
“Do you just want to be successful, or do you really enjoy waking up every day and getting out there and having a runner’s high?,” he asks. “You have to love the process, not just the idea of being successful.”
Wesley Chapel Elementary’s Odyssey of the Mind (OM) team is known as the 2017 World Champion elementary school team in the extracurricular academic activity that is a combination of technology and performance art. The WCE team gets to defend its title this weekend.
If you ask someone to name a world championship team from Wesley Chapel, the first thought might be the U.S. women’s national ice hockey team that trained at Florida Hospital Center Ice before winning the Gold medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea earlier this year.
But, for those who follow competitive mind games, the Wesley Chapel Elementary Odyssey of the Mind (OM) team is famous for winning the 2017 World Champion elementary school team in the extracurricular academic activity that is a combination of technology and performance art. According to the OM website (OdysseyOfThemind.com), OM is the “largest creative problem-solving competition in the world!”
Teams of students compete in grade-appropriate divisions to solve problems that require building and using a vehicle they can ride on while completing a triathlon of feats that display mechanical prowess and dexterity, such as jousting, curling and navigating a course in two directions.
The students compete from prepared routines they create, corresponding to a rubrik of requirements, such as a multiplication problem or something more spontaneous — like being asked unexpectedly to answer a question like “name a tree.”
It is a production that for the WCE team, known as “JJAMSSS” (the name is derived from the first initial of the name of each team member), combines a bit of pirate-speak and a boat that turns into a sea monster with a learning platform for science, technology, engineering, arts and math (STEAM) knowledge.
“The dynamic of this team is incredible,” says Joelisa Sherman, a parent serving as the team publicist. “They have truly learned the meaning of teamwork through perseverance, hard work, and a lot of creative thinking.”
Of the seven team members, six are fifth-grade students and one is in the third grade. Three of them are returning veterans from the 2017 World Championship competition that took first place at the OM World Finals at Michigan State University in Lansing.
Among them is Sam Cappelluti, who says that while performing as the lead sea monster can be good preparation for a possible career in life science, he really enjoys the time with like-minded students.
“I like thinking creatively and having fun with my friends,” Sam says.
Also adding championship experience to this year’s team is fifth-grader Jason Sherman, who says the atmosphere at the Odyssey World competition is not too unlike other big events, whether in education or sports.
“You develop great relationships with friends and there’s a lot of things to do there,” Jason says.
Mina Melaika is the third member of the team who competed for WCES last year, and she says it truly is an international event. “You go to a dorm and meet friends from Japan and trade pins and stuff.”
Third-grader Jadyn Sherman, Jason’s sister, says she enjoys crafts and finds the OM competition a good fit for her artistic skills.
“I saw the creativity in it and I like to make stuff,” Jadyn says, adding that participating in OM is “a really cool way to hang out with my brother (Jason).”
Anna Gust is a fifth-grader who says she appreciates the close-knit nature of her team and that she wants to “learn more stuff about inventing because, when I grow up, I want to invent stuff.”
The storytelling aspects of OM competition is of particular interest to fifth-grade student Samarth Muralidhara, who also says he’s finding an outlet for his curiosity about how things work.
“I like to see people laugh at my jokes and I love to do the pirate voice,” he says.
A new member of the team who brings about four years of experience is Sean Donahue, who has been participating in OM for four years. He has high expectations for the World Title defense, which will take place at Iowa State University in Ames, May 23-26.
“I’m especially excited for the Worlds, to meet new people and brainstorm,” he says.
Parents who are serving as coaches for the team are Jackie and Sergio Cappelluti, Sandy Gust and Elena Donahue.
The WCES team earned the right to compete at the World Finals by placing first in the Gulf Coast Regional and Florida State-level competitions earlier this year.
To District 7 Tampa City councilman Luis Viera, there is nothing like the sight of a filled room for one of his town halls and New Tampa Council meetings.
This time, on May 2, it was the Jeri Zelinski Community Room at the New Tampa Regional Library, which was filled with local residents with questions about water, fire and emergency service, traffic and future developments.
But mostly, traffic.
Hillsborough’s countywide District 5 Commissioner Ken Hagan — who is running for the District 2 seat that represents all of New Tampa — was the guest at the May 2 New Tampa Council meeting. Viera actually had to recuse himself and leave the room halfway through the meeting when the discussion turned to an issue — the connection of Kinnan St. to Mansfield Blvd. (see stories on pages 1 & 4-5) about which he had a hearing the next day.
What did you miss?
Here’s some of the more interesting tidbits from the hour-long meeting:
Parks, Parks & More Parks
Comm. Hagan was asked about building a cricket field in the area, which turned into a conversation about the progress of a park on 50-plus acres of land in K-Bar Ranch. Hagan said the park will be paid for by the county — which has already set aside $5 million for the project, he added — but will be maintained and run by the City of Tampa in a rare city-county collaboration.
Ken Hagan
He says the park has the blessing of Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, and the two parties are working on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), a non-binding agreement that lays out the terms, details and each party’s responsibilities as they pertain to the park.
As for the what amenities the park would offer, Hagan is unsure. He said, however, that sports fields will not be one of them. At one point, an athletic complex was envisioned, but according to the commissioner, “the city felt that was too intense.”
Another park, this one a public-private venture, is planned for the Branchton Park area, south and west of the intersection of Cross Creek Blvd. and Morris Bridge Rd.
The county bought 10 acres of land for $1.17 million to complete its holdings in the Branchton Park area and open the way for development, as reported last November in the New Tampa Neighborhood News.
Hagan said he is hoping for a creative project. He also said that he expects there will be some commercial development on the corner of Cross Creek Blvd. and Morris Bridge Rd., with the developer funding a lot of the potential amenities, like a splash pad, dog park or zip line.
Hagan also said that he is excited about the The Village at Hunter’s Lake project across the street from Hunter’s Green, saying it will break ground in October. As for the New Tampa Cultural Center, he said that planned jewel will be opening in 2020.
“It will be a centerpiece for the community,’’ Hagan said.
The Zombie Road Returns?
Plans to build a 3-mile East-West Road (E-W Rd.) connecting New Tampa Blvd. and I-275 died in 2008, but it never fails to draw some conversation at Viera’s New Tampa Council and town hall meetings.
That’s probably because some local residents remain convinced it would actually help solve some of New Tampa’s current traffic woes. As originally proposed, the E-W Rd. would direct traffic through West Meadows and connect from where the Gateway Bridge ends at Commerce Park Blvd. in Tampa Palms to a new interchange on I-275. The roadway was expected to help decrease the delays at the I-75/S.R. 56, I-75/BBD, and I-275/Bearss Ave. interchanges.
As Hagan recalled, most of New Tampa was in favor of the road, but residents of West Meadows and Tampa Palms Areas 4 & 8, where the road was proposed to go through, banded together as a formidable opposition group.
There were other problems with the proposed road as well, from environmental concerns to whether or not to make it a toll road.
“I would still support taking a look at it and making another run at it,” said Hagan, whose parents lived in West Meadows at the time, but still supported the E-W Rd. “I can certainly see how that would relieve a significant amount of congestion.”
At the other end of the same road, Hagan also was asked if there are any plans to extend Cross Creek Blvd. to U.S. 301, but he said there are not.
“When you look at our unfunded list of projects, priority-wise that would be pretty far down the list,” he said.
The same goes for widening Morris Bridge Rd., north of Cross Creek Blvd. Although it is a constrained road and currently prohibited from being widened due to environmental concerns, with the extension of S.R. 56 and the continued development in K-Bar Ranch in that area, the two-lane, well-worn Morris Bridge Rd. has “future problem” written all over it.
Surprisingly, no one complained about the intersection of Cross Creek Blvd. and BBD, which continues to be a major nuisance for commuters in peak hours, although the City of Tampa is currently studying it.
A BBD Pedestrian Bridge?
The idea of a pedestrian bridge, or a foot bridge, crossing over BBD from Live Oak Preserve (or even the Pebble Creek area) was presented again by Sigrun Ragnarsdottir and, is it just us, or does it make more and more sense every time it is brought up?
Think of it — a bridge for students to be able to walk, ride a bike or otherwise cross over an extremely congested road to get safely to Wharton High. It would be safer than relying on traffic lights — and the common sense of drivers probably holding their cell phones in one hand — to cross BBD, and surely more parents would let their kids walk or bike to school, reducing the number of cars piling up on BBD for drop-off and pick up.
Yes, a pedestrian bridge recently collapsed in Miami, and the cost of construction probably kills any chance of making this happen. But, when you look at the other high schools in Hillsborough County, there are aren’t any others – even Chamberlain (Busch Blvd.), Plant (Dale Mabry), Sickles (Gunn Highway) — where the majority of its local students have to cross a busier and more dangerous road than BBD to get to and from school.
Police On The Radar?
As the population of New Tampa continues to grow, so does the need for a police substation in the area, according to a few local residents. Viera said that, at the moment, however, a police substation is a “want…whether or not it’s a need is a point of distinction.” He added, however, that the idea of a police substation is on his radar.
“It’s something that, as we see more growth in this area , we are going to want to take a look at because right now, we’ve pretty much got police hanging out at 7-11, and that’s not the most amenable plan,” he said.
Hagan said a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) substation is being put at a new park in Carrollwood he is championing, and then it hit him — maybe it’s something that could be done at the proposed K-Bar Ranch park. “I hadn’t thought of that before,’’ he said.
The Elephant In The Room
You kind of got the feeling from the start that people were just killing time waiting for someone to bring up the whole Kinnan-Mansfield thing, and of course, it came up.
Short recap: Nothing has changed.
Hagan wants it connected, and said it was a travesty that the issue has dragged on this long. It appeared everyone in the room pretty much agreed.
Someone in attendance joked about sneaking in there and connecting them overnight, another said they could just borrow the equipment being used to widen BBD, and another suggested a boycott of Wiregrass Ranch businesses.
Judging by our stories on pages 1 and 4, however, it is a situation that hopefully is entering its endgame this summer.
“Small, but Mighty.” I’m almost positive my friend and former Rotary Club of New Tampa Noon president Valerie Casey first coined that phrase about the Rotary Club to which both Val and I belong.
Case in Point: Our annual “Cycling for Vets” Bike Ride through Flatwoods Park, which has raised thousands for U.S. Military veterans organizations and our local first responders (police, fire and emergency folks).
Our committee did a great job,” said Dr. Dau. “As always, it was a true team effort.”
