Members of the Wharton High “Beautification Club” hope to raise funds to add some green to this serenity garden, which serves as both a memorial and a place of peace and quiet on the school’s campus.
Several years ago, students in Wharton High’s Key Club created a place on campus to remember students and faculty members who had passed away. But, the quiet corner it’s tucked into doesn’t have sprinklers, so grass won’t grow, and plants planted in the “serenity garden” wither.
Over the years, it fell into disrepair. In fact, says Jennifer Bell, an English teacher at the school, “It became a weed-choked barren thing with a picnic table — not the kind of memorial garden we wanted.”
So Wharton’s “Beautification Club,” which Bell co-sponsors with fellow English teacher Lindsey Glenn, went to work.
Back in September, with the help of the school’s head custodian, Junior Cintron, club members completely overhauled the area, adding raised plant beds with drought-friendly plants.
Now it’s much improved, but members of the club think it still has a way to go. While other solutions have been tried, such as mulch (which washed away in heavy rain), it was decided that the best way to improve the space would be with artificial turf, since no water is available to keep grass alive.
The turf is expensive, so the club hopes members of the community might help to make this project happen. The turf is estimated to cost about $1,200.
“We know there are people in our community who have been touched by those who were lost,” says Bell.
She emphasizes that the area is not only a memorial, which is why it was named the serenity garden.
“We want to make it a place that is uplifting and beautiful, as a place of reflection,” she explains. “So, if you need to go and re-center yourself, it’s off the beaten path a little, so you can take a quiet moment to yourself if you’re having a rough day.”
She says that is already happening. “We’ve heard there are definitely students who have noticed the improvement and have been sitting out there if they are upset and need to take a moment to themselves.”
Bell says that the serenity garden isn’t the only project the Beautification Club has undertaken since its inception last year.
“One thing that’s striking at Wharton is that everything at the school is gray,” she says. “We felt like the lack of color and beauty was hurting morale at Wharton.”
She explains that while the club hopes to overcome the gray with some color, it’s about more than that.
“We want to boost morale and improve the overall climate around the school,” she says, explaining that the club takes on a couple of large and a couple of small projects each year. “We’ve placed anonymous Post-It notes to encourage students, we’ve made sensory bottles — also called calm-down bottles — to help autistic students, and painted murals at our on-campus preschool playground.”
To support the Wharton Beautification Club’s efforts to install artificial turf in the school’s serenity garden, contact the club’s sponsors via the school: (813) 631-4710. Checks, made out to “Wharton High School” and designated for the Beautification Club, can be dropped off at the school.
Earth Fare pledges that it only sells products that are free of high fructose corn syrup, added hormones, bleached or bromated flour, antibiotics and artificial fats, colors, preservatives and sweeteners.
The Hyatt Place Hotel and Convention Center is expected to open in July, and according to Impact Properties president Dilip Kanji, combined what will follow soon after will make the Cypress Creek Town Center the place to be in Wesley Chapel.
At the Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce’s monthly Economic Development Briefing on Thursday, Kanji announced that organic grocer Earthfare, as well as Stein Mart, Chipotle, HomeGoods and other long-anticipated retail stores and restaurants, are heading to the north side of S.R. 56, directly across from Tampa Premium Outlets.
“You may (already) know this, but I have permission to release this,” Kanji said, to the delight of a few dozen local business leaders at Hunter’s Green Golf & Country Club.
Kanji said a number of previously undisclosed but rumored businesses will be popping up along the bustling S.R. 56 strip being developed by the Sierra family. Those include:
Earth Fare: One of the boutique, or organic, food stores many in Wesley Chapel and New Tampa have been clamoring for. Earth Fare pledges that it only sells products that are free of high fructose corn syrup, added hormones, bleached or bromated flour, antibiotics and artificial fats, colors, preservatives and sweeteners. The nearest store is roughly 20 miles away in Oldsmar, and most recent store – the company’s 46th – opens Saturday in Bradenton.
Stein Mart: Department store that touts big savings on designer brands. The company closed its store in Tampa Palms in 2015.
Chipotle Mexican Grill: A chain of fast casual restaurants with over 2,000 locations and something of a cult following. It has a location in New Tampa at The Walk at Highwoods Preserve, and specializes in burritos, tacos, bowls and salads.
HomeGoods: HomeGoods will be joining what will be a crowded market for home fashions, including kitchen and bath items, rugs, lighting and furniture, as an At Home is planned for the south side of S.R. 56 behind Costco, and a Cost Plus World Market should be opening soon at The Grove at Wesley Chapel.
Total Wine & More: The largest U.S. independent retailer of fine wine has three locations in Tampa Bay – Tampa, Brandon and Clearwater.
Hobby Lobby: An arts and craft store with more than 800 locations in 47 states, it has been rumored to be coming since showing up on as a Cypress Creek tenant on a retail flier in 2016. This would b the third Pasco County location, joining stores in Zephyrhills and New Port Richey.
Golf Galaxy: Formerly known as Golfsmith before being acquired by DICK’s, 36 new Golf Galaxy stores, which sell the latest golf equipment, apparel and accessories, opened last summer, including one on N. Dale Mabry Hwy. in Lutz.
The sports-themed bar now is only located in Texas and Louisiana but is expanding all over the southeast, including nine locations in Florida.
Walk-On Bistreaux and Bar: Founded by a pair of former walk-on basketball players on the Louisiana State University basketball team in 2003, Walk-On was named by ESPN is 2012 as the No. 1 Sports Bar in America. New Orleans Saints quarterback Dree Brees joined the ownership team in 2015, and the sports-themed bar now is only located in Texas and Louisiana but is expanding all over the southeast, including nine locations in Florida.
Blaze Pizza: The California-based fast-casual chain touts its freshly and daily-made dough, signature sauce and fast-firing create-your-own pizzas (hence the name).
“In April, they will start clearing ground,” Kanji said. “It will be 330,000-sq.-ft. of retail space that will be built.”
Blaze Pizza: The California-based fast-casual chain touts its freshly and daily-made dough, signature sauce and fast-firing create-your-own pizzas.
Other businesses Kanji mentioned have also been reported in the Neighborhood News. They include Dick’s Sporting Good (most likely a fusion of DICK’s and Field & Stream, one of the company’s subsidiaries), PetSmart and Burlington Coat Factory, which are already in the permitting phase.
Restaurants that are already under construction and expected to open by the summer: Chuy’s Tex-Mex and Bahama Breeze Island Grille. Mellow Mushroom, a specialty pizza place, opened in mid-January.
Kanji said the explosion of new businesses on the Sierra properties is why he wanted to build the Hyatt Place and Convention Center of Wesley Chapel there. He said he has had his eye on Wesley Chapel for a number of years, but saw most of the potential west of S.R. 56.
“When we looked at the hotel site, we could have gone on the other (east) side, we could have gone on Bruce B. Downs, but this is where we wanted to be,” Kanji said. “I mean, where else would you stay if you’re in Wesley Chapel than right there. Walking distance to restaurants, shopping, entertainment. Within walking distance (of so many things), that’s what today’s traveler wants.”
Naufil Keshwani batting at Rodney Colson Park. (Photo by Nagesh Nayak)
Nagesh Nayak is on a mission.
The Tampa Premier League (TPL) president, a K-Bar Ranch resident, has taken his power point presentation to Hillsborough and Pasco county commissioners, emailed and spoken to local politicians, shown up at town halls and, even in the midst of the heated budget battle last year, where Tampa City Council members argued over spending, Nayak stood up and asked for money to build what to him seems logical.
A cricket field in the New Tampa or Wesley Chapel area.
Sure, he says, land is sparse these days. Business development of what land is available takes precedence. But, look around New Tampa, in places like Cory Lake Isles, Arbor Greene and Tampa Palms, and you might notice Tampa Bay’s largest concentration of Indian residents.
Their game is cricket, and they would like a place to play it.
“So much of the population would be interested,” Nayak says.
A large portion of the more than 26,000 or so households in New Tampa’s 33647 zip code are of Indian and Asian descent, a number Nayak says he believes may be as high as 10 percent. Another zip code with a heavy Indian population, 33620, borders New Tampa at the University of South Florida.
In fact, the USF Cricket Club, founded by TPL chairman Satish Hanumanthu in 2007, is one of the top programs in the American College Cricket (ACC) league. The ACC, founded in 2009, has more than 70 teams, and holds its national championship in South Florida during spring break.
Nagesh Nayak (right) and Satish Hanumanthu, two of the leaders in an effort to bring cricket fields to New Tampa and Wesley Chapel. (Photo by John C. Cotey)
“USF has won 80 percent of the (collegiate) tournaments it has played in,” Hanumanthu says.
“I would safely say, without any disrespect to anyone, you could safely call us the (New England) Patriots of college cricket,” Nayak adds.
The program is so esteemed, Hanumanthu says, that the club is often the deciding factor for Indian students coming to attend college in the U.S.
“It helps them choose USF over other universities,” he says. “It’s important they have a place to play.”
Nayak feels the same way about the New Tampa (and Wesley Chapel) Indian population, which he says continues to grow and includes the Tampa Palms Cricket Club, which Nayak says has roughly 80 members.
The TPL, which has 18 teams of roughly 22-25 players each – 65 percent of whom live in New Tampa — currently plays many of its matches on a small field at Hamilton Park near Tampa International Airport, but it has no lights and can be an hour drive from this area.
“We would really like two fields with lights,” Nayak says.
Nayak sees a cricket field — which is a rectangular pitch (like a baseball infield) surrounded by a large oval field (like a baseball outfield) — offering a recreational opportunity for adults to play and teach their children the sport they grew up playing, like U.S.-born families do with baseball, basketball and football. He has already looked into attracting new players from Freedom and Wharton high schools, and has led some youth clinics teaching the sport.
He also sees a permanent field as a business opportunity, as some of the U.S.’s largest cricket tournaments can draw tens of thousands of spectators over the course of a weekend, filling hotel rooms and local businesses.
About The Game…
Cricket has many nuances but most closely resembles baseball, in that the object is to score runs by hitting a ball thrown by a pitcher, or in cricket parlance, a bowler, who hurls it on one bounce towards a wicket. There are 11 fielders, and the batsman continues to hit until he makes an out (or is dismissed).
A batted ball that makes it through the defense on the ground and to the boundary of the field is worth four runs. A ball hit over the boundary in the air, like a baseball home run, is worth six.
Ashish Rawat Bowling at Rodney Colson Park. (Photo by Nagesh Nayak)
Championed by Hillsborough County Commissioner Al Higginbotham, the county, at a cost of $800,000, opened its first designated cricket fields at Evans Park in Mango back in 2015, and there also is a dedicated cricket field at Rodney Colson Park in Seffner.
Nayak has had discussions with Tampa’s District 7 City Councilman Luis Viera, and asked Viera and Hillsborough County District 5 Commissioner Ken Hagan at a town hall last year about making room for a cricket field at a potential K-Bar Ranch park being developed by the city and county on roughly 60 acres of land.
Hagan said it sounded like a good idea, while Viera has promised to look into it. But otherwise, Nayak says, the response from Tampa and Hillsborough County has been lukewarm.
Go North, Young Cricketers?
But, just north in Wesley Chapel, Nayak has found a friend in District 2 commissioner Mike Moore, who sees the potential in a cricket field, from a business perspective, and also a chance to please a large base of his constituents.
Moore likens the game to lacrosse, which he says has grown from being a niche sport to one of the most popular youth games in America. And, with Pasco County’s focus on capturing a big chunk of the sports tourism market, he sees it as another opportunity to potentially fill hotel rooms
Moore put Nayak and Hanumanthu in contact with RADD Sports, the Clearwater-based sports facility management & development company that is building a large indoor/outdoor sports facility, with a Residence Inn by Marriott hotel on site, in Wiregrass Ranch.
“I definitely think there is potential (for cricket) to do very well,’’ Moore says.
Until then, Moore and the county have provided a large patch of currently unused land that is designated for future development behind the soccer fields at Wesley Chapel District Park (WCDP) for Nayak and his league.
The TPL poured $20,000 into removing the dirt and replacing it with rocks and clay to create the pitch, as bowlers throw their pitches on one-bounce to the batsman and need a smooth, hard and level surface. They say the field is still a work in progress, but they are hugely appreciative of Moore’s efforts to help.
In fact, TPL will host the Wesley Chapel Invitational Championship February 3-4, at their makeshift home. TheMinnesota Strykers Club, three-time MN Cricket Association Champions, will compete against the Tampa Stars and USF Bulls. Nayak says the Minnesota team will be staying at the Wesley Chapel Holiday Inn Express, showing the sports’ potential value to sports tourism. Nayak hopes it is the start of something big.
The Trials & Tribulations of Wesley Chapel’s Karaoke Legend
When I first met the man I now know as “Wild Bill” Peterseim, he was singing a medley of Elvis tunes at what was then City Grill (it’s now O’Brien’s) in the Wesley Chapel Village Market on S.R. 54.
I was just minding my own business, waiting for my turn to sing, when this slim, 70+-year-old man dropped to the floor and banged out at least 40 pushups during a 45-second musical interlude.
From that point forward, Wild Bill and an impressed certain publisher and editor became friendly, as we are both part of a crowd of regulars who go to O’Brien’s as many Wednesday and Thursday nights as possible to get our regular karaoke fix.
Flash forward at least two years. Wild Bill sought me out to tell me that he had a similar experience as something he read about in the Neighborhood News.
“I read that story about the lifeguard who saved that girl’s life at the New Tampa YMCA,” hesaid. “I saved someone’s life the same way last year.”
The girl Wild Bill was referring to was an experienced, but young synchronized swimmer whoswam so far underwater she lost consciousness. The New Tampa Y lifeguard noticed the girl’s leg twitching uncharacteristically, and just as she started to go down, jumped in and saved her life.
In Bill’s story, a large, 50-something man from India who was visiting a family member in Lexington Oaks — where Bill and his wife Linda (more on her below) have lived since 2011 — in the fall of 2016, also started having body spasms while swimming in one of the community clubhouse’s two conjoined pools.
“I don’t think either he or his wife really understood English, but I started calling out to him because I could see he was panicking and now, I could hear him choking,” Bill recalls. “He was in the deep end, but finally got close enough to the wall that I could reach him from behind and even though he outweighed me by at least 50 pounds, I was able to pull him out of the water in one motion.”
And, although one or two other people saw him accomplish this heroic feat, Bill attributes what he did to God. A man of great faith, he explained that he was planning to swim his usual at least one mile in the pool that day, but he decided instead to go for his personal record in chin-ups on the monkey bars in the children’s play area at the clubhouse.
“If I had gone swimming, I would have been done and out of there long before that man started drowning and he might have died that day,” Bill told me. “But,because I set my personal best of 320 chin-ups (in an hour and six minutes) that day instead, it took me a lot longer and I just happened to be walking by as the man started flailing. God guided me to put me in just the right place at the right time.”
Heroic From The Start…
Wild Bill — who was nicknamed that by a friend during his early karaoke days, in the 2000s, not his years in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War (he enlisted in the Air Force in 1963) — has a 140+ IQ and was gifted in science at a young age. In fact, he was a 19-year-old civilian Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-certified radar operator who was working at a military base in rural Maryland in September 1961, shortly after Bill’s 20th birthday, a few months after the Bay of Pigs incident in Cuba (which happened April 17 of that year).
It was there that he became the radar operator who was the first to “witness” a Soviet nuclear launch that took place in Siberia — literally thousands of miles from that unnamed base. At that time, the range of military radar was known to only be about 250 miles.
The amazing thing was — as he says he once told a retired Air Force General — “We were using low-frequency radar, reflecting off multiple layers of the ionosphere, over the north pole and over the central Siberian area, ranging 10 or 11,000 miles. And, the retired general’s jaw just dropped. He had never even heard (that radar could do that).”
It was during his time at this base that he was given his Top Secret clearance by the government (very rare for a U.S. civilian) and was watching the radar, when all of a sudden, “I see all of these spikes coming up all at once on the scopes, a big anomaly I had never seen before,” Bill says. “Within a minute, my boss, the radar project manager, and I were on the phone with the President (John F. Kennedy). He said, ‘Mr. President, we have verified that the Russians have just violated the nuclear test moratorium.’ And the last big nuclear arms race was on, until the last major treaty — the new nuclear moratorium of 1963 — that Kennedy signed before he was assassinated.”
Bill then worked with one-megaton nuclear missiles during his time in the Air Force and was thankful they weren’t used during his stint.
There’s Always A Girl…
Bill and Linda Peterseim. (Photo provided by Bill Peterseim)
Bill freely admits that he was ten years older than Linda, his beloved wife of 46 years, and he was 30 and she was 20 when they got married. Bill says he was actually neighbors with Linda’s best friend Marilyn when Bill was 24 and Linda was only 14. They only met once at that age, when Bill worked in his family’s RCA TV store, but Linda told her mother and Marilyn later that day that, “I just met the man I’m going to marry someday.”
Bill and Linda shared their strong Christian faith (she read thousands of books by Christian authors), but he also admits he wasn’t sure if 20-year-old Linda was “the one”…“Until the first time I saw her in a bikini.”
But, with their shared faith, “and the fact she took the wedding vows so seriously — good times and bad — she was always there for me. I just love her to pieces…and look forward to seeing her again.”
Bill had multiple long-term careers — including owning and running one of the largest Century 21 real estate brokerage firms in the Cleveland area in the 1970s and selling insurance, mutual funds, stocks — that kept the blissful couple in their native Ohio until the early 2000s, when they moved to Orlando.
Karaoke…Meet Ponzi
Bill also became a Certified Financial Planner and a sometime Christian broadcaster when he and Linda lived in Orlando, and he started singing karaoke at the original Avalon Park development. That’s where he first met a very charismatic younger man named Chris Maguire, although the two weren’t involved in business together until years later, when Bill and Linda had moved to a rented home in Meadow Pointe.
Bill says that despite all of his experience, after the bottom dropped out of the real estate market here in Florida in 2007, he was having trouble finding work. Maguire offered him the opportunity to sell “proof of funds letters”in 2012. “I looked it up on-line and asked friends in the corporate world who said it’s a legitimate thing,” he says. “It just wasn’t legitimate with this guy.”
He adds that Maguire, “came with all kinds of credentials, and everything worked great for about a year and a half. And, I encouraged people — many of whom sought me out when they heard I was involved — to take money out of the investment. But of course, if you’re going to be a con man…a Ponzi scheme guy, you’re not going to be somebody that people hate.”
It wasn’t long after Bill got involved with Maguire that we met at City Grill. Despite his outgoing nature, Bill never mentioned anything to me about being bilked in a Ponzi scheme, but now, years later, he is still fighting the after-effects of being taken in by the man who is now serving 10 years in federal prison.
“He’s no Bernie Madoff, but he’s the same kind of guy,” Bill says. “A few people who got out early made money, but dozens of people lost millions of dollars to this guy.”
And, after buying their home in Lexington Oaks in 2014, Bill found out just how much of a victim he had been.After years of negotiating with the government, because Bill actually originally made money on Maguire’s scheme, he and Linda found out in mid-2017 that they would have to sell their $300,000 home in Lexington Oaks in order to pay back what the federal government told him that they owed.
And Then…Tragedy
It wasn’t long after the Peterseims found out that they could lose their home that Linda was diagnosed with a recurrence of the rare form of ocular melanoma that caused her to have her right eye removed three years ago.
Linda and Bill Peterseim less than a year before she passed away, after 46 years of marriage. (Photo provided by Bill Peterseim)
“But, it seemed like they got it, because she was fine for almost three more years,” Bill says, “when she started having pressure and soon, terrible pain in her other eye. She passed away on November 16, only three weeks later.
I only met Linda once that I can recall — for Bill’s 75th birthday in 2016 — but even though Bill says she couldn’t handle how loud it is at most karaoke bars, including O’Brien’s, Jannah and I would see Bill, and our other O’Brien’s karaoke friends — Derrell, Jay W, Emil, PJ and John, to name a few — pretty much at least one day every week.
Bill and Derrell (the professional Elvis impersonator who also works at Costco) both sing a lot of Elvis and 1960s-era rock, while I skew more to 1970s icons like Billy Joel, Springsteen and the late, great Tom Petty. But, Bill always attracts attention from people of all ages, not only when he drops and gives everyone on hand anywhere from 30-55 pushups during any lengthy musical interlude, but also for his voice, his personality and his showmanship.
So, he’s been an American hero, a successful real estate guy, a broadcaster, a Ponzi scheme victim, a widower and a proud, faithful Christian who unsuccessfully hoped his savior could save his beloved wife. I’m hoping he’ll be able to negotiate a deal where he gets to stay in the home that he and Linda bought together, but he could be forced to sell it shortly after this issue sees print.
Either way, Wild Bill, it’s been a wild ride so far and the final chapter won’t be written until you and your beloved Linda meet again. In the meantime, keep singing and doing those pushups.
If anyone can help keep Bill in his home or wants to hire a truly great guy, please email me at GaryN44@yahoo.com.
I have lived in Meadow Pointe II since 2000 and my subdivision straddles Mansfield Blvd. and County Line Road right behind Meadow Pointe II Clubhouse and I beg to differ with your analysis of our opposition to connecting Kinnan St. to Mansfield Blvd. What you find is B. S. really are the problems of connecting the two roads. Traffic studies(and there have been numerous ones over the years that have shown and proved it would cause traffic bottlenecks at the three intersections and thru the school zones as well as safety issues at the schools. I believe what is a waste of money is another traffic study when Mansfield and County Line Roads are in such bad shape! Money should be spent repaving roads period. Meadow Pointe Blvd. has the expandability to be four-laned and there are no schools until after intersection SR 56. and not that far from Kinnan street.
I find reading your paper that you basically take Hillsborough’s side and provide no voice for the people who have to live with this harassment every two to three years. Pasco County Commissioners should put an end to this idea once and for all.
Ray Kobasko
Meadow Pointe ll
Long Leaf (at MP) Resident
+++++++++++
Mr. Nager:
Reference is made to your editorial concerning the objections to the connecting of Kinnan St. to Mansfield Blvd.
Firstly I am not a resident of Meadow Pointe II but of Meadow Pointe III and I object to the connection you so much desire. Using your same description of why MP II objects to the connection your claim that the traffic will only increase during the evenings and on weekends is, as you said before, BS. As soon as the connection is made, and trust me as soon as enough financial arrangements are made to the benefit of those in power, the connection will be made, those residing in the so called “New Tampa Area” will start using Mansfield to 56 as their home to work to home route therefore increasing, the already overloaded route, with additional traffic, to think otherwise is at least identical to the use of smoke and mirrors.
The dream that residents from Cross Creek/Live Oak would travel down Mansfield and then would turn left (eastward) on Beardsley can only be described as the unreachable dream once you have reached that point why would you desire to take a longer route, such an action is not to be expected from the American humanoid unless forced by physical barriers.
Furthermore those who reside adjacent to Beardsley lived for many years with the expectancy that once the constructions, due to the lengthening of 56, would cease peace and quiet would reign in Beardsley where many master bedrooms are less than 10 feet from the roadway and now you and those of Cross Creek want to return the noise and excessive speed, speed limit in Beardsley is posted at 35 MPH, a speed limit that will not be observed since Pasco County’s Sherriff will have many other problems to tend to.
But your routing from Kinnan to Mansfield north and an easterly turning from Mansfield thru Beardsley will take you to Meadow Pointe Blvd, which has the space and was planned to eventually become a four lane route, why them planners cannot reroute Kinnan to connect with Meadow Pointe Blvd. is beyond my understanding.
If Pasco County is offering that alternative get the engineers back to the drawing board and have them reroute the traffic from the Cross Creek/Live Oak area to connect with Meadow Pointe Blvd, it seems to me as a logical, economical and fastest solution and beneficial to all parties concerned.
Sincerely,
Rafael Rivera
MP III resident.
+++++++++++
Gary —
The idiots who oppose the connection live in the same area that don’t want to share their clubhouse with the other communities, (Meadow Pointe II). I’m tired of these folks trying to hold the rest of us hostage because they are stuck up and don’t want progress.I have been living in Meadow Pointe I way before any of those houses were even built, but they want to slow progress. They do not own the whole area! Not to mention those schools have different start times and is no different than any other morning traffic.As far as the two lane/ four lane non issue, they can merge the 4 lanes into 2 with those permanent barriers that you see on roads. More connections mean more access to businesses on both sides of the line. I’m pretty sure CVS and the Mall wouldn’t be opposed to that road opening. It only makes sense! It’s time! MPII can’t hold us hostage any longer!
Thanks, Warren
+++++++++++
Mr. Gary Nager,
You are wrong in getting involved with something that does not involved you.You can’t even get the Streets involved correct.Kennan is the four lane road that will dump excessive traffic into a development were the narrow two lane cannot be widen due the already villages along Mansfield.You don’t seem to understand that there are three schools plus a college already established on Mansfield.I live in the village of Lettingwell which has a very limited visibility to traffic approaching from the left as we try to exit.We have already had a serious accident at this intersection.When school traffic is using Mansfield in the morning, it is almost impossible to make a left turn to go to County Line Road.I do not believe you are getting any positive feedback for residents of Meadow Point 2.
As a concerned resident of Lettingwell, I am a 100% Disable American Veteran who is very concerned about your unauthorized involvement in this situation.
Dick Arens
dickarens@verizon.net
Editor’s note-I do so love a spirited debate, but the fact is that when the idea of connecting Kinnan (not Kennan) to Mansfield was first discussed probably 15 years ago, it was Hillsborough County officials who opposed it…and I was not only there, I told those folks they were wrong back then, too.
I have seen many (but not all) of the traffic studies for this area, but I’ve never seen anything in those studies, at least not to date, to support not connecting roadways that have always been planned to do so.
I probably take the concerns of Mr. Arens, a disabled U.S. vet, to heart the most of any of these commentaries, but as someone who has given his personal health to protect all of our liberties, I’m surprised to hear him talk about my “unauthorized involvement” in this situation. As a free American and as the only member of the local media who has lived and/or worked in and reported the news of New Tampa and Wesley Chapel for 24 years (as of next month),I stand by my words and hope that Mr. Arens and everyone else who disagrees with me still stands behind my right to voice my opinion, as I stand behind their right to be “heard” disagreeing with me…in these pages.— Gary Nager
“We know there are people in our community who have been touched by those who were lost,” says Bell. 
