A group of Boy Scouts from across the nation — including New Tampa’s N’Jhari Jackson from Boy Scout Troop 142 in Tampa Palms — spoke Tuesday to Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Paul Ryan (pictured here) and President Obama, as part of the organization’s annual Report to the Nation.
N’Jhari Jackson, an Eagle Scout with Boy Scout Troop 142 in New Tampa, was selected as one of 10 Boy Scouts from across the nation and delivered the “BSA 2015 Report to the Nation” to U.S. Congressional and governmental leaders Tuesday, March 1 in Washington, DC.
“JUST GAVE MY SPEECH TO OBAMAAAAAA,” Jackson texted to friends. “(It went) Great, I didn’t stutter either. OMG. I’m awesome ohhh I feel gosh!”
N’Jhari is still just 13 years old, but has already earned an incredible 121 Merit Badges and has set a personal goal to earn all 136. He has been recognized extensively (including in this publication in March 2015) for his outstanding volunteer service, with projects he has created and implemented, such as collecting 1,200 pair of socks for children’s group homes in the Tampa Bay area, delivering more than 4,000 Pajama Buddies and Pajama Grab Bags to hospitalized children, raising money to donate an AED (automated external defibrillator) to his school, and delivering blankets and other items to the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital.
“I am excited and nervous about my trip to Washington, DC,” N’Jhari told the Neighborhood News prior to his trip. “I know it will be something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”
The list of those seeking to replace Lisa Montelione on the Tampa City Council continues to grow as two more potential candidates have declared that they will run for the seat she is vacating to challenge Shawn Harrison for the Florida House District 63 seat, bringing the total to three people who have expressed their interest in running for the seat to Neighborhood News.
As we reported in last issue’s News Briefs, Tampa Palms resident and local attorney Luis Viera had stated that he is exploring a run for the District 7 seat. Joining Viera in expressing their intent to run for Montelione’s seat when it becomes available are Cory Lake Isles Community Development District (CDD) chairman Dr. Cyril Spiro, M.D., M.B.A.; and Tampa Palms resident and La Gaceta (Tampa’s largest Spanish language newspaper) assistant editor Gene Siudut.
Since Montelione has filed to run for the state legislature, state law requires that she resign and vacate her council seat by June 10 of this year, according to Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections office spokesperson Gerri Kramer.
Although all three of the people who have expressed their interest in the seat so far are New Tampa residents, District 7 is actually a large and diverse area which runs north from Waters Ave. to County Line Rd., and includes Forest Hills, Terrace Park, New Tampa and the University of South Florida area.
Dr. Cyril Spiro
Dr. Spiro, who has served on the Cory Lakes Isles CDD for nearly five years, is currently the Chief Medical Information Officer at HealthAxis, a Tampa healthcare information technology company that in 2013 bought M.D. Web Solutions — which Spiro founded in 2004.
Dr. Spiro also founded a not-for-profit organization, the Sunshine Board Cooperation, which is designed to make government more effective and transparent and facilitates cooperation between representatives and their constituents through open online workshops, or forums. The Cory Lakes Isles CDD has been an active user of the workshops to facilitate action.
Dr. Spiro alsosays that as a city council member, he would emphasize technology, particularly online communications between government officials and their constituents, to fight for what residents in an area really want and need.
“I very much believe in using technology for improving democracy,’’ Dr. Spiro says. “We have used (resident) survey systems in Cory Lakes Isles with great success. That’s very exciting to me. It’s something that I think can be carried across the country at all levels of government. It will make government more effective at doing what the people want.”
Dr. Spiro, who received his M.D. degree from the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore, has also developed Lotterease, software that is used in charter schools to manage their lottery systems, like at Terrace Community Middle School (TCMS) and Lutz Preparatory School and others.
He says he has worked with Montelione on previous issues, including helping with resident surveys in District 7.
“We did some surveys in North Park, between Busch Blvd. and Fowler Ave.,’’ he says. “There, the primary concern is crime. When you go north to New Tampa, it’s transportation. For each of those areas, you have to be aware of what those needs are. Oftentimes, the city will address needs of groups that make the most noise. I’d like to help identify with data and more evidence what’s really in need of most repair.”
Dr. Spiro has lived in New Tampa for 13 years, with his wife of 18 years, Laura. The couple has two children, Arden, 12, and Alenna, 14.
Gene Siudut
Siudut (pronounced Sue-Dit) grew up in New Jersey before moving to Florida in 1999, where he landed a job at La Gaceta, which is renowned for being the only trilingual (English, Spanish, Italian) publication in the U.S.
As an assistant to the editor and columnist for La Gaceta, Siudut says he has been active on the city’s political scene, as well in the community in and around Ybor City.
“I’m familiar with everyone on the (current) city council,’’ he says. “I feel it’s a job I can do.”
The longtime Ybor City resident, married two years ago to wife Keri and a newly-transplanted Tampa Palms resident, Siudut says the job requires a fighter who is willing to get in the ring for the New Tampa area’s fair share of the city’s budget dollars. He says he would fight for both New Tampa and the USF area.
“New Tampa needs to have a strong voice,’’ he says. “Whatever the issue, you have to keep fighting for those dollars.”
The 42-year-old is president of the Ybor City Lions Club, a Board member of the Ybor City Development Corporation (YCDC) Executive Committee and chair of the Ybor City Retail Arts and Special Events Committee, which operated with a $1.2-million budget.
“The focus of city government is downtown, and everyone has to fight for city dollars to get their fair share, so that’s a good stepping stone,’’ he says.
Siudut has served as vice-chair of the Hillsborough County Human Relations Board (the county’s anti-discrimination board), and has done volunteer work for The Cuban Club Foundation, Cigars For Soldiers and the Ybor Mural Project.
Siudut says he has a strong understanding ofhow city government works after watching it closely and interacting with the players for 17 years. He says that has helped sparked his own interest in serving. “I actually got the itch about five years ago,’’ he says, adding that he had initially planned to get into politics in 2019, at the end of Montelione’s current term. Her decision to leave the city council, however, expedited those plans.
“This is a window of opportunity,’’ Siudut says. “After 17 years working in Ybor City, I understand that number 1, the squeaky wheel gets the grease and number 2, you have to keep asking. No one is going to ask, ‘You know, I really wonder if Tampa Palms needs anything.’”
The infamous and befuddling barricades (photo) blocking Mansfield Blvd. in Meadow Pointe from Kinnan St. in the K-Bar Ranch/Live Oak Preserve area of New Tampa continue to stand as the area’s most notorious roadblock. But, whereas the barricades themselves have had zero movement in years, that can no longer be said of talks to remove them.
Pasco County District 2 commissioner Mike Moore and Hillsborough County District 7 City Council member Lisa Montelione sat down for a conversation last month and the two have agreed to re-open discussions to resolve the long-standing Kinnan-Mansfield impasse.
“Lisa and I met and had a great conversation,’’ Moore said. “We agreed to sit down with both of our sides either the first or second week in March. Obviously, there’s a lot of work to get through, but we both agree we want to do what is best for the region and the citizens.”
Montelione placed tackling the Kinnan/Mansfield dilemma — which, if resolved, would give Wesley Chapel and New Tampa drivers an alternative north/south route to Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. (and the two-lane Morris Bridge Rd.) — on her list of things to do in 2016. She sent a letter, dated Jan. 21, to the Pasco County Board of County Commissioners (BCC) in the hopes of sparking a new debate.
Moore, however, already had agreed to meet with Montelione before the letter even arrived. He said his first priority has been seeing that the S.R. 56 extension was approved, but once that was settled, he was going to set his sights on Kinnan/Mansfield.
“There are a lot of people for (the Kinnan-Mansfield connection),’’ he said, “but a lot of people have concerns.”
Moore said he will be accompanied at the meeting by Pasco County administrator Michelle Baker, assistant county attorney David Goldstein and Ali Atefi, Pasco’s transportation engineer.
A Scary Situation…
In her letter to the Pasco BCC, Montelione laid out the human side of the City of Tampa’s case for removing the barricades. She wrote that in early November of 2015, K-Bar Ranch (located off Morris Bridge Rd. in New Tampa, just south of the Pasco line) resident Otto Schloeter was cooking lunch for his family when a pan caught fire and severely burned his arm.
The 9-1-1 call from a cell phone ended up going to a tower in Wesley Chapel. The Pasco County 9-1-1 Dispatch Center transferred the call to Hillsborough County Fire Dispatch, which then alerted the wrong Hillsborough County station — nearly 20 miles away — in Thonotasassa, when there are two Tampa Fire Rescue stations (Nos. 21 & especially 22, which is only a mile or so from Morris Bridge Rd.) on Cross Creek Blvd. that are both only a few minutes away from K-Bar.
Hillsborough County’s fire truck eventually made it to Schloeter’s, and called in a Tampa Fire Rescue ambulance.
Due to the confusion, it took nearly two hours to get an actual ambulance to Chloeter and get him from his home in New Tampa to the emergency room at Tampa General Hospital.
While Montelione suggests that more updated emergency responder technology be implemented near the border of New Tampa (which has both unincorporated Hillsborough and City of Tampa communities) and Wesley Chapel, she also says that the pathways that should be connecting counties and cities should be open and as easily accessible as possible.
If Kinnan St. and Mansfield Blvd. had been connected, Montelione wrote, Pasco County Emergency Service Station 26 in Meadow Pointe would have been recognized as the closest station:
“With the mutual aid agreement between our governments, I believe it is fair to say that the completion of this road could have prevented Mr. Schloeter from waiting 45 minutes for emergency responders.”
A similar argument was put forward in 2012 by John Thrasher, the CEO of Excel Music (located in the Cory Lake Isles Professional Center on Cross Creek Blvd.). Thrasher organized and submitted a petition with 61 signatures representing roughly 40 businesses on both sides on the county line, to the City of Tampa attorney’s office urging for the completion of the Kinnan/Mansfield connection.
“This is not only about commerce and convenience, but in an area of wildfires, sinkholes, floods and hurricanes, it is a matter of public safety to provide citizens with as many routes as possible in and out of an area,” Thrasher wrote.
The issue of connecting Kinnan St. to Mansfield Blvd has been mired in dispute since the 2,000-ft.-long roadway was paved north to the county line in 2007 by the developer of Live Oak Preserve in New Tampa.
In November of 2012, Goldstein reached out to the City of Tampa attorney’s office about Kinnan/Mansfield and laid out of a list of Pasco’s requirements — which included a commitment from the City and/or K-Bar to pay for traffic-calming improvements at the intersection of Mansfield Blvd. and Beardsley Dr. (which runs along the southern border of Meadow Pointe), as well as at Mansfield Blvd. and Wrencrest Dr. to the north, with a funding commitment by Pasco capped at no more than $500,000.
Those requirements were rejected by Julia Mandell, senior assistant attorney for the City of Tampa, in February of 2013.
Thrasher’s petition a month later also failed to bring about any action.
One of Pasco’s requirements from 2012, however, could be part of any new 2016 negotiations. Pasco asked for four lanes of right of way, or land on which to construct the “Beardsley Extension,” which would link Beardsley Dr. east to Morris Bridge Rd. and take some of the traffic pressure off Mansfield Blvd.
Montelione did not comment on the specifics of the Beardsley Dr. request from 2012, but is open to the extension if the two sides can agree to terms. She did say that it seems unlikely that a Kinnan/Mansfield agreement can be negotiated without the Beardsley Extension being a part of the deal.
Moore says that after years of failed attempts, though, he has hopes for success in 2016.
Tampa Palms resident Melanie Otte remembers her grandfather’s stories about World War II. He would regale the family about his wartime exploits, as they leafed through his photo albums, and proudly show off a picture of the Enola Gay — the first aircraft ever to drop an atomic bomb — that he had to jump a fence to take the photo with a small spy camera.
It never really hit her, though, what his service meant to him until she recently chose to take part in an Honor Flight.
Otte and Wesley Chapel resident Jennifer Lee, both members of the Greater Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC)’s New Tampa Junior Woman’s Club, served as volunteer guardians to a pair of U.S. Military veterans on Sept. 22, an experience that left both amazed, appreciative and very much in awe.
Jennifer Lee (left) and Melanie Otte
“I had been to Washington, DC, as a kid, but this was a much more moving experience,’’ Otte says. “I mean, standing there with a person who lived it, that was just something totally different.”
Honor Flights are one-day trips organized by non-profit organizations dedicated to providing a way for veterans to visit the monuments created in the name of their service scattered throughout the nation’s capital.
Last year, the New Tampa Junior Woman’s Club donated $400 so one veteran could make the trip. That inspired Otte and Lee to get involved as Honor Flight volunteers this year.
Otte served as a volunteer guardian to 80-year-old Korean War U.S. Air Force Military Police veteran Frank Kynion, who lives in St. Petersburg, while Lee escorted Laura Tilton, a 92-year-old Venice resident and World War II veteran.
The day of the Honor Flight began with alarm clocks going off at 3 a.m. for the volunteers, a donated breakfast from McDonald’s at the St. Petersburg-Clearwater Airport, and a 4 a.m. flight to the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport with about 80 other veterans and their guardians.
When they got off the plane, the spunky Tilton asked Lee if the wheelchair had a speed limit, and Lee asked if she was pushing too fast.
“No, pick it up, we got things to see,’’ Tilton told her with glee.
A contingent of military personnel was there to greet the veterans at the airport, setting off a whirlwind day of emotional sightseeing.
“When we were at the Korean War Memorial, it was very somber,” says Otte. “Frank was visibly taken aback. You could tell he was welling up.”
Otte said the listing of the Korean’s War’s U.S. fatalities (almost 40,000, with more than 100,000 injured) and the 19 haunting seven-foot-tall stainless steel statues standing in a patch of juniper bushes at the memorial was overwhelming.
Lee pushed Tilton around, although the former Naval Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN)/pharmacy maid, was able to stand and walk for short periods of time.
“She was a lot of fun,’’ Lee says. “I think a lot of them just appreciated the one-on-one attention. She told me, ‘I had so much fun. I like to giggle, you like to giggle. She told me I was now her third daughter.”
As the vets returned to Florida, they read dozens of letters written to them by school children and adults, thanking them for their service and dedication. When the plane landed back in Clearwater, a throng of roughly 800 people, including a band, were there to greet them.
Kynion, who married a Japanese woman after the war, says he faced discrimination as a result, and also lived through the anti-military era of the Vietnam War, so he was humbled by the support. In fact, many of the veterans, on multiple occasions, asked why everyone was doing this for them.
Otte told him the answer was simple: “Because you are our heros.”
The GFWC New Tampa Junior Woman’s Club meets the second Monday of every month at 6:30 p.m. at the New Tampa YMCA (16221 Compton Dr. in Tampa Palms). For more info, visit GFWCNewTampaJuniors.org.
Meanwhile, we went to press so soon after the ninth annual Fisher House Golf Classic (held at Pebble Creek Country Club off Bruce B. Downs {BBD} Blvd.) on October 30 that organizer and New Tampa Noon Rotary Club president Val Casey and her amazing committee did not yet have a total amount of funds raised.
But, with a full field of golfers and plenty of great sponsorships — including, for the first time, Val’s employer Delta Airlines — there’s little doubt that this year’s Fisher House Golf Classic was, indeed, a true classic.
Of course, the Tampa Fisher House is the 20-bed residence which houses and feeds — at no charge — the families and significant others of the wounded soldiers being treated at the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital.
And, thanks to Val, the Arbor Greene resident from a military family who has organized and run the annual golf tourney to benefit the Haley Fisher House, more than $210,000 already had been raised in the previously eight years of the event, including surpassing her goal of $30,000 this year.
Val again thanks her fellow New Tampa Noon Rotary Club members Barry and Clare Shuman, as well as all of the tournament’s sponsors, golfers and supporters for their efforts this year and was again thrilled that injured U.S. Army Ranger Romy Camargo and several other Purple Heart recipients and other military veterans were again on-hand for the event.
Tampa Fisher House director Paula Welenc and Fisher House national Board member and U.S. Marines Lt. Gen. (ret.) Marty Steele, who has been a member of the Board of Directors of the national Fisher House Foundation, were both again thrilled to be able to attend — and speak at — the tournament’s awards ceremony.
“We certainly couldn’t have housed more than 850 family members of our wounded soldiers at the Tampa Fisher House without all of you supporting events like this one,” Welenc said.
To make a donation, email ValCasey3@aol.com or visit FisherHouse.org.
