Sunday July 27 - GreenLight - The Train Wreck Continues

Greenlight Polling turns negative

Take a look at this Poll by St. Pete Polls as presented in the Blog Eye on Tampa Bay: Poll Shows Opposition to Greenlight Pinellas. Those Voting NO 55.2%, those Voting YES 34.7%, Undecided 10.1%, Margin of error 3.5%.

In the meantime, PSTA paid a vendor $48,125 of your property tax money to host three conference calls to "inform" you about the benefits of adding a $100 million dollar tax load to Pinellas County; mostly for a train that goes nowhere near where the 2% of Pinellas County residents who actually use public transportation live or work.

You might want to dial into the next call and express your opinion.

Most uninformed quote of the day: Brad Miller PSTA CEO, "No one looks at sales tax rate before hitting that buy button for a vacation on Expedia."

You can rest assured the states and even Florida counties competing with Pinellas for those precious tourist dollars will be sure to mention their lower tax rate in their tourism ads. And it's the ads that cause those "buy" buttons to be pushed. Welcome to the real world Mr. Miller.

As seen on TV

Also queued up by the folks out at PSTA is TV pitchman Anthony Sullivan.  In addition to some very humorous TV ads, you may remember Mr. Sullivan signed on to the St. Pete LENS issue with great gusto as a supporter. Another really bad idea.

Either Mr. Sullivan is deeply enamored by large, expensive non functional public projects or he just can't resist the opportunity and the challenge to sell something to people they don't need, won't use and costs too much.

In any event Mr. Sullivan does bring some clarity to the Greenlight issue.

If your are so desperate to get something past the voters that you resort to infomercial style marketing, the voters, many of whom have probably had the "as sold on TV" experience, should now know the value and durability of the train to nowhere. You can read the whole debacle in Christopher O'Donnell's St. Pete Tribune Article: Pitchman throws support behind Green Light.

The people in St. Pete figured out and the LENs is history. Such should be the fate of Greenlight.

The PSTA Honey Pot

Just in case you don't believe my comments about Greenlight being the biggest redevelopment plan in Pinellas County history take a look at this Tampa Bay News Papers Article: Developers present Seminole Mall vision.

If you read down far enough in the article you will find this quote: "The project would also require cooperation from the county. Other funding possibilities include Penny for Pinellas money, community grants, Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority participation, utility taxes and franchise fees."

Every developer in Florida is looking to dip into the PSTAs $130 million dollar revenue flow to help fund their next massive Pinellas County public project. Really interesting since the train goes nowhere near Seminole Mall and the real objective is to move retail, and residential to the train stations.

Watch My Video Green Light - It's a Bad Law before you vote.

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Disclosures: Contributor to No Tax for Tracks