News & Public Affairs

St. Pete has $10 million budget gap, may charge fire service fee to close it listen

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Tags: Steve Kornell, St. Pete City Council, St. Pete Fire Department, Darden Rice, People's Budget Review, regressive tax, fire readiness fee

St. Pete City Council is considering whether to impose a fee on properties to pay for the city’s fire services. On Thursday, council will vote on whether to implement the suggestion proposed by Mayor Bill Foster in order to avoid cutting city services. City Council member Steve Kornell voted against the measure on first reading in June, but it advanced anyway.

“It bothered me – especially as a social worker – that now we’re going to say this is a fair way to do it because grandma who li...

The People's Budget Review in St. Petersburg and Florida's Stand Your Ground Law

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Tags: Lou Brown, Rick Smith, People's Budget Review, St. Petersburg budget, Arthur Hayhoe, Stand Your Ground law, Trayvon Martin, Florida Coaliton to Stop Gun Violence

Good morning, welcome to Radioactivity. I'm Rob Lorei. Coming up we'll talk with Lou Brown of the St. Petersburg NAACP and Rick Smith of the Florida Public Services Union. They and a coalition of other groups are involved in opening up the St. Petersburg city budget process to more residents. To that end they are asking residents to fill out surveys that help identify what spending priorities they value most. The People's Budget Review. And later we'll t...

St. Pete group calls on community involvement in the city's budget listen

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Tags: St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg City Council, budget, activism, People's Budget Review

Political activists launched a non-partisan initiative this morning that aims at giving citizens of St. Petersburg a louder voice in the budgeting process. On the steps of City Hall, 40 supporters of the People’s Budget Review learned details of the process that reaches out to residents to gather their ideas on how tax dollars should be spent at the city level. Christian Haas spoke about the process at a press conference.

“Essentially we want to have aggregate data of the citizen’s view...