St. Pete Beach Florida - Treasure Island Florida News and Opinion

St. Pete Beach Florida News

"Treasure Island, which has seen the greatest loss of hotel rooms to condos because of a ban on tall buildings, lost about 259 hotel rooms in 2004"
St. Petersburg Times, Nov. 15, 2006

Our opinion of local affairs.
By
Gary Becker

Updated 10-26-07

The next time you here someone complain about Treasure Island's tight city budget just tell them to go to......the library.

That's right, let's all go to the library after all if you live in Treasure Island it's costing you a cool one hundred grand to have that library card in your wallet or purse. That's right, the City Commission cut City services, cut events like Rock Around the Clock, cut benefits to City workers but the Commission allowed Mayor Maloof to fund one of her pet projects, the Gulf Beaches Library for the cool sum of one hundred grand.

Our so called City Manager who we affectionately call Reid Spinelessbourne, claims that of Treasure Island's five thousand or so full time residents, twenty-five hundred use the library. Give me a break Reid, you'd be lucky to find twenty-five Treasure Island residents who even know where the library is much less twenty-five hundred who carry little library cards around with them.

Now, to be fair, or unfair as our slogan goes, not all the Commissioners were supportive of this library nonsense. We wrote each Commissioner and received few replies, however, Commission Alan Bildz did respond:

I agree with you on the waste of money on the library. I pointed this out during our budget workshops, how people use the "google box" instead of checking out books, here in the 21st century. The rest of the commission felt that there are a sufficient number of people who use the library that justifies the cost of the over 100K. Individual memberships would cost around 240K (2400 X $100). I don't know how accurate the numbers are but those are the ones we used. Our new agreement has a stipulation which allows us to opt out for budget reasons. It won't happen this year, but if enough pressure is on or the state legislature cuts local budgets enough, then next year cutting the library would certainly be possible.

Alan

It's hard to admit, but we actually agree with Commissioner Bildz more than we disagree with him, however ( I really like using that word) we disagree on one point in Alan's letter. The cutting of funding next year for the library shouldn't be a possibility, it should be a certainty.

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