I regularly hear from folks that are very happy with the changes that they are seeing in New Port Richey. I’ve been blessed to serve with council members who are committed to investing in a series of positive changes to the city.
For entirely too long, the city based its plans on what was “good enough” to get by. It was almost as if the powers that be thought that our residents didn’t deserve anything better. Doing the minimum you can get away with is NOT the way to effect positive change.
When I came on board as Mayor, a majority of council members agreed with me that we weren’t going to accept “good enough” anymore. We set a higher bar for ourselves and our city.
You can sum up why we want more for New Port Richey with the term “Quality of Life”.
Sims Park is an obvious example of where that investment has paid off. In spite of a number of people who didn’t want us to make major changes to Sims Park, we moved forward. We spent several million dollars sprucing up Sims Park. The park is not a revenue generator. On a strictly dollar basis, it makes no sense to invest in a park that will never make money. That’s the point: The improvements we made to Sims Park have NOTHING to do with generating revenue and EVERYTHING to do with improving the Quality of Life in New Port Richey. Most of the skeptics now agree that the Sims Park improvements were a good idea.
When companies and families look at places to settle down in and call home, they look at Quality of Life issues. Other examples, besides parks, include things like housing, schools, roads, shopping, entertainment, libraries and recreational opportunities. No one thing is likely to be the key factor in a decision to move here, but they all play a role.
If you look at the items in the city’s five year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), the vast majority of them are tied to making New Port Richey a more attractive place to call home. The next big item on the list is the Recreation and Aquatic Center.
After nearly ten years in the current facility, we’ve figured out that some things need to be changed to meet current and anticipated future needs. The center needs additional space for exercise equipment and meetings & parties. One glaring omission from the original design is that there is no day care center. That wasn’t a big deal when “everyone” was a retiree, but our city and the surrounding area is getting younger and a safe area for kids while mom or dad workout is important today.
How important is this? I’ll suggest you think back to Sims Park before and after the upgrades there. The park is routinely mobbed with children in numbers that none of us had ever seen before. If we make the Recreation Center more conducive for use by families, they will come. Unlike Sims Park, the Recreation Center charges for memberships and admission. More people signing up will help cover the operating cost of the center. Will memberships and admissions ever cover the full cost of the Center? No, but that isn’t the point. The point is that having a modern, well equipped Recreation Center is a part of the Quality of Life we want for our city residents.
Like the Sims Park plans, the Recreation Center upgrade plans have attracted opposition. There are those that would have us do the minimum necessary to address the most critical issues and let everything else slide. I believe that is a mistake. We will be reviewing the latest quotes for upgrading the Rec Center at our January 3rd meeting. My guess is that we will approve more than the “good enough to get by” folks want and less than everything that the design team has proposed. The key will be doing as much as we can to modernize the Rec Center while staying within our budget constraints. We have to address the changing needs of our community while being fiscally prudent.
There are other Quality of Life items that are included in the CIP, such as a proposed expansion of the library. A public library is, by definition, a money loser. Virtually everything the library offers is free of charge to the public. Making money has never been the point for the library. It is an integral part of our city’s Quality of Life. Back in the 1980’s, the city had the opportunity to give the library to the county system and eliminate the cost of running a library from our budget. The city turned that down because of the importance that city residents placed on the library then. Our city library remains a vital part of our city to this day.
When I was growing up, the New Port Richey Public Library was a small, one story building sitting where city hall is now. The library moved into the old Pierce Elementary School building some years back and is still there today. The biggest impediment to physically expanding our library is one of space. Fortunately, there is an obvious location right next door: Fire Station One.
The good news is that the city is already scoping out possible locations for a new Fire Station One or a consolidated station that would house all of our fire service employees. The new fire station is also in the CIP. Once the fire station issue is resolved, then it becomes a simple matter to look at converting the old station into a library annex or “Maker Space”.
It has been suggested that we would be better off to spending money earmarked for the Recreation Center on things like paving. Keeping our roads up is important, but there are already three sources of funds for paving: The local option gas tax, a portion of the Penny for Pasco receipts, and assessments of the properties benefiting from the paving. We’ve got some work to do getting the assessments sorted out to be as fair to everyone as possible, but the funding sources are there.
The local option gas tax is particularly important. The county changed the allocation methodology to what they thought was their advantage a year or so ago. It is in our interest to spend as much as possible on paving to boost the amount of gas tax receipts that come to the city. If you don’t spend the gas tax revenues each year, the next year’s allocation goes down. As the old expression goes, two can play this game.
In looking at how our city ranks on the Quality of Life scale, it is important to look at the whole picture. No single piece is of overriding importance, but everything together makes a difference.
So where do we go from here? We could do as one council member suggested in September and slash taxes, spending, and city services to the bone. The other four of us disagreed.
In my opinion, the way to make things better is to make strategic investments in our community, secure in the knowledge that those improvements are going to make our city more attractive to the businesses and residents we want to attract. The second phase of Sims Park / Orange Lake improvements, updating our Recreation and Aquatic Center, building a new entrance into the Grey Preserve, planning for an expanded library, and all of the other things are strategic investments in the future of New Port Richey.
So what do you think? Do you believe we should settle for “good enough to get by” or are we right to set a higher standard and strive for that going forward?
Rob Marlowe, Mayor
Elaine Smith says
Very well said. Thank you.
NAL says
Totally agree Mr. Mayor! A city government planning for the future! We need to lure young professionals to the area and this is a step in the right direction! A city that it’s residents will be proud of!
Joan Rees says
So happy there are forward thinkers in the mayors office and on city council. You have and are making New Port Richey a very special place. So proud of the city. Keep up the good work.
Greg Smith says
Greg Smith
Sims Park is great and is and a asset to bring more possible customers to downtown business and in many cases family’s to move downtown by purchasing a home. The Recreation Center which I’m a member is also a great asset but a very expensive one to keep financing and to date never coming close to caring it’s own weight. Streets, lighting, multi-use pathways far out way the Recreation Center in life style improvements for a greater number of the community. We also need a downtown parking garage sooner that later as the park, events, business ,Hacienda and soon all the new living areas are filled bring more to the already limited parking to downtown. When there has to be a lottery to get a membership to the Recreation Center I’m for expanding but that is not even on the radar.
Rob Marlowe says
Greg,
I didn’t mention the parking garage, but that is absolutely a high priority. We have got to deal with the parking issue before all of the residences at Orange Lake soak up the parking on the site. Site acquisition is funded in the current (2016-2017) fiscal year with construction to follow.
Jim Julian says
I agree with your assessment of our downtown, Rob. My concern is that our infrastructure (the dirty underground stuff like sewer and water lines that nobody sees) doesn’t get ignored. Nobodies going to want to visit a park if the lift station next to it backs up.
Rob Marlowe says
Indeed Jim!
There is a million and a half dollars allocated for Sewer Main stuff over the next five years.
There is another million and a half plus allocated for potable and reclaimed water system extensions.
Paul Doyon says
I just moved into the city just 6 months ago, I love the area. I think the city is a diamond in the rough. The center city has so much potential. I can envision this city looking much like Dunedin, that city seems to be thriving.
Sims park is great, the activities going on done there is great for the city and only helps to improve the city.
I think more should be done to help make the center city more attractive and bring more small businesses in to attract more people and money to the city. Beef O’Brady is a good start, Improvement to the hotel and the building before the bridge are also good starts, but it cannot stop the there. Revitalizing the downtown building need to be done to to lure more traffic to the city. These are just a few thoughts from a new city resident.
Rob Marlowe says
Thanks for your “new resident” observations. There are indeed a whole bunch of moving parts involved in revitalizing our city.
Bob Smallwood says
Sorry Mayor, I disagree that the Rec center should be the next big item. Tremendous strides have been made to return the downtown to a vibrant area, especially the improvements to Sims Park. I’m ok with spending money on some improvements to the Rec Center, just not to the tune of $2 to $3 Million. Big ticket priorities should be fixing our roads, finish the remaining phases of Sims Park and plan on how to handle downtown parking in advance of the new residential units (main Street Landing/Orange Lake) and major events. You mention funding sources to fix the roads, when will we see some results of these funds? We have settled for “good enough” way too long on our major City roads.
Our Rec center currently is a tremendous asset compared to other cities with similar demographics as NPR. It is an expensive City Employee perk, and a financial burden on our taxpaying residents. Sims Park’s improvements have been a huge success, but it would be interesting to see how many people would use the playground or splash pad if they had to pay!
Rob Marlowe says
Bob,
I probably should have been a bit clearer. The Rec Center is the next big item coming up for discussion at the city council. There are other projects (eg. Orange Lake) that will be completed well before any expansion of the Rec Center. If you haven’t done so, please read the other comments, including mine.
I’m certain we need to make some updates / upgrades to the Rec. Center. The exact amount is, for me, up in the air. I’m pretty sure that we need more than the bare minimum some are advocating and I’m pretty sure we don’t need to buy everything that has been proposed. Done right, the updates on this ten year old facility should REDUCE the annual financial cost to taxpaying residents.
As chairman of our Main Street organization, I don’t need to tell you that the correct answer to which priorities we need to be addressing is often “all of the above”. Just as the Main Street program falls flat when it concentrates on special events to the exclusion of everything else, the city needs to be looking at ALL of the things that will take us to where we want to be. (Note to anyone else reading this: The New Port Richey Main Street organization is currently working on a number of different things besides special events.)
Projects we are working on include the millions we have allocated to address storm water issues, the millions we anticipate spending on environmental issues (including the Orange Lake restoration project), the “Phase 2” Sims Park improvements, the millions budgeted for the central fire station relocation, the millions budgeted for street improvements, and the nearly two million dollars designated for a downtown parking garage. In the grand scheme of things, sprucing up the ten year old Rec. Center to make it more functional is a small part of a much larger whole.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate your perspective on our city.
Rob
Joan Nelson Hook says
Thank you Mayor for your forward looking inclusion of the Library expansion in your Quality of Life vision. Our city library will reach the grand age of 100 years in 2019 and we’ll need the additional space to take us into the next 1oo years. The Library is much more than a repository for books, now days. It is a place to find videos, learn a new language, obtain assistance in writing a resume and even learn to use a computer to print objects! The Library certainly adds to the quality of life of our community and it has the added benefit of enriching our citizens’ lives.
Rob Marlowe says
The addition of a “maker space” is at the top of my wish list for the library expansion. 3D printers and basic machine tools would allow folks to prototype ideas.