Photo taken by J. David Wright
I wrote an article a couple of weeks ago titled “I hope she has her running shoes on”. Yesterday (Saturday, June 14th) our new city manager, Debbie Manns, LITERALLY laced up her running shows and ran the Rap River Run with our city librarian and former interim city manager, Susan Dillinger. Not exactly what I meant when I penned that piece, but worth telling anyway. Something on the order of 1400 others also ran in this fund raiser for the Rap House. I joined cycling friends Greg Smith, Bruce Mills and Andy Froelich to help by riding the courses on bike. Thank you David Wright for capturing proof that I can still fit into my cycling kit.
We had quite an exciting week in New Port Richey. The city council work session Tuesday was exciting on multiple levels:
It was the very first time an out of town council member used Skype to participate in a meeting. A second council member was also out of town and participated by phone. Kudos to Bryan Weed, the city’s geek, for making this work.
Bryan plans to teach a bunch of old dogs new tricks when he holds an iPAD training session for city council Tuesday evening. That should be fun. If he is successful, we will be able to save forests worth of paper going forward by not having to print out hundreds of pages of documentation for each council member before each meeting.
The sole topic for last Tuesday’s meeting was the Hacienda. City staff are now working to try to put together an agreement with the Rosners to rehabilitate and reopen the Hacienda. After years to getting nowhere, it appears there is a decent chance of saving the Hacienda and returning it to use.
Greater New Port Richey Main Street hosted a welcome reception for our new city manager Wednesday evening. The Art Gallery was packed and we had to go next door to Cocktails to eat the food that all of the downtown restaurants had provided. The Rosners were there, as were David Hall and his business partner. You likely haven’t heard about Mr. Hall’s company…yet. They are opening the Dulcet Restaurant & Lounge in the old Moose Lodge (across Grand from Cocktails) this fall. The Dulcet will be an upscale restaurant, complete with valet parking.
Valet Parking? In New Port Richey? This should be fun to watch. Their target prices for meals are in line with nice sit down meals in the area.
Speaking of fun to watch, “The Church Basement Ladies” sold out at Jimmy Ferraro’s Studio Theatre last weekend and the Sunday matinee this weekend sold out on Friday. You don’t want to miss this musical comedy. It runs through June 29th.
Friday night was the West Pasco Chamber of Commerce 70th Annual Banquet. Among those honored was our own Susan Dillinger, who given the award for “Outstanding Public Servant”.
Not quite so obvious was the appearance of traffic counters around town this week. This was designed to pick up the traffic information needed to plan for the possible closing of Grand Blvd from Sims to Bank in order to make way for the new playground in Sims Park. At the council meeting two weeks ago, we had people get up and tell us that the closing of Grand, along with part of Circle was going to decrease traffic and kill the downtown as well as increase traffic and ruin the tranquil nature of the park. Some individuals seemed to promote both views, oblivious to the contradiction. We are only looking at the short section of Grand that runs through the park, so getting solid traffic counts seemed to be in order.
Also low key, but none the less important were a pair of SCORE programs on how to start a business and sales communications. Both of these were held at the New Port Richey SMARTStart Center, aka the New Port Richey Business Incubator. The only clue for those not aware that these training sessions were being held was the fact that the Gloria Swanson parking lot had more cars in it than usual.
The excitement in New Port Richey is almost palpable. I have had people come up to me daily to tell me how happy they are that good things are finally starting to happen in town. All I can say is “keep watching, the best is yet to come.”
For Starters, this coming Saturday (June 21st) is a city wide cleanup. It is an opportunity for our residents to help spruce up the town. One disappointment during the Rap River Run was that the 5 mile course took us past a spot where someone ignored the “No Dumping” sign and dumped a couch and mattress on the side of the road. This is NOT what we want visitors to our city to see. We need to get everyone to share our pride in our city and help us clean it up.
In her weekly city manager’s report, our city manager identified a number of properties the city is going to seek to have demolished as part of our efforts to clean up blighted properties. So far, we’ve demolished five such buildings and a sixth one is being fixed up. Property owners are on notice that they can’t let their buildings in New Port Richey fall apart.
The city is also aggressively going after business owners who cater to criminals. From motels being used by prostitutes to rental homes being used as grow houses and for drug dealing, we are holding the property owners responsible for what happens on their property. One motel on US 19 has a hand written sign out front that it is a drug free motel. We got the owner’s attention.
Pasco County will be making a presentation on their vision for redevelopment of West Pasco, called “The Harbors Plan”. This presentation will be at the regular city council meeting on Tuesday, June 17th at 7:00pm. The public is invited.
I’m excited. I can hardly wait to see what this coming week brings.
Rob Marlowe, Mayor