{"id":10820,"date":"2011-10-20T14:54:48","date_gmt":"2011-10-20T18:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=10820"},"modified":"2011-10-20T14:14:29","modified_gmt":"2011-10-20T18:14:29","slug":"park-fees-lowered-post-office-saved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=10820","title":{"rendered":"Park Fees Lowered; Post Office Saved"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY LEON B. CREWS<\/strong>
\nSentinel Staff Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the second budget hearing of the Tampa City Council, several citizens and activists addressed the need for officials to look into lowering the fees at city parks, especially where it impacted seniors.<\/p>\n

City of Tampa Chief of Staff, Santiago Corrada<\/strong>, said he met with Parks and Recreation Director, Karen Palus<\/strong>, then later with Michelle B. Patty<\/strong> and Jarvis El-Amin<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came out of the meeting with Karen Palus<\/strong> and told Mrs. Patty<\/strong> and Mr. El-Amin<\/strong> that we had come up with a new fee scale. We will not charge $25-per-hour for seniors to ride the van anymore. We also reduced the requirement for renting the park for activities from a 4-hour minimum to a 2-hour minimum during the week. We currently have a 25% discount in place for non-profit groups, and now that could go as high as 50%. Those were the major issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councilman Frank Reddick<\/strong> said he addressed the issue with Corrada<\/strong> and Palus<\/strong> after listening to seniors and others in his district complaining about the high fees.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Patty<\/strong> said this is proof of what can happen when people use their voice and speak out.<\/p>\n

U. S. Postal Produce Station on East Hillsborough Avenue<\/strong><\/p>\n

In July, Patrick Donahoe<\/strong>, Postmaster General for the U. S. Postal Service, announced possible closures of more than 3,700 post offices in the country. Two of those locations were the Produce Station, 2810 E. Hillsborough Avenue, in Tampa, and the second was the Morris Milton Post Office, 1750 16th Street, South, in Midtown St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n

However, during a press conference Wednesday morning, U. S. Rep. Kathy Castor<\/strong> and St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster<\/strong> announced that both locations had been removed from the list of possible closures. The conference was held at the Morris Milton Post Office, 1750 16th St. S in St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n

Rep. Castor<\/strong> said, \u201cThe credit for this goes to the entire community. The people made the case to the Post Office early in the process. \u201cThe Produce Station is valuable, well used, and the majority of its boxes are rented. It just doesn\u2019t rise to the level as some of the others. It is also valuable to everyone in the community, especially small businesses and our older neighbors,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Pictured: From left to right: Jarvis El-Amin, Santiago Corrada, and Michelle B. Patty.<\/strong><\/p>\n

City Editor Iris B. Holton can be contacted at (813) 248-1921; or emailed at iholton@flsentinel.com.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY LEON B. CREWS Sentinel Staff Writer During the second budget hearing of the Tampa City Council, several citizens and activists addressed the need for officials to look into lowering the fees at city parks, especially where it impacted seniors. City of Tampa Chief of Staff, Santiago Corrada, said he met with Parks and Recreation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}