Metro I-4 News

I’m sure you’ve already heard that your Hillsborough County BOCC voted 5-2 to rename the county’s Moral Courage Award after long-time local activist and money man Ralph Hughes.
According to articles in both the Tribune and the Times, only one person showed up to support the renaming of the award.  Neither paper tells us how many [...]

Congratulations to Deborah Newell Tornello, aka LitBrit!  Her blog was chosen by the Creative Loafing staff as the Best Local Blog in their Best of the Bay 2008.:
Staff Pick
BEST LOCAL BLOG: Litbrit
She’s progressive. She’s a hottie. And she is a major Frank Zappa fan, posting little-known clips of the late composer-rocker on her blog each [...]

With apologies to the greatest novels of all time for the liberties I’ve taken below.
Treasure Island city commissioners have decided that they will no longer be funding the Treasure Island library:

Cutting the Treasure Island library funding means residents of that city no longer will have free access to the Gulf Beaches system, which is located [...]

Pasco Sheriff’s Deputies arrested Tallie Gainer III for check fraud.  He didn’t do it.  The real criminal used Gainer’s name, but left his own thumbprint on the bad check.

Eight months passed before the Pasco Sheriff’s Office decided to compare the thumbprint to Gainer’s.

EIGHT freakin’ MONTHS.

In the meantime, Gainer and his wife missed work to attend [...]

A couple of months ago, I was summoned for jury duty.  I noted at the time that “many people complain about how they can’t “waste their time” by serving on jury duty, and try to get out of it…“  Of course, I never ended up going.  They apparently overbooked and before I headed downtown, I [...]

Ok, forget what anyone has said about pivotal moments for the Rays. The three game series against the Boston Red Sox that began last night is undoubtedly the biggest thing to ever happen in Tampa Bay baseball history…to date anyway. After Wednesday night’s game, the Rays could find themselves anywhere from feeling free to place [...]

As far as local elections go, we complain that the local media don’t give us the coverage we want.  Of course, the local parties themselves are not all that forthcoming with online information.  For as much “communicating” they claim to want to do, local party websites sure are bare:
The Hillsborough County Republican Party website has [...]

Excerpt from Agenda for 9/17 Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners’ Meeting (page 14):
Commissioner Norman
[Item #] F-2:  Give authority to County Administrator to ask the Hughes family for permission to name the Moral Courage Award after Mr. Ralph Hughes and request a family member to participate in all future presentations.
Agenda Backup:
“Prior to meeting each commissioner [...]

If you are going to any Buccaneers games at Raymond James Stadium this year, you may want to chill on the getting obnoxious part.
Wanting to make the football game experience more family-friendly, the NFL announced tougher rules on your actions in the stands back in August. It includes bans on:

Behavior that is unruly, disruptive, [...]

You will remember the quadriplegic dumped from his wheelchair.

According to an independent panel, it was  an “anomaly” — a shocking moment uncharacteristic of the overall detention system.

American Civil Liberties Union of Florida board member Lorie Fridell was on the panel:

“We are well-known for calling it like we see it, and we are well-known for looking [...]

On the afternoon of Aug. 18, Pinellas officials ordered mandatory evacuation of the county’s most flood-prone areas for 6am the next day.  Tropical Storm Fay was heading our way.

Over at the TradeWinds Island Resorts in St. Pete Beach, visitors checked out and took off.  They say they missed out on over $150,000 in canceled rooms [...]

After his daughter was diagnosed with leukemia, Fox 13 reporter Charley Belcher said he wanted to raise money and awareness about the cancer.  He now has the opportunity with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Light the Night.  Here’s a note we received from Charley:

As many of you know, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is [...]

According to the print edition of this week’s Creative Loafing, they received over 3,000 ballots for the 2008 Best of the Bay readers’ poll.
We are proud to announce that Sticks of Fire has been named a finalist for Best Local Blog, along with two other great blogs, Seminole Heights and Creative Loafing.
We also want to [...]

When I was in high school, my friends and I walked about a mile from my home to the bus stop.  That was from 1982 to ‘85.  It was dark, and seemed like a long walk to us, but three to five of us walked together, and got used to it.  At the end of [...]

We recently mentioned the low voter turnout for the primaries in Pinellas and Hillsborough, and suggested that you just don’t care about picking a leader.  But was that a fair statement?
Creative Loafing’s Wayne Garcia weighed in on the sorry turnout for voting in the primaries, calling it “crappy.”  He says the “circumstances” include (my highlights):
few [...]