Welcome to TBO.com. Skip directly to: our Keyword Search, Section Navigation, Content.

TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online

About This Blog:

The Jax Files is an interactive, quick-hitting blog devoted to any and all things Pasco, whether whole-heartedly, tangentially or merely psychologically.

Tom Jackson:

Tom Jackson is in a 12-step program for recovering sports writers; as part of his rehabilitation, he writes a column centered on the people, politics, passions and peculiarities of Pasco County. Email

Pasco County Links:

Most Recent Entries

Monthly Archives

The Jax Files: With Tom Jackson in Pasco

Pasco County News | Breaking News

Dear Commissioners: Decline this bad deal

Posted Apr 18, 2011 by Tom Jackson

Updated Apr 18, 2011 at 07:01 PM

Lousy plans are like bad wine: They do not improve with age.

In some cases, they go from bad to worse.

Which brings us to Tuesday’s meeting of Pasco County commissioners, and a proposal that they throw perfectly good public money down a private-sector rat hole – a plan bound to further erode the deteriorating name of “affordable housing.”

The petitioners, operating under an umbrella called Pasco CWHIP Partners, LLC, include one developer from Pinellas County and another with a rather familiar last name. Tuesday at the West Pasco Government Center in New Port Richey, Tom Smith – president of General Home Development Corp. of Pinellas – and Tom Schrader – President of Ten Oaks Development Corp. and brother of District 1 County Commissioner Ted Schrader – will seek between $700,000 and $1.37 million to resurrect a construction project that had dubious merit when it came up in the winter of 2007, and has worsened with age.

Pasco CWHIP (Community Workforce Housing Innovation Pilot Program) proposes to erect 30 houses in the Ten Oaks development on Eiland Boulevard just outside Zephyrhills. Its target audience: Government employees who earn no more than 140 percent of the local median income.

Nearly half the project’s $5.567 million cost comes from the state, money extracted from the settlement of a lawsuit involving Pasco CWHIP and other similar partnerships, which sued when the Legislature – having come to its senses – rescinded the original grant money in the wake of the exploding real estate bubble, on the theory that widespread foreclosures pretty much cured the housing crunch.

We’re hoping the Legislature learned a valuable lesson. Responding to an overheated housing market, lawmakers hoped to carve out a niche for “essential” community workers, such as teachers, police and firefighters, that would keep them close to home. The notion was adorable … and utterly wrongheaded.

This is the same brand of denial of economic reality that brought us state-run Citizens Property and Casualty Insurance, an unwarranted governmental intrusion into premium rate-setting with the potential to bankrupt the state.

Just ahead of the meltdown, however, the school board and county commissioners voted to approve Pasco CWHIP’s plans. Exercising breathtaking statesmanship, each body reasoned if we didn’t get ours, somebody else would. Since then, the school board has withdrawn; there will be no community of special interests built on district property in west Pasco.

That leaves Ten Oaks. Tuesday, the partnership will seek to be made whole by the Board of County Commissioners. Did we mention one of the principles is the brother of District 1 Commissioner Ted Schrader?

In a memo that reads as if it was written with one arm twisted behind his back, George Romagnoli, Pasco’s Community Development Manager, recommends diverting $700,000 from its Neighborhood Stabilization Plan account. Among the negatives, Romagnoli notes: “Building new homes in a newer subdivision does not really stabilize neighborhoods hit hard by foreclosure, the intent of NSP.”

Moreover, “(N)ew homes are being built and sold in this area, so a government subsidy is not required to develop homes there.”

Indeed, the Tribune’s real estate section featured a new home builder opening for business in Ten Oaks just last week. Beth Dolan wrote about it here.

Then there’s the idea that taxpayer dollars would be going to a project that carves out affordable housing opportunities only for government employees. As if we haven’t spent the past nine months identifying all the ways government employees at all levels – who were generally doing better than their private-sector counterparts anyway – have dodged most of the worst effects of the Great Recession.

And finally, among a litany of downsides, the worst may be this: Approving Pasco CWHIP’s proposal would almost certainly put an end to the county’s contributions to local Habitat for Humanity operations.

Specifically, East and Central Pasco Habitat for Humanity’s plans to build as many as 50 houses in Lacoochee would be at a standstill. Infrastructure – sewer, water, sidewalks and such – that accompany new construction and lend momentum to the long-distressed community’s pined-for comeback, would end.

“We’ve already got four houses started,” says Director John Finnerty. “If the county sends those dollars somewhere else, we could see some foundations just sitting there for a while.”

East and Central Pasco Habitat draws from a variety of funding sources, but with private contributions well down from historic levels, it has come to rely on county support – the kind for which NSP was specifically designed.

Consider a bridge, Finnerty says. His organization has enough money coming in to build all but the center span. But without the funds to close the gap, it’s useless to sink the first pylon.

The news comes at a pivotal moment, less than two weeks before Habitat begins its ballyhooed “Women Build” project, when two houses are scheduled to be built in the week leading to Mother’s Day.

“I can’t say we’re in great shape for that, but we’ll do everything humanly possible to complete those houses,” Finnerty says. “It could be tight. It could be very tight.”

The moment for sober reflection has arrived. By slashing impact fees, commissioners already are bowing to pressure from homebuilders, despite a glut of unsold, never occupied homes on the Pasco landscape. To reiterate, the affordable housing problem has pretty much taken care of itself.

Commissioners have no obligation to Pasco CWHIP. They should tell the partners thanks, but no, thanks.

Reader Comments

Por (TrilbyMan) on April 18, 2011 (Suggest removal)

Dang. Just when I think you have no sense of what is good for the County you have to come up with a good objection to another stupid move by the Commissioners.

Love/Hate relationships are so exhausting.

On top of my problems, do you know that HfH can build a home for $90,000 and this program wants $185,000 for each of the 30 homes?

Suggest removal

Page 1 of 1 pages