BELLEAIR BEACH – Belleair Beach residents will receive questionnaires soon seeking information on what they want in their city in terms of code enforcement, policing, recreation and other amenities.
Under the guidance of Reid Silverboard, the city manager, the city is embarked on a visioning mission and the City Council discussed the nuts and bolts of that last Wednesday at a special meeting.
The meeting almost didn’t happen with four council members – Stan Sofer, Lynn Rives, Jeff Coulson and Donna Durante – missing at the scheduled meeting time of 4.30.
Then Paul Marino, the city’s lawyer, made a call to Durante who happened to be near by and she showed with the meeting getting under way 10 minutes late.
Visioning was one of four items on the special agenda. Other matters were the city’s logo contest, discussion of negotiations with a solid waste contractor and a look see at sketches of the new city hall.
The logo contest virtually went on the shelf, with little or no enthusiasm shown for changing the city’s current logo.
Mayor Rudy Davis pointed out the costs attendant in changing stationery and other documents and places the city logo appears.
Durante said, “Frankly, I thought this was a silly idea to begin with.”
Dorothy Papworth, a former member of the City Council, probably put the final kibosh on the idea of changing anything when she recounted a brief history of the logo.
“We had a logo for 40 years and then 13 years ago decided to change it,” Papworth said. “We wanted something very understated. Other cities nearby had themes like gulls and stuff that we didn’t want to duplicate,” she explained.
Finally, Papworth said, the officials in 1992 decided on the shell that appears within a circle surrounded by the words identifying the city. “The current logo could be tweaked,” she said, “but I would favor keeping the basic idea.”
Silverboard reported that negotiations with a company called Republic broke down and suggested that the city stick with Waste Management.
The council gave him authority to execute a contract that will cost the city $210,000 a year.
The plan on the questionnaire for the visioning plan is to have Silverboard solicit questions from council members then compile these and develop an overall sheet for residents to examine and express their views.