BlogWood: MT Archives

Update to The Idlewild Baptist Central Campus Illegal Tire Dump and Mosquito Farm for Christ

After years of frustration, and after reading about Idlewild’s brand new $73 million campus being built in northwest Hillsborough County, I blogged about the unkempt lot that Idlewild owns and fails to maintain right next door to my inner city property.

Before the cleanup: tires litter the Idlewild lot

A crew form the Tampa Solid Waste Department showed up around 8:00 this morning and carted away much of the tire pile. They were sloppy and lazy enough that at least one tire and a big piece of carpet along with several other pieces of debris were left to continue rotting.

While they were still throwing tires into their truck, I wandered out to speak with them and was greeted rather brusquely. They informed me that their work order showed my address as the offending property and that I would be billed for the cleanup. They then began to lecture me on the proper care and feeding of a vacant lot.

I quickly grew tired of their demeaning attitude and I left them to their task and returned to the relative peace of my domicile, but I was rather concerned about the billing issue, since I sure as hell don’t want to get into a fight over payment for the cleanup of a lot that I don’t own. This and the fact that not everything was removed prompted me to call Code Enforcement.

After the cleanup: things are better, but not good enough.

Surprisingly, Code Enforcement informed me that they still showed no violation for the church property. I told the friendly staff person my story, and she directed me to Solid Waste.

I called Solid Waste and was told that no work order existed for either my address or the address for the vacant lot. I repeated that the Solid Waste crew had informed me that my address was on the work order and that I was being billed for the cleanup, and I was put on hold while a search was done, but no record of the work order could be found.

Now, this could well be a simple case of bureaucratic confusion, but I have my doubts.

I strongly suspect that the Solid Waste crew was sent as a favor to the church and that the city will end up eating the cost of the cleanup. This, in itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, since the neighborhood as a whole benefits from the removal of discarded tires, but if true, it is a great illustration of hypocritic workings of Tampa’s governmental organizations.

Mayor Pam Iorio has been waging a war against code violations, citing people for such trivialities as address numbers that are difficult to read and slightly overgrown lawns. Many property owners who get cited are simply poor property owners who have trouble maintaining their property, but who do the best they can with a limited budget.

The poor get no break. If they fail to clean up or paint or whatever the city asks them to do, they face stiff fines and very possibly the loss of their homes. Again, they are not intentional scofflaws, but simply economically distressed individuals who may be forced by circumstance to put off a fresh paint job or other cosmetic repair.

The Idlewild Church, on the other hand, is one of the wealthiest and most politically connected property owners in my neighborhood. They are well aware of the blighted vacant lot across from their Central Campus, and have done absolutely nothing to clean up the unsightly and completely illegal pile of junk that has been accumulating there for more than two years.

So, if my paranoid theory is correct, the city is paying for an under the table cleanup for an organization that could easily afford to foot the bill themselves, an organization that has ample resources to properly maintain their property in the first place but which has neglected to do so. At the same time, the city continues to harass and intimidate and cause untold amounts of grief to poor homeowners who would happily comply with city code were they financially able to do so.

Business as usual.

After Cleanup Pictures

Before Cleanup Pictures

Note - to be perfectly clear: I am still waiting for a call back from the Solid Waste Department as to who ordered and is paying for the cleanup. I will post updates as I get them, and I will gladly eat my words if my theory is incorrect.