"biggest land owner as a city proportionally for the amount of people"

“Please state your name and address and you have 3minutes sir,” said Mayor Affronti.

Jack Ippolito, 518 Nantucket Drive, Temple Terrace, FL resident 28 years born and raised in Hillsborough County.

I appreciate being here tonight and the opportunity to address the council once more. I don’t think I am here to convince you all of anything because I think most of you all have made up your mind. I don’t think you have all the facts. I think there is a lot of back patting on your own backs.

I don’t believe you are getting all the information and everything is escalating.

I made some notes tonight because I am worried about all these consultants you all keep talking about. It seems like every time I read something it is about another consultant. We are spending money on consultants like they are going out of style. I don’t know if it is a fetish with this City. I don’t know if we don’t have the people capable of handling these things and we have to hire consultants.

If this guy that we are talking about now that is so good he is a financial wizard, maybe we need to hire him and get rid of all the consultants. Replace Mr. Boseck get all this money give it to this guy let him tell us what to do and how to do it if he is that great.

We are talking about $25,000 for the new cultural center and maybe another $25,000. We are talking about several thousand we already paid this gentleman this lobbiest in Tallahassee on the road work that you all need six and a quarter million dollars. You needed a million just to get the plans done. It was approved by the legislature. Vetoed by the Governor. I haven’t heard anything about that. No word came out on that. That it was vetoed. So it is back to the drawing board again to try to get that money to give you some of the infrastructure you need as a vehicle for that revitalization that you are doing.

I really believe that the City of Temple Terrace and I wish somebody would correct me. I think it is the biggest land owner as a city proportionally for the amount of people and the square miles it occupies than any city in this nation. And I would like to be corrected if I am in wrong in that because I have never seen a city in all my life and I was in development for 35 years. I retired, I retired at 55. So I got my share of seeing what was going on. I’ve just never seen a city with this much development.

That shopping center there is in trouble. And I don’t know if this redevelopment business and hiring this developer and bringing all this fancy stuff in here is going to help. I’m here tonight in hope that if there is someone here that is on the fence, I get them to come on the side to turn down the millage increase. That is what I am here for. Because those that have made up your mind I am not going to get to you. You are all convinced.

But with the facts that I have here, there is nothing that is going to convince me that it is going to be a great success. We have a weak business section. Temple Terrace has brought that on over the years. I have been selling real estate in this area for over 30 years. Temple Terrace is very difficult to deal with. A lot of people are scared to come in this city.”

Beep..Beep..Beep..Beep..

“Now..” The three minute beeper interrupts Mr. Ippolito.

Mayor Affronti says,”Wind it, wind it, wind it up please. You have three minutes. Three minutes is up.”

Mr. Ippolito continues,”Okay, well I had a little more but I have to say this I mean these are some things that I think are important because you all talk about this for 15 minutes about it and I have 3 minutes to talk and try to bring out these important points and I think are important.

Tramell Crow backed out of this because he said they are concerned about many things on this, ah. He said most of the obstacles could be overcome, but not within a hard commitment. They are concerned about leases. They are concerned about a lot of things that prevail on this.”

Your other developer which was Lincoln National Properties, LLC same problem they are very concerned about it.”

So now you are with Unicorp that I can’t get any information on to be honest with you. You have Unicorn, Unicorp that you are left with and now we have a problem now that we are saying that they are the last ones we have to hire this guy that is going to cost us a bunch of money to tell us that this guy is going to do a good job for us and we don’t even know what the climate is out there.”

Mayor Affronti tried to interrupt several times.

Mr. Ippolito continued, “All I am saying is…all I am saying is, I think we ought to back off this project or face it down to something more affordable, really,” and then Mr. Ippolito stepped away from the podium.

Mayor Affronti said, “Thank you. Thank you very much.”