Among the many issues on the top of Pat Gerard's agenda as she prepares for a run for Pinellas County Commission later this year is building up the county's affordable housing stock.
A 2012 Housing Market study produced for the county's housing finance authority said that, "Without continued population growth and accompanying affordable and workforce housing, businesses will not be able to attract employees due to longer and more expensive commute times."
"We spend every penny we can on affordable housing money because that’s also a huge investment," says Gerard, now serving the last year in her second term as mayor of Largo. She says she's done a lot with public-private partnerships, which provides "the biggest bang for your buck" and have been done so professionally that "you wouldn't know it was affordable housing."
[jump]Gerard is running for the District County Commission seat currently held by Norm Roche, who is being challenged inside his own party by former state legislator Ed Hooper.
"I think Norm’s proven himself not to be particularly progressive," Gerard told CL on Saturday night in St. Pete Beach, where she was attending a Pinellas Democratic Party event highlighted by an appearance by congressional candidate Alex Sink. "And Ed Hooper has piled up a lot of anti-residence votes in the Legislature. He's voted the party line for eight years, and was one of the ones who refused the Medicaid expansion after he filed to run for County Commission....I mean, he's cost thousands of people [health] insurance, so I think that's sort of short-sighted."
Previous to becoming mayor, Gerard served six years on the Largo City Commission. And she's been a long-time public servant in her role as chief operating officer for Family Resources Inc., a nonprofit agency that assists troubled teens.
Like Democrats Charlie Justice and Janet Long before her, Gerard intends to campaign in support of the Greenlight Pinellas transportation initiative, the ballot measure that calls for an increase in the county's sales tax to fund an expanded bus and light-rail plan. Roche has been the lone holdout against the plan on the County Commission, while Hooper also opposes the measure.
"I think this is an investment in our future," Gerard says about Greenlight Pinellas. "If we don’t have a decent transportation system in this county, we start losing jobs — and I’m convinced we’re already losing jobs to different areas that have planned ahead. We’re not just competing in Florida anymore, we’re competing in the whole country... Businesses don’t want to relocate to a place where their employees can’t get to work, so I think it’s critical, it’s vitally important to the future of our county.
And Gerard says that she'd like to see the county do more to help out the arts, which she says is virtually nothing these days. "It's not just an aesthetic necessity, but it's an economic driver for this county."