With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, Yes on Greenlight, the PAC behind the Greenlight Pinellas transit tax initiative, is going all out to blanket the airwaves and try to persuade undecided voters to choose "yes" when they fill out their ballots. They've just purchased their biggest buy of the campaign season, a television ad featuring former north county Pinellas GOP Commissioner Sallie Parks speaking about the benefits of the plan, surrounded by two young children (one of them her grandson, the other the granddaughter of Clearwater Chamber of Commerce President Bob Clifford).
Parks represented District 4 in North County from 1992-2000, where she sat on the PSTA and MPO boards. She says that transit has been on the "front burner" since than time, and has seen some improvements, but nothing like the "robust plan" offered in the Greenlight proposal. "I think there will be benefits for North Pinellas," she says, even though it may not be referring to some connector routes and longer hours that an enhanced bus service would bring if the referendum is successful.
Yes on Greenlight spokesperson Kyle Parks says the ad featuring former Commissioner Parks is an antidote of sorts to the relentless negative ads that have been polluting our airwaves for months. And he says that's not all Yes on Greenlight has planned.
"We are going to be knocking on 15,000 doors in the county," he says. " We're going to be calling 30,000 likely voters, with real phone calls, not the robocalls that the opposition has been doing."
Other actions involve a van going around the county custom-wrapped with a Greenlight logo, hitting small businesses all over the county and talking up the initiative. There will also be a radio commercial appearing by the weekend.