Kent King says he can better serve Tampa's District 4 on City Council

Harry Cohen is the establishment favorite to win re-election to his South Tampa District 4 seat next month. The 44-year-old lawyer and former chief deputy clerk of the Circuit Court for Hillsborough County (where he still works on a part-time basis) has been endorsed by all the major newspapers, and some observers speculate that he may be a viable mayoral candidate four years from now.

But Kent King doesn’t think Cohen deserves to be re-elected. King’s a businessman who has supervised a sales staff at Southern Wine and Spirit of Florida for the past dozen years. And he thinks the district deserves better.

“Let’s look at his record,” King said Wednesday night at a City Council candidate forum at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. He then blasted Cohen for supporting an apartment complex in Harbor Island tower opposed by its neighbors, approving zoning variances in SoHo “that have resulted in a mess down there,” and voting to change zoning at the corner of Santiago Street and Dale Mabry Highway from residential to retail, which King  said was “against the neighbors’ wishes.”

“Bottom line, I don’t call that working for you,” King said.

In response, Cohen said that it’s not accurate to say the neighbors were opposed to these actions. “In some cases they were, in some cases they were mixed,” he said.

In the Harbor Island case, Cohen said that it was a unanimous vote by council based on legal issues. “There was no hearing about the facts, it was a legal question. And when the council votes unanimously on a legal question, it tends to mean something.”

When asked whether he thought was a cheap shot by King, Cohen said, “I think it was to the extent that it made it sound like I was the only one. … it wasn’t clear to the audience that it was a 7-0 vote.”

In his campaign literature, King devotes a section to Cohen labeled “Harry who?” He writes that “it’s the first question voters have asked Kent King throughout his campaign,” which he says proves that the district is underrepresented.

In Wednesday’s candidates forum, where all the City Council candidates appeared before a crowd estimated at 185 people, King played the classic outsider, dismissing claims made not just by Cohen, but other current council members on the ballot such as Mike Suarez, Yolie Capin and Charlie Miranda on issues like the lack of sufficient storm-water infrastructure.

Cohen said that reduced property tax revenue because of the lingering effects of the Great Recession have hampered efforts in that area in recent years, but said the city has been making investments since then, spending $2 million for canal dredging and for the construction of a pump station.

King would have none of it, though, saying there is always money in the city’s budget for storm-water projects, but that it hasn’t been a priority.

Regarding the explosive growth in South Howard, Cohen said people are “desperate” to live in the area, and said it’s the council’s responsibility when they make land use and zoning decisions “to make sure that the neighborhoods can handle what is taking place,” adding that such a massive growth period creates stresses on a neighborhood.

King said the council was giving out too many variances for parking for some establishments, causing “overloading.”

“Sometimes you just have to say no,” he said. “They wanna live here? Sorry, not everybody can live everywhere they want.”

An issue that has come up with both King and District 3 candidate Paul Erni is the fact that they both work in the alcohol beverage industry (Erni is a salesman with Republic National Distributing Co.). That has led to speculation that they could miss out frequently on votes by recusing themselves, since the council votes frequently on wet zoning applications.

“Alcohol is not just about the votes, it’s about the discussion,” Cohen said on Wednesday. “You have to be able to present for the discussion. The neighbors, the other council members, and the applicants, all go through a discussion of what the conditions are going to be, that underlie any alcohol approval, and if you’re not there for the discussion, you can’t represent the neighborhood.”

King said that he’s reviewed the Florida Constitution and the Florida Code of Ethics, and said that there was nothing there that indicated that he or Erni would have to recuse themselves that often.

But Capin and Suarez noted that Tampa has its own code of ethics that are tougher than the state of Florida’s. It prohibits officials or employees having a “contractual relationship that will create a continuing or frequently recurring conflict between his or her private interests and the performance of his or her public duties.”