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Talk & Predictions
Santa Rosa Sells By CD
Kids' games aren't the only thing being marketed these days on CD-ROM. Santa Rosa County's Authority for Economic Activity (AEA) and its private sector partner spent $40,000 to develop a CD-ROM for use as an economic development tool. The disk - "Santa Rosa County: Moving You in a New Direction" - represents about 500 pages of hard copy, according to its producers, and allows an "interactive tour" of the Panhandle county's demographics, infrastructure, schools, labor force, services, culture and real estate.
Jim Hill, chairman of the AEA and publisher of the Santa Rosa Press Gazette, says it's the first such CD developed by any of the state's counties and one of only ten nationwide. The disk communicates a "state-of-the-art" awareness to business prospects and is "definitely more appealing than a 500-page information manual."
The AEA has distributed roughly 500 of the disks to trade show leads and businesses that were already considering the county as a site. Jerry Burden, a vice president of Regions Bank in Milton and Pace and vice chairman of the AEA, says the group is in "serious negotiations" with one relocation prospect attracted in part by the CD-ROM, which has been out since late September. "It will only take one to justify the whole cost of the project," he says.
- Mark Howard
REGULATION
9-1-1 for 9-0-4
Bragging rights, Round 1:
In this corner, Jacksonville: A major metropolitan area, major business center and port. It's slowly outgrowing a long-standing inferiority complex. In the other, Tallahassee: Capital city, home to Florida State University and a major political center. It's small, but prideful.
At stake? Rights to the 904 area code number, which, BellSouth estimates, will be out of usable numeric combinations by May of 1998. One of the two communities has to change area codes and become 850.
Not us, say the bureaucrats in Tallahassee. We have a broad community of callers both nationwide and internationally who would be inconvenienced. Not us, say the businesscrats in Jacksonville. What are we, chopped civic liver? We have more phone users in our area. And a football team, too.
The state's Public Service Commission will decide who gets to keep 904 on Jan. 21. At hearings this fall, 40 people showed up in Jacksonville to plead their case for 904, while in Tallahassee only about half a dozen came to the hearing.
BellSouth says that if historical patterns of growth in cellphone, faxes and home phone usage continue, Jacksonville will be out of numbers again by 2002. So the city would have to start talking about another area code switch in just four years. Tallahassee, if it gets to keep 904, may not keep it much longer; if 904 stays, the capital will be out of numbers by 2006.
RADIO
Not Just Blowing Smoke
David Zeplowitz, aka the "Cigar General," aka "Cigar Dave," not only has figured out a way to talk about cigars for two hours on the radio every Saturday, he's finding that a lot of people across the country want to hear him do it.
Zeplowitz, 32, a media broker and investment banker in Tampa, hosts a two-hour show, Smoke This!, on WSUN-AM in Tampa. He and callers discuss the fine and not-so-fine points of upscale stogies, greeting each other with the cigar smokers' equivalent of "Aloha" ... "Long ashes to ya!" He started the show in the summer of 1995, catching the much ballyhooed cigar wave at exactly the right time. Zeplowitz took his show national last December, and it now airs in more than 35 cities, including Los Angeles, Portland, Reno and Atlanta along with the Florida markets of Tampa, Orlando, Miami, Jacksonville, West Palm, Fort Pierce and Tallahassee.
The show has its own affiliate relations manager and long-term advertising contracts with a number of major cigar manufacturers. Meanwhile, the cigar craze blazes unabated - nationally, smokers bought 4 billion cigars last year. At least five cigar stores have opened in the past six months in the Orlando area alone.
CITIES
Gloom Over Miami
Miami celebrated its 100th birthday as an incorporated municipality last summer, but the party's over now. The city government announced a projected deficit of $68 million in its $275 million budget for the current fiscal year, which began in October, raising the frightening specter of a Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing. Two major bond-rating agencies reacted to the deficit news by lowering their ratings of Miami's general-obligation debt.
But bond analysts maintain that Miami's fiscal mayhem is manageable. "We see a lot of distressed cities, and Miami has more capacity than most to deal with its problems," says Robin Prunty, director in the public financing department of Standard & Poor's. "This is fixable," concurs John Incorvaia, vice president, regional rating, for Moody's Investors Service.
Bond markets were reassured last month when Gov. Lawton Chiles appointed a special committee to oversee the Miami City Commission's efforts to return the local government to sound financial footing.
A federal investigation into corruption at Miami City Hall has resulted in charges that several city officials were involved in kickbacks-for-contracts schemes. Former city commissioner Miller Dawkins already has pleaded guilty to demanding money from Unisys Corp. in exchange for a favorable vote on the company's proposal to handle a city computer project. Former city manager Cesar Odio was indicted for alleged participation in a plan to skim money from a city insurance contract.
Phil Hamersmith, a longtime political consultant in Miami, believes byzantine financial practices at City Hall "made it easy to be corrupt."
The president of the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, Merrett Stierheim, left the bureau temporarily last fall to serve as interim city manager of Miami and discovered, among other deficiencies, that the city government masked shortfalls in its general operating budget with money reserved for capital improvements, pensions and other purposes. Projections prepared by Stierheim and his advisers show that if the city commission took no action, Miami's government would run out of cash for day-to-day operations by March or April. Stierheim proposed a series of steps to wipe out this year's projected $68 million deficit, including:
Doubling the fee Miamians pay for garbage collection - now only $160 a year, less than half the amount paid by residents of nearby jurisdictions. The higher fee would bring in an extra $10 million in annual revenue.
Ending the practice of paying for fire service with property tax income and imposing a new fire service fee on Miami property owners - including churches. The fire service fee would raise at least $20 million a year.
Winning concessions and pension adjustments from unions representing police, fire, sanitation and other city workers - worth an estimated $26 million over the next two years.
Many of Stierheim's proposals, especially doubling the garbage fee, appear politically unpalatable for the five-member Miami City Commission, which was doing more debating than deficit-cutting as Christmas approached. "We're running out of money," Miami Mayor Joe Carollo warned at a Dec. 5 meeting of the city commission, "and there's going to be nothing to discuss or argue about at that point in time. We know the next step."
If the commission fails to eliminate the projected deficit soon enough, Gov. Chiles could be compelled to act. The governor might force the city commission to impose new fees or raise taxes in Miami under the Florida statute that allows him to appoint the city's oversight committee. Chiles has another club, too: The state constitution permits him to remove elected city officials from office for misfeasance or malfeasance.
Given the state government's own wobbly financial condition, Chiles can't afford to send the message that Tallahassee stands ready to cover the deficits of Florida's troubled municipal governments.
A bankruptcy filing by Miami's city government, which would require Chiles' approval, is widely regarded as a last resort. "Miami shouldn't be declaring bankruptcy because, looking down the road, its problems are solvable," says Richard Lehmann, president of the Bond Investors Association in Miami Lakes.
Not everyone agrees. A group called the Coalition for a New Miami has gathered thousands of signed petitions to force a referendum vote on a proposal to abolish the city government. The group wants to extend the services of the Dade County government, which already serves more than one million local residents, to Miami's population of roughly 365,000.
One of the group's leaders, local attorney Gene Stearns, says Miamians would see a sharp reduction in their property tax rates if they were served by Dade County's government instead of the city's. "The tax base in Miami is simply not large enough to support the government that's trying to run the city," Stearns says.
Hamersmith predicts that Miami's Hispanic voters will decide the outcome of the referendum because they represent about 65% of the voters likely to cast ballots. He says Hispanic voters generally support retention of the city government - but warns that their support could erode if they're forced to pay a steep price for a balanced budget through higher garbage fees or other measures.
- Mike Seemuth
PEOPLE AND CHANGES
Banking
First Union's G. Kennedy "Ken" Thompson, 46, moves to the bank's Charlotte headquarters as executive vice president and co-managing director of the Capital Markets Group. Thompson, an active civic leader in Jacksonville, has been president of First Union National Bank of Florida since 1992 and head of consumer and corporate banking.
AmSouth Bank Vice President Randy Phillips was named chairman of Tampa's Foreign Trade Zone Board. The trade zone, established in 1982, acts as a tariff-free holding area for imports as they are assembled. Phillips, 49, has spent 21 years in international banking.
Health
Jim Henry, vice president of Florida operations for Prudential HealthCare, is the 1997 chairman for the Florida Association of Health Maintenance Organizations.
International
Ernst & Young attorney/CPA Jos? Leiman joins the Big 6 firm's Miami office as head of its Latin American Business Center. The center provides tax planning and consulting to Latin American companies operating in the U.S. and multinationals investing in Latin America. Cuban-born Leiman, 36, previously worked in Ernst & Young's International Tax Services/National Tax Office in Washington, D.C.
Manufacturing
Robert E. Gill was named CEO of Tampa's Group Technologies Corp., a maker of circuit cards and other electronic products. He replaces Carl P. McCormick, who is retiring. Gill, 71, spent 22 years with Honeywell and was Group Technologies' chairman from 1989 to 1992. He currently chairs Group Financial Partners, a Louisville, Kentucky, holding company expected to merge with Group Technologies this spring.
Revolving door maven "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap, CEO of Fort Lauderdale-based Sunbeam Corp., continues to shake up the ranks of the troubled household products company. He promoted Don Uzzi to senior vice president for worldwide marketing, with additional responsibility for global operations. Uzzi, 44, had been vice president for marketing. In another move, Sunbeam announced the resignation of P. Newton White, executive vice president for consumer products. White, 53, left for "health reasons."
U.S. Plastic Lumber Corp., a Boca Raton maker of plastic lumber products, tapped Mark S. Alsentzer, 41, as president and CEO. He replaces David A. Farrow, who becomes vice chairman and chief operating officer. Alsentzer, a vice president with Republic Environmental Systems Inc. from 1979 to 1996, also is president of New Castle, Delaware-based Clean Earth Inc., an environmental remediation company.
Real Estate
Clearwater-based Prudential Florida Realty, the state's largest real estate brokerage firm, tapped Jill Fisher Powers as executive vice president and chief counsel. Powers, 35, was in private practice specializing in real estate and corporate law in the Tampa Bay area.
Restaurants
Thomas E. Metzger, 34, was promoted to president of Fort Lauderdale-based Roasters Corp., operator of the struggling Kenny Rogers Roasters chain of restaurants. The company, now owned by a Malaysian investment group, recently closed a number of restaurants. Before joining Roasters in 1995, Metzger was a vice president with Mid Atlantic Restaurant Systems L.P., an operator of 68 Boston Market restaurants.
Services
ABR Information Services Inc., a Palm Harbor-based administrator of healthcare and other benefits, ousted Vincent Addonisio as executive vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer "due to differences with the Board of Directors and management." Reva Maskewitz, ABR's vice president of finance and controller, is acting chief financial officer.
Technology
Former IBM executive Andy Ruppaner, 56, takes over as president and COO of HotOffice Technologies Inc., formerly LinkStar Communications. The Boca Raton-based Internet company recently introduced HotOffice, an online service for small businesses that provides the capabilities of the Intranet such as document publishing and retrieval, communications and other business tools.
America's Health Network, the Orlando-based cable channel, promoted D. Bruce Sellers, 48, to the new position of executive vice president of distribution and affiliate affairs. Sellers, a former executive vice president at QVC, joined America's Health Network in 1995 as a senior vice president.
