By now, the five candidates hoping to represent disproportionately impoverished District 7 on St. Pete City Council are probably pretty sick of talking about how they'd weigh in on the Tampa Bay Rays stadium debate.A bigger issue for most, if not all, candidates, it seems, is that of ending the cycle of poverty in the city. Sure, Trop jobs and the team's generous bestowal of game tickets on low-income youth help to some degree. But when families are bogged down by court fines and criminal records and jail time for totally harmless (if technically illegal) offenses, baseball can be kind of a non-issue.
Perhaps that's why the five candidates contending in a primary race for the seat all said, in their own way, that they'd follow Miami-Dade County's lead in decriminalizing certain quantities of marijuana. In June, the county commission there voted to give law enforcement officers the discretion to decide whether to arrest someone they find to be in possession of 20 grams of marijuana or less, or simply cite them with a $100 fine.
In Florida, according to NORML, current potential penalties for having such a small amount include up to a year in prison (!) and a $1,000 fine.
Obviously, this affects people who can't afford court fees or bail money, let alone a top legal team.
At a recent Pinellas Libertarian Party forum in St. Pete, the five Dist. 7 council candidates each expressed their openness to adopting such a policy within the city.
"Everybody makes mistakes now and then," said candidate Aaron Sharpe, a financial consultant. "But to ruin an opportunity for the future and to take that away from folks because of a little mistake...it's nonviolent, it's just not worth the cost to all of us in the future that takes away from those individuals."
Community advocate and former urban planner and attorney Sheila Scott-Griffin agreed, adding that not sending people for jail for having a tiny bit of grass would benefit taxpayers, too:
"Massive incarceration in the United States is a travesty. There are many things, many nonviolent occurrences that do not necessitate us paying for a bed and a meal. There are ways, there are programs, there are procedures that can be enacted that will help us get on the right path for minor infractions where violence is not a part of the crime. Where the greatness of a person still is, we need to have them to extract that, not making license plates in prison.”
Candidate Elvert "Lewis" Stephens, a behavior specialist at Campbell Park Elementary, said he would support the policy, but wonders why there aren't more resources invested in preventing young people from being inclined toward smoking marijuana in the first place.
The policy was not without its skeptics. While she didn't elaborate, Lisa Wheeler-Brown, former head of the Council of Neighborhood Associations, said while she'd support it, she has some "concerns."
"(W)e want our youth to be successful," she said. "And if they have that one mark, that is going to hinder them. The use of the civil citations, while it may be a great idea in some areas, like I say, I have some concern about it. I want our youth to be successful and that's what I'm going to work for.”
Meanwhile, union leader and retired firefighter Will Newton (whose brother currently occupies the seat but is vacating due to term limits) had a cut-and-dried answer.
“Yes," he said. "And I will make that one of my new business items once you all elect me.”