It took more than two hours for Tampa International Airport officials to convince One Direction fans that the band wouldn’t be making an appearance in the main terminal Saturday.

Rumors spread quickly on Twitter that the boy band would have a two-hour layover in Tampa on its way to Los Angeles for the MTV Video Music Awards. More than 200 fans formed a welcoming committee that clogged the main gate area and forced airport police to put up stanchions to control the crowd.

The band did touch down at 5:45 p.m. at TIA on one of British Airways’ daily nonstop flights to Tampa, said Janet Zink, an airport spokeswoman. But the band went through customs and took a van to Landmark General Aviation near International Plaza mall to board a private jet.

Still, fans crowded in front of the entrance to the F gates hoping for a glimpse. Zink said employees announced the band wasn’t coming to the main terminal over the intercom every five minutes. She also took to Twitter (@flyTPA) to communicate with fans for two hours.

“This was a much larger crowd challenge than the Republican National Convention,” Zink said.

One Direction’s private charter flight left just before 7 p.m. A little while later, disappointed fans cleared out.

Zink tweeted a warning to her colleagues: “Get ready @LAX_Official. You’re next for the @onedirection madness!”

http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/one-direction-fans-swarm-tampa-international-airport-leave-disappointed/1249373

Decision time has arrived for the City Council.

This month will be pivotal as council members decide how to close a $10 million budget gap. Regardless of how they boost revenue, it’s almost certain to affect residents and businesses.

Taxpayers have flooded council members with calls and emails about how they think the city should raise money. Many oppose a suggested new “fire readiness” fee, suggesting instead the city to dip into its reserves. Others are against any more cuts to services, such as fewer hours at city pools or libraries.

Thursday’s council meeting could be a precursor to gauge the public’s pulse before formal budget hearings Sept. 13 and 27. Residents will be allowed to speak during Thursday’s forum.

“I’m going to rally folks to be there,” said Vince Cocks, vice president of Faith House, a halfway house in St. Petersburg. “I’m working away on this.”

The council, which voted 5-3 in July to move forward with a fire fee, is limited on how it can raise the $10 million, or roughly 2 percent of the city’s proposed $472 million budget for next year.

The council could choose between a property tax hike or the new fire fee. Members instead could dip into the city’s $40 million reserve fund, or approve some combination of all three measures.

“This is one of the most closely watched city budget processes ever,” said Darden Rice, president of the League of Women Voters of St. Petersburg.

The fee has ignited controversy among residents, churches and charities. Critics contend the fee is a regressive tax on the poor designed to save businesses and wealthy property owners from paying thousands in additional property taxes.

To fend off some of this criticism, Mayor Bill Foster has proposed allowing poor residents to defer the fee until their properties are sold. The city would place a lien on the homes to guarantee eventual payment.

The People’s Budget Review, a coalition of neighborhood groups, civic organizations and union members, has conducted a survey of more than 1,200 residents. Preliminary findings show residents oppose the fire fee and prefer to balance the budget by raising property taxes and tapping reserves, said Rice, a member of the group.

Results were not released; the group said they were still being tallied.

“I think citizens are smart and see through the fire readiness fee for what it is,” Rice said. “It is flat tax that disproportionately hurts the poor.”

The former president of the NAACP, Ray Tampa, agreed: “The fire fee is affecting the people who can least afford it.”

Council members seem split on how to balance the budget.

Jim Kennedy, who voted to move the fire fee forward, expects the group to exempt, not defer, houses valued under $50,000. He estimates the fee to then raise between $7 million and $8 million.

The city has gone at least 22 years without raising the current tax rate of about $5.91 per $1,000 of taxable value. Kennedy expects the streak to end.

He prefers raising the tax rate to about $6.20 to generate between $3 million to $4 million.

“I see us doing a combination of things,” Kennedy said. “I don’t see us dipping into reserves.”

Wengay Newton, who opposed moving the fee forward, expects residents to pack the council chamber for the meetings.

He prefers tapping reserves and slightly increasing property taxes to balance the budget. Newton questions why Foster wants to hold reserves worth $40 million only to keep the city’s bond rating higher.

“We shouldn’t be hoarding taxpayers’ money like a bank,” he said. “This is what the money is supposed to be used for.”

Newton lambasted council members who want to modify the fire fee by exempting the poor and nonprofit groups, saying: “If it can’t stand on its own, then it’s not a true fee. I hope my colleagues come to their senses.”

Residents are rallying.

Scores have packed recent meetings when the council decided the future of the Pier and whether to allow digital billboards. Meetings lasted hours.

This month’s meetings could be the same.

A grassroots group, Fair Tax Coalition, has urged residents to attend and created an online petition opposing the fee.

Many taxpayers mistakenly believe the fee is to keep fire engines rolling, said group member Tom Tito, adding: “The more the public learns about this, the less they like it.”

Edward Pettit, a resident in the Pasadena area, said the council has eroded public trust by not allowing taxpayers to vote on the Pier and by moving forward with the fire fee.

“They all deserve to reap what they’ve sown and to be voted out,” he said.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/localgovernment/st-petersburg-leaders-must-decide-how-to-raise-10-million-tax-or-fee/1249619

The questions Joe Melchiorre asked himself were: How would he relate to kids? Was he too old? And the deeper questions, the ones that really bothered him: How immersed should he be? How much of himself should he commit?

As he put it, “How do I maintain a balance between emotion and reality?”

Three months after beginning as a guardian ad litem in Hillsborough County, Melchiorre has found easy answers to the first questions. He’s been around kids all his life. He has grandchildren. All he has to do is be himself.

He’s still wrestling with the other, harder questions.

Around the beginning of the year, the Legislature spread $1.8 million around the state to try to overcome a massive shortage of guardian ad litem volunteers. That happened about the same time Melchiorre was wondering how, besides playing golf, he was going to spend his new retirement.

He’s 67. He has raised four children. Before he retired last January, he was vice president of operations at Shriners Hospitals for Children — Tampa.

• • •

Devoting part of his newfound free time to helping children seemed like a good fit. He’d coached baseball and soccer for years. He thought about volunteering with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Tampa.

But at the same time, Florida Guardian ad Litem was announcing its recruitment drive. The state had 31,000 children in foster care. For 10,000 of those kids — including 993 in Hillsborough and 1,421 in Pinellas and Pasco — it lacked volunteers to watchdog their wellbeing at home, to monitor their health and progress in school, to speak on their behalf in court.

Melchiorre read a Sue Carlton column in the Tampa Bay Times that profiled Richard Cadogan, a 63-year-old disabled Army vet, who has helped 60 children as a guardian ad litem volunteer for the past 12 years.

By May, Melchiorre had graduated from a training class and two weeks later he had his first case. The case came with two brothers, ages 4 and 7. They were living with their grandmother since their father was arrested on domestic violence charges. The good part was that neither boy had been abused. Both parents loved them.

The boys had no idea what a guardian ad litem was, or what he would want from them.

“What do I say, what do I do?” Melchiorre asked his guardian ad litem supervisor, Amanda Sinicola.

“You’re not going to be alone,” she told him.

Sinicola made the introductions at Macfarlane Park during the boys’ supervised visit with their mother. Melchiorre sat down to meet them at their eye level. Sinicola announced, “This is Mr. Joe. He’s going to be looking after you, to make sure you’re safe.”

The boys looked at him blankly.

Melchiorre did better on the next visit, at the home of their paternal grandmother, where they lived.

He asked the boys if he could see their room.

There, he found their bats and gloves for T-ball. It was an instant connection between an old coach and two aspiring ballplayers. They spent the visit talking about baseball.

“I could see the 7-year-old’s eyes light up,” Melchiorre said.

He has not been able to ask them the questions he really wants to ask: How are they feeling? How are they dealing with the domestic violence they witnessed and the separation from their parents?

Melchiorre doesn’t feel he’s earned the right to ask those questions yet.

So he’s going by the book. His priority is to observe. Are they physically well? Are they clean? Are they seeing their pediatrician and their dentist? He talked to their schools and found that the older boy needs extra help. One of his first accomplishments was to work with the boys’ case manager to arrange tutoring.

At the same time, the state has relaxed the rules for guardian ad litem visits. The rules now allow the volunteers to take children 7 and older in their cars to places outside the home.

Melchiorre sees that as both the opportunity he needs to really break through and a relationship change that might lead to disappointment.

• • •

The hoped-for goal in all such cases is that parents repair the damage in their lives and get their children back. The hoped-for goal is that the children no longer need a guardian ad litem.

By taking the children on outings, Melchiorre worries that he could give them things that their parents couldn’t match. It also could enforce their perception of Melchiorre as a kind of surrogate grandpa who will be in their lives forever, when their parents may not even want that. He’s not about to hurry them off to Disney World. “It’s a fine line,” he said, “you don’t want to overstep.”

Suzanne Parker, guardian ad litem program director, said she’s gratified to hear that Melchiorre has concerns. “I love it when we have people who really think how their actions affect others,” she said.

She wishes she had more like him. She’s trying to find 400 new volunteers.

But she said Melchiorre is overthinking. “Other kids get to go on outings,” she said. “We’re just doing this so our kids can feel normal.”

Melchiorre said he wants to give himself until October to raise the bar. He’ll keep observing, keep talking to the boys’ teachers and doctors. Then he plans to take the older boy on an outing, somewhere they can talk uninterrupted.

He hopes the boy will feel safe enough to talk about all he and his brother have been through. “I hope by then I’ve established enough trust.”

http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/retired-businessman-finds-new-purpose-as-guardian-ad-litem/1249610

Kelly Zelaya stands in front of a group of children at the Bible Truth Ministries Academy on N 22nd Street. She tells them it’s important to drink eight glasses of water every day, even if they don’t really like the taste, or lack thereof.

They can add fruit like pineapple to make it taste better, she says. A few make faces of disgust.

“Oh, my goodness, you and your ‘ewws,’ ” Zelaya says to a boy at one of the tables. “You have an eww for everything and you always end up eating everything we make.”

The boy is one of 14 children, ages 6 to 15, in Zelaya’s healthy cooking class. On Tuesday mornings for six weeks the students have learned about food labels, vitamins, and making quick, healthy meals from Zelaya, who is working on a teaching degree and has two teenagers of her own. On Friday they’ll make a little bit of everything they’ve learned to show their parents during a graduation ceremony.

The classes were started by Molina Healthcare of California for low-income children. This class is also part of Molina’s effort to fight childhood obesity. Seventeen percent of U.S. children are obese, according to a June report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“A considerable number of low-income children are obese,” said Dr. Mark Bloom, chief medical officer for Molina Healthcare of Florida. “Their families have a harder time making good choices when it comes to food largely because of cost.”

The ingredients for a lot of the meals Zelaya has taught the children how to make are the same, so the dishes are easy, and they’re inexpensive.

Zelaya’s class is the first in Florida. Another in Polk County began three weeks ago. Molina hopes to bring the classes to Pinellas, Seminole and Pasco, said Paulina Torres, community engagement coordinator. The classes were added to an existing summer program at the Bible Truth Ministries Academy, a K-12 school. Molina often partners with community organizations, schools or churches to bring programs like the cooking classes to children in the community.

On Tuesday students made turkey wraps and little pizzas with English muffins, wearing blue aprons and white chef hats.

“I never thought of using English muffins” instead of pizza dough, said Tatyana Speights, 13.

She takes cooking classes at Stewart Middle School in Tampa. With the summer class, she has had the chance to learn more, and eat more — her favorite part, she said.

Students make the turkey wrap with a green tortilla, lettuce, tomato and mustard instead of mayonnaise, because it has less fat and sugar.

They work in pairs. Zelaya encourages them to smell the ingredients, and taste a little bit of the mustard before declaring that they don’t like it.

Knowing how to cook “makes them feel more a part of deciding what they want to eat,” Bloom said. “If they have participated in making it or deciding what to eat, they’re more likely to want to eat it.”

At the end of the class, Zelaya holds up the empty tortilla bag.

“I have a secret to tell you about your green tortilla and I don’t want to hear any ewws. Your green tortilla is a spinach tortilla. Can you taste the spinach? You can’t even taste it, can you?”

Nobody ewws. They’re too busy eating.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/more-mmms-than-ewws-kids-learn-to-make-healthy-meals-in-summer-class-in/1242608