HIL CO 73 page 53

 from your career and politics here locally, to do with the road board or other
 issues? I guess St. Pete and Tampa have always been rivals.

C: Turn it off, and I will tell you a story. [Tape interrupted.]

B: All right. We were starting to talk a little bit about the contentiousness of the
 relationship between St. Petersburg and Tampa over time, how you saw that
 play out in your own Road Board experience.

C: Probably the biggest contention ever, the biggest one problem that arose, was
 the location of the airport. That became a real problem. Over a number of years,
 it went back and forth to the FAA [Federal Aviation Authority] and whoever else
 makes decisions about where international airports can be located, and finally it
 was located in Tampa. That was a very, very difficult situation between the two
 counties. As far as the Road Board was concerned and my time on the Road
 Board, I had some real difficulty with the governments of Pinellas County, the
 county commission and different city governments. They had about twelve,
 fourteen different cities in Pinellas County. Never had any problems with Tarpon
 Springs or Clearwater, but...[End of Side 6, Tape C.] The biggest problem that I
 had personally with them was the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which could have
 been refunded and we could have raised additional funds through the refunding
 of the bonds to be paid by tolls, so that all the work could be done in Pinellas and
 Manatee County that they needed for years to come. It was a bridge that should
 have been built, it was built, and it was a good toll-road. It raised considerable
 funds, much more than just the maintenance and payment of bonds for the
 bridge. The newspaper, primarily, and Mr. Poynter [Nelson Poynter], who was
 the owner and published the newspaper, told me that the bridge would never be
 refunded and he did not want the bridge bothered because it was, in effect, his
 bridge. I said, well, that is fine, if it is your bridge then you ought to have a say-
 so, although the bridge belonged to the people of the state of Florida and
 particularly to the people of Pinellas and Manatee Counties. But I did not pursue
 that any further. He did say once something to the effect that the bond will be
 refunded over my dead body, I suggested that might not be a bad idea, and we
 dropped the conversation there. Other things that developed in Pinellas County
 were the location of roads and the building and rebuilding of bridges. One of the
 things I remember most of all [in] my relations with Pinellas County and its
 governments and its civic clubs and community clubs was the building of a
 bridge, and I believe it was Madeira Beach Causeway, which was an old turnstile
 bridge on the Intracoastal Highway. It should have been replaced, but we did not
 have the funds to do it. They did not accept that as a reason, and they got up a
 phone-calling group of maybe 100 people who were to call me. Every five
 minutes, they assigned somebody to call me and wake me up and tell me what
 needed to be done to the bridge. Needless to say, that only lasted until the third
 call. I just hung up. The message got back to them the next day, that they
 certainly would not get a bridge nor any other assistance from the road