Special to The Laker/Lutz News

Volunteers to beautify Land O’ Lakes and Lutz

By Kyle LoJacono

For the last 25 years people have been participating in the International Coastal Cleanup each September to protect the planet’s waterways.
That effort transformed into on overall cleanup effort of all outdoor areas and several groups will be participating in north Hillsborough and central Pasco counties.

“It’s the largest volunteer effort to help protect the oceans, lakes and rivers,” said Jennifer Seney, Pasco County’s recycling coordinator. “More than 7.8 million people have removed more than 135 million pounds of trash from the shoreline since it started 25 years ago.”
The first Coastal Cleanup in Pasco was 23 years ago, according to Seney. About 500,000 volunteers removed 7.4 million pounds of trash around the world last year. This year in Pasco, the event will be from 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Sept. 18.
The first inland event in Pasco was in Land O’ Lakes and its original organizers, Betsy Crisp and Kurt Conover, have participated in all 21 of them. Crisp said the Land O’ Lakes site has about 500 volunteers each year, making it the largest Pasco site.
“Last year, we picked up 6.25 percent (one ton) of the total 16.1 tons collected that day,” Crisp said. “We had 429 volunteers in 38 teams turn out, 30.5 percent of the 1,400 total volunteers county-wide.”
Before 1990, the cleanups were only on Pasco’s Gulf coast. At that time, Joanne Hurley was the county’s recycling coordinator and worked to bring the project inland to help the rivers and lakes.
“Before 1990 there were some attempts at cleanups inland, but they were isolated and we thought we needed to have a more comprehensive approach,” said Hurley, now a member of the Pasco County School Board.
Hurley said she still participates in Crisp’s cleanup, which was along Kent Grove Road in 2009. This year the Land O’ Lakes cleanup is along SR 54, along Collier Parkway and through Parkway Boulevard all the way to Ehren Cutoff. They will start at the corner of SR 54 and Osprey Lane.

Crisp has seen many strange things during the cleanups.
“Every year a new discovery,” Crisp said. “My favorite, the biggest haul of all time was brought in by my daughter’s junior Girl Scout troop. They discovered a huge pile of 18 semi-truck tires dumped off Parkway and refused to leave their treasure by the roadside for the county to pick up. They formed a caravan of cars and trucks to get them back to the drop-off site.
“My husband, Paul, usually mans the dumpster every year and remembers the rear bumper of a car, complete with license tag,” Crisp continued.
There is another central Pasco cleanup near Connerton led by Alex Murphy. For more information on the cleanup, call Seney at (727) 847-8041 or e-mail her at .
In Hillsborough the cleanups are a week later, Sept. 25, at the same time of day. Lutz has two sites, one at the Old Lutz Schoolhouse at 18819 N. US 41 and at Ramblewood Road at the entrance of Brooker Creek Preserve.
The cleanup at the schoolhouse brings several groups, including Boy and Girl Scouts, to clean up areas of Lutz along US 41. For more information on other Hillsborough sites or to sign up, visit www.khcbonline.org.
Seney said she participates in a Wesley Chapel cleanup near the interchange of I-75 and SR 54. This year the event is along Old Pasco Road and is organized by Jeff Pope.
“We get out there twice a year, in the fall during the Coastal Cleanup and in the spring for the Great American Cleanup,” Seney said. “One year we filled 56 bags of garbage from Overpass Road. Those were the 30 gallon trash bags and we did it three years ago. That’s the most I’ve seen.”
Also part of the Pasco cleanups is a collection for people to bring any type of odd metal they are trying to get rid of, including metal appliances, air conditioners, grills, shelves, cabinet and bed frames, bikes, tools, pipes and poles, insulated wire and lawn mowers. The collection is from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 18 at Pasco Lakes, 9344 Old Pasco Road in Wesley Chapel.
The metal will be recycled to help pay for the 2010 Coastal Cleanup in Pasco. Also being collected are car, truck and tractor batteries to be safely recycled.

By B.C. Manion

It doesn’t take long to realize that A Cup of Organic, a coffee shop in Lutz, isn’t your typical place to get a cup of Joe or a fancy coffee drink.
There’s live music there three nights of the week, free wi-fi and the menu offers a selection of organic coffees, teas, smoothies, milkshakes, sandwiches, muffins, cupcakes, cookies and other pastry items.
It has a clean, contemporary feel – and a relaxed vibe.
It also wants to be more than a place where people rush through to get their morning java.

“We want to be the community coffee shop,” said J.D. Lane, one of the company’s five partners. “We don’t want to be a place where we’re simply in someone’s traffic pattern – they’re heading to work, they’re grabbing their morning coffee because they have to have it.”
They appreciate that kind of business, Lane said. However, he added: “We want to be the place where people want to come and actually hang out.”
The coffee shop, at 1900 Oak Grove Blvd., opened last month. It already seems to be gaining a following, and some of its house blends are emerging as its top sellers, Lane said.
Pete Davidson, another one of the partners, created some new coffee drinks.
One is called a Caramel Macchiato Dream – which features a layer of caramel, espresso sweetened with caramel, steamed milk and froth. It is finished with thin streams of caramel, which slide down the interior of the glass.
“That’s why he named it dream: It looks like something ethereal.” Lane said, of the drink, which sells for $3.15 for a small, $3.70 for a medium and $4 for a large.
Another popular Davidson creation is the House Special Vanilla Latte. That is served hot or cold and consists of organic espresso blended with organic milk, sugar and vanilla. It goes for $2.90, $3.40 and $3.90.
Serving organic food and drinks is not the only thing that makes this place different from its coffee shop counterparts.
This one has clear Christian overtones: Bible verses are proclaimed in bold letters and in tasteful frames on the coffee shop’s walls.
As part of its corporate culture, the company gives a portion of its proceeds from its online sales to select ministries and missions. It also has a collection box at the coffee shop, where patrons can make donations to a ministry or mission of the month.
Lane said he realizes not everyone shares the company partners’ beliefs, but they see the business as an answer to prayer and they feel compelled to offer expressions of praise.
“We felt like God brought us all together,” Lane said, referring to himself, Davidson and their other three partners, Juan Torres, Doug Torres and Glenn Deller.
While expressing their faith, they’re not trying to push it on others, Lane said.
“We don’t attempt to preach doctrine when people come in here. We’re not a church. We welcome everyone here,” he said.
The company got its start just a few months ago as an online business to sell coffee grown in Honduras to customers in the United States. The coffee is grown by the family of Juan Torres’ wife.
“We were going to be content doing that for awhile, then all of a sudden a local pastor approached us about this (coffee shop) location,” Lane said.
Lane, who is a business consultant, said he initially was reluctant to open a coffee shop. He understood the excitement of doing it, but knew that it would be tough.
So, he and his partners prayed about it.
They knew what the lease structure needed to be, in order for them to proceed with the coffee shop. They figured if they could get what they needed, they’d go for it. Otherwise, they’d stick to the online shop.
So far, just a few weeks after opening the shop, they’re already beginning to build a following, Lane said.
Last week, a band called Mizan, entertained a small, but appreciative crowd.
Peggy Sample-Summerhill, of Land O’ Lakes, was munching on a sweet while listening to the music. She said the strawberry shortcake cupcake was scrumptious.
Regena Everes, of Tampa Palms, was also listening to the band. She said the shop’s coffee is good. “It’s strong and dark.”
The live music is a big draw, especially on Fridays, Lane said. “We jam this place out. It’s wall to wall.”
It is mostly high school and young college kids, Lane said. “They seem to like this place as a safe, comfortable, hangout.”
There have been so many people there on a couple of recent Friday nights that the shop has stayed open until midnight — an hour beyond normal closing — to accommodate the crowd.
Eventually, the partners would like to replicate the concept elsewhere.
“I think it has shown itself to be very well-received,” Lane said. “It is unique.”
For more information, go to www.acupoforganic.com.

By Kyle LoJacono

University Community Health (UCH) and the Adventist Health System (AHS) have completed the merger that started months ago when the two signed a letter of intent to combine the two healthcare systems.
The merger will create one organization with 43 hospitals, combining the 37 from AHS including Florida Hospital Zephyrhills, UCH’s five and the future Wesley Chapel Medical Center that was to be jointly owned by the two.
The companies began work on the first full-service hospital in Wesley Chapel in 2007, which will be located north of the intersection of SR 56 and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard. A joint press release from UCH and AHS after the letter was signed in March states the companies’ relationship strengthened as a result of the joint venture and prompted the boards of both organizations to explore full merger possibilities.
“AHS and UCH are committed to enhancing the accessibility and quality of medical care to the Tampa Bay area,” AHS president and CEO Don Jernigan said. “Long term planning is essential to the success of healthcare systems and we believe our patients, employees and communities will all be blessed from bringing these systems together.”
The merger was completed after UCH president/CEO Norm Stein retired Aug. 31.
“After working so closely together on the joint venture for the past three years, we have decided to explore opportunities that allow (us) to deliver heightened healthcare services to our expanding patient population,” Stein said previously. “It helps that we already are working together and have like-minded missions that stress patient-centered services.”
The first act of the new board was to appoint current Florida Hospital Zephyrhills president and CEO John Harding to the same position for the Tampa Bay region. He will oversee the Zephyrhills facility, the future Wesley Chapel center and the newly acquired facilities in Tampa and Tarpon Springs.
Taking over for Harding as Florida Hospital Zephyrhills’ CEO and president is Douglas Duffield, who was the hospital’s chief operating officer. Duffield currently lives in San Antonio.
“Doug has proven that he has the leadership skills, the vision and the sense of mission that will enable Florida Hospital Zephyrhills to continue on its journey to provide the most comprehensive and compassionate healthcare services to our patients and the communities we serve,” Harding said.
AHS committed $125 million in capital investments, $10 million to UCH’s Foundation and also agreed to take on UCH’s debt.
AHS is affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church and was established in 1973. It already had the most hospitals of any nonprofit protestant health care company in the United States, but Florida Hospital Zephyrhills was the only facility in the Tampa Bay area.
Christine Stewart, spokeswomen AHS, said the merger gives the organization an opportunity to grow on the relationships UCH has in the bay area. She added there are no plans to layoff personnel so the company can maintain the current patient-care process. No other details on staffing were released and she added there are no solid plans to change the names of the UCH facilities.
“It is too early in the due diligence process to share any concrete details,” said AHS’ president and CEO in the Florida region Mike Schultz. “What I can confirm is that both systems are focused on uninterrupted quality care to our patients and dedicated to the service of our employees.”
The five facilities originally owned by UCH include:

University Community Hospital, 3100 E. Fletcher Ave. in Tampa
University Community Hospital-Carrollwood, 7171 N. Dale Mabry in Carrollwood
Long Term Acute Care Hospital at Connerton, 9441 Health Center Drive in Land O’ Lakes
Pepin Heat Hospital, 3100 E. Fletcher Ave. in Tampa
Helen Ellis Memorial Hospital, 1395 S. Pinellas Ave. in Tarpon Springs
Also within UCH is The Women’s Center, which is part of University Community Hospital.
The newest of UCH’s hospitals is the Connerton facility, which opened in 2009 to serve the growing community in central Pasco County.
AHS has more than 50,000 employees at its original 37 hospitals, 17 of which are in Florida. The others are in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kansas and Colorado. The company is based in Winter Park, near Orlando.
More information on AHS can be found at www.adventisthealthsystem.com. More information on UCH can be found at www.uch.org.

By B.C. Manion

Melissa Ramacco didn’t set out to become a cake pop queen.
It just happened.

Now, the Land O’ Lakes woman who drives a van with a “Got Cake” license tag keeps busy creating her clever confections for customers of all ages.
When Ramacco, the owner of Island Girl Cakes, began her business she specialized in custom-designed and decorated cakes.
She got her start in the cake world before shows like Cake Boss, the Ace of Cakes and DC Cupcakes became the rage.
Her foray into the field, however, was not part of any grand design.
She began simply with a cake expressing a New York Yankees’ theme that she made for her dad for Father’s Day.
The response was so positive, she decided to begin taking orders to make cakes for family and friends.

As her business evolved, she became more and more immersed in all things cake – reading blogs, scouring the Internet for information and perfecting all sorts of techniques by following directions in how-to articles.
For awhile, her elaborate cakes were fetching anywhere from $100 to $250 each on a regular basis, and even up to $500 for a really big job.
But as the economy slowed, so did her orders.
Patrons loved the cakes, but either couldn’t or wouldn’t pay for them, she said.
So, she shifted to smaller cakes and matching cupcake tiers. That gave kids a chance to blow out candles and to hand out the coordinating cupcakes.
Then she read about cake pops.

She loved the idea. They looked fun and she wasn’t aware of anyone else in the area that was making them.
So, she focused her efforts making and marketing cake pops. She is totally sold on the value of social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, and relies heavily on word-of-mouth marketing.
The cake pops took off and she’s not looking back.
“Cakes are really labor intensive. I don’t think people realize how much labor goes into those cakes,” said Ramacco, noting she has no plans to return to custom cakes.
Making cake pops offers plenty of opportunities for creativity, she said.
They can be dipped and left to dry upright, like a traditional candy apple or can be air-dried by poking their stick into a plastic foam form.
The upright technique produces a pop with a flattened bottom; the air-drying approach produces a perfectly rounded pop.
The pops typically are wrapped individually, and can be presented on a tray, in a bud vase or as a bouquet.
They also can be put on longer sticks with a name card attached. These can serve double duty at weddings and other events: They’re a party favor and they let people know where to sit.
Brides seem to like that idea, Ramacco said.
There’s no end as to how the small cakes can be decorated, she said. They can be dipped into milk chocolate or white chocolate and then sprinkled with candies, or drizzled with another flavor of chocolate.
They can be made to look like tuxedos or baseballs or basketballs.
They can be made in various cake flavors, such as chocolate, red velvet, yellow or lemon.
“It’s limitless, what you can do with them,” she said.
Patrons buy them for all sorts of reasons including baby showers, birthday parties and graduations or as party favors and appreciation gifts.
The chocolate cake pops are the most popular.
They have a doughy consistency, Ramacco said.
“The cake is very moist because it is blended with the frosting. It’s just a traditional cake like you would use for cupcakes,” she said.
To make a batch of chocolate cake pops, she mixes up a chocolate cake from scratch and bakes it. After it cools, she breaks it into pieces and puts in a mixing bowl, where she blends it into crumbs with a mixer. Next, she adds frosting which sweetens the mixture and binds it together.
Finally, she forms it into balls for cake pops or truffles, or into squares for cake bites, and chills the small cakes.
After the cakes are thoroughly chilled, she melts a batch of chocolate. For cake pops, she dips a lollipop stick into the melted chocolate and inserts the stick into a cake ball. Then she coats the ball in melted chocolate.
The melted chocolate must be the proper temperature: Too hot and it runs right off; too cool and it won’t adhere.
If she wants to add candy, she sprinkles that on while the cake pop is wet.
If she wants to drizzle it with another flavor of chocolate, she lets the cake pop dry before she drizzles the chocolate.
Besides accepting private orders, which must be a minimum of 12 cake pops, the treats are sold at Rapscallions in Land O’ Lakes, at New York Times Square Pizzeria in Lutz, at the Carrollwood Deli in Carrollwood and at Oak Bars & Grill in Brandon.
They’re also available at Shampoo, a hair salon, at Bearss and Florida avenues.
Her husband had doubts that a hair salon would have a call for cake pops, Ramacco said.
It turns out, however, that they’ve been wildly popular.
“They have gone through six dozen in three days,” she said.
She theorizes it is because “they’re portion-controlled. All women are watching their weight.”
The ladies probably also enjoy eating something that is pretty, while they’re being pampered, Ramacco added.
Moms like to give them to their kids, too, because they are easier to eat and less messy than cupcakes, she said.
The cake treats can keep for up to a week at room temperature, for up to two weeks in the refrigerator and for up to a month in the freezer.
Besides the cakes she now sells, Ramacco is developing some recipes with tropical flavors to go along with her Island Girl Cakes’ name. When that happens, there will be a closer connection between her company name and her cakes.
When she launched the business, she said, she decided to stick with a theme that fit her personality rather than going for some kind of fancy cake name.
Eventually, Ramacco hopes to open a storefront, to set up permanent kiosks at malls and to have traveling carts at special events.
For now, she’s busy taking care of orders.
She had 200 cake pops, cake truffles and cake bites to deliver on Saturday.
To learn more about the business go to www.IslandGirlCakes.com or call (813) 699-9866.

Students will head home so teachers can plan

By Elizabeth Gwilt

Despite some backlash, the Hillsborough County School Board decided last week to continue the practice of early release days.
Students will head home early on 15 days this year so teachers will have more time to plan. They will be dismissed two hours early on 14 Wednesdays throughout the year, starting Sept. 15. On the final day of school, now set for June 13, students will leave 2½ hours before regular dismissal.
The agreement makes other tweaks to the calendar. All schools will be closed the week of Thanksgiving and a four-day weekend is now slated for March 18-21. And in a surprise some board members say they didn’t realize they had approved, the new calendar bumped the final day of school to a Monday, June 13.
The board approved the changes 6-1, with Jennifer Faliero voting against, saying “14 early release days is too disruptive for all.”
Faliero, who said 40 percent of elementary school students don’t even attend school on early release days, was not alone in her opinion. Several parents attended the meeting in an attempt to convince the board that children will be missing too much instructional time if early days appeared on the calendar.
Though she voted in favor of the contract, board member Candy Olson sympathized with parent concerns about an erratic calendar
“I do have a problem with the number of weeks that are not normal,” she said.
The contract also includes a 2 percent increase in teachers’ salary, up to $1000. The vast majority of teaching and non-teaching staff members supported the contract, with 96 percent and 97 percent voting in favor, respectively.
There are mixed emotions about the new calendar among students and parents.
Noah Keene, a freshman at Steinbrenner High School, is content with the approved changes.
“I was hoping there would be ‘half days’ this year,” Keene said. “Sometimes I need the break.”
When Keene attended Martinez Middle School, he thought teachers took early release days seriously.
“It depends on the class, but for the most part there was a new lesson those days,” he said.
Classmate Stephanie Morris didn’t see it that way. She recalls early release days as pointless.
“We didn’t learn anything on early release days. I skipped school for most of them,” she said.
Now that she’s in high school, Morris said she might consider going to class on early release days.
Students in Janice Heiden’s classes should do the same thing. The fourth-grade teacher at McKitrick Elementary School said early release days are business as usual in her classroom.
“We never show movies; we do regular class work like any other day. We still teach and don’t do any less of what the norm is. We can’t sacrifice any time,” she said.
As a former teacher, Denyce DiCaprio of Lutz said the 2 percent raise is well deserved. “Being a teacher myself and knowing how little they get paid, I believe it is a good idea,” she said.
But she didn’t like the calendar that pushes spring break until the final week of April.
She would have preferred spring break at the end of March because “the kids get so burned out and need that long break.”
Board members rejected pleas to move spring break earlier, citing the need for more time to prepare students following the state’s decision to push FCAT testing from March and into April. But they still may have one more tweak on the calendar.
To close Thanksgiving week and add an extra off day in March, the district bumped the final day of school into a new week. Following Tuesday’s meeting, some board members said it was an oversight that needed to be fixed.

Scheduled early release days:
Sept. 15, Sept. 29, Oct. 13, Oct. 27, Nov. 10, Dec. 8, Jan. 12, Jan. 26, Feb. 9, Feb. 23, March 9, May 11, May 25, June 8, June 13*
All two hours early except the final day, which is 2½ hours early.

By B.C. Manion

While many businesses remain frozen in place, or are continuing to cut back, ClassB, a custom T-shirt shop in Zephyrhills, is continuing to expand – and is hiring.

The company doubled its downtown space about three years ago and now operates out of roughly 10,000 square.
In coming weeks, it plans to add about 1,500 square feet of office space in Tampa, where it plans to run its marketing operations, said Gregg Hilferding, the company’s vice president.
This is yet another milestone in a company that began in 1982 with Terry Hilferding, Gregg’s mom, operating the business out of her kitchen.
Recently, ClassB was ranked as the 32nd fastest-growing company in Tampa Bay by the Tampa Bay Business Journal.
While the company does not release its actual sales figures, Gregg estimates it in the millions of dollars annually.
The company’s primary customers are Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H Clubs and families who are having reunions.
The business comes in from all over the country.
On a recent day, the company was filling orders from Cub Scout packs, Boy Scout troops and Girl Scout troops in Texas, Florida, Georgia, New Mexico and Tennessee; for 4-H Clubs in Ohio and Wisconsin; and for family reunions in Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas and Florida.

And those were just a few of the orders waiting for completion.
The work keeps the company’s 39 employees busy, which is why it is looking to hire more employees, Gregg says. The company expects to fill at least six positions in coming months and he encourages anyone who is interested to fill out an application. Training is provided, he said.
The name of the company stems from a slang term often used by Boy Scouts to describe the T-shirts they wear when they’re not wearing their khaki dress uniforms. The company has decided to adopt the term to describe the shirts it sells to all of its customers.
It also refers to a broader class of people who switch from formal shirts to more casual shirts for activities.
When the company was founded, it was called Shirts & Caps, and it kept that name from 1982 to 2003.
But it used ClassB as the name for its website and changed its name for consistency, as it continued to gain more customers nationwide, Hilferding said.
He credits the company’s surge into the national market to the popularity of the Internet. Before it arrived, there was no way to reach out to a national customer base, he said.
“We do a lot of online marketing,” he said, with an emphasis on search engine marketing.
The company doesn’t do direct sales, but has customer service representatives to answer questions that online customers may have about the products.
Class B receives blank T-shirts from warehouses, decorates them and sends them straight to the customer. It can screen print as many as 500 T-shirts in an hour, depending upon the design.
Terry Hilferding traces the company’s beginning back to when the family lived on Florida’s Space Coast and her oldest son wanted to go for a Boy Scout printing merit badge.
The Scout Master didn’t have someone to teach the skill, so Terry volunteered.
After the family moved to Zephyrhills, she continued volunteering to teach children how to do screen prints and that evolved into the business.
It began in the family’s kitchen but outgrew that space and moved into a carport, which they enclosed. Next, it took over the garage.
“Once Gregg started kindergarten, I got a storefront and we just ballooned from there,” Terry said.
“Our first website was in 1997 and we did get an order that year,” Gregg said. “It took quite a few years after that to take off,” he added.
Terry and her husband, Robert, decided to shift the business to their sons’ control. Eric became the president and Gregg, the vice president. Their sister, Carin Fletcher, owns the same kind of business in South Carolina.
Terry thinks it’s cool that the company’s beginnings have come to play such a major role in its success.
“We have a great deal of respect for the Boy Scouts of America program,” she said.
Gregg and Eric, who both achieved Eagle Scout, try to run the business according to the philosophy of the Boy Scout law, Gregg said.
Apparently, it’s working.
For more information about ClassB, go to www.classb.com or call (800) 851-4020.