Rick Baker (mayor)

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Rick Baker is the mayor of St. Petersburg, the fourth-largest city in Florida. Elected in 2001, he was re-elected in November 2005 with more than 70% of the votes cast. Baker's re-election platform, called the Baker Plan, focused on five key areas: supporting schools, promoting economic development particularly in Midtown, ensuring public safety, working on the city's neighborhoods, and ensuring the efficient delivery of city services. His term expires on January 2, 2010.

As Mayor Baker continues his second term, St. Petersburg experiences an unprecedented period of growth and renaissance. There is currently more than $1 billion in downtown developments underway downtown, including construction of more than 1,000 new residential units, a new corporate headquarters for Progress Energy, two downtown hotels, renovation of the city's Mahaffey Theater, development of a new waterfront park and a new building for the Salvador Dali Museum which will be located in the Progress Energy Center for the Arts.

His successes in the components of the Baker plan have been noted nationally as the city becomes a model city in programs such as supporting education and inner city revitalization. He has been called the "education mayor" by the local newspaper, and was asked to chair Florida Governor Jeb Bush's Municipal Mentoring Initiative as well as a National League of Cities municipal mentoring task force. Realizing that the quality of the education of our youth is linked to building a quality community, he has been personally involved in motivating corporate leaders and city staff alike to partner and participate in making St. Petersburg's schools the best. He has helped to raise private donations for hundreds of college and vocational scholarships, encouraged mentoring, recruited corporate partners for every school in the city, created a home-buying assistance program for St. Petersburg school teachers, and pioneered an innovative program to use school property for new public-use playgrounds -- achieving a goal of having a playground within a half mile of every child in the city. In 2005 - 38 percent of the city's schools improved, compared to just 10 percent of Florida public schools and 12 percent within the Pinellas County school system.

The same energy Mayor Baker has devoted to youth and education can be seen in his progress in revitalizing the city's urban core, Midtown; charting the city's operational efficiency through a network of performance measures; improving personal and public safety; and continuing a remarkable renaissance in St. Petersburg's rich and diverse neighborhoods. The Partners for Livable Communities recently designated St. Petersburg as one of "America's Most Livable Communities."

Despite the positive changes Mayor Baker has created within the Saint Petersburg community, some feel that his positions on development and curbside recycling leave important questions about our city's future that still need to be addressed.

Baker has practiced corporate and business law for 20 years, serving as president of Fisher and Sauls, P.A., a St. Petersburg law firm. He is the author of Mangroves to Major League, a historical account of the development of the city of St. Petersburg.

Prior to his election as mayor, Baker served as the chairman of the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce.

Baker received a B.S. in management, M.B.A. and Juris Doctor with honors from Florida State University. He later studied comparative law at Oxford University.

Born in Chicago, Baker is married to wife, Joyce, with two children.