It looks like the City of Clearwater is next in line to bring a Domestic Partnership Registry to its citizens. Clearwater Mayor George Cretekos brought up the idea during an April 16 city council work session.
“I think it’s the right thing for us to do. I think it’s the decent thing for us to do,” Cretekos said.
Cretekos spoke about a similar registry that was created in Tampa earlier this month. Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn signed the Tampa ordinance on Friday, April 13, less than two months after the idea was brought to the Tampa City Council's attention in late February by council woman Yolie Capin.
There was virtually no controversy in Tampa surrounding the ordinance, which was based on the City of Orlando's ordinance that was finalized in January.
â┚¬Å”I really don’t see any downside to this,” Clearwater council member Bill Jonson added during the workshop.
While a recent surge in domestic partnership registries and conversations surrounding the ordinance have given the LGBT community confidence that marriage equality is on the way, local cities have been very clear that DPRs are unrelated to marriage issues.
In Tampa, the ordinance is very clear that there is nothing within it that should be â┚¬Å”construed as recognizing or treating a domestic partnership as a marriage.”
The council did not vote on the measureâ┚¬â€Âit simply asked that the city staff to draw up the ordinance to be discussed at a later meeting. Like Tampa's ordinance, same-sex and opposite-sex domestic partners could register as domestic partners, regardless of their permanent address, but it would only be recognized within the city's limits.
The registry would allow partners to visit each other in health care facilities within the city limits, make medical decisions or each other and make funeral arrangements, among other things.
St. Petersburg has already begun the process of constructing a domestic partnership ordinance, which will be voted on later this month. It too is modeled after Tampa's ordinance, and is expected to be approved before the summer.
In Tampa, residents can register as domestic partners in July.
