Whether or not Hillsborough County voters approve the transit tax on next month's ballot, there is little doubt that the political leader who has been key in getting the years-long effort this far has been Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, who asserted several years ago that it was time for Tampa/Hillsborough to do something about its transportation needs. CL spoke with the mayor just weeks before "the decision."
CL: There have been some concerns that the voters will go to the polls on November 2 without any idea where the first rail line will be. Is that a problem?
Iorio: I don’t think it matters; this is just the first phase of light rail. There are many more phases down the line that don’t even have the preliminary studies that have started, so the fact that it’s been narrowed down to two routes in either direction is positive. For people who are interested in that level of detail they can look, but I think for most people, that really wouldn’t be a determining factor with their vote because in other communities [that voted for light rail] the light rail was just a concept, there were no routes. So, these routes take a long time to develop and you go through a fairly laborious federal process and they look at all these different factors: cost, environmental, redevelopment, six different factors, so it takes a long time. My whole point with HART is ‘do it right.’ This is something that will last forever and this plan is organic, I mean it…, I know we’re all focused on the first line — that will be the USF Downtown Westshore to the Airport — but there will be many more lines… in the first 30 years, there will be 46 miles of rail. And then 30 years after that, there’ll be a whole different group of people, people who are really young today who are older 30 years from now and they’ll be making the decisions on where the next lines will go. So you’ll never have that much detail because that’s just not the nature of building transit systems, and as I said, in some communities it’s only been conceptual that the voters have voted on …Here we actually have a good deal of detail because we were lucky to get the federal money for the Alternative Analysis, and had Hillsborough not done some planning work a few years ago we never would have gotten that money to do the AA, so I think we have enough detail for the voters to make a good educated decision, and I think only a small number of voters would make their decision on whether it’s route A or route B anyway. I wouldn’t make my decision based on that.
There have been some concerns that the voters will go to the polls on November 2 without any idea where the first rail line will be. Is that a problem?
For people who are interested in that level of detail they can look, but I think for most people, that really wouldn't be a determining factor with their vote because in other communities [that voted for light rail]… there were no routes… My whole point with HART is 'do it right.' I know we're all focused on the first line — that will be the USF Downtown Westshore to the airport — but in the first 30 years, there will be 46 miles of rail. And then 30 years after that, there'll be a whole different group of people, they'll be making the decisions on where the next lines will go. So you'll never have that much detail because that's just not the nature of building transit systems …I think we have enough detail for the voters to make a good educated decision, and I think only a small number of voters would make their decision on whether it's route A or route B anyway.
There are lots of critics out there. Is there anything that someone has said that sticks out to you as being egregiously inaccurate?
I was on a program with Rob Lorei where this person talked about how much it was going to cost the average family for the sales tax, and quoted a figure that was so out of line, it was something like 800-some dollars. I don’t know where that figure came from, it was so out of line. The figure is $144 for a family of four.
The other point constantly brought up is that it’s a subsidized system, and of course, yes it is, as every system is subsidized — roads are subsidized… the other thing that’s often said is, ‘Well, there won’t be money to operate the system, and they’ll have to come back for more taxes’ and that’s wrong, because this sales tax can be for capital and operating. In fact, as the financial plan shows, after 30 years, half the sales tax will go for operating. So it’s not a system that is going to be built and then there’s no money to operate it. It’s built into the financial plan and that I think has been misrepresented.
One of the questions that I always pose is, ‘What’s the alternative?’ I have not heard a single articulate statement about what an alternative would be for our transportation problems if we don’t pass this.
If the measure fails , do supporters come back and try this again in two years' time?
Well, I hate to think about that, because I think we had everything aligned for this particular moment in time and it’s really not going to be up to me to determine that because I won’t be mayor after March 31, and that’s why it’s so important that the next mayor have a keen interest in transit, whether it passes or fails, one way or another, because there’s a lot of heavy lifting to do no matter which way it goes.
But it took a lot of years to get to this point where we’re able to get the majority of the County Commission to vote to put it on the ballot; to get the plans finalized, analyzed, to get everything in ship shape, the ordinance; and then the Tampa Bay Partnership and the business community has gotten together, and Jim Davis has offered his pro-bono services, and they’ve raised a million and a half dollars to run the campaign, so it’s difficult to duplicate all that in a couple of years and say ‘Let’s do it all again.’ The players will be different, and I don’t know.
So I just have to think about passing it this time because it’s so critical to our future, and if it passes I will have such a good feeling about our ability to get out of this economic downturn that we’re in.
This article appears in Oct 14-20, 2010.