On Tuesday, at an event sponsored by the Tampa Downtown Partnership, Hillsborough County Metropolitan Planning Organization chair Ray Chiaramonte continued his PowerPoint presentation tour about the results of a recent survey regarding light rail proposal in the county.
Chiaramonte has a story to tell about why voters in the county rejected the 2010 one-cent-sales-tax measure, and what it will take to get something similar passed in 2014. One of his talking points is how such a measure must take 65 percent of the revenues generated from the tax to put into roads and other infrastructures outside of Tampa, with 35 percent going toward light rail in the city.
An idea on the "menu of options" is to have the City of Tampa put up its own referendum, since light rail actually won inside the city in 2010. But that's not currently allowed by state law, so local lawmakers are lobbying for a legislator to sponsor such a bill calling for some of the state's biggest municipalities — like Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando and Jacksonville — to be part of it.
But Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn admitted that even if a local representative agrees to sponsor such a bill, the odds of it actually passing "will be a very difficult, if not an impossible road to hoe."
Buckhorn added that it needs to be part of a menu (again that term) of potential transportation sources, and it should appeal to Republican lawmakers.
"It is conservative in that it gives the local decision making down to the local level. It is not a tax, it is merely giving the people the opportunity to choose for themselves what their quality of life will be. We're going to continue to push that, and push that hard," he said.
After admitting that its prospects are dim, would the mayor be the man to step up and lead the transit effort in Tampa? Would he lead the issue that Chiaramonte insisted is needed to get the measure passed in a few years?
This article appears in Dec 13-19, 2012.