Bridging Forest Hills and New Tampa through the USF area, it stretches along the outer rim of the city, creating a diverse district that can appear to lack a consistent identity. And with so much focus on keeping the momentum alive in downtown Tampa, it can often get lost in the chatter.
But District 7 City Councilman Luis Viera, who's about half a year into his first term, hopes to change that.
Earlier this week, Viera spent an evening chatting with constituents at the Acropolis Greek Taverna on Bruce B Downs about how to bring the needs of those living farthest from the city center to the forefront.
The third of these town hall-style meetings Viera has held since taking the seat in December in a special election to fill the it after Lisa Montelione left to run for the State House, Viera said such gatherings will help him get an idea of what the people in his district are facing.
“The Forest Hills one, there's a lot of needs out there with regard to crime, definitely with property crime. Transportation is a big issue, quality of life issues with roads, sidewalks, et cetera," he said. "The New Tampa one, we had about 75 people at the rec center two weeks ago, there were a bunch of people there. The big issue I'd say would be parks and recreation and transportation, which we kind of knew were the big issues. So we're continuing to do that and do outreaches.”
The way that District 7 cuts along the edge of Tampa's city limits, with Unincorporated Hillsborough County and Temple Terrace creating an awkward bottleneck into New Tampa, has in some ways left that part of the city isolated from the growth and development occurring in other parts of Tampa. Viera also cites a lack of community organizing in the area, something he hopes to rectify, as a cause for the lack of attention.
“There needs to be organizing," he said. "South Tampa is very well organized. Whenever there's an issue on City Council that affects South Tampa, people are there. The councils I'm trying to form, the New Tampa Council, the Forest Hills Council that we're going to be working on, different associations, are meant to do that. People have got to get engaged on what the issues are and when they have concerns about those issues who to talk to. For example a lot of people do not know that I'm not their only City Council member, that there's three city-wide city council members. They don't know about the structure of government in the city of Tampa. It comes down to the word organizing.”
As for what Viera plans to do for his district, it's mostly a reflection of what he's gathered from his town halls. Funding for Parks and Recreation in New Tampa, bringing the drop in property crime that the rest of Tampa has seen to Forest Hills and a Community Redevelopment Area designation for the underserved neighborhoods near the University of South Florida campus — which would steer local tax dollars into efforts to boost the economy there.
“For the USF area something I want to have a dialogue about is the creation of a Community Redevelopment Area designation for the USF area. Difficult to do because a lot of that is with the county, but something I want to do because that's an area I've been working on with a lot of community stakeholders including [Tampa Innovation Alliance founder former Hillsborough County] Mark Sharpe and different organizations out there. I think a CRA is something we can do right here, right now to help people. I want to garner support for that.”
Viera plans for the next town hall to be held in late July and hopes to continue holding them every few months or so throughout his term.
This article appears in Jun 22-29, 2017.