Credit: Photo via Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections/Facebook

Hey Tampa, it’s me, your conscience, begging you to vote, again.

In the March general election, roughly 33,000 of 240,000 eligible voters saw fit to cast a ballot, a meager 13.65%. Forgive me if I refrain from offering us any form of high-five or pat on the back, quite frankly we should be ashamed. While it wasn’t as bad as the 25,000 voters I had feared and projected, turnout as a community was shameful. If we want a democracy and a thriving city, occasionally we have to be willing to get off the couch and fight for it—or at least fill in some ovals on a piece of paper.

With the Mayoral election settled, the question becomes what of Tampa City Council? Two races were decided – with voters resoundingly re-electing Councilman Bill Carlson by a whopping 19%, and Councilman Orlando Gudes being defeated by a mere 81 votes.

Furthermore, Council Chairman Joe Citro was overwhelmingly rejected at the ballot– finishing a distant third in a five-person race.

This leaves the four remaining council races: Districts 1, 2,3, and 6 up for grabs in a run-off that will be decided on April 25 (early voting started on Monday and runs through the weekend). Pundits are already guesstimating (yes, that’s a technical term) an even more moribund turnout. There is some speculation that the total number of voters could total between 18 and 20,000.

Despite hundreds of thousands of dollars in communication coming from the city council candidates, there is clearly more fatigue among Tampa voters than there is fear of missing out.

An unconscionable amount of money and trees have been spent to unceremoniously stuff mailers in our mailboxes. Janet Cruz and Charlie Miranda have been in my mailbox so often they ought to help out on my mortgage.

If the turnout is particularly poor this run-off election, it certainly won’t be the fault of the candidates, and we as a city will likely get precisely what we deserve. If Tampa can’t handle a municipal election, it certainly doesn’t bode well for our statewide or national influence.Why should anyone else take us seriously if we can’t take ourselves seriously?

These elections will have real consequences. Toilet-To-Tap or PURE or whatever they are calling it today is not necessarily dead, who knows, “Zombie Water” could make a comeback.

There are real questions about accountability and transparency, land use and zoning, and preserving Tampa’s history and heritage. I’ve been on Roman roads better maintained then ones here, our infrastructure has the integrity of paper mache.

A one-bedroom apartment, let alone a house, is becoming entirely impossible for a normal person to afford, a large percentage of Tampa citizens commute via a transit agency that’s running toward ruin, and there are very real class and race-based divisions and wounds in this city that gentrification is exacerbating. In some sick metaphor, The Jackson House deteriorates and disintegrates everyday while construction cranes further develop downtown.

This next city council will have the Herculean task of protecting Tampa’s past while pushing our city collectively into the future. Over the next four years, Daryl Shaw’s GasWorx project will come online in Ybor City while Midtown and Water Street continue expansion. Everyone acknowledges the stark reality that we are growing by leaps and bounds—but our city needs a council who will ensure that this growth supports Tampa citizens.

Development is necessary, the only way we can combat our housing crisis is to grow intelligently, build more attainable housing, create density along appropriate transit corridors—but this will require a council that’s willing to look at the land use codes and rewrite them in a way that serves the future of all Tampeño’s. This election is not about where Tampa has been, but it is absolutely about where Tampa wants to go.

Tampa can only go as far as competent leadership can carry it. We can try the same old ways that have gotten us where we are, but I think many would agree that the old ways of doing things are not serving the vast majority of our citizens. They say insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result, so perhaps we as a city should try voting this time.