This fall, Ray Chiaramonte — the executive director of the Hillsborough County Metropolitan Planning Organization — has been making the rounds before various local government agencies, as well as other organizations. He's been touting the results of a series of public surveys taken amongst Hillsborough voters about what it might take for them to support public funding for a mass-transit system in the region.
As CL reported last week, those focus groups have determined that county voters would support a half-cent sales tax for transportation improvements, including the beginnings of a light rail system (the measure that was defeated in Hillsborough in 2010 was for a full penny tax).
Tuesday morning, Chiaramonte brought his traveling PowerPoint demonstration to Jackson's Bistro, at an event sponsored by the Tampa Downtown Partnership. In addition to the polling data he recounted before other forums, the Hillsborough MPO chair was emphatic that somebody, anybody, needs to lead the way in the county if the light rail will come back before the voters in 2014.
"HART has not been willing to jump back in," he said, referring to Hillsborough's transit authority, which led the planning for the initiative two years ago.
Of his own speaking tour, he said, "Somebody needed to take the lead to begin talking about it again. Like it's not a 'toxic' thing to discuss."
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2012.