The St. Pete Times David DeCamp and Curtis Krueger have a well balanced story looking today at what the heck Pinellas County is planning on doing regarding transportation, in the midst of the "shellacking"(to borrow President Obama's term) that the transit tax received in Hillsborough County Tuesday night (And can we call into account the one and only major poll released by the St. Pete Times and Bay News 9 nearly 4 weeks ago on the matter? The one that had the measure winning by 9%?)
The Pinellas Transportation Tax Force is scheduled to meet on Monday, November 15 to decide on what they will recommend to the Pinellas County Commission after meeting all year long. The thought had been that there would be a recommendation for a penny or half-cent measure to put before Pinellas County voters in 2012 to begin funding that county's construction of a light rail system.
However, the whole idea that TBARTA and other leaders agreed upon years ago is the project would begin in the Tampa Bay area's region biggest part of the seven-county region, Hillsborough.
But the vote in that county quickly has seemingly changed everything in this discussion – or has it?
When supporters of the project like Jim Davis or Mark Sharpe were asked if the project could be delayed because of the poor economy and thus the reluctance for citizens to be taxes, they replied that the County was already way behind when it comes to transportation issues, and thus it would be deleterious for all to delay any longer.
But would Pinellas leaders still opt for now becoming the first local government to try to get a dedicated source of income for the regional plan?
Former Pinellas County Commissioner and TBARTA chairman Ronnie Duncan says that Pinellas and Hillsborough should go in together and put the proposals back up in 2012.
But the idea of putting the coalition together in Hillsborough for another run in two years didn't seem to be an attractive option on Tuesday night. Although Bill Varian in the Times today reports that officials had previously said they would revive the plan in 2012 if it failed at the polls this year, I have to say I've never heard that when I've asked those some of those same officials, who always said that they were just concentrating on November 2.
This article appears in Nov 4-10, 2010.