The good news as far as officials with Hillsborough County's transit agency HART are concerned, is that, unlike in recent years, there is no danger of services being cut or reduced in the future. In fact, the talk is of expanding current service, including more hours on the weekends and late at night.
And with the housing market slowly coming back, HART CFO Jeff Seward says that ad valorem revenues that the agency uses to fund itself should be the highest they've been in five years.
But while the current budget, defined by HART CEO Philip Hale as "lean as lean," pleases board members who want to ensure that the taxpayers money isn't being wasted, others think it lacks ambition and vision, and are concerned that as transportation woes in the area grow larger, the agency will appear too small to be able to handle that need.
This article appears in May 2-8, 2013.