A year and a half ago, the Board of Hillsborough County Commission approved $125,000 to study a future ferry service that initially would run between Apollo Beach to MacDill Air Force Base, with the potential to go to downtown Tampa and St. Petersburg.
Since then, the project has moved along swimmingly, with former County Commissioner Ed Turanchik chaperoning the public-private partnership between the county and HMS Ferries. The project includes using 20 acres of a 134-acre piece of
land owned by the Southwest Florida Water Management District called the Fred and Idah Schultz preserve for a terminal and parking lot. Turanchik has proposed a land exchange with SWFMD, offering to give them more (46 acres owned by another private group working with him called the South Swell Group). And for the most part he has had local environmentalists back him on the plan.
Turanchik also thought he had buy-in from state environmental groups like Audobon Florida, but that perception has changed dramatically in the last week. That's because Audobon's VP, Charles Lee is claiming that Turanchik and the BOCC are making a land grab for non-conservation purposes (first reported on Monday by the Tampa Tribune's Mike Salinero).
Could this development be a game-changer for a project that has been touted as part of the transformation of the county's woeful transportation issue? It's certainly affected the BOCC, who yesterday unanimously backed Sandy Murman's proposal that Turanchik begin looking for other sites to base the terminal in South County. Based on quotes in both today's Times and Tribune, Turanchik is incensed with Audobon, claiming they had previously given him the go-ahead, and that he's already searched for all other potential sites. Stay tuned for new developments on this story….
In other news…
Rick Scott was in Brandon yesterday, touting all the infrastructure spending his administration has done over the past four years and what he'll do in the future regarding transportation – but reporters wanted to hear if his mind had been changed at all after meeting with climate scientists on Tuesday.
A group of activists intend to meet up at David Jolly's St. Petersburg district office this afternoon, where they'll call on the Pinellas Republican to support legislation that will provide paid attorneys for those tens of thousands of Central American undocumented children who have crossed our southern border this year.
And maybe you don't know (or care), but your tax dollars in Florida are going to support our Corrections Department, which has been stunningly asleep at the wheel on a whole host of issues in recent years. Yesterday DOC head Michael Crews issued a memo listing where he is demanding improvements, writing that his department "should be held to the highest standards, and I have zero tolerance for anything less."
This article appears in Aug 14-20, 2014.
