On a recent Thursday night around three dozen members of Connect Tampa Bay met at the Tampa Museum of Art to unveil their plan for transit in Hillsborough, the result of consulting with over 3,000 members. Their plan calls for a 1-cent sales tax increase that would raise $204 million annually, slicing those funds into one third for transit, one third for roads, nearly a quarter for buses, and a smaller slice for bike trails and even ferry service.
That latter request may come to fruition before anything else. Last week before the Board of County Commissioners, former commissioner Ed Turanchik won approval for a study to be conducted on a possible ferry service from near Apollo Beach to MacDill Air Force Base, with an ultimate goal of providing transportation from downtown Tampa to downtown St. Pete. But all eyes will be on Pinellas this year to see if Tampa Bay can finally be dragged out of the transportation backwoods.
The St. Pete Chamber’s Steinocher was a major proponent of the rejected Lens design for the St. Pete Pier last August. It was obvious from his words last week that the experience seared something into him.
“People feel like they’re entitled to their own facts and data,” he recounted about his frustrations with the Stop The Lens movement. He added that there was “mass confusion” about what the Pier was ultimately going to look like. “I really believe that uncertainty killed people on that one.”
Although he told the audience in Clearwater last week that it’s more about communicating neighbor to neighbor, he doesn’t preclude television ads as part of the marketing campaign. But whatever the method, he says people need a comfort level that a yes vote is the way to move the entire community forward.
Whether they’ll be persuadable won’t be known until November 4.
