fix what now?
tommy permalink | categories: development, economy, education, environment, health, marketing, polls, quality of life, transportationby tommy @ 11:00 am
Last week we discussed Tampa Bay’s top ten problems, according to Wayne Garcia:
1. Suburban sprawl
2. Urban density (lacking)
3. Transportation
4. Environment (weak protections)
5. Living green
6. Diversity (racial, ethnic, class)
7. Professional sports (over-subsidized and over-idolized)
8. Media consolidation (lack of independent voices)
9. GLBT Rights
10. Save our young (with economic opportunity)
We asked if you thought the list was comprehensive, but Chaaalie suggested we add education, economics, taxes, and cost of living. Besides these being vague, I assume Garcia left them off his list since those are essentially statewide issues.
But we can certainly do our part here in Tampa Bay to bring about change, so I have added them, and combined a couple of the issues above in a new poll to find out where you think we ought to get started. Pick your top three issues that should be worked on FIRST:
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March 7th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Not sure what other folks screen shows, but the poll I’m seeing is regarding sports uniforms. If that’s the most pressing issue in people’s minds, we’re in real trouble.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
No, I think its intentional and we ARE in trouble.
Sports is the opium of the masses, have another toke.
March 7th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
oooops… fixed.
thanks
March 7th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Education!
Think our schools are bad now? The consequences of that stupid property tax cut are just around the corner.
Fools and their money…
March 7th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Wayne Garcia should be given the Man of the Year award for his “Fix It Now” piece.
March 10th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Wayne Garcia’s Fix it Now piece was incredibly insightful. Tampa’s power brokers have so consistently made bad decisions over the past 20+ years that our problems seem overwhelming now, and we still seem to be moving in the wrong direction on most of things on his list. One thing is certain, though: Lowering taxes is not going to fix the economy or anything else on your list of what to do first.
One thing I’d love to see that would go a long way toward mitigating problems related to urban sprawl, transportation and the environment: rationing gas and water. It will never happen but it is the most egalitarian way to limit our consumption of precious natural resources and force us to develop and use mass transit, move closer to urban nodes, xeriscape our yards, install low-flow toilets, etc. The way things are structured now, you can consume as much as you want if you can afford it. Water rationing would be pretty easy to do on a local level, but gas rationing would be much trickier.
Barring rationing, I really believe the only way to turn things around is to improve our education. If kids were taught to think critically, and if they understood the true costs of sprawl, pro sports subsidies, environmental pollutants, media consolidation and automobile-dependent transportation, they would demand more of mass media and government officials and make more responsible decisions. Think the FCAT could test for that?
March 10th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Lara:
It will probably take a (green) revolution to implement your suggestions.
Short of that I can’t imagine all those ‘burbanites giving up their humvees and dualie cab pickups
(used only to drive to church on Sundays).
March 14th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
It will definitely take a major crisis of some sort.