Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

HART’s next board meeting will be Monday, August 4, at 8:30AM. This may prove to be an interesting session. TBO reported yesterday that the HART Board of Directors plan to vote on whether to pursue a sales tax funded rail initiative in 2010. What didn’t make the papers is that HART is also scheduled to rule on a good many contentious issues; not the least of which are proposed service reductions, service improvements, a base fare increase and an ad valorem [property] tax increase.

Just before 4th of July weekend, HART made public their suggested service improvements and reductions for the coming year. The suggestions were subject to a two week period of public comment and review, culminating in a public hearing at the Marion Transit Center on July 16. Based in part on HART’s reaction to the public comment, the final staff recommendations for service changes in 2009 are as follows:

• Weekday midday service on Nebraska Avenue, Route 2, to increase from 30 minutes to 20 minutes, between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Peak a.m. and p.m. service on Route 2 is already at 15 minutes.
• The recommendation to eliminate Route 88, the Town N’ Country connector is rescinded and a revision has been recommended to include the new Westgate Library and community center
• Additional express buses for Routes 24x and 25x that serve MacDill Airforce Base
• Route 85, the South Tampa Weekend Connector, to be eliminated
• Service on Route 36, Dale Mabry Hwy/Himes Avenue, to be extended on weekends from Britton Plaza to MacDill AFB

An early service proposition that is now noticeably missing from the final staff recommendations is a proposal to spend an additional $1.2 million to increase weekday service on Route 30, between downtown and Tampa International Airport. Service on Route 30 is currently every 30 minutes but the improvement would increase service to 15 minutes only on the downtown-airport segment.

According to the agenda for Monday’s meeting, staff now want the HART board to defer a decision on Route 30 service improvements until March 2009. Officially, staff have requested the deferment because new buses that were intended for that service will not be available until that date. However, I had a conversation with a senior HART staff member this week, and he informed me that HART intends to write the funding for downtown-aiport service improvements into the FY2009 budget, for service beginning in March.

In order to fund the new service, pay for the increase in the price of fuel, and offset the losses in revenue of the ad valorem [property] taxes due to the actions of the Florida Legislature and the Save Our Homes Amendment, HART has proposed an across the board fare increase. The fare increase recommendations vary by category. At the low end, the base one-way fare is proposed to increase 16.7% from the current $1.50 to $1.75. On the high end, the monthly unlimited pass is proposed to increase 20% from the current $50 to $60.

Even with the fare increase, HART still comes up short on a balanced budget. As the County Commission learned earlier this month, the taxable value of property in Hillsborough is down 4% in 2008. HART budget planners had originally projected a $2.8 million loss in their ad valorem revenue. That decrease in property tax money was intended to be offset by the fare increase and by cuts to service. But the public comment on service reductions has lead HART to rethink some of it’s cuts and the cost of fuel for next year is still in flux. To make up the difference, staff will ask the HART board to approve a small increase in the ad valorem millage rate.

The staff recommendation is to increase the millage rate to the authorized maximum of 0.500 mills, which would generate an additional $5 million in 2009. Such an increase will require a two-thirds vote of the HART Board of Directors.

Elected representatives on the HART board include County Commissioners Rose Ferlita, Al Higginbotham and Mark Sharpe, Tampa City Councilmember John Dingfelder and Temple Terrace Councilmember Ron Govin.

If you’ve got opinions on HART’s plans for 2009, be sure to give them a call before Monday morning.

Mayor Pam Iorio says that Tampa needs to get started on rail transit now, and not wait for TBARTA to get it going.

TBARTA wishes she would just give ‘em time to analyze the entire region.

The Hillsborough County Board of Commissioners will have to decide if they want to ask for extra sales tax as soon as the 2010 election.

“The Pier” has been a landmark of downtown St. Petersburg since 1899 when Peter Demens connected the Orange Belt Railroad to a half-mile wharf. D. F. Brantley started the first Pier Pavilion in 1895, and a “Municipal Pier” debuted in 1913.  But it is the 1926 “Million Dollar Pier” (postcarded here) that long-time residents remember.

The Million Dollar Pier was the place to be - whether it was for a veteran’s meeting, a high school dance or a just getting a Coke at the drive-in. In the days before air conditioning, the way to cool off was to take a drive out to this community center pier. Cruise boats docked at the pier and during World War II so did the military ships.

The city began tearing down Million Dollar Pier in 1967, and opened today’s inverted pyramid structure in 1973.  In 1978, the city installed a laser on the third floor of the inverted pyramid, sending a “beam of green” up the pier to downtown.  It never really worked great, and was removed in the mid 80s.

The Pier got a $12 million makeover in 1988, with a lovely shade of turquoise contrasting the pale yellow building.

You may have noticed that The Pier Aquarium is looking to move off The Pier, and over to Baywalk.  It seems that after 35 years, The Pier and the building at the end of it are falling apart.  So now the city is looking for ideas on what to do with The Pier.

To do it right, some have suggested we look at other piers across the nation, such as Chicago’s Navy Pier (pictures), Santa Monica Pier (pics), and San Francisco’s Pier 39 (pics).

But maybe we ought to knock it down and replace it with a bridge to Ruskin.

You got any ideas?

I’m not making this up.

State highway safety officials are asking bikers to dress brightly, paint their motorcycles in brighter colors and add more lights to the machines.

The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles have unveiled a new campaign called - get this - Ride Proud, Dress Loud.  The idea is to convince motorcycle riders to help themselves be seen easier by other drivers.

Can you imagine watching a half dozen motorcycles pass you, with their riders all dolled up like Elton John?

But what the hell do I know - I’m no biker.  It just might work!

I mean, if Easy Rider heads out to the poker run with rainbow stickers all over his bike, while wearing a plume of bright green peacock feathers, or maybe a big sequined shiny vest, I can imagine that lots of folks wouldn’t get too close.

At least one rider thinks it’s a good idea.  But I don’t think they will all be convinced.  Even the gay motorcycle clubs stick to denim and leather, as did that biker from the Village People.

Another rider is outraged at the promotion.  For some reason, instead of suggesting he dress like Elton John, he expected the state to insist that us car drivers take some responsibility.

To be sure, all drivers should ALWAYS look out for motorcycles.  But at the same time, all riders should RIDE TO LIVE, and help convince those idiots who don’t to ride with some damn sense (and patience).

This nonsense about drilling offshore infuriates me. It won’t do a thing to lower prices, it is sure to turn clean beaches into tarball traps, and it prevents people from discussing practical ways to cut consumption.

Case in point: How many times have you driven past a fast-food or Starbucks outlet with six to 12 cars in the drive-thru queue?

If I go to one of these places, I always park, go inside, get my stuff and go. Meanwhile, the losers are still in line, with their engines running. How many gallons of gas are wasted each day by idling vehicles in these lines? I don’t know. But it just makes sense to quit the practice.

No more drive-thrus!

First off, it just sucks to be involved in a car accident.  Even the smallest crashes are irritating.  And if you or your wreckmates have any damage, someone has got to have the police come in to write up a report.

And you have to be patient. 

Real patient.

Cops are a busy lot, what with all the traffic tickets they give out, the separating of domestic disputers, checking in at the Krispy Kreme, and whatever else it is that they are doing.

So when you call the cops to have them come out and check on a no-injury-crash, expect to wait longer than if AAA is on their way to change your tire.  It took cops 90 minutes to reach us last December.

John Cullum wasn’t patient.  He got into a wreck on the interstate in Wesley Chapel, called the cops, and Pasco County deputies showed up after some time.  But interstate crashes are investigated by the Florida Highway Patrol, so he had to wait a bit longer. 

He decided to call emergency about the wreck a second time, and that got him some attention.  He was charged with “misuse of 911.”

By the way, if an accident is called in, and you decide to leave before the cops show up, you could also be charged with leaving the scene of an accident with damage (it happened to my wreckmate last December).

Instead, use the time to prepare for the aftermath of the accident: 

• Check and treat minor injuries
• Move vehicles if they are in an unsafe place
• Exchange information with your wreckmates and any witnesses
• Use your celly to photograph the damage
• Call your insurance company

If you still have time after all that (and you will), think about how you have to miss work to get the car into the shop, be without your vehicle for a couple days, and how you will have to fight with the insurance company for every nickel.

In an interview with the Tribune Editorial Board regarding transportation, Mayor Pam Iorio says the City of Tampa needs to be the master of her own destiny. It really sounds like she has had it with CSX. Check out these quotes:

too much reliance on CSX will be our undoing in building a rail system.

Regarding CSX’s demands at the streetcar crossing in Ybor City:

we finally were able to obtain $100 million worth of insurance and finally got them to agree to $100 million of insurance instead of $500 million because [city attorney Fred Karl] was able to convince them that we just could not ever obtain $500 million worth of insurance.

That policy has cost the streetcar corporation about $400,000 a year. Prior to that, we had to have the flagman stand there for a cost of $370,000 a year. This has been my experience with CSX.

Why can’t we be masters of our own destiny and go out there and purchase the right-of-way and lay our own track, but make sure it’s track that’s ours and that we can control.

Of course, the Tribune asks about the costs.

Pasco’s spending $415 million to widen some roads up there and the DOT is spending $70 million to add a lane, and you know how much everyone is spending for something that’s not even going to really help people in New Tampa that much? I’m not counting the East-West road which isn’t going to happen. I’m not counting the full widening of Bruce B. Downs to eight lanes, which is ridiculous. A billion dollars!

I’m not even getting into the unfunded stuff. That’s another half a billion. Add up the interstate costs that DOT just finished with I-4, the 10-year plan to widen the interstate by one lane all the way to St. Pete and the whole interchange around the airport.

Speaking of which, the Florida Dept of Transportation has a wmv video which drives you along the eventual path of I-275 from the Howard Franklin to the Hillsborough River and back, showing all of the great stuff you are getting for your tax money. It’s eleven minutes long, but if you have the time, check it out - it’s impressive. Please remember that it won’t look like this until 2018 or so. And by that time, it will likely be over crowded, too.

Back to Mayor Pam with the Trib. As you know, there have been a million different plans for commuter rail in and around Tampa - which plan is going to be the one for Tampa.

This is an MPO plan that was a 1995 plan and was part of the plan that the County Commission shelved when they weren’t interested in any referendum. We’re really back at that point.

And Mayor Pam’s timetable?

If TBARTA can do its work quickly and if we can take that MPO plan and get down to some details, I think we could be ready for a referendum in 2010.

For the latest on the progress of commuter rail in the Tampa Bay area, check with Dave Pinero of TampaRail.org.

Tomorrow Matters! is working hard to get thousands of people to participate in the public phase of One Bay’s regional visioning project (“VoiceIt”), which will be kicked off at 5 locations simultaneously on June 2, then continued at smaller meetings and in an online survey throughout the next 6 weeks.

Because I’ve been working with the Tomorrow Matters! (TM!) committee hosting the event, I was allowed to attend a private preview of the four scenarios.  I was disappointed to see that the survey form (against all my fabulous, free advice!) was basically just a series of multiple-choice questions asking participants to simply vote for one of the 4 scenarios. I complained about this to everyone I could corner, and I’ve suggested some questions that would encourage participants not just to rubber-stamp one scenario or another, but to provide meaningful input that can be used to shape the final vision. Dena Leavengood (TM! leader) is also suggesting better questions.

As I briefly explained in a previous post, the scenarios have been developed by the One Bay Tech Team which includes a lot of very well-intentioned expert planners, but also includes an awful lot of developers, and NO community activists, environmentalists, bicycle advocates, nor just plain folks. The Tech Team includes no environmental protection agencies besides water-based agencies — did they account for all the upland habitat and other green space besides the wetlands in the scenarios?

Let’s keep that process in mind as we review these 4 scenarios:

• Scenario A: Business as usual — a depiction of what Tampa Bay will look like if development is allowed to continue the way it has been going.
• Scenario B: A compilation of where the Reality Check invitees put their Legos during that 90-minute exercise.
• Scenario C: Combines the Reality Check results with an emphasis on compacting growth around transit corridors and walkable communities.
• Scenario D: Combines the Reality Check results with an increased focus on protecting water resources and wildlife habitat.

Note that Scenarios B, C, & D incorporate the Reality Check results as their starting point. Is that why Scenario D looks so sprawly? Are we expected to believe that protecting our natural resources (D) leads inevitably to more sprawl than transit-oriented development (C)? Why should we have to choose between Scenario C’s goal of promoting transit and Scenario D’s goal of protecting natural resources? Good planning should be able to accomplish both of these goals—and then some.

If we weren’t tied to the Reality Check “data” (a skewed sampling of opinions gathered under contrived conditions), could we come up with a future scenario that accomplishes more of what we want the future to look like?  What if we started with professional planners and without special interests?

But whether One Bay offers you a thought-provoking survey form or not, it’s up to you to think outside the four corners of their scenarios and—no matter what questions are asked—tell them what you want to say. Write your ideas on their form in the margins if you have to, or hand in a piece of paper with your thoughts. Pretend every multiple choice question has a write-in blank for “other.”

If none of the 4 scenarios matches your vision, don’t just choose the closest one. Describe your ideal future scenario. Combine parts of the 4 scenarios, or take one scenario and change it, or just explain what’s important to you. Tell them what you like and dislike about all the scenarios. Point out any important elements that are not addressed by the scenarios. You might also step back and comment on the process and suggest ways we might come up with a better vision.

Finally, don’t hesitate to question the underlying assumptions, including the growth projections. Note this point in an Orlando Sentinel commentary about Florida’s recent over development and the vacant suburban slums left in its wake:

“If we didn’t build another house in the suburbs, we still would have too many of them 17 years from now.”

Aside from our local glut of newly built, empty condos & houses, we also have over 50,000 unbuilt homes already approved just in south Hillsborough County.  50,000 homes.  Even if we didn’t rezone another farm field we could accommodate much of the growth projected for decades.

This is your turn to have a say in your region’s future. Don’t miss it. But don’t let them hand you a rubber stamp, and then claim that the public has spoken.