Daily Loaf

Have you ever wondered what Williams Park would look like if it were actually green space?

You’re in for some exciting news. According to a report by the Transportation and Parking Department, presented on November 10th at a public meeting at the Sunshine Center, the City of St. Petersburg has hired the private firm PB Americas, Inc. to work with PSTA and conduct a study of the downtown area between Tampa Bay and 5th Ave N, and 6th St and I-275. The study will determine a new location for St. Petersburg’s most congested bus transfer center. Read the rest of this entry »

By George Niemann
PoHo contributor
Hillsborough Board of County Commissioners:
It appears likely that you are going to ask us to approve a 1% sales tax increase in November of 2010 to fund a long range multi-modal transportation package which is highlighting the introduction of light rail to the Tampa Bay region.

At Wednesday’s Regular BOCC meeting it was revealed that, although the referendum’s top billing will be “light rail”, only 37% of the proposed tax will end up going toward an inter-city light rail system. The balance will go toward other forms of transportation, as well as road improvements that are long overdue.

The big question is this – are you going to give voters all of the hard facts surrounding this proposed referendum? And will you incorporate this into your referendum campaign? I know that it will be tempting to take the soundbite approach without providing detail because, as you know, the devil is in the details. Considering that a good portion of this tax would be used to fix infrastructure problems that were created by approving sprawl, how do we know that you’ve learned your lesson? Or that you won’t come back to us 10 years from now and say we need an additional 1% on top of the first 1% because we couldn’t help ourselves from approving more sprawl without getting the money for the infrastructure?

Read the rest of this entry »