Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Bay Times article on transportation:
Hillsborough hopes 10-year slate of transportation projects will entice voters in 2016
Thursday, June 11, 2015 4:11pm
TAMPA — Voters in Hillsborough County will see a list of transportation projects set to be built within the first decade of a proposed 30-year half-cent sales tax before officials will ask residents to approve the new funding source for road and transit projects.
County Administrator Mike Merrill presented a new transportation plan to county and city officials today based on a half-cent sales tax that would generate $117.5 million for transportation projects annually.
Hillsborough voters went to the polls in 2010 and soundly defeated a 1-cent sales tax to fund transportation projects. Similar referendums met a similar fate in Pinellas and Polk counties last year.
But Merrill and representatives from Parsons Brinckerhoff, the national consulting firm the county paid $1 million to help with the process, think this latest plan can entice enough voters both within the cities and unincorporated county to earn a win at the ballot box in fall 2016.
“We just can’t afford to screw this up,” said County Commission Chairwoman Sandra Murman.
By asking for less tax revenue from voters and providing more specificity about the projects that will be funded with that revenue, county staff is hoping the plan will be more appealing to voters than the 2010 version.
County and city officials who are part of the policy leadership group will meet on July 16 to decide whether or not to go forward with the proposal. If so, county commissioners will authorize attorneys to draft ballot language for a referendum.
Officials will then give county staff the go ahead to organize 12 public meetings in which they will work with community members to put together a list of projects people most want to see completed within the first 10 years of the 30-year tax.
Those projects could include new roads, intersection improvements, a ferry, Bus Rapid Transit and express bus service, said Bob Clifford of Parsons Brinckerhoff.
Staff will use that community feedback to present a list of projects to county commissioners in October.
The new proposal is projected to generate $3.5 billion — 61 percent less than the $9 billion that the consultant said was the most conservative estimate of the county’s future needs.
A third of that $3.5 billion will go to transit and the rest will be used to build roads, maintain existing ones and pay for bike and pedestrian improvements.
The consultants polled 600 county residents in April. It said that 52 percent would vote for a half-cent sales tax while 43 percent said they would vote for a 1-cent sales tax.
