Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on the Port:

Business News

Port Tampa Bay negotiating for two new gantry cranes

By Yvette C. Hammett | Tribune Staff
Published: August 19, 2014

TAMPA — Two mega cranes scheduled to be installed at Port Tampa Bay in a couple of years will allow the seaport to prepare for a future with larger, wider cargo ships.

The Tampa Port Authority board voted Tuesday to direct its staff to negotiate with Zhenhua Heavy Industry Inc. — the world’s largest manufacturer of gantry cranes — to purchase two of them at a cost of about $24 million.

More cargo coming in on larger container ships means more jobs for terminal operators, laborers, crane operators, truck drivers and logistic services, said port spokesman Andy Fobes.

Half of the money to pay for the cranes is coming from a state grant and half is coming in the form of a loan from the Florida Department of Transportation’s State Infrastructure Bank.

The three 42-year-old gantry cranes currently in operation at the port’s container berth can reach 110 feet across a ship’s deck, the width of 11 cargo containers. The new cranes will have a reach of 160 feet, which means they can reach across 19 containers on a ship’s deck. The decks on the “post Panamax” container ships (built after the recent expansion of the Panama Canal) will have room for just that many containers across their decks.

There are even larger ships being built, said Port President and Chief Operating Officer Paul Anderson. But those larger ships will be heading to Europe, not the United States.

The best part about this purchase, said Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman, who sits on the port board, is that the cranes “will bring a whole ton of jobs here and attract more companies to come here” to ship goods.

“The growth is there and we are building the footprint” for even more expansion, Fobes said. “We are prepping for the ultimate goal of about 1 million-container capacity moving in or out of the port.”

The number of containers coming through the port fluctuates annually, Fobes said. In 2006, the port had 23,167 containers come through. In 2013, 42,198 containers came through the port.

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Bay Times article on Ports:

Port Tampa, Port Manatee meet, hoping to heal rift

JAMAL THALJITampa Bay Times

Wednesday, August 13, 2014 11:44am

ST. PETERSBURG — Today’s meeting of Tampa Bay’s seaports was billed as a chance to promote regional economic development.

But in reality, it was a peace summit to heal the rift between Port Tampa Bay and Port Manatee.

Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Ananth Prasad left no sports metaphor behind in declaring himself the referee of this regional economic conflict.

The state wasn’t spending millions on Florida’s ports so they could compete at the expense of each other, Prasad told a group of more than 50 officials and spectators attending the meeting at the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.

“The goal here is not to steal from each other,” Prasad said. “The goal is for Florida ports to steal from other state’s ports.”

Prasad sat between delegations from the Tampa Port Authority and the Manatee County Port Authority, who sat on opposite sides of the table.

The two ports have spent the past year at odds. Last year, Manatee accused Tampa port officials of seeking to combine both ports into one regional port authority.

Tampa officials denied that, and said it was a misunderstanding that started in Tallahassee. Prasad admitted that as well. But hard feelings still linger.

“I think this competitiveness being interpreted as combativeness is not helping at all,” said Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandra Murman, who sits on the Tampa Port Authority board.

“I feel tension in this room,” said Manatee County Port Authority Chairwoman Carol Whitmore.

The consolidation issue was followed in March by another point of contention when the Tampa Port Authority hosted the International Pineapple Organization’s Global Pineapple Conference in Tampa. It would not let Manatee officials attend the conference because of an exclusive agreement with the pineapple group.

Manatee feared that Tampa was encroaching upon its fruit cargo market.

“So what happened on the pineapple deal?” Prasad asked Tampa Port Authority CEO Paul Anderson.

Anderson said his port was offered an exclusive deal to host the pineapple conference and took it.

“It was really a miscommunication,” he said, “but that’s all I have to say about that.”

Anderson then defended regional competition. It’s inevitable and natural, he said, and in the end the free market will lead customers to decide which port to use.

“It’s a clear misnomer to think there’s no competition between regional ports,” Anderson said.

Anderson pointed out that Port Miami and Port Everglades compete against each other over millions of dollars worth of cargoes.

“That’s unacceptable, by the way,” Prasad said of those two ports competing.

“I’ve got to call it what it is,” Anderson said. “If anyone in this room wants to say otherwise, you have the wrong information.”

“I have to take exception to that,” Prasad said. “No one is saying we don’t want competition.”

But Prasad also said that the state doesn’t want its ports to undercut each other.

“If you use state dollars to take money away from other ports,” Prasad said, “I have a problem with that.”

When the room seemed to turn on Anderson, Murman came to the defense of the CEO of Port Tampa Bay, who has led the port since 2013.

“Our board has complete confidence in him,” she said. “When we brought him onboard as CEO, you have to understand, we were stagnant.

“We weren’t doing anything and we had a port director banking everything on the cruise business, which was not good.”

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on transportation:

Politics

Hillsborough transportation tax plan going public in September

By Mike Salinero | Tribune Staff
Published: August 12, 2014   |   Updated: August 13, 2014 at 05:58 AM

TAMPA — If you don’t know a lot about Hillsborough County’s big plans for transportation improvements, you’ll get plenty of chances to find out more next month.

Starting after Labor Day, local government leaders will hold a series of meetings in all corners of the 1,000-square-mile county. The purpose of the gatherings will be to get feedback from the public on a long list of road, trail and mass transit projects. The list has been 14 months in the making.

County Administrator Mike Merrill, speaking Tuesday to the county’s transportation policy leadership group, said the purpose of the meetings will not be to “sell’ the project list, but to ask residents, civic and business groups to critique it and suggest changes.

Merrill said the outreach program, which will include a social media blitz, will last through mid-October. Then the results will be brought back to the policy leadership group, which consists of the seven county commissioners, the mayors of Hillsborough’s three cities, and the chairman of the HART bus system.

“What we’re really talking about is bringing it back to you in October and letting you know what we’ve heard,” Merrill said.

Depending on what county officials hear in the public meetings, the leadership group may pare down the projects list or add some new roads and transit routes.

At some point late this year, or in early 2015, the leadership group will decide whether to hold a referendum in 2016 to raise the sales tax by a penny. If it passes, the tax hike would produce $6 billion over 30 years for transportation.

The emphasis on public outreach is an outgrowth of lessons learned from the failed sales tax referendum in 2010. Proponents of that effort felt that large portions of the county were left out of planning when transportation projects were developed and the residents were unclear about how the tax would benefit them.

“In 2010, everything was not crystal clear; it was real muddy,” county Commissioner Les Miller said Tuesday. “If we don’t make it clear, we’re doomed to failure.”

The board approved Merrill’s suggestion to hire a consultant with transportation experience to help with the public information program and in crafting the campaign to win passage of the referendum.

They also agreed to delay a controversial decision to replace all the HART citizen board members with elected officials. Merrill, with support from the leadership group, had argued that HART should be enlarged to handle all mass transit projects if the tax hike passes.

If this comes to pass, he said, the board handling the money needs to be accountable to the public.

But the proposal met with resistance from the HART board and from some in the public who saw it as a power grab by the county commission. Commissioners, surprised by the push-back, decided the HART governance discussion was a distraction from the main mission: selling the transportation plan to the public and passing a tax to finance it.

“We’re moving from a governance conversation to a mobility conversation,” Commissioner Sandy Murman said, signaling an end to the HART board conversation.

Though the board voted unanimously to go forward with the public information campaign and to hire the consultant, there was some dissension. Plant City Mayor Rick Lott cautioned against showing the public specific road projects or bus routes during the information campaign because it would lead to questions about “why this is happening and why this is not happening.”

“I think it’s very dangerous when you go out to the public and you have lines on a map,” Lott said.

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn disagreed, arguing that the sales tax referendum will only be successful if voters know how the tax will benefit them in terms of specific intersection improvements, road widening or new bus routes.

Buckhorn cited the success of The Better Jacksonville Plan, which voters in that north Florida city approved in 2000. The plan raised the sales tax by half a cent to finance $2.25 billion in construction projects, resurfacing of existing roads and construction of new ones.

“The people in that community knew, literally down to their street, what the benefit was to them directly, because the plan was that specific,” Buckhorn said. “I think that specificity needs to be there when they go to the ballot box.”

Commissioner Victor Crist said he was concerned there wouldn’t be enough money to pay for all the projects on the list, even with the sales tax increase.

Crist said voters in his north-county district are likely to balk at the high costs of the projects and vote down the tax.

“I’m not sure we have enough time to sell this,” Crist said, “and I’m not sure we have enough time to do the leg work that needs to be done to generate the voter buy-in … to get this passed.”

But Buckhorn, who once spoke of holding the referendum next year, dismissed any talk of delay. He used one of his familiar sports analogies to drive the point home.

To a chorus of laughter, he said, “We’re suited up, we’ve been training, we’re ready to go, we want to hit somebody, but we’ve got to have a game.”

msalinero@tampatrib.com

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on HART:

Business News

HART: Residents should participate in transit decisions

By Yvette C. Hammett | Tribune Staff
Published: August 5, 2014

TAMPA — Residents should actively participate in deciding how transit should expand and operate in Hillsborough County, the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority urged on Monday.

A representative from the authority will take that message to the county administrator.

The conversation on what the HART board may look like in the future if voters approve a 1-cent sales tax for expanded transit and road projects dominated the meeting. Transit activists and several board members made it known that they don’t favor the county government’s plan to transform the board into one made up entirely of elected officials.

But they also agreed they don’t want the issue of the board’s makeup to derail efforts to pass the tax.

The estimated $6.2 billion in projects the tax would fund over 30 years is designed to break up gridlock on Hillsborough’s roads.

Mike Suarez, HART’s chairman and a Tampa City Council member, HART interim CEO Katharine Eagan and board attorney David Smith will meet with County Administrator Mike Merrill in an effort to reach consensus on the HART board’s future makeup. They will report back to the full board at an unspecified time.

The discussion is part of a larger conversation sparked by the Policy Leadership Group, a committee made up of elected officials from Hillsborough County, Tampa, Temple Terrace and Plant City that is devising the plan.

The 13-member HART board is made up of seven county representatives, elected officials and citizens among them, plus three representing Tampa, one Temple Terrace and two gubernatorial appointees.

In addition to the governance issue, concerns were raised about whether an authority running the bus system should oversee road projects if its role is expanded.

In an email memo Monday to leadership group members, Merrill said that while HART would collect the new sales tax money, it could allocate money for road projects to the cities and the county. HART and its staff would not be expected to plan, design or complete road projects.

For now, the policy group is aiming to put the 1-cent sales tax on the ballot in March 2016. If approved, the sales tax would generate more than $6 billion over 30 years. That’s enough money that elected representatives should be overseeing it, said county Commissioner Mark Sharpe, who sits on the transit council.

Elected officials, Sharpe said, are accountable to taxpayers.

Not everyone agrees.

“Why on earth, when we know what we know about the track record of elected officials in this county, would we feel more secure with a board of elected officials?” citizen activist Ken Roberts asked the HART board.

“Nobody’s ever been led out of the HART chambers in handcuffs,” he said, referring to county commissioners sent to federal prison in the 1980s for taking bribes.

HART board member Fran Davin, a Tampa citizen appointee, said getting into a confrontation over governance of the board won’t help the transit cause. In Pinellas County, citizens, the Pinellas County Transit Authority and elected officials “are in lockstep” to expand transit, Davin said. “We want to go about it the same way.”

The board and the county need to work the issue out, said county Commissioner Les Miller, appointed to HART last week to replace Ruskin businesswoman Anne Madden, who resigned. Miller’s appointment fueled the conversation about the board’s makeup because he will become the fourth elected official to fill one of the county’s seven slots.

“Rushing to something that changes the way we function without balancing the needs of the community would be done in haste,” HART board member John Melendez III said. There is still much to be done before the HART expansion plan is a done deal, he said.

“There is nothing on paper, set in stone,” said county Commissioner Sandy Murman, also a HART board member. “We have to start showing a great deal of leadership and the message has got to be that we understand the big picture, the traffic problems, the transit problems in this community and we are willing to step back and work on a consensus.”

Murman made the motion to have Suarez and the others meet with Merrill to work it out.

“This is such an opportunity for us,” she said. “The community is going to grow and we have to answer that need.” HART and the county need to show residents “we are going to do it and do it right.”

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Bay Times article on HART:

HART board unsure how — or whether — to transform into super transportation agency

CAITLIN JOHNSTONTampa Bay TimesMonday, August 4, 2014 3:00pm

TAMPA — Two months have passed since a recommendation to greatly expand the role of Hillsborough Area Regional Transit to oversee all sorts of transportation initiatives beyond bus service, and it still is unclear what its new board will look like and just what it will oversee.

At a meeting Monday, the directors of HART were unable to agree on how or even whether to change the board’s composition.

Instead, they voted to allow their chairman, CEO and attorney to meet with the county attorney, administrator and staff to create a consensus document about the board’s governance.

“We have to start showing a great deal of leadership,” said County Commissioner Sandy Murman, who serves on the HART board and made the motion. “And the message has got to be that we understand the big picture — the traffic problems, the transit problems in this community — and we’re willing to step back and work on a consensus document.”

The recommendation would eventually be brought back for discussion and possible approval.

The proposal to transform HART goes hand-in-hand with a proposal to ask voters in 2016 to approve a 1-cent sales tax to help pay for transportation improvements, including light rail, in the county. As envisioned, HART would become the agency overseeing the projects, expected to top $5 billion over three decades.

A similar tax-for-transportation referendum failed in 2010. In that case, the topic of governance was a last-minute discussion, County Commissioner Mark Sharpe said, so leaders are trying to act now to assure they have everything organized before going to voters this time.

The HART board is made up of 13 members — seven appointed by the Hillsborough County Commission, three by Tampa, two by the governor and one by Temple Terrace. The county’s other city — Plant City — has no appointees to the board.

Under an idea proposed by a large group of local elected officials calling itself the Policy Leadership Group, the HART board would still include the two gubernatorial appointees. But every other member would be an elected official — all seven county commissioners and the mayors of Hillsborough’s three cities, for a total of 12. As it stands, fewer than half the HART board members currently are elected.

Under this iteration, the mayor of Tampa would be that city’s sole representative on the board, but would still be able to cast three votes. This means HART’s charter would have to be altered to allow for proportional voting. County Administrator Mike Merrill said interlocal agreements between the county and cities could accomplish the change.

Even if the HART board were to reject a reorganization, Merrill said rules already allow the county and cities to appoint all elected officials — rather than laypeople — if they choose.

“Each jurisdiction can appoint to the HART board whoever they chose,” Merrill said. “It’s not like it’s anything really new that’s needed. If the County Commission wanted to appoint all seven of themselves to the HART board right now, they could do that.”

Several citizens spoke up during a public comment period Monday against that idea.

“What evidence is there that a board of elected officials is preferable from the people of Hillsborough County?” Ken Roberts of Citizens Organized for Sound Transportation asked. “You see, nobody’s ever been led out of the HART chambers in handcuffs. Nor has anyone from this board ever gone to prison for malfeasance or misuse of public money.”

Contact Caitlin Johnston at cjohnston@tampabay.com or (813) 661-2443. Follow @cljohnst.

A Times Editorial

Editorial: Murman’s steady hand on the tiller

Sandy Murman

Tuesday, November 18, 2014 6:00pm

DANIEL WALLACE | Times

Sandra Murman’s experience, personality and quiet confidence will be enormously useful in the coming year as she takes over as chairman of the Hillsborough County Commission.

Sandra Murman’s experience, personality and quiet confidence will be enormously useful in the coming year as she takes over as chairman of the Hillsborough County Commission. In selecting her Tuesday, the board signaled that it wanted a moderate leader and a forward-looking agenda, which is what the county needs as it considers new investments in transit, jobs and the social safety net in the coming year.

Murman, 64, is a Republican and former state legislator who has long championed children’s issues. Her unanimous selection speaks to the reputation she has built among both Republicans and Democrats. She has a thorough understanding of how state and local governments work. She knows the back roads of this community, and she appreciates the role that Hillsborough plays across the Tampa Bay region. Murman has also taken on job development issues, preparing her to assume that policy area from former Commissioner Mark Sharpe, who left this week because of term limits.

The board is off to a good start by concluding its organizational session without creating new scores to settle. But it must quickly transition from ceremonial to substantive duties. A city-county work group is reading a new transit package, presumably for the 2016 ballot. Hillsborough is examining ways to better align its public investment and job recruitment efforts. The county also is remaking its housing program, looking to reauthorize a tax for children’s services and poised to enter the discussions on keeping the Tampa Bay Rays in the area.

With so much on the table, the commission needs to focus on the right priorities and demonstrate a higher level of engagement on the diciest issues, especially the proposal for a new tax-funded transit package. On that note, it was striking Tuesday that the board gave new Commissioner Stacy White, who opposes new taxes for transportation, seats on three critical boards — two that oversee county transit policy and a third that deals with regional job development efforts. This unexpected vote of confidence in White might at least expose him to the region’s pressing need for a modern transit system, but it is another big gamble for a county that is falling behind in these areas.

In a welcome demonstration of bipartisanship, the new Pinellas County Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to appoint as 2015 chairman John Morroni. This will be the third time Morroni has chaired the commission, but the first as a Republican leading a commission with a majority of Democrats. Morroni knows the county and the issues well, and his even temperament serves him well in a leadership role.

In Hillsborough, Murman clearly has the desire to lead. She seems to have an ally in modernizing the county’s approach to jobs and transit in Commissioner Ken Hagan, who has served ably as chairman and who has found a stronger voice on regional and transportation issues. Murman needs to bring the transit plan into sharper focus and begin work on a framework for a referendum in 2016. And she needs to help sell conservative commissioners and voters on the need for a new funding source for transit. There is no other issue more important to address as she leads the county in 2015.

Editorial: Murman’s steady hand on the tiller 11/18/14 [Last modified: Tuesday, November 18, 2014 6:19pm]

Commissioner Murman’s guest column on ending homelessness appeared in the Tampa Tribune:

Sandra Murman: Ending homelessness in Hillsborough is a collaborative work in progress

As vice chair of the Hillsborough County Commission and a board member of the new Tampa-Hillsborough Homeless Initiative (THHI), formerly the Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County, I wanted to share the remarkable progress made in the countywide effort to combat homelessness in the community over the past 18 months.

It is a new day in Hillsborough County as we begin to break the choke hold that homelessness has on the lives of more than 2,243 men, women and children, according to the most recent homeless count released in May. The specter of homelessness threatens the working poor, who are often only a paycheck away from losing their homes or apartments, even more.

Homelessness in Hillsborough is a community challenge that demands a community response. Government alone cannot solve this problem; it takes everyone in the community working together.

With that in mind, on Jan. 23 and Feb. 5, your county government took these positive steps toward the goal of ending homelessness in Hillsborough:

♦  The board of County Commissioners approved $2.3 million in contracts per year for two years with community service providers to address Hillsborough County’s portion of the community response to homelessness. Providers selected were Metropolitan Ministries, Salvation Army, and ACTS (Agency for Community Treatment Services), which will administer emergency housing assistance to homeless families and single adults. This program started March 1 and includes housing, in addition to comprehensive wrap-around services such as onsite child care, onsite family dining, workforce preparation, GED classes, and assistance with obtaining other benefits. In other words a “help up” to get homeless families and individuals back on their feet and productive in our community again: a $2.3 million investment (annually).

In addition:

♦  In 2013, in a public/private partnership, the county and private business leaders partnered with Gracepoint (formerly Mental Health Care, Inc.) to open Cypress Landings — a “Housing First” project that has successfully provided supportive services and housed 23 chronically homeless individuals, resulting in reduced substance abuse, reduced mental health symptoms, reduced emergency room visits and incarceration. This a $2.3 million investment: $2.1 million is a one-time investment; $200,000 is annually.

♦  In March of this year, a “Homeless Services Department” was created as part of the county’s restructuring. This department will work with THHI, county departments, as well as public and private agencies in the community that provide services to the homeless.

♦  The county partners with several external agencies, including the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office for the Jail Diversion Program. This innovative program involves providing case management to homeless individuals who are frequently incarcerated because of misdemeanor charges and mental health issues. As part of the program, clients are able to access referrals to other services and reduce expensive jail time. This is a $775,000 annual investment.

­♦  The county’s social services and homeless services staff are being trained concurrently with community nonprofits on how to best utilize THHI’s new Coordinated Intake and Assessment System, which will be fully functional later this year. Once implemented, the new system for persons seeking housing will identify personal or family needs based upon objective criteria, allowing all agencies interacting with the client to be knowledgeable about the client’s continuity of care and coordinated from whatever agency they contact. In addition, they will use tools to track the homeless and their activities and ensure more accountability and greater oversight of all housing unit conditions through required inspections. This should reduce service gaps and ineffective resource allocations. It is a $225,000 annual investment.

♦  The county is in the process of re-purposing the sheriff’s Work Release Center Building at 1800 Orient Road into an emergency housing facility. A request for proposal has been released for an organization to staff and operate this facility, which will shelter up to 184 homeless individuals on a short-term basis. This is a $2 million investment annually.

Total new investment for homeless services by Hillsborough County government, from multiple funding sources, is over $7.6 million; $4.9 million is recurring.

Our homeless veterans are very important to us. The county has been working with several partners in the community, and multiple initiatives are underway, including a housing project for up to 80 chronic homeless veterans that recently opened. No one who has worn a uniform for our country should be living on the streets.

We are acknowledging the expertise of outside agencies and partnerships with the private sector. The county is working closely with its partners to ensure accountability for delivering quality services and outcomes. These nonprofits have done an often overlooked, tremendously intensive job in providing counseling, and job and life-skill training — within what was barely a coordinated system. More importantly, everything we do to help the homeless is only effective if services are offered alongside the housing and programs they enter, and we are committed to that effort.

Still, a full understanding of the homeless plight is needed. Most citizens see homeless on the street corner panhandling for money, sleeping on a park bench, lining up at designated feeding sites, and congregating in alleys. Also, there are the countless homeless children in our schools who are couch-surfing every day from home to home.

The goal to end homelessness altogether in our community is one I share with my fellow THHI Board members, who are leaders representing the mayor’s office; the private sector, like Mark Fernandez from the Rays, Tod Leiweke from the Lightning, Guy King from M.E. Wilson and the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce, and Calvin and David Reed from Tampa Tank Inc.; and many others from nonprofits, education and government.

And with THHI’s new CEO, Antoinette Hayes Triplett, bringing her energy and expertise as former manager of the city of St. Louis’ Homeless Services Division, we embark on a new journey where we envision a time when families and individuals, including veterans, are off the streets and have the tools necessary to make their lives productive and successful.

There is still so much work to be done, but we are off to a great start. One obstacle is identifying and securing adequate housing stock for the formerly homeless, and this will be an ongoing process.

These challenges did not occur overnight, and neither will their solution. However, there is no lack of support or commitment to solving the issue of homelessness in Hillsborough County. We would not be where we are today without the dedication and support of County Administrator Mike Merrill, my fellow county commissioners, elected constitutional officers and other officials at the county and city levels, and the partnerships with nonprofits and the private sector.

Ending homelessness is a tremendous endeavor that may take a while, but for the first time in decades, our county, cities, the private sector and stakeholders are building a foundation by working together to solve homelessness.

To do it right, we need to take it one homeless person and one housing unit at a time.

Sandra L. Murman was elected to the Hillsborough County Commission in 2010. She served in the Florida House of Representatives from 1996-2004.

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on HART:

Transportation

HART wants funds to plan county transit

By Yvette C. Hammett | Tribune Staff
Published: July 21, 2014

TAMPA — The regional transit board gave a unanimous thumbs down Monday to a plan that would focus most early transit expansion in downtown Tampa. That plan, board members said, could leave people in the rest of the Hillsborough County standing on a corner waiting for a bus that won’t be coming.

Rich Clarendon, senior transportation planner for the county’s Metropolitan Planning Organization, presented a plan to the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority board outlining a study that calls for possible light rail and expanded modern street car service that might use existing freight tracks to operate. It also looked at connections to the planned transit station on Interstate 275 in the West Shore area. The study was a joint project of the MPO and the Tampa Downtown Partnership.

Instead of giving that plan the nod, the HART board voted to ask Hillsborough for funding to hire a specialized planner that can look at all transit needs throughout the county.

Clarendon was asking for a HART recommendation to include the downtown study in the MPO’s long-range transportation plan.

It is imperative that county, state and federal officials all work together to plan transit’s future here, said County Commissioner Sandra Murman, who sits on the HART board. “How is this integrated into what the city and county are doing? We need to work on one plan. We can’t have every agency having its own little plan.”

County Commissioner Kevin Beckner, who also sits on the transit board, said he didn’t readily see how this downtown plan would “connect with everything else.”

HART’S existing Transit Development Plan would double transit throughout Hillsborough County, said HART board member Karen Jaroch. This plan, she said, “would eat the entire apple of a 1-cent sales tax,” something that is being considered to fund expanded transit and roadway expansions in the county. The sales tax would require a referendum.

And, added board member Fran Davin, “everything is not centered around getting in and out of downtown. We need a lot more information. We can’t put all the money in tracks and leave the rest of the county stranded, with no service.”

The board will request at least $500,000 from the county for the transit study.

Commissioner Murman mentioned in this Creative Loafing article on HART:

Hillsborough

HART board to vote on its future next month

Posted By Mitch Perry on Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 1:11 PM

click to enlarge

• HART chair Mike Suarez says goodbye to outgoing board member Anne Madden on Monday.

HART board members today voted unanimously to agree to vote at their August 4 meeting on whether or not to support the proposal brought forward in May by Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill to have the transit agency reconfigured. The new organization would be headed by a new group consisting of the entire County Commission as well as the mayors of Tampa, Plant City and Temple Terrace taking over from the current board.

That vote will come a week before that group, known as the Transportation Economic Development group (or TED, though it is sometimes called the Policy Leadership group) meets for the first time since Merrill dropped the bombshell in late May that it should take over for HART and be the main transit agency making decisions as the county prepares for another tax referendum in 2016.
Although the HART board’s unanimous vote to decide on their own future came with only seven members present towards the conclusion of the meeting, a quick reading of the tea leaves makes it sound like the majority is not in favor of such a change.

HART board chair Mike Suarez, who has been outspoken in disagreeing with the idea, said that as far as he knows the TED group doesn’t have the legal authority to make a change, a notion on which HART attorney David Smith did weigh in.

“I am very reluctant to proceed with road and bridge money [mixing] with transit money, that just is not going to work,” offered board member Fran Davin. Referring to her experience as a Tampa City Council member, Hillsborough County Commissioner and board member of HART, she said she knows that “you cannot mix road and bridge money with transit money.”

But interestingly, County Commissioners and HART board members Kevin Beckner and Sandy Murman said exactly the opposite, saying they both believed “transit” means both buses, streetcars (and possibly rail) and roads. “It’s a matter of repurposing what were doing. It was a no-brainer to chose HART as lead agency,” Beckner said about Merrill’s proposal, which he supports. 
So does Murman, and so does the third member of the HART board who also serves on the County Commission, Mark Sharpe.

Since the announcement by Merrill in late May that the TED group wants to take over HART, it has taken the summer off, with their next meeting scheduled for August 12. That’s when they are expected to unveil the completion of more than a year’s work on their ideas for improving transportation going forward. But there has been radio silence about the idea of reconfiguring HART.
HART attorney David Smith acknowledged that he has not attended any of the TED meetings, saying, “I could not tell you what the articulating vision is — there seems to be some uncertainty there.”

Earlier, two members of the public weighed in on the proposed reconfiguring of the agency.

“It’s fundamentally wrong,” said Ken Roberts with Citizens Organized for Sound Transportation (COST). “It disintegrates the best public agency in the area. He also called it a “naked grab to HART’s access to funds” and “a hostile takeover.”

Calling the change in the composition of the board “much more complex” than Merrill has laid out so far, COST’s Sharon Calvert said a reconfiguration of the board wasn’t in the best interests of HART’s customers.

Davin said that with the consensus being that the County Commission was poised to put another transit tax referendum on the 2016 ballot to pay for more buses and possibly light rail, the last thing it needed to do was create confusion before the public. “How are we going to convince the people of this county to have faith and go ahead an approve a well thought-out plan for better transit?” she mused.

Meanwhile, the board unanimously voted on a motion to make a request to the Hillsborough County Commission for at least $500,000 to help the transit agency with planning. The motion came from Commissioner Mark Sharpe, and followed a statement made by Connect Tampa Bay Executive Director Kevin Thurman suggesting that HART take the lead in moving transportation planning forward. The motion also includes asking the County’s Metropolitan Planning Organization to kick in funds for planning as well.

“Take the lead,” Thurman implored on the board during the public comment portion of the meeting. 

Initially, the request was met with resistance from County Commissioner Sandy Murman, who said that money had already been earmarked to the Transportation Economic Development (also known as the Policy Leadership Group) for outreach planning. That’s the group consisting of County Commissioners and the mayors of Tampa, Plant City and Temple Terrace that county administrator Mike Merrill called for in May to take over the existing HART board.

“This has nothing to do with the Policy Leadership Group,” HART board chairman Mike Suarez told Murman, while Commissioner Sharpe added that the Policy Leadership Group didn’t have the expertise to do such work.

In fact, HART has not had a planner since Mary Shevalier left the agency a couple of years ago.