***Cross-Posted at Out in Left Field***
Are you one of thousands of Tampa commuters who’d rather drive off a cliff than down Bruce B. Downs or I-4 during rush hour? Do you have children attending an overcrowded school? Are homeowner’s insurance premiums going through the roof – forcing you to subsist on grilled cheese sandwiches and American beer?
If so, please contact your legislators in Tallahassee. Tell them to shelve the idea of a week-long tax-free holiday. Jim Davis correctly referred to this plan as a gimmick and I agree. Instead, our representatives should use this revenue to solve some problems.
A quality education is expensive and kids cannot excel in elementary schools currently overcrowded by about 500+ kids. Perhaps you don’t have children and can’t understand the influence smaller schools have on a learning environment. Okay, how about this argument: Property values go up and crime goes down when neighborhood schools are well-funded and supported by the local community. Take it from someone involved both as a parent and educator – investing in education helps the residents of our state more than discounts on plasma televisions.
The widening of Bruce B. Downs from four to eight lanes has been postponed – don’t expect relief until at least 2008. Currently, New Tampa residents spend a half-hour just driving down the street! Ever visit other highways in town during morning or afternoon hours? Combine careless drivers with too-few lanes and about six hundred rubberneckers and I’m not surprised when a stray bullet grazes someone’s windshield. Unless we start kicking people out, Florida legislators are going to have to solve our growth problem. Open the roads and clear the way.
The Tampa Tribune even suggested using this tax money to alleviate the current crisis with Citizens Property and rising homeowners’ insurance premiums. Citizens is often the last resort for folks who can’t get insurance elsewhere and all Florida homeowners pay to offset its deficit. What are the alternatives? Try foreclosures and bankruptcies. As a community, we must make a decision: Do we want a work force owning homes here or not? I believe its best when everyone – those with and without – are connected to the towns in which they live and work. Ownership has its privileges.
Tallahassee: keep my hundred bucks and fix our schools, roads, or insurance woes. Instead of a week, try making every day a holiday.
Julie Creyts
4 years ago
Widening roads does not ease congestion, it only brings more traffic, pollution and noise. Why do the residents of New Tampa want Bruce B. Downs to have more capacity than an Interstate Highway. One look at Fowler Avenue should have residents fighting against the expansion and asking for transportation options!!!
kate
4 years ago
Julie – the people are already here and so we need the roads to accomodate them. It’s as close to unbearable as anything I’ve ever experienced. The fact that Tampa as a whole needs to figure out mass transit options is beside the point. They should have never built these developments without schools and roads in place. It needs fixing – now.
David Jenkins
4 years ago
Does anybody really believe that the masses in Lutz, New Tampa, New-new Tampa, Nuevo Neu Tampa and beyond are really going to give up their couchmobiles in favor of using mass public transit?
This is yet another reason why sprawl is such a bad idea.
I do however wholly agree the tax-break is a gimmick.
John
4 years ago
I don’t want to get into the bruce b downs and transit thing…
I DO want to get into the VOTER MANDATED Constitutional ammendment to reduce class sizes that the Legislature is fighting AGAINST funding hand over fist… Sorta like they fought against High Speed Rail hand over fist. Sorta like they fight against ANYTHING from the citizenry hand over fist…
Fred
4 years ago
Widing the roads will just encourage more drivers to get on the roads on peak traffic periods and will encourage more development. In about 7 years the 8 lane road will be just as crowded as the 4 land road is now. Then what?
Brett
4 years ago
Do you live in the New Tampa area? Have you seen the New Tampa area? This kind of attitude got New Tampa into the trouble it’s now currently dealing with. This is not the first time that the idea of widening BBD/alternate roadways out of New Tampa has come up. But they were fought against by residents, who feared that enlarging the roadway would encourage more development and make things worse. And what happened?
The development came anyway. You can’t swing a dead cat in New Tampa without hitting two new home developments and a shiny strip mall, complete with limited access entrances and (more than likely) a Subway. The development isn’t going away until the housing market implodes – and Florida is the last place that will feel that implosion as long as northern retirees are willing to pay $1,300+ a square foot for suburban bliss. Stamping your foot in the sand and saying they shouldn’t expand the road? You might as well stick your head in there too.
This is not to say I think this is the only solution. New Tampa is a begging for a new form of public transportation. If I could find something that would get me from New Tampa to my office (located near Feather Sound) in less than three hours and four bus changes, I’d probably jump all over it, as I’m about ready to shove my commute up the arse of the next jerk to cut me off in traffic. As it is, I’m seriously considering selling my house and getting an apartment in the city again. At least I might regain some semblance of my sanity.
PortTampa
4 years ago
I am appalled that the state legislature would even consider a sales tax holiday when there are so many more ways to use the money that would actually permanently improve the lives of Floridians. I won’t get into the wisdom of building roads vs. mass transit, or even whether a one time infusion of cash in education is a good idea (merits to all sides of those arguements). I think it probably makes the most sense to just set a good chunk of it aside. When the next catastrophic hurricane comes,who in any political party, is going to stand up and say “I still believe the best thing we ever did with that big budget surplus was give the people their money back when they bought all this stuff that has now been destroyed. We’d help them out with new housing but we don’t have the money any more.”
Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog » new tampa - looking out for number one
4 years ago
[...] Kate’s recent post about the tax-free holiday got some folks in quite an uproar. Not about the rebate, but a passing comment about the traffic situation in and around New Tampa got many a commenter’s attention. [...]