Sales Tax Hike For New Regional Transit Authority Will Be YUUGGE!

The Tampa Bay rail cartel is back, with their media accomplices attached.

And this time it is for regional power and regional taxing. 

Regional power requires regional taxes

Our skepticism of the $1.3 million taxpayer funded Go Hillsborough campaign was right on. We speculated it would end up with another unnecessary sales tax hike that included costly rail and it did.

The AEComm report, paid for by Hillsborough County in 2014, clearly stated Hillsborough does not have the transit ridership, the densities or the cost per trip requirements to meet the federal criteria to receive federal funds for fixed guideways. This is why the report was hidden and whitewashed by the County and by our local media because AEComm recommended (highlight is mine):

Initial transit investment should be in a travel corridor with the potential to generate very high transit ridership at a very low start-up cost to improve the project’s cost effectiveness and increasing the probability of obtaining federal funding support.

The prospect of a network of managed lanes within the Tampa Bay region provides an extremely attractive opportunity to provide high quality, higher speed Rapid Bus or Enhanced Bus on managed lane services to address regional travel and longer distance commuting markets. (aka FDOT's TBX project that has been delayed and Phase 1 funded by gas taxes we already pay)

Hillsborough County should approach making transit investments cautiously and prudently.

Even after voters soundly defeated the rail tax in 2010 and after the AEComm report, Go Hillsborough ignored the will of the voters and proposed another 30 year sales tax hike to pay for costly rail and fixed guideways. Why? Because some politicos, entrenched bureaucrats and special interests eyeing another big pot of tax dollars wanted it.

Even after Greenlight Pinellas was soundly defeated in 2014 and Go Hillsborough dumped last year, they are at it again with the $1.5 million taxpayer funded Regional Premium Transit Campaign currently underway. This time it is Go Hillsborough/Greenlight Pinellas on steroids - a regionalized campaign effort to sell another YUUGGE sales tax hike and this time it will be regional. 

And the new regional transit authority board will be run by almost all electeds  - another mismanaged PSTA on steroids…

How do we know this latest effort is about higher taxes in Tampa Bay? 

Because Jacobs Engineering, the same consultant who did Greenlight Pinellas and was a subcontractor to Parsons Brinckerhoff on Go Hillsborough, told us in their presentation responding to the RFP to get the campaign work. Their presentation slide below reflects their arrogant attitude - we are just too stupid for not wanting to raise our taxes to pay for boondoggles. This slide insults our intelligence and should have disqualified Jacobs.

Slide from Jacobs Engineering RFP presentation 

How else do we know?

Because it will take massive regional taxing to fund the regional transit projects we expect to pop out of this latest campaign - the CSX corridor and other costly rail/fixed guideway projects.

Jacobs' website for the regional transit campaign is here which clearly states the federal FTA is the primary audience. Information about their evaluation plan found here clearly states the need for local financial commitment. The map below that reflects projects Jacobs says they are considering is full of rail projects.

Projects Jacobs is considering includes
lots of rail projects 

With federal money for transit projects drying up, we seriously doubt our state legislators will allow another SunRail disaster to occur. The state way over paid for CSX tracks in Central Florida and the local municipalities still do not have a committed long term funding source. We doubt the state will pick up the big tab to cover what federal grants were previously covering.

That is why special interests Tampa Bay Partnership created Latvala's bill who hastily filed it before the session started. It forces taxpayers to fund another transit agency in Tampa Bay. This new regional transit authority will enable regional power an arms length away from voters and taxpayers, and provide the trigger for regional taxing. 

Latvala's bill must be stopped because regional transit authorities are how most, if not all, of the rail boondoggles across the country were pushed through. These regional transit authorities, especially over time, become powerful, arrogant and wasteful. Regional transit authorities empower deep pocketed special interests who then launch massive multi-million dollar campaigns for higher taxes. These regional entities often end up reeking of cronyism and corruption - a post for another day. 

A recent TBBJ article also confirms the Regional Premium Transit campaign is ignoring the will of the voters who have consistently rejected rail boondoggles. A subscription is required to access the article online so we included the entire article below (highlight mine).

Transit engineers to announce priority Tampa Bay corridors this week

The engineering firm responsible for targeting Tampa Bay area transit priorities as part of a state-funded process will announce this week five corridors it has identified as top attractors for federal funding. The announcement will serve as the first major step toward identifying a regional transit solution and pave the way for the next step, which is determining the mode of transit that will work best 

Transit in the Tampa Bay region has been so far left behind that a group of top-level CEOs came together with $50,000 each to recreate the Tampa Bay Partnership with a sole emphasis on transit improvements. 

The Florida Department of Transportation is funding the regional transit feasibility study through the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority, aimed at honing transit across municipal boundaries rather than a piecemeal approach by county. Experts will evaluate more than 60 transit plans, most of which were never brought to fruition, to establish priorities. 

“The Tampa Bay area hasn’t been very good at that,” said Scott Pringle, a group director with Jacobs Engineering, the company conducting the transit study.
The announcement is likely to include connections between Tampa and St. Petersburg.  

One of the studies Jacobs Engineering (NYSE: JEC) employees are looking at is the 2014 Greenlight Pinellas plan that would have created a passenger rail line connecting downtown St. Pete, mid-Pinellas County in the Carillon area and downtown Clearwater. Voters rejected the one-penny sales tax increase to fund the measure. While the corridor will be a key step in improving transit throughout the region, identifying a mode is likely to be more controversial. Transit critics have historically blasted the idea of light rail projects as being too costly and outdated. 

Pringle rejects the notion that rail is an outdated means of moving people. “A lot of steel wheel solutions move a lot of people really fast,” Pringle said. “So if that’s what your corridor needs then it makes sense.” 

Engineers will study the makeup of the targeted transit corridor next to establish patterns like how many people travel portions of it and how often. That can help planners decide where to put stops and how frequently to service routes.
Solutions could range anywhere from increasing bus service to using autonomous vehicles. 

Knowing where transit service would work best could also increase the odds of receiving federal funding by showing the chosen transit mode will help connect people who don’t own cars to job centers. Pringle said that’s like “extra credit” for attracting federal dollars. 

While transit planners are quick to celebrate the study as a major step toward increasing regional transit options, there will always be the question of funding. 

Those who have worked for years to block transit spending often decry it as a waste of money, a notion Pringle and other transit supporters reject.
“It’s a critical part of our infrastructure to grow jobs and attract people,” Pringle said. “There aren’t really roadways that pay for themselves either.”

Scott Pringle is out of touch with reality. Costly rail is outdated except for the densest population areas like NYC. Tampa Bay does not have the densities for rail and the AEComm report that Hillsborough County tried to bury in 2014 confirmed that. Our roads are very highly utilized assets used by 98% of us everyday. Highly utilized assets reduces the cost per trip that increases the value of its use.

With getting federal money for new transit projects anytime soon becoming a pipe dream, what is their Plan B? State and local funding…..

That's why regional taxing will be required to fund the costly transit projects we speculate again will pop out of this latest taxpayer funded transit campaign.

And the regional taxing is gonna be YUUGGE!

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Help stop the regional power grab that will trigger regional taxing. Contact state
legislators to voice opposition to HB1243 and SB1672
General Accountability Committee 
Community Affairs Committee
State Representatives (find your state rep)
State Senators (find your state senator)
Speaker Corcoran
Governor Scott

Wizard of Oz Orchestrating Another 30 year Tax Hike: Part 2

After the Hillsborough County Transportation Policy Leadership Group (PLG) took a ceremonial vote to continue pursuing Go Hillsborough's proposed huge 30 year $3.5 Billion sales tax hike, we began revisiting how did we get here.  

Our previous post identified there is a Wizard of Oz down at County Center who is manipulating the process - much of it outside the Sunshine and behind the green curtain.

We'll pick up where we previously left off with the hostile takeover of HART put on the back burner, for now. Wizardry could not dampen the distraction of that issue.

At the May 28, 2014 PLG meeting, it was announced by then facilitator Herb Marlowe that the transit projects were to be presented at the next PLG June 2014 meeting. We remember vividly because Mayor Buckhorn informed us all that rail would be included. The transcript and video of the May 28 meeting can be found here. This is from the transcript of the May 28, 2014 PLG meeting:

>>BOB BUCKHORN: I THINK IT WOULD BE SOMETHING THAT -- AND OBVIOUSLY EVERYTHING HAS SEEN THAT WE PUT A RAIL PROJECT ONTHIS LIST, SO NO SURPRISE TO ANYBODY, IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN.WE'RE GOING TO GET THIS DONE.

>>MARLOWE: WELL, LET ME JUST PREVIEW AGAIN OUR JUNE MEETING. WE'LL BE PRESENTING TO YOU THE FIRST PARTS OF THE BUSINESS PLAN, WHICH WILL INCLUDE ALL THE KEY ECONOMIC SPACES AND WHAT THOSE PROJECTS WILL COST; TRANSIT....

>>MARLOWE:  IF I MAY JUST MENTION, WE WERE PLANNING FOR MORE OF A FOCUS ON TRANSIT IN OUR NEXT WORKSHOP.

What happened next? 

No transit projects were EVER presented to the PLG.

Suddenly the June and July PLG meetings were abruptly cancelled by Merrill. The Wizard of Oz needed some breathing room behind the curtain to manipulate some levers and buttons.

The cancellation of the June PLG meeting to present transit projects occurred conveniently right after the AEComm transit assessment was completed in May. That assessment stated that Hillsborough County should invest in transit prudently and cautiously and that we do not have transit ridership high enough to qualify for federal funding of fixed guideway solutions.

Apparently, the Wizard also did not want to rain on the MPO's (Metropolitan Planning Organization) parade. Why? Because the MPO presented at the July 21, 2014 HART board meeting a downtown rail plan study they did in conjunction with the Downtown Partnership. 

While there were no open and public meetings in June or July last year, nothing stopped. The Wizard's levers and buttons continued to be orchestrated behind the green curtain.

Coincidentally, last June County Administrator Mike Merrill, in his newly empowered role as Hillsborough County's first unelected County Mayor, started taking a presentation out on the road advocating for another 30 year sales tax hike.

We posted here what Merrill presented to the HART board at their June 9, 2014 meeting. At that time transit projects were still planned to be presented at the June 26 PLG meeting.

Merrill stated there will be a comprehensive list of proposed projects at the next Policy Leadership Group meeting on June 26 that will include a BRT demo project, people movers, etc. When asked by a Board member what the BRT demo project was, Merrill didn't answer the question. We'll have to find out more at the June 26 meeting because no details were provided by Merrill about the list of proposed projects. (emphasis mine)

Note the slide Merrill titled "What are We Agreed On?". Merrill or someone apparently forgot about 2010.......Does equity in mobility and funding solutions sound Socialistic? Does equity in mobility and funding solutions mean throwing our tax dollars at high cost solutions just to be equitable? Where's cost-effective, efficient or even effective?

Slide from Merrill presentation June 9, 2014
 to HART Board

Tying all our transportation funding into a single huge 30 year sales tax hike is not "Equitable"! That is not wise, prudent or necessary.

Advocating for a tax increase is policy making. Policy making is the responsibility of elected county commissioners or an elected county mayor. It is not the responsibility of an unelected bureaucrat, the county administrator. 

As late as the June 18, 2014 BOCC meeting, Merrill told the county commissioners an entire transportation plan was to be presented on June 26: 

THAT'LL BE BROUGHT TO THE POLICY LEADERSHIP GROUP ON JUNE 26th, SO THAT WILL BE THE FIRST TIME THAT THE ENTIRE TRANSPORTATION PLAN IS PRESENTED (emphasis mine). 

THERE WILL BE A BALANCE OF TRANSIT 

That never happened. 

Merrill had an entire plan ready to be presented last June? Why wasn't it ever presented to the PLG? What happened? Who got "cold feet"?

Instead, Merrill started taking this presentation touting trains, fixed guideways and a new huge tax increase out on the road to over 60 local organizations. 

He was even contacting homeowner associations and asking if he could come speak to them on the transportation issue. When was the last time a County Administrator was soliciting homeowner associations? Why weren't the county commissioners out making these presentations? 

Merrill's presentation includes that we invest "early" in Fixed Guideways in direct opposition to what the AEComm transit assessment stated. Is that why the county wanted to bury the AEComm report?

County presentation advocating for
high cost fixed guideways

Did the commissioners back then ever take a vote on this policy direction? No. Why aren't the county commissioners in synch with the state's direction for highly utilized managed lanes added for additional road capacity that are shared with express bus service? 

Merrill lived in Germany a while and he likes trains. However, the rendering below from his presentation looks more like a safety hazard than anything else. Somebody's bound to get killed with a solution like this. Has Merrill Googled the issues with the new DC streetcar lately?  Is a train, a single lane of traffic and a bike path what Hillsborough County wants to spend billions on to fix our traffic issues? Ridiculous?

Rendering from county transportation presentation

Merrill's presentation is almost entirely focused on transit. It is so biased that his one page Value Proposition does not even mention roads, the county's largest and most utilized asset that has the biggest funding gap. In addition, some of Merrill's Value Proposition talking points are very questionable as they came from APTA (noted in very small print), the big transit lobbyist in DC.

The Wizard of Oz also created  a "we must have transit options"  video and a "comprehensive mobility" proposal video. These videos were created PRIOR to the Go Hillsborough campaign. Who authorized these videos?  How much did they cost taxpayers?

The videos tout fixed guideways (again in opposition to the AEComm transit assessment) and implies we'll have high cost rail in 10 years. And some kind of rail will connect to All Aboard Florida in Orlando. Huh? Roads will be improved to get to "transit hubs". Really? 

These presentations and videos were the cart before the horse, way out of line and exceeded the County Administrator responsibilities as defined in our Charter. They confirm the Wizard of Oz down at County Center has been pulling the levers and pushing the buttons for another 30 year sales tax hike long before Go Hillsborough. 

The next PLG meeting finally got scheduled in August.

Next up:  what the Wizard ordered.