Another day, another Cuba-Tampa scenario. From commercial flights to consulate speculation to environmental cooperation anchored by the Florida Aquarium. Now add this: transshipment.
It’s part of the ripple effect of a widened Panama Canal, Cuba’s expanded Port of Mariel and the possibility of off-loading containers to smaller boats to ship cargo to the burgeoning market of central Florida via Port Tampa Bay. It’s hardly incidental–or coincidental–that Tampa’s port recently spent $24 million for two gantry cranes that are part of a gateway-to-central-Florida marketing campaign.
Cuban port leaders are expected to visit Tampa later this year. Next month local maritime officials will travel to Cuba. And President Barack Obama could issue an executive order to facilitate the Mariel-Tampa port connection. Currently ships from any nation that dock in Cuba are prohibited from doing likewise in the U.S. for 180 days.
Maxing out on geography, logistics, economics and history are all in the mix to make a transformative difference for Port Tampa Bay.
But you know what would really help? A closer. The president can sign an order. Delegations can be exchanged. But somebody who’s proactive, a born salesman and the unquestioned political leader of this city with a game-changing port and a strong-mayor system has to step up and make a difference.
In an all-important-hands-on-deck scenario, the missing hand can’t be that of Mayor Bob Buckhorn. But it is. Apparently “This is our time” doesn’t apply to the Tampa-Cuba nexus. Tucker/Hall’s Bill Carlson is more important than the city’s CEO when it comes to Cuba.
And, yes, we know why the mayor prefers his spectator role. Loyalty to friends who suffered from the revolution and those who flew with Brothers to the Rescue. Animus to those who disdain democratic freedoms and devalue political dissent.
But Buckhorn’s first priority should be what’s best for Tampa and all its constituents and all its unrealized potential. Maintaining a personal agenda, to the competitive detriment of his city, in the waning, post-Cold War years of the Castro brothers may still be rationalized and play well in hardliner circles, but it’s blatantly counterproductive in 2016 for Tampa.