Tampa as a Potemkin Village? OK, that’s an exaggeration, but not as much as it should be.
Since the end of the Great Recession, Tampa has been on the upswing. We’re familiar with counting the ways: From the expanded Riverwalk, a reviving downtown and Channelside 2.0 plans to Bollywood Oscars, a national political convention, championship football games and myriad mentions on a bunch of Internet hipster lists. Even a cross-bay ferry.
Always lurking, however, is a governor on the sort of progress that would ultimately take Tampa to the next level in terms of economic competitiveness and quality of life. Pull back the happening-and-hype curtain and you can’t miss the absence of mass transit. No other market with such aspirations is so immobile. It undermines corporate–and millennial-employee–recruiting.
Then, as we’ve been graphically reminded of late, there is systemic sewer incapacity in our low-lying areas. And given that everything around the southwest Florida coast is low-lying, it’s a red flag and an existential threat whether you acknowledge global-warming scenarios or not.
And Hillsborough County, home to the eighth-largest school system in the United States, now has more than serious debt-service issues. It has problems just keeping its schools air-conditioned.
And what do transit, sewers and schools have in common? They are our critical infrastructure components. Absent reinforcement and investment, we are recklessly gambling with our future. We need to underwrite what should be our priorities: quality of life and economic viability and competitiveness. Or we will pay a price far beyond infrastructure taxes.