We’ve now learned the results of that poll commissioned by the Tampa Bay Partnership on the one-sided defeat of the Greenlight Pinellas transit plan. The finding: It wasn’t so much the light rail component, typically a contentious topic, but it was the sales tax increase that did it in. According to the survey, more than 90 percent of the voters who rejected GP did so because of the 1-cent sales tax hike.
Not that anyone should be surprised.
This is Tampa Bay: a couple of major cities surrounded by unlike-minded county residents. Don’t talk quality of life. Don’t talk competition with other markets for company relocations and millennial employees. Don’t talk business-redevelopment ripples that translate into jobs and a broader tax base. Don’t talk visitor amenity in a tourist market. Don’t even talk trade-off with reductions in property taxes.
Put it this way: It’s not just no tax for tracks. It’s no tax for anything, whether you’re talking mass transit, better schools, regional connectivity, immortality or eternal salvation. Doesn’t matter. It’s how we roll, so to speak.