Mitch Perry
Last week, at a candidates forum in South Tampa, District 4 challenger Kent King assailed incumbent Harry Cohen’s performance on council over the past four years, saying he hasn’t represented South Tampa well at City Hall.
But after King told moderator Christine Burdick at this morning’s Downtown Partnership candidates forum that the City Council is not the “lead dog” on transit issues, Cohen pounced.
“I disagree with my opponent’s explanation,” he began, before detailing how the expansion of the streetcar system (which Mayor Bob Buckhorn and other council members have been touting) could work in tandem with the soon to be constructed multi-modal transit center in West Shore. “Then you actually have a system that gets people in between the two major employment centers of the region,” which he called “huge.”
Cohen also one-upped his challenger after King said that the Council should work on modernizing traffic control systems throughout the city.
“The Council’s already invested in that,” Cohen responded, saying that the Council has budgeted more than $2 million towards an ntelligent traffic system that actually allows the traffic lights to be synchronized based on the number of cars on the road,”rather than on pre-determined decisions that someone has made from an office sitting somewhere six months earlier. ” He said that the city is currently using those systems at the intersections of West Shore and Gandy, as well as Dale Mabry and Interbay.
Transportation was mentioned frequently during the nearly 90-minute affair, held at the Embassy Suites hotel in front of approximately 100 guests.
Mike Suarez, running for reelection in District 1 against Susan Long (who did not appear), acknowledged that because of the transit tax defeats in both Pinellas and Polk counties last November, there is a lot of “apprehension” about a potential 2016 transit tax referendum going back before Hillsborough County voters, but said emphatically that “we need a referendum.”
He said the magic number to work on extending the streetcar service into the north downtown area was $15 million, where the city can then begin to draw state and federal monies to help fund it. He said that the city could generated the funds from the various Community Redevelopment Agencies (in downtown and Channelside).
Joe Citro, candidate for the citywide District 2 race, said he saw as a member of the Ybor City Redevelopment Corporation how ineffective the streetcar system had been created, mentioning how Ybor residents could not travel to downtown in an expedient way. He said it should have been built with two rail lines. He called the proposed high-speed ferry “The best bang for the buck today and I support is the ferry system.”
District 3 challenger Paul Erni (whose opponent, Yolie Capin, reportedly was involved in a traffic incident and failed to appear) also criticized how the streetcar was built, and said he didn’t want to touch the issue of light-rail with his limited time on stage. Afterwards he told Florida Politics that he believes that ridership should expand on HART before expending more taxpayer funds. However, HART’s expansion plans are limited without more revenues. Ermi then said he supported a referendum on transit. “Let us vote on it,” he said.
Like Suarez, District 6 candidate Guido Maniscalco has been an enthusiastic champion of supporting a transit referendum in 2016, if it reaches the ballot.
Tampa has been criticized for years as an extremely dangerous area for pedestrians and cyclists, but in discussing the idea of encouraging more bicycles on the road, both Charlie Miranda and Tommy Castellano criticized the behavior of some cyclists in the city.
“The bicyclists don’t know the rules of the road,” Castellano said. “They go against the traffic a lot of times,” adding that “someone should be issuing them a ticket.”
Miranda added that he saw a cyclist yesterday drive right through a four-way stop in downtown. “It’s a two-way street,” he said, referring to the behavior of drivers and cyclists.
The City Council election takes place on Tuesday, March 3.
