Tampa will remain trainless in the near future if county officials want to depend on local taxpayer funding for light rail, Hillsborough County voters decided Tuesday.
Despite an effort heavily funded by Hillsborough business leaders, nearly 60 percent of voters rejected increasing the sales tax by 1 cent on the dollar to support building the region's first light rail train routes along with bus and road improvements.
"This plan was rejected by the citizens of Hillsborough County because they didn't know what they were voting to fund (because all details had not been provided), they didn't know how much it would cost and they sensed it was unnecessary to solve true issues of congestion," said Karen Jaroch, a leader in the No Tax For Tracks movement.
The impact of Tuesday's vote ranges well beyond Tampa, where about 28 miles of light rail lines to link downtown with Tampa International Airport and the northeast suburbs had been viewed as the keystone for modern transit development in a seven-county region.
Jaroch said the movement would take the issue to people in other counties, in particular Pinellas and Pasco, where she believes advocates would continue to push for rail lines.
She said her group would remain opposed to rail unless it could be shown to be financially sustainable.
"We cannot sustain any more tax burden," Jaroch said from a gathering at a restaurant in Brandon.
The Hillsborough tax defeat did not, however, sink the hopes of rail and transit improvement advocates throughout the region, said Ronnie Duncan, chairman of the seven-county Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority and a former Pinellas County commissioner.
"Hillsborough is an integral part of the master plan, but it's only part of it and not necessarily the first part," said Duncan.
A lack of light rail means Tampa residents and visitors must rely on buses and cars for a local connection with the first U.S. high-speed rail line, which is all but certain to begin service between Tampa and Orlando in 2015.
That contrasts with Orlando and Miami, where established projects for local and regional train service will connect with Florida's proposed high-speed rail network at major, new transportation centers, similar though now likely to be initially larger and busier than the high-speed station planned in Tampa adjacent to the Marion Transit Center bus hub.
The outcome of Tuesday's referendum left unclear answers to the question of what's next with light rail and how to fund it now that the tax referendum.
What is certain is that the issue will not disappear in the near future.
"What we've got to do is make sure we evaluate and analyze everything that went on and gauge what voters want," said Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, who has been the staunchest backer of light rail and transportation improvements for Tampa and the region beyond.
Neither Iorio, whose term expires in March and has not announced possible plans for a future in politics, nor other proponents committed to seeking another vote as early as 2012.
Still, the board of the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority is scheduled to meet Nov. 15 to hear a staff recommendation on details of where light rail routes would be built if the project were to go forward at some point.
Until mid-August, HART had said it would provide voters with proposed light rail routes and stations before the referendum.
HART then said it needed more time to update first phase rail plans that had been extended this summer beyond the West Shore business district to and through the airport to the west and beyond Skipper Road and the University of South Florida to Cross Creek.
The decision -- if not the rationale of delaying the route decision to just two weeks beyond the referendum -- puzzled proponents and opponents alike.
HART had increased its consultant expenditures to about $1.3 million to devise plans to compete for federal matching funds to be ready by year's end, but proponents did not insist on finalizing plans before the election.
That seemingly provided ammunition to opponents of the tax, who said it made little sense to approve a tax to support a system whose details were undecided.
One thought that emerged in private discussions among proponents and opponents was that some supporters believed a "fuzzier" plan would have better chance of passage by not excluding options before the vote.
The route decision also has been complicated by ongoing negotiations with CSX railroad to either run light rail alongside its track on 30th street or buy nearly 100 miles of track to gain access to the six mile portion HART sought to use in east Tampa.
The proposal to increase the sales tax, in the works for nearly three years, would have provided an estimated $180 million a year, the majority of which would have been used both to help build the light rail routes and leverage matching federal funds under the Federal Transit Administration's New Starts Program.
The local anti-rail initiative by the lightly-funded No Tax For Tracks, which raised about $20,000, and the Orlando-based Ax The Tax movement, relied heavily on ideological sentiments for opposition to the Hillsborough rail vote.
The main proponent organization to pass the tax increase, "Moving Hillsborough Forward," was a business backed coalition that raised more than $1 million for an advertising campaign including dozens of public outreach sessions, some of them vi a telephone conferencing with the general public.
"This is the start of the conversation," said Stu Rogel, chief executive of the Tampa Bay Partnership, an eight-county regional planning group that heavily supported the sales tax increase and transportation improvements. "This is tough, but don't be disheartened."
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