Page 3 - Florida Sentinel 10-7-22

Feature
Commissioner Is Asking Residents To Vote ‘YES’ For Transportation Tax
BY MONIQUE STAMPS Sentinel Staff Writer
Commissioner Gwen Myers is urging residents to vote YES for the 1% trans- portation sales surtax on the November ballot.
Commissioner Myers , the lone Black on the County Commission is championing the initiative and says that this one percent sales surtax is long overdue in Hillsborough County.
The purpose is to fund transportation improvements, including operations and maintenance, throughout the county and the cities of Tampa, Plant City and Temple Terrace.
The funds will be allocated
as follows: fifty-four and one- half percent (54.5%) of the funds to the County and the cities based on their relative populations; forty-five percent (45%) to the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Author- ity (HART); and one-half per- cent (.5%) to the Hillsborough Transportation Planning Or- ganization (TPO).
Commissioner Myers
believes that the County’s transportation system is lost without a new revenue source, imperiling the County’s ability to make improvements of roadway pavements, sidewalk repairs, bridge rehabilitation, signal and traffic control de- vice repairs, intersection im- provements, pedestrian crossings, safer routes to
COMMISSIONER GWEN MYERS
schools, trails, and complete street projects without current roadway capacity.
She further explained that the new funding and invest-
ment would create more than 350 miles of safety projects throughout our county. It would add more than 1,400 miles of missing sidewalks. Further, the investment sup- ports more than 500 miles of new streetlight corridors on currently unlit roads, which contributes to nearly 40% of all pedestrian deaths in Hills- borough County.
The November 8th ballot initiative will save more than 1,000 lives, avoid 55,000 in- juries, and prevent 140,000 car crashes, according Comm. Myers and these sta- tistics are vitally important.
Since 2014, traffic fatalities in Hillsborough County have risen nearly 40%.
Comm. Myers also ex-
plained that the County is plagued by a $13 billion back- log of transportation improve- ment needs. Since 2018, unfunded or underfunded transportation needs have grown $1 billion per year, so the problem is only going to get worse.
She states, “for the reasons I illustrated earlier, we must vote FOR the one percent (1%) transportation sales surtax on November 8, 2022. Please join me in voting YES during Early Voting or on November 8, 2022.”
“I urge residents to visit the County’s One Percent Trans- portation Sales Surtax website at: www.transportationhills- borough.com for more infor- mation.”
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