First, there are a lot of questions that haven’t quite been answered yet, so maybe there’s a perfectly good explanation for why a contract that was approved by Tampa City Council in March of 2022 for 8.5 million dollars in paving only resulted in less than half a million dollars in paving. Or why nobody has mentioned that there’s $8 million in unspent contingency funds sitting in the Local Option Gas Tax Capital Projects Fund.

How much is $ 8 million to the city? Considering last year when the mayor proposed a one millage point increase in property taxes that Council rejected, roughly $40 million needed to be cut from her proposed budget to balance. That’s 20% of what had to be cut. Once you pay for people and the day-to-day operations of the city, there isn’t a lot of money left over for “new” projects or even fixing old projects. Take a look at the state of our parks.

As to paving, there are 2 ways roads get paved. Either as part of a Capitol Improvement Project (CIP)—which may have various funding sources—often federal or state dollars making up the majority of the funds. Smaller roads and repairs are done through the annual Mobility Department budget. Last year the Admin said we generally budget $4 million dollars annually for paving. Sidewalks get about 25% of that (they can also be part of CIP projects. I believe there are 2 miles of sidewalks from Palma Ceia to Bayshore this year as part of the CIP.) So $8 million is 2 years worth of the general paving budget.

Also during last year’s budget process, once the parking budget was being scrutinized and the “smart” parking system was scraped, the Admin proposed and Council approved an additional $7 million in the paving budget this year. I thought that money could have been used to fund the normal paving/sidewalks budget, freeing up the general funds for something that didn’t involve transportation. Regardless, an extra $7 million was budgeted. Over the last few months Mobility has been briefing Council on a plan for the City to take on more paving in house. Buying all of the equipment and hiring professionals to do it ourselves. It makes sense. I actually had sent an article on the subject to Council last year when I came across it. A very objective study of States Transportation Dept and the cost of building a mile of road found that state’s that take on more in-house pave roads cheaper than states that rely solely on private companies. So they have been thanking Council for putting an extra $7M into the budget for paving so we could invest in this equipment. Everybody wins.

Clearly they have known about item 74 for at least a year. Through the budget process, through the equipment purchasing, while briefing Council on it all. It’s really hard to build trust with the community when it looks like a shell game is being played with money while our roads go unpaved. I personally find it typical that these types of things always wind up on the agenda right before a holiday. I’m sure someone tried to argue since it wasn’t an expense then Council’s rule about being pulled from consent didn’t apply and wanted this to not have any discussion. There’s no controversy on the vote, clearly the work hasn’t been done and we need to close out the contract and free up these funds, the conversation is about what happens after and why.