Tampa Bay Times Editorial: Mayor Jane Castor’s ambitious plan for a stronger Tampa
EDITORIAL STAFF, TAMPA BAY TIMES
The roadmap for Tampa’s future that Mayor Jane Castor released last week is breathtaking for its ambition and scope. It addresses not only housing and transportation, which typically fall under a mayor’s purview, but also climate change, racial equity, student achievement, public health and services for veterans and seniors. There are enough policy prescriptions to choke a horse, and many of Castor’s goals are aspirational. But it’s an expansive outlook for the Tampa mayor as the nation moves closer to the post-COVID era.
The 106-page plan, called Resilient Tampa, leaves few policy stones unturned. It calls for expanding affordable housing, making streets safer and more walkable, supporting small businesses and more fairly promoting economic opportunities across Tampa’s many diverse neighborhoods. Some of the proposals are an extension of what the administration is already doing, or reflect local priorities that have existed for years. Castor wants to extend and modernize the downtown streetcar line, sharpen job development and workforce training efforts and deal broadly with the impacts of climate change, from hardening infrastructure to advancing more efficient and eco-friendly construction and water management practices.
Mayors typically use their budgets to set policy priorities, and in that sense, Resilient Tampa is no different — promising increased spending for sidewalks and for rent, mortgage and utility assistance for those facing eviction. But Castor is going further than any Tampa mayor in recent history in envisioning a city role in shaping the larger community landscape. She wants new initiatives with the Hillsborough County School District to address early learning and the achievement gap among young people of color. She wants to work with philanthropic and financial institutions to create Children’s Savings Accounts, helping low-income families save for college. She also wants to partner on after-school and mentoring programs to boost high school graduation rates and the chance for success.
Castor’s vision of involving the city more directly in education, and in social services generally, marks a sharp departure from previous Tampa mayors. Her goals also depend heavily on building stronger connections with other government agencies, businesses and nonprofits, who would provide the resources for much of the work. Castor rightly avoided setting arbitrary timetables for some major projects, like the commitment to eventually power all city operations with 100 percent renewable energy. It will be important to score some early victories and to manage expectations of what the city can accomplish in the near-term.
As a political document, Resilient Tampa is a way for Castor to reintroduce her agenda after COVID shut down the country and consumed the nation’s attention for an entire year. Rolled out at the midpoint of her four-year term, the plan sets the table for 2022, and comes as the state and federal governments are beefing up climate planning and spending on infrastructure. It also fundamentally asserts the notions of equity and justice in city budgeting and decision-making, reflecting how George Floyd’s murder and the disparate racial impacts of COVID have trickled down to the local consciousness. This was a timely, welcome reminder that government can do two, or even three, big things at once, and that creating a smarter, fairer society begins in our own neighborhoods.
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