Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on HART:

Transportation

HART wants funds to plan county transit

By Yvette C. Hammett | Tribune Staff
Published: July 21, 2014

TAMPA — The regional transit board gave a unanimous thumbs down Monday to a plan that would focus most early transit expansion in downtown Tampa. That plan, board members said, could leave people in the rest of the Hillsborough County standing on a corner waiting for a bus that won’t be coming.

Rich Clarendon, senior transportation planner for the county’s Metropolitan Planning Organization, presented a plan to the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority board outlining a study that calls for possible light rail and expanded modern street car service that might use existing freight tracks to operate. It also looked at connections to the planned transit station on Interstate 275 in the West Shore area. The study was a joint project of the MPO and the Tampa Downtown Partnership.

Instead of giving that plan the nod, the HART board voted to ask Hillsborough for funding to hire a specialized planner that can look at all transit needs throughout the county.

Clarendon was asking for a HART recommendation to include the downtown study in the MPO’s long-range transportation plan.

It is imperative that county, state and federal officials all work together to plan transit’s future here, said County Commissioner Sandra Murman, who sits on the HART board. “How is this integrated into what the city and county are doing? We need to work on one plan. We can’t have every agency having its own little plan.”

County Commissioner Kevin Beckner, who also sits on the transit board, said he didn’t readily see how this downtown plan would “connect with everything else.”

HART’S existing Transit Development Plan would double transit throughout Hillsborough County, said HART board member Karen Jaroch. This plan, she said, “would eat the entire apple of a 1-cent sales tax,” something that is being considered to fund expanded transit and roadway expansions in the county. The sales tax would require a referendum.

And, added board member Fran Davin, “everything is not centered around getting in and out of downtown. We need a lot more information. We can’t put all the money in tracks and leave the rest of the county stranded, with no service.”

The board will request at least $500,000 from the county for the transit study.

Commissioner Murman mentioned in this Creative Loafing article on HART:

Hillsborough

HART board to vote on its future next month

Posted By Mitch Perry on Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 1:11 PM

click to enlarge

• HART chair Mike Suarez says goodbye to outgoing board member Anne Madden on Monday.

HART board members today voted unanimously to agree to vote at their August 4 meeting on whether or not to support the proposal brought forward in May by Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill to have the transit agency reconfigured. The new organization would be headed by a new group consisting of the entire County Commission as well as the mayors of Tampa, Plant City and Temple Terrace taking over from the current board.

That vote will come a week before that group, known as the Transportation Economic Development group (or TED, though it is sometimes called the Policy Leadership group) meets for the first time since Merrill dropped the bombshell in late May that it should take over for HART and be the main transit agency making decisions as the county prepares for another tax referendum in 2016.
Although the HART board’s unanimous vote to decide on their own future came with only seven members present towards the conclusion of the meeting, a quick reading of the tea leaves makes it sound like the majority is not in favor of such a change.

HART board chair Mike Suarez, who has been outspoken in disagreeing with the idea, said that as far as he knows the TED group doesn’t have the legal authority to make a change, a notion on which HART attorney David Smith did weigh in.

“I am very reluctant to proceed with road and bridge money [mixing] with transit money, that just is not going to work,” offered board member Fran Davin. Referring to her experience as a Tampa City Council member, Hillsborough County Commissioner and board member of HART, she said she knows that “you cannot mix road and bridge money with transit money.”

But interestingly, County Commissioners and HART board members Kevin Beckner and Sandy Murman said exactly the opposite, saying they both believed “transit” means both buses, streetcars (and possibly rail) and roads. “It’s a matter of repurposing what were doing. It was a no-brainer to chose HART as lead agency,” Beckner said about Merrill’s proposal, which he supports. 
So does Murman, and so does the third member of the HART board who also serves on the County Commission, Mark Sharpe.

Since the announcement by Merrill in late May that the TED group wants to take over HART, it has taken the summer off, with their next meeting scheduled for August 12. That’s when they are expected to unveil the completion of more than a year’s work on their ideas for improving transportation going forward. But there has been radio silence about the idea of reconfiguring HART.
HART attorney David Smith acknowledged that he has not attended any of the TED meetings, saying, “I could not tell you what the articulating vision is — there seems to be some uncertainty there.”

Earlier, two members of the public weighed in on the proposed reconfiguring of the agency.

“It’s fundamentally wrong,” said Ken Roberts with Citizens Organized for Sound Transportation (COST). “It disintegrates the best public agency in the area. He also called it a “naked grab to HART’s access to funds” and “a hostile takeover.”

Calling the change in the composition of the board “much more complex” than Merrill has laid out so far, COST’s Sharon Calvert said a reconfiguration of the board wasn’t in the best interests of HART’s customers.

Davin said that with the consensus being that the County Commission was poised to put another transit tax referendum on the 2016 ballot to pay for more buses and possibly light rail, the last thing it needed to do was create confusion before the public. “How are we going to convince the people of this county to have faith and go ahead an approve a well thought-out plan for better transit?” she mused.

Meanwhile, the board unanimously voted on a motion to make a request to the Hillsborough County Commission for at least $500,000 to help the transit agency with planning. The motion came from Commissioner Mark Sharpe, and followed a statement made by Connect Tampa Bay Executive Director Kevin Thurman suggesting that HART take the lead in moving transportation planning forward. The motion also includes asking the County’s Metropolitan Planning Organization to kick in funds for planning as well.

“Take the lead,” Thurman implored on the board during the public comment portion of the meeting. 

Initially, the request was met with resistance from County Commissioner Sandy Murman, who said that money had already been earmarked to the Transportation Economic Development (also known as the Policy Leadership Group) for outreach planning. That’s the group consisting of County Commissioners and the mayors of Tampa, Plant City and Temple Terrace that county administrator Mike Merrill called for in May to take over the existing HART board.

“This has nothing to do with the Policy Leadership Group,” HART board chairman Mike Suarez told Murman, while Commissioner Sharpe added that the Policy Leadership Group didn’t have the expertise to do such work.

In fact, HART has not had a planner since Mary Shevalier left the agency a couple of years ago.

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on the Port:

Port agrees to slightly lower tax rate

By Yvette C. Hammett | Tribune Staff
Published: July 15, 2014

TAMPA — Taxpayers are getting another slight break in the amount they pay toward Port Tampa Bay operations.

The Tampa Port Authority voted Tuesday to reduce its tax rate slightly. That means that the owners of a $150,000 house with a $50,000 homestead exemption will pay $16.50 in taxes to the port in 2015, compared to the $17.50 they pay this year.

The board will finalize the tax rate after public hearings in September.

Over the past 20 years, the port has cut its tax rate in half, said Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman, who sits on the port board. “That’s a great thing that we are doing, becoming less dependent on taxpayer money.”

Port Tampa Bay has made it a goal to lessen its dependence on property tax receipts and focus on raising more revenue and acquiring more state and federal grants, said Chief Financial Officer Mike Macaluso. And it’s working.

“Over the years, as the port’s financial situation has improved, we have had to rely less” on property taxes, Macaluso said. What the port does receive from property taxes goes only to port infrastructure or projects that directly benefit the public, he said.

Macaluso told the board in May that the port is experiencing higher-than-predicted revenues this year and that lease revenue is up, more money is coming in from the cruise ships and property taxes collections are more robust.

“We’re driving the revenue engine,” Board Member John Grandoff said, and that is important to economic development and job creation.

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune editorial on cruise ships:

Editorials

Protect Tampa Bay and cruise ship industry

Published: July 6, 2014

With the cruise ship industry now building massive megaships that won’t fit under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, Port Tampa Bay officials rightly want to explore ways to keep from being squeezed out of the market.

But it’s essential they don’t allow that effort to justify ventures that would wreck Tampa Bay, which after decades of pollution and abuse has made a remarkable comeback.

At least one of the proposals that may be considered — the construction of a new cruise ship terminal on submerged land near the mouth of the bay — we fear would be hugely destructive.

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, a member of the Tampa Port Authority, is justifiably worried.

“You’re talking about a dredge and fill project in relatively shallow water that’s prime fish habitat. I don’t see how you can do that without tremendous impact,” Buckhorn says. Alas, sometimes in the quest for business, such ecological consequences — which could forever damage the region’s appeal and quality of life — are minimized.

The Florida Department of Transportation, in preparing a report for the port on how to deal with the Skyway issue, lists four options: constructing the new terminal in the bay near the Hillsborough-Pinellas line; replacing the Skyway; building a drawbridge at one end of the Skyway with a new channel for the large ships; or doing nothing.

Other than doing nothing, all the options likely would have some adverse impact, which is to be expected when maintaining the infrastructure — including channel dredging — necessary for commerce.

But when environmental damage is necessary, it’s vital that it be minimized and every precaution be taken against enduring harm.

It is not reassuring that DOT officials, in what they call a “pre-feasibility study,” do not address the possibility that the terminal could cause overwhelming damage to Florida’s largest estuary.

It seems to us this critical resource should have been accorded more concern before proposing projects that might be pursued.

Thanks to a coordinated state, local and federal effort over the past 30 years, the bay is in better shape than it has been in generations. Water quality is vastly improved, seagrasses are returning to the once-barren bottom, and fish numbers have rebounded.

It would be disgraceful if leaders, in the quest to appease one industry, turned the clock back to the days when Tampa Bay was treated as a worthless dump and it lost more than 80 percent of its seagrass beds and nearly half of its mangrove forests.

Without question, the community should strive to sustain and grow its cruise ship industry. As The Tampa Tribune’s Yvette Hammett reports, Tampa’s port served 854,000 passengers in fiscal year 2013, and a report last year found the local cruise ship industry was providing 1,984 jobs and represented $379.7 million in economic activity.

Such numbers are the reason Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman, a member of the Tampa Port Authority, is excited about the potential of a new terminal west of the Skyway. She sees the cruise ship industry as a “tremendous tourist driver” and believes a terminal that would accommodate the larger ships could put passengers’ numbers well over 1 million

Even so, she also acknowledges, “We have to be cautious. I am not going to do anything that will hurt the environment.”

Though we’re skeptical, perhaps there is a way to develop a new terminal on the bay’s bottom without causing an environmental disaster. Tampa Bay’s welfare needs to be a central concern as port officials determine their course of action.

Buckhorn is dubious that a new terminal would attract much more business. The smaller — the term is relative — cruise ships are not going to suddenly disappear. And Buckhorn wonders if over time the port’s cruise ship facilities might more profitably be transitioned into waterfront residential complexes.

There is a lot to study and debate. The port is an economic engine — $15 billion in annual economic impact — and its continued success should be a regional priority. But so should the health of Tampa Bay.

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on THHI:

Politics

St. Louis advocate named new Hillsborough homeless director

By Keith Morelli | Tribune Staff
Published: July 4, 2014   |   Updated: July 5, 2014 at 01:14 PM

TAMPA — Less than two years after taking the helm of homeless advocacy in Hillsborough County, Maria Pellerin Barcus is calling it quits and a new director is coming on board.

Barcus, 62, is retiring from the directorship of the Tampa Hillsborough Homeless Initiative in August, giving way to Antoinette Hayes Triplett, currently head of homeless services for the city of St. Louis.

“She’s done an incredible job in St. Louis,” said Kathleen Beach, executive director of Gateway 180, a shelter in St. Louis for homeless women and children. “You guys have a good one there.”

Beach said Triplett, during her 13-year tenure as head of homeless services, has changed the culture of how the city deals with people on the street.

“It came during her time here,” Beach said. “It used to be you had to be a city of St. Louis resident to get services from the approved housing agencies, and about four years ago Antoinette met with other (care providers) in the metro area, and they decided people should not have boundaries. If they come to us and need help, we will take care of them no matter where they come from.”

St. Louis, Beach said, now takes care of its homeless population.

“I would say the city is very friendly,” she said. “People come here from other jurisdictions, where it may be illegal to be homeless. Here, nobody goes to jail. A homeless mom sleeping in her car with her kids isn’t put in jail. Outreach teams get help for that family.”

Beach said St. Louis’ loss is Tampa’s gain.

“I see her as a visionary,” Beach said of Triplett. “She takes a concept and pulls it together with so many large pieces to make things happen.”

She said this summer Triplett is spearheading a push to get homeless veterans into apartments as soon as they are identified. She’s more than a bureaucrat, Beach said.

“It’s easy for somebody to be in an administrative position, to be in a government office and stay in that government office,” Beach said. “But Antoinette actually goes out and does outreach. In encampments along the riverfront, she knows them by name.”

Triplett was mentioned in a federal Housing and Urban Development newsletter last year, which praised her BEACH (Beginning of the End: Abolishing Chronic Homelessness) program that coordinates the efforts of governmental, charitable and for-profit businesses to cut into homelessness in St. Louis.

“Our case managers and other partners … are doing amazing work towards ending chronic homelessness,” Triplett said in the article. She said 73 percent of the chronically homeless counted in St. Louis in January 2013 were a part of the program and more than a third of those had been placed in apartments.

The program, funded through a $1.25 million HUD grant, uses 20 agencies to provide mental health services and a stable place to live for the chronically homeless in St. Louis. The Tampa Hillsborough Homeless Initiative funnels $7 million from federal, state and local funds to front-line vendors who provide services and homes for those on the street.

Triplett did not return messages left last week for an interview.

In St. Louis, she oversees the distribution of grants to a network of about 50 nonprofits, according to an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Triplett does have her critics in St. Louis.

The Rev. Larry Rich, a homeless advocate with the New Life Evangelistic Center in St. Louis, said Triplett may be good at her job, which is getting money and distributing it, but she’s no real advocate for the homeless.

“If you talk to the people who get that money, they will tell you what a wonderful job she is doing,” he said in a phone interview this week. “She’s a wonderful, good person, a dedicated person, but when it comes down to being an advocate, she’s not an advocate. She’ll be a CEO like she is here. She’s trying to get federal money, but there’s a big gap between the money from the federal government and the homeless.”

He cited a homeless hotline in St. Louis. “It’s wonderful on paper,” he said. “You call and get placed. But three-quarters are not getting the service. They are turned away by hotline operators because the providers are not able to find a place for them. It takes six months to get into housing.”

Officials in Tampa say they have made a good choice in hiring Triplett.

Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman, who serves on the board of directors for the Tampa Hillsborough Homeless Initiative, said Triplett’s leadership will bring the local program to the next level.

“When Maria announced her retirement, the timing just happened,” Murman said. A group from the initiative went to St. Louis to learn about the programs there and met Triplett, she said.

“The group,” she said, “met this wonderful person, Antoinette, and her staff that had just turned around St. Louis, how they work with homeless and develop partnerships in the community.

“We all agreed that was something we were looking for in the next phase of our operation,” Murman said. “I think it’s a great opportunity to align ourselves with a great community like St. Louis, Missouri, that really takes care of its homeless, which is what we want to do here.”

Barcus, who came to Tampa 17 months ago to usher in sweeping changes in how the city was addressing the homeless issue, helped enact mandates from the federal government that switched the focus from providing services to placing homeless into transitional and permanent homes. Her job was to persuade the local advocates and governments to buy into the new philosophy.

“We get people housed,” she said, “and then work with them to sustain that housing.”

She is retiring to spend more time with family, she said. She will continue to live in Tampa but plans more visits to her children and grandchildren in Atlanta and Chicago. She will continue to consult on homeless issues, she said.

There is still work to be done, she said, mentioning two goals she was unable to achieve.

One is the creation of an organizational chart for all the advocate agencies; the other is the finalization of the community plan that lays out the existing strategy and includes all the agencies and advocates.

“I’m confident it will be completed before too long,” she said. “There are a lot of components there, but I think it’s close. It’s a question of pushing over the finish line.”

In the short time she was in charge of the initiative, formerly known as the Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County, Barcus made many changes, the effects of which may not be known for years.

“Yes, I am pleased,” she said. “I think some major things were put into motion, though it will take a while to see the results. I think the community as a whole will see the benefits of what we started by the 2016 count.”

Her methods have met with some success. According to a homeless count earlier this year, the number of people living on the streets of Hillsborough County dropped from the year before and 188 chronically homeless people were placed into apartments or houses in 2013 under the housing-first program.

The Tampa Hillsborough Homeless Initiative in February sent out 300 volunteers who tallied 2,243 homeless men, women and children. The number was down slightly from 2,275 counted in 2013.

Barcus took over amid controversy about the count in 2011, which tallied more than 10,000 homeless in Hillsborough County. But that count became suspect after it was revealed that discrepancies in the method greatly inflated the numbers. The surveys in 2013 and 2014, under Barcus’ watch were more realistic.

This year’s count, she said, was meticulously undertaken.

“We were able to shed some light on the number of homeless we have and get rid of some major misconceptions there,” she said.

“The upside was that there weren’t 10,000 homeless in Hillsborough County. That was an overwhelming number. Now there’s a sense of, ‘We can deal with this.’ ”

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on Tampa cruise industry:

Study: Skyway to hobble Tampa cruise industry

By Yvette C. Hammett | Tribune Staff
Published: June 30, 2014   |   Updated: June 30, 2014 at 07:23 AM

TAMPA — Port Tampa Bay’s cruise ship business could go from thriving to shriveling without a plan to get the newest and largest of these floating cities past the limitations of the Sunshine Skyway.

The Florida Department of Transportation is preparing this week to release the results of a study examining four options to address the issue: do nothing, replace the Skyway, build a cruise ship terminal near the Hillsborough-Pinellas county line in Tampa Bay to avoid the bridge issue, or build a drawbridge at one end of the Skyway with a new channel for the giant ships to navigate.

The decision will likely be based on return on investment, transportation officials say. And that has yet to be studied.

“The Tampa Bay region has enjoyed a significant amount of cruise ship traffic through mainly the facilities at Channelside in Port Tampa Bay,” transportation department spokesman John O’Brien wrote in an email. “This business generates a significant economic impact for the region and the State of Florida. For many years, however, the cruise industry has been building ships which no longer can enter Tampa Bay …”

The state agency sanctioned the study in April 2013 to review the options and get input from stakeholders, O’Brien said.

The transportation department’s seaport manager, Meredith Dahlrose, would not release the report in draft form last week under a public records request, saying the agency wanted to wait until it had finished compiling stakeholder comments.

Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman, who sits on the Tampa Port Authority Board, said she is eager to see the new study.

She said she hopes it finds that the best option for keeping cruise ship business growing here is to build a new cruise ship terminal on submerged lands Hillsborough County owns in Tampa Bay, west of the Skyway.

“We are getting close to a million passengers right now, and that is a very significant increase over recent years,” Murman said. “We’ve got a great relationship with the cruise companies. I know ships are getting bigger and I don’t want to lose that momentum, because it’s a huge economic driver for our area.”

Port Tampa Bay is the eighth-largest cruise port in the U.S., said Andrew Fobes, director of public affairs for the port.

He wrote in an email that the area is appealing to cruise ship companies because of its proximity to Caribbean cruise destinations, Tampa International Airport, a strong market in people driving to the port, and the attractions in the area.

Fobes said Tampa’s cruise business is robust.

Royal Caribbean International will add a second ship in Tampa in November, he said, and AIDA Cruises will use Tampa as a port of call beginning this December. AIDA will bring in a larger vessel the following season.

The port served 854,000 cruise passengers in fiscal year 2013 on five ships representing the world’s largest cruise lines: Carnival Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean International, Holland America Line and Norwegian Cruise Line.

A report titled The Local and Regional Economic Impacts of the Port of Tampa, completed in 2013, states that the cruise ship industry was, at the time, providing 1,984 jobs and had a “total value of economic activity” of $379.7 million.

Local businesses and suppliers to the cargo and cruise industries at the port, according to the 2013 report, made $933.1  million in local purchases and were responsible for generating $90.9 million in wages and salaries.

This is no time to slow down, Murman said.

“We have the potential, if we do an off-site terminal, to increase our cruise passengers to up to 3 million,” she said. “I am hoping the study reveals that this would be a good move for us.”

Because Port Tampa Bay is updating its master plan, the timing is ideal, Murman said.

O’Brien said any future use of the study’s findings would have to be coordinated with the state Department of Transportation.

It is likely that the cruise ships would invest in any new infrastructure built for their benefit.

In discussing the issue in 2012 when the Port Authority began studying a Pinellas-area terminal, a Carnival Cruise Line spokesman said Carnival would be interested in a port that avoided the Skyway.

He also said it is unlikely that any new Carnival ships would be able to operate from the current Channelside facility.

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Bay Business Journal article on EDC:

Jun 5, 2014, 5:51pm EDT

County: EDC communication issue is ‘fixable’

Chris Wilkerson

Deputy Editor- Tampa Bay Business Journal

Note to Tampa Bay executives and elected officials: When Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp. CEO Rick Homans has a lot of appointments to make at once, he starts texting at 6:22 a.m.

Homans reached out to all seven members of the Hillsborough Board of County Commissioners to set up individual meetings after the EDC and he personally were harshly criticized during Wednesday’s commissioner’s meeting.

“I got the message loud and clear from the commissioners that I need to do a much better job of communicating with them as a board and individually,” he said from the EDC’s new offices in Bank of America Plaza in downtown Tampa.

“First of all, all of this is fixable,” said County Commissioner Al Higginbotham after a Thursday lunch meeting in Tampa. “Rick is doing a good job and getting big wins.”

Higginbotham reiterated that he felt like Homans and the EDC needed to do a better job of communicating with the commissioners so they understand where the EDC is spending its time and resources.

County Commissioner Sandy Murman agreed that the situation is not unresolvable. “It can be fixed,” she said

“Somewhere along the way [Homan’s] attention has been diverted,” she told the Tampa Bay Business Journal. “The communication has not been there. We are just not getting it.”

Murman echoed Higginbotham’s concerns about cross-county partnerships that would divert the EDC’s attention from growing and recruiting companies and creating new jobs.

“It seems like, in the past six months, we haven’t heard about any new wins. We’ve been hearing about regionalism,” she said.

She likened the EDC’s actions to those of a child who stops bringing home his report card. “You know when they are hiding the report card, there’s something wrong,” she said.

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on Bus Rapid Transit and managed lanes:

TRANSPORTATION

Study explores toll lanes for faster commutes in Tampa area

By Yvette C. Hammett | Tribune Staff 
Published: June 3, 2014   |   Updated: June 3, 2014 at 10:16 PM

TAMPA — A study exploring whether express interstate toll lanes are the key to a faster commute could be complete — at least in draft form — by summer’s end.

The Florida Department of Transportation is driving the study, assisted by other regional transportation agencies looking for ways to maximize the existing road system and loosen gridlock. It is considering express toll lanes on Interstate 275, on I-75 and on I-4.

Bus Rapid Transit — or running buses on managed highway lanes — is a big part of the study, said Scott Pringle, an FDOT consultant, who updated the Metropolitan Planning Organization on the study Tuesday.

“We’re focusing on long-distance commuter trips,” like bus rides between Wesley Chapel and downtown Tampa, Pringle said. The study looks at key destinations, ridership-heavy areas, station placement and cost.

Express toll lanes are already in use and successful in various cities around the country and local transportation planners are tapping their knowledge to determine how to tackle issues like bus station placement along or on interstates and how to handle parking for those using the bus service.

“We are identifying projects that are like Tampa, reaching out to other cities and asking what they would do differently,” Pringle said. So far, he said, a common theme is parking issues. Not having enough space for commuters to park and catch a bus is “an indication of success, because demand is greater than expected,” he said. And this area needs to consider that.

When the study group looked at what Miami-Dade is doing on Interstate 95, Pringle said, they saw that just adding the express toll lanes increased bus ridership by 30 percent, due to guaranteed speed and allowing buses to bypass congestion.

“I’m so excited about this,” said Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandra Murman, who represents the fast-growing South Shore area of the county. But, she said, she was disappointed that the proposed express toll lanes didn’t extend further south, where most of the county’s new affordable housing is going in.

Murman said she would at least like to see the express lanes go as far south as the Selmon Expressway, if not to Big Bend Road, where rush-hour traffic is a daily nightmare for commuters.

Lee Royal, government liaison for FDOT, said future plans for the toll lanes will include south Hillsborough County. She said the study will first look at areas with the highest bus ridership.

“If we had more (bus) service, we know we would have more ridership,” Murman said. She urged the study group to consider traffic traveling north from South Shore on I-75, in planning the toll lanes.

“I’m a big fan of this concept,” said Steve Polzin, an MPO board member and director of the University of South Florida’s Center for Urban Transportation Research. Public input will be critical, he said, because commuters need to know what areas will be served.

Tampa City Councilwoman Lisa Monteleone, another MPO board member, urged the study group to get more public input on the front end of the study. County Commissioner Mark Sharpe agreed, saying public input on the front end is important.

Joe Lopano, chief executive officer of Tampa International Airport, called the presentation “a good first step. We all recognize that we have a problem today, but we need to look out 20 years when the airport will have double the number of passengers.”

And young people will want to use this express bus system, he said. They much prefer sitting and having access to wifi for texting, twittering and emailing than driving, he said.

“Other communities are roaring forward” with similar express lane plans, Sharpe said. “The public wants this and it takes a long time,” so roaring forward is the way to proceed.

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Bay Times story on Metropolitan Ministries:

New housing program offers hope to the homeless

• By Zack Peterson, Times Staff Writer

Monday, June 2, 2014 6:22pm

TAMPA — Three months ago, when she was homeless, Danielle Price would wake up in the front seat of her car and check her baby for bugbites.

At the time, she was struggling with alcohol. She was sleeping in random parking lots, alienated from her oldest son, Mason. She was afraid that child protection services would take Maddox, her 6-month-old.

Price, 28, finally sought refuge at Hope Hall, a $1.2 million partnership between Hillsborough County and Metropolitan Ministries. Completed May 1, the program provides free emergency short-term housing for 48 families and single women.

It comes in the wake of embarrassing revelations last year about the county’s Homeless Recovery program, which for years funneled millions of public dollars to slum owners while placing families in unsafe living conditions. The Tampa Bay Times received a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the program, and its eventual shutdown by the county.

A roomful of officials gathered Monday at Metropolitan Ministries for a tour of the new facilities. They listened to Price’s story and applauded the nonprofit’s breadth of resources, which include GED classes, a guaranteed three meals a day and workforce preparation.

County Commissioner Sandy Murman acknowledged the Housing Recovery debacle, which she coined the “dark cloud” hanging over homeless services in Hillsborough County. She said Hope Hall will be a “bright light” that restores confidence among families trying to get back on their feet.

“It’s really going to take us forward,” Murman said. “This partnership is going to enable people to do so many things.”

Tim Marks, president and CEO of Metropolitan Ministries, said tenants can stay at Hope Hall for up to four months. He said several factors will keep the program high-quality: 24-hour staffers, counseling and child care, case workers who help families locate new jobs and housing.

Despite being short-term housing, Hope Hall should generate healthy outcomes, Marks said. If families need more time, they can graduate to Uplift U, a program that allows families to stay another six to nine months.

“What we’re finding,” Marks said, “is that one year after leaving that program, 97 percent are living in stable housing.”

After three weeks living in room 156 at Hope Hall, Price said she’s already noticed a difference. She found work at the Salvation Army near University Mall and stopped abusing alcohol. She communicates regularly with her sons. Once she nails down housing, she plans on leaving the center as soon as next week.

“All I’m waiting for,” Price said, “is my bus card.”

Zack Peterson can be reached at (813) 226-3446 or zpeterson@tampabay.com.