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Incorporation idea floated once again

A Tampa Palms resident, whose secession move failed in 1997, thinks the benefits of New Tampa being a city outweigh the infrastructure costs.

By RODNEY THRASH
Published March 6, 2005

NEW TAMPA - Edwin Benton looks at his property tax bill and, as he puts it, the picture ain't pretty.

"For years the city of Tampa looked out here as an opportunity to get easy revenue," the Tampa Palms homeowner said. "We're not getting our money's worth in services."

He would if New Tampa was its own city, said Joseph Caetano, who lives and owns a business in Tampa Palms. On Wednesday, he told a crowd of 130 how he planned to make New Tampa, the city, a reality.

"If Temple Terrace can run a city with $5-million, we can run a city," Caetano said.

New Tampa has a taxable value of $3.5-billion, according to the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser's Office, and pays about $22-million a year in taxes into the city.

Under Caetano's plan, New Tampa would outsource all of its city services much as Weston does in Broward County. Weston has a mayor, a four-person City Commission and three city employees (a city manager, an assistant city manager and a city clerk) who work out of an office complex that Weston rents for $90,000 a year. Beyond that, Caetano did not offer specifics.

But while many applauded the sentiment, some wondered if the costs would outweigh the benefits.

The city is helping pay for more than $200-million in road projects in the New Tampa area, said Shawn Harrison of Hunter's Green, who is New Tampa's representative on the Tampa City Council. "These are all projects that didn't exist six years ago," he said.

If New Tampa seceded from Tampa, would the money for those projects vanish?

Harrison said he wasn't sure. But he does know there are other implications to consider.

"We'd have to figure out a way to provide water to the new city, solid waste, stormwater," he said. "All the infrastructure needs other than transportation would still have to be funded somehow through the new city."

For Jim Davison, a physician who lives in Hunter's Green, the cost of self-rule is too great.

"What are we unhappy with here in New Tampa?" he asked. "Is it the services that we don't think we're getting?"

The area, he said, is poised to receive more ambulances and ballfields.

"If you think that incorporating us is going to get an ambulance faster, that's not going to happen," Davison said.

What will happen, he said, is that "our bills are going to go up."

Harvey Alkow of Tampa Palms suggested that, instead of self-government, New Tampa work on becoming more politically active.

"We don't have enough people that come out and represent us," he said.

Nor did he think Caetano laid out a clear enough cost basis for becoming a city.

"If we're going to do anything, we've got to know numbers," he said. "Exact numbers."

Getting those numbers is the next step, Caetano said.

"We need a feasibility study," he said.

That was the problem the last time Caetano initiated a secessionist movement in 1997. There were no surveys done to gauge the community's interest in the proposal and support was isolated among a few people, namely Caetano.

State Sen. Victor Crist, then a representative for the area, sponsored legislation asking the county to study the feasibility of incorporation. But when the Hillsborough County legislative delegation met in January 1998 to consider Crist's bill, they killed the idea.

Crist isn't on board with renewed incorporation efforts. Not yet, anyway. He told the Times in November that several prerequisites would have to be met before he would consider endorsing Caetano's proposal. One of his stipulations was that New Tampa include portions of the low-income area around the University of South Florida in the new city.

Not if he has anything to do with it, Caetano said Wednesday.

"We don't want them in the city," he said. "They can stay where they're at. They require too much services and they pay no taxes."

- Rodney Thrash can be reached at 813 269-5313 or rthrash@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 5, 2005, 08:12:04]