Has Tampa Bay lost his stomach due to a big idea?

Tampa and Orlando are 90 miles apart, but the two cities seem to live in completely separate universes.

That came to mind last week after an Orlando private group announced that it had set aside $2.5 billion to attract the Tampa Bay Rays or another Major League Baseball team. Orlando Dreamers said it has received “preliminary” written and verbal commitments from qualified investors, and is based on the momentum that brings the franchise to central Florida. Financial supporters include Orlando Super Lawyer John Morgan, acclaimed “for the people.”

Is Orlando true? There are no clues. But let’s be our neighbor and assume that the money is there. The commitment includes $1.5 billion in team acquisitions and another $1 billion for the stadium. That should be something everyone should pay attention to. In particular, Tampa Bay, a stadium will sign a grand destruction of the Rays in March.

But I’m not here to talk about the Rays, St. Petersburg Stadium’s fiasco, or Orlando. My concern is big: Did Tampa Bay lose his stomach due to a big idea?

That was my first thought when St. Pete’s Rays signed. It then collapsed without Plan B. It was a response last year that Hillsboro County cut its signature infrastructure tax period in half. That came to mind after conservatives began pushing the Bay Area back and forth into mass transport for years. And it’s been bubbled for months as local leaders respond to last year’s hurricanes and insist that it’s time to focus on basics.

Tampa, for example, recently announced that it has committed tens of millions of dollars to sewer upgrades, filling 11,445 pot holes since 2021. Heck, I was at Olyn Mott last week. However, storm drains and potholes are government 101. Keeping them is like wearing socks. So why do we count chores as a result?

Ironically, this notion that we should choose between basics and bigger things, just as Tampa Bay has grown. But we did both at the same time, so we grew. Certainly not all big ideas are great. Regional transport authorities have proven their bust. Rescuing the old Gandhi Bridge was a money hole. Bidding for the Olympics seemed stupid. However, some ideas blossomed over time. Others have made the mirrors shine that help us with our strengths and weaknesses.

Most importantly, these big ideas sparked conversations among lively citizens, questioning the way we do things old and bringing new voices to the table. Neil Cosentino, Ed Tráncque and Mark Sharp were able to get you crazy, but they were creative, positive and good at working with the phone. Mary Anne Stiles brings a towering character to civic life, and Rick Homans brings his data and charts. I’ve only mentioned a few things, but they and others all believe in this community and worked to make it richer, more dynamic, inclusive and accountable.

Tampa Bay has plenty to showcase it, from local water operators to Tampa General Hospital, which has been reimagined as an academic medical center. We made the schools better, the police and firefighters stronger, and the tourist destinations more attractive. It also built new commercial industries in communications, security and bioscience. Even some failures have moved from Hillsboro’s proposal to elect mayors across the county to efforts to build local rail and bus lines. The chatter of that era made pictures of big cities on the way.

But I’ve now heard none of it from government, business or civic leaders – and it’s infuriating. We went crazy because we could do potholes or something else. You can do sewer and other things. We can do something else with rays. You can go to Tampa Riverwalk, and other places like Downtown Clearwater. No matter what we do, we can always do something else.

My dear friend Stacey Frank had the rules. It was not enough to clarify the problem. What are you going to do about it? In that spirit, I kick off the conversation with three ideas to deal with. Here’s a brief look at it and explore more later.

One is that Hillsboro will need to convert its unused school campus into homes for teachers. There is plenty of excess space and what teachers save on housing and transportation could result in a 50% pay rise. We’ll talk about recruitment tools.

The second is that we need to consider rainwater as a valuable natural resource, not just a danger. This means investing in capture and storage technologies that reduce flooding while reusing water for irrigation, groundwater charge farming, and other sensible projects.

The third is a local marshall plan to develop elected leaders of tomorrow. Why don’t areas that are experiencing great growth attract fresh faces to the political process? The parties are not solutions, and neither embraces a slide into extremism.

Oh, let’s go back to the corner with the rays while we do it.