Tampa, Fl
From: Eye
On Tampa Bay
Posted by: Dr. Jim Davison and Sharon Calvert
All taxpayers are being hit hard by raging inflation and skyrocketing gas prices. Hillsborough County has yet to refund one penny of the unlawfully collected $512 MILLION illegal All for Transportation tax back to the taxpayers.
Some Hillsborough County commissioners and County staff don't care. Those who want to raise taxes at this time are not compassionate people. 70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and these commissioners want to unnecessarily burden Hillsborough county taxpayers with higher taxes. They want to unnecessarily burden struggling businesses with higher taxes.
Hillsborough County is hosting 3 more transportation meetings this week at 6pm - tonight at the Northdale Recreation Center, tomorrow night at the All People's Community Center and Thursday at the Riverview Public Library.
On February 9th Hillsborough County did a test run at the Jan Platt Library
where they unleashed their propaganda campaign to sell its latest massive sales
tax hike. This rail tax go round will take an estimated $18 billion dollars
from the taxpayers, businesses and economy in Hillsborough.
These meetings are intentionally NOT called Town Hall meetings where those who attend can make public comments. The County does NOT want the public to hear comments made by others because they fear those telling the truth will destroy their false messaging.
Pushing another $18 Billion rail tax, Hillsborough County is telling the public information that is not true, filtering out information that is true and using their position to deceive.
The public is handed a handout upon entering the county's transportation meeting that is Hillsborough County's “Executive Summary of the 2045 Long Range Transportation Plan” (LRTP). The LRTP is a federally and state mandated document required to be created by the Transportation Planning Organization (TPO). The TPO was formerly known as the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO).
The LRTP is NOT a County produced document. The TPO has failed the residents and taxpayers of Hillsborough County for decades by pushing costly rail and transit over fixing local roads.
As we posted here, the TPO's 2045 LRTP is very flawed and is a congestion creation plan. The 2045 LRTP was passed in 2020 and contains $32 BILLION of Federal, State and Local revenues over the next 23 years. It contains the same Sales Tax revenues as the unlawful 2018 All for Transportation (AFT rail tax.
The TPO never removed the AFT sales tax revenues from the LRTP even after AFT was ruled illegal and unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court. Why?
Because
the County wants plans to put a 30 year $18 BILLION AFT
2.0 rail tax on the November ballot.
Because the rail cartel members are a majority of those who sit on the TPO Board. Because the Tampa Centric 5 Democrat county commissioners sit on the Board and approved the TPO's costly flawed plan. Because the TPO has been pushing costly rail over fixing our roads for decades. Because the TPO is part of the rail cartel.
Once inside the County's transportation meeting, the public is "greeted" with a series of storyboard charts. These charts were filled with disinformation, misinformation and misleading information.
The County even
used an extremely misleading TPO logo'd chart titled "State of the System
2021" with information that was created made up by the
TPO in January 2022. None of the numbers used on that chart were contained in
the actual "State of the System 2021" report. The TPO created this
chart that is deceptively named by inserting made up claims their flawed LRTP
was to accomplish. This is outright fraud!
There is a reason the Hillsborough County budget is an abomination of confusion. The County relies on the public not understanding the budget so they can tell the public what the County wants them to know to do what the County wants them to do....pass huge unnecessary tax hikes.
The County created their "storyboard" charts to present to the public from charts County staff presented to the commissioners at the September 23, 2021 Transportation Workshop. The charts for the public leave out these charts.
It appears the County BACKED into their "NEEDS" "WANTS" from the total revenues estimated to come from a new huge 1% sales tax hike AND a big gas tax hike.
To read more Click Here: Shameful! Hillsborough County Deceptive Transportation "Open Houses
This post is contributed by EYE ON TAMPA BAY. The views expressed in this post are the blog publisher's and do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher of BayPost Internet.
Cross Posted with permission from: Eye On Tampa Bay
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