9/3/26 – All Eyes Again on South Howard

[Updated] The original post incorrectly identified the original report as the “JMP” report. The firm that completed that is JMT. Also, Tampa Monitor has confirmed the final vote is September 17, 2026. This week is a preview of that item.

Once again this week, the preview is going to be light as the focus is going to be on agenda items 36-39 for the SHFRP. I’ve been trying to get caught up on some offline tasks and honestly not burn myself out. (Related, it should be a rule that SWEEP rotate time of year for neighborhoods so my area of East Tampa isn’t always in late summer where you’re in 100°+ heat indexes and dodging storms).

One item that did catch my eye is item 20, moving $4.2 million out of “Citywide Backup Data Center Upgrades, Dimensions Time Keeping and Analytics, Tampa Police Data Mart Revamp, Oracle Recruiting Module, and ITSM Replacement projects to the Public Safety Communications and Citywide Infrastructure Upgrade projects”. As I wrote in my budget preview for Technology & Innovation department, “Because so many citywide licenses sit in this budget, it’s not always clear which department spending actually belongs to.” “Public Safety Communications” isn’t a software license, but it is “Emergency System equipment for the Police and Fire Departments to include laptops, radios, consoles, and network expansion equipment; to be located at the Tampa Police and Fire Communications Center” which appears to be an ongoing hardware refresh that has spent ~$17M to date. None of which ever touches police or fire budgets from my research. At least I can’t find an IT internal-service fund doing chargebacks. There is $12.7M budgeted for the communications center in TPD budget, and another $3.1M in fire, but this is a different fund in OpenGov. The departments pay for people, not technology. Technology in Tampa appears as a hidden departmental cost.

Innovation is another conversation.

Before the headline item, I’d like to once again thank Mags The Barber for being this summer’s Community Sponsor. If you’d like to promote your business or event with an engaged Tampa audience, please get in touch.

South Howard Flood Relief Project GMP

The project was supposed to be on last week’s agenda as a preview to a September vote but seems to have been pushed for the Rays. Normally, any project over $20 million is previewed for council and the public (per their rules) prior to the actual vote. It’s unclear from reading the memos if that’s the case this week or if they’ve decided with all of the previous discussion, including dominating the stormwater budget workshop they’re moving straight to a vote. There are 4 related agenda items: the $92 million Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) for the construction contract, an agreement with Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority (THEA) for the $11 million they are contributing to the project, a resolution to pull together $50.3 million in funding and a reimbursement resolution for the $26 million that will be borrowed.

It’s doubtful I’ve written about anything more than this subject (a check shows no less than 11 posts focused on SHFRP, another 18 that reference it). The most comprehensive collection is the post I started when the design contract was up for a vote. So I figured I’d take one last stab at trying to put it all in context. I get that there are people opposed to the project for a variety of reasons, mistakes have been made by the administration in communicating the project early on and that $100 million sounds like a massive project. It’s more than what the city is borrowing to give to the Rays.

So if nothing else, I just want to remind everyone what the project is designed for. Rain. Specifically 5 inches over 8 hours. Not 2.5 inches in an hour or 16 inches in a day. Not storm surge flooding from a hurricane. A long, steady rain dropping a little more than half an inch an hour overnight kind of rain.

And right now, the system in the SH project area couldn’t handle it. If next week a slow moving tropical depression, a “rain maker”, rolled through Tampa dropping 5 inches of rain overnight people would wake up to their streets and possibly homes flooded. Every engineer asked has said the proposed project would eliminate that scenario. They’ve even gone as far as to say substantially more rain could fall than the 5 inches and there would be minimal structural flooding. Maybe not to Milton levels of rain, but without it, you have a much higher chance of flooding.

Yes, the price tag has increased. If you haven’t noticed, every price tag has increased. Price a hard drive today compared to 5 years ago when this project was first put in motion. Or a sheet of plywood. Additionally, staff have made clear there was an extension of the trunkline to the Memorial Hospital retention pond that will allow a significant amount of water to be drained out of Palma Ceia Pines before it cascades south to Swann and into Parkland Estates. That section was not scoped in the original JMT study or priced into the $65 million. How much that contributes to the new $100 million price tag is unclear. Or the Swann route compared to bulldozing down through eastern Parkland Estates and cutting through the tree lined streets the JMT report proposed.

And yes, I’ve heard about the Singapore engineers who asked why would we do this and I’m absolutely sure if they had a clearer understanding of the rail line, sewer main locations and a raised expressway plus didn’t have the kind of budget they may enjoy, they might come up with a similar solution to the one on the table. There were several solutions scrapped in the JMT report due to cost. At some point you have to weigh do we do a once in a 150 year project and go down Howard Ave, yes disrupting businesses and lives to solve a problem for $100 million or do we spend $300 million disrupting a different set of people’s lives to solve the same issue. Even if you could spend $300 million and disrupt fewer lives, who’s paying for that?

Let’s talk about price. The project was originally proposed at $65 million. $7.7M has already been spent on design. So there’s a $35 million gap from what’s been approved and budgeted and the GMP. The mayor swept close to a dozen projects that still had some funds appropriated for them and scrapped a couple more — half a million here, a million there — adding up to $11 million. Contrary to some information circulating, the presentation I watched noted the vast majority of those projects are completed. The ones that haven’t included one that was literally a one off project for a complaint that’s been since resolved and another where there were right-of-way issues so the project is being scrapped for now. The remaining $24 million is to come from stormwater capital improvement assessment fees. There is still a strong belief by the Administrator of Mobility and Infrastructure Brad Baird the city will qualify for state grants to eventually recoup the $24M but the grant wouldn’t be secured at the time of the GMP vote.

So what’s going to happen is the project will probably get the 4 votes needed and I’ve already been told — and the parties have all but put the city on notice during public comment — they are going to tie this project up in court. Delay the project until they can try to get someone elected that will kill the project. Or council members who previously approved the design contract and the fund reallocation use the lack of the outside funding for the remaining $24 million to kill the project now for political reasons and the city just eats the $7.7 million spent on design.

Related, it’s interesting to think that Howard Ave was the western boundary of the city of Tampa until the 1950s.