By: Mitch Perry, The Florida Phoenix<\/p>\n
Saying he wants to build a city that \u201cis the envy of the nation,\u201d former Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn filed paperwork Monday to become a candidate to return to lead City Hall.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis city\u2019s best days are yet to come,\u201d he told a group of reporters standing in front of the Hillsborough County Center in downtown Tampa.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can fix those challenges. We can fill those potholes. We can pave those streets. We can invest in that infrastructure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThat\u2019s not why people hire mayors. That\u2019s not why I\u2019m running for office. I\u2019m running to build a city that is the envy of the nation. To continue down the path that we set out on 10 years ago. We\u2019ve proven we can do it. I\u2019ve already done it. And now it\u2019s time to write our next chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buckhorn previously served as mayor of Florida\u2019s third largest city from 2011 to 2019. Speculation began during his first term in office that he was a potential Democratic candidate for governor. Those rumors grew louder after he formed a political action committee and then won re-election in 2015 with nearly\u00a096% of the vote.<\/p>\n
But in March 2017, he announced he would\u00a0not\u00a0run for governor.<\/p>\n
A political committee supporting Buckhorn has already raised $1.8 million, dwarfing the funding of the other nine candidates who have already filed to run for mayor. That\u2019s not including City Councilman Bill Carlson, who is expected to enter the race.<\/p>\n
Buckhorn said that, if elected, he\u2019ll work on the region\u2019s transportation problems, saying that he fears that without changes the city could encounter traffic jams regularly seen in places like Miami and Atlanta.<\/p>\n
He said he believed the issue had been addressed to a certain extent when Hillsborough County voters in 2018\u00a0approved\u00a0a one-cent sales tax over 30 years that was designed to improve roads and bridges, expand public transportation options, and make streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists.<\/p>\n
But in 2021, the Florida Supreme Court declared the tax unconstitutional.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to go back and pass that referendum again to give us the dedicated revenue source to do big, big projects,\u201d Buckhorn said.<\/p>\n
The Tampa mayoral election is slated to take place on March 2, 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By: Mitch Perry, The Florida Phoenix Saying he wants to build a city that \u201cis the envy of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-233519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}