2 min read February 2023 — In an interview with Invest: Sean Sullivan, executive director of Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, talked about the council’s Regional Resiliency Action Plan that will ensure Tampa Bay’s continued growth while preserving its beauty, how the region is addressing environmental issues through infrastructure development and how tourism continues to boom.
What have been some of the key highlights for the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council (RPC)?
One of the major accomplishments from 2022 into early 2023 is the development of the Regional Resiliency Action Plan. It’s a document that has taken three years to develop and is just shy of 100 pages. From November 2022 to January 2023, we had started the rollout, so now the goal is to get cities and counties in the Tampa Bay region to review the plan and consider adopting it. The plan is about continuing to build resilience into the fiber of what we do as it is a menu of best practices that can help us become more resilient. The document covers everything from hurricane preparedness and food insecurity to securing our transportation and infrastructure networks against extreme weather events. In fact, in a recent presentation to the St. Petersburg City Council, the Regional Resiliency Action Plan was presented to them for their review.
As of today, every member government of the RPC in Tampa Bay, of which there are 27, is officially a member of what we call the Tampa Bay Regional Resiliency Coalition, which is an entity within the RPC that we created in 2018. Now, we’ve grown to 33 members, so we’ve gone beyond our geographic boundaries to include the county of Sarasota. And this is great because we all know that we live in a beautiful region, and we have to become more resilient and adapt our policies to preserve the integrity of the region. The Resiliency Coalition was the 16th of its kind in the U.S. and this action plan is the second of its kind in the state of Florida, so we’re just thrilled with the stakeholder engagement with the cities and counties as they have provided input to help develop this plan.
Lastly, we have also developed a model shoreline protection ordinance, and while it’s only three pages long, it still has an abundance of guidance behind it as the policy was developed with input from legal and engineering professionals. It is also a first of its kind in the Tampa Bay region, which the council has adopted within the last six months. In fact, we’re going to present that ordinance to the Redington Beach City Commission for them to consider as it will help protect the shoreline. We are proposing work on mangrove enhancement, which is a nature-based solution, to create an environment that will ultimately improve water quality in the region.
How have the issues related to inflation, affordability, labor and supply chain influenced the market?
We just released a report called the Tampa Bay Environmental Restoration Fund (TBERF) which we have been working on with our fellow organization called the Tampa Bay Estuary Program. It’s an economic valuation of Tampa Bay and it shows that one in every 10 jobs is connected to Tampa Bay. If you extrapolate that out to our population then you have 210,000 jobs that have some direct connection with the Tampa Bay region. We also know that Tampa Bay itself is a huge driver within our economy, so the protection of the bay and its water quality is something that we need to value. Furthermore, we have estimated that there’s a value worth $62,000 to each residential property that has access to the watershed of Tampa Bay. Thus, the importance of protecting the integrity of the bay itself is tied into our economy and recreation as well.
What are some challenges related to the region’s development that the council is keeping track of?
Flooding is a major concern that we have throughout the region, even in some of our inland counties as well. Eastern Pasco County, northeastern Hillsborough County and northern Pinellas County have more frequent high intensity rainfall, particularly during the rainy season, which also coincides with the hurricane season that is generally from June 1 to Nov. 30. This means flooding is a real challenge here in Tampa Bay. As a result, we work to strengthen our drainage systems and work on our transportation infrastructure so that we can move people. We want to avoid significant impacts from flooding, so we have worked to develop strategies throughout the region with our member governments to avoid the impact of intense rain, hurricanes, and storm surges.
Additionally, we do a whole lot of modeling for the cities and counties in this region to determine the specific areas of vulnerability, and then work closely with our federal partners at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Economic Development Administration. We also work with our state partners in the Department of Economic Opportunity, Department of Environmental Management, and the Department of Emergency Environmental Protection. Lastly, we’re working with the military on a resiliency study of MacDill Air Force Base, which employs over 20,000 people in the Tampa Bay region, which is a huge driver in the success of our economy. The southern tip of Tampa, where the base is located, is right on the bay, so that is clearly a vulnerable area. We are working with the military to develop a resiliency plan to help the military installation become more resilient to extreme weather. This has helped MacDill land a new contract with the Department of Defense and a KC-46 refueling tanker aircraft squadron is going to land at the base.
What are some infrastructure projects that you would like to highlight?
Right now, the dollars are starting to trickle down for resiliency projects. There’s a continuous flow from the federal government, but here in Florida the governor created the Resilient Florida program about two years ago. The benchmark is for each county in the state to develop a vulnerability analysis and plan. For instance, the City of Newport Richey experiences some flooding challenges since the downtown is along a river tributary that ultimately goes out to the Gulf. We worked with the city on a federal grant to help develop some conceptual plans that the city then adopted. When the implementation dollars came down from the state, it was awarded an $800,000 grant to implement some of those drainage improvements along the river downtown. The New Port Richey project isn’t underway yet, but the funding has been approved and there are several similar projects throughout the region.
How have you seen the Tampa Bay region grow and evolve throughout your tenure and what is next for the region?
Tampa Bay is the 24th largest metropolitan economy in the U.S. and our GDP is measured about $225 billion annually, so if Tampa Bay were its own country, we would have the 55th largest economy in the world. We also know that property values have increased and even with interest rate hikes and high inflation, the cost of living here in Tampa Bay is still better than your average metropolitan area in the country.
Our region continues to grow. Tourism continues to be the number one industry in Tampa Bay. We have so much to offer in this region and it’s a great place to live. There is abundant sunshine and excellent sports teams. Right now, we’re about to embark on spring training which is a huge economic driver in the Tampa Bay region. We’ve got four major sports teams: the Tampa Bay Rays MLB team that is based in St. Petersburg, the minor league team Dunedin Blue Jays located in Pinellas County, the Pittsburgh Pirates in Bradenton, and the New York Yankees in Tampa. All of these are huge economic drivers.
What is your outlook for the next three to five years?
As the Regional Planning Council, we plan to run an economic impact analysis so that we can understand clearly where our economy is growing and pinpoint areas where we might need to do a little bit more work to help continue our growth. With the rollout of our Regional Resiliency Action Plan, we can help reduce our vulnerability to extreme weather in this region. If we can continue to grow our economy, welcome visitors, harden our infrastructure and collectively bring cities and counties together so that we’re sharing information and learning best practices from each other, then we can all further the advancement of the Tampa Bay region. All this will create more jobs, enhance the building of real estate, protect our seashore and provide nature-based solutions to support our military installations.
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