The Wall Street Journal says Tampa is for the cool kids | Editorial
Tampa, a city so cool it’s hot. This week, the Wall Street Journal gave Tampa a chef’s kiss that is a chamber of commerce’s dream. Walkable! Loved by Gen Z and Millennials! A great place to visit, a greater place to live! The travel piece leads off with this sentence: “Millennials disenchanted with Miami’s flashiness and the car-centric urbanism of most Sunbelt cities have found a new Gulf Coast getaway. That would be Tampa.” Miami? Passé. Tampa? It’s got it all: sophisticated dining, ambiance, a great bar scene, the best vibe. Ditch the car, the article says. Instead, walk, amble, stroll and saunter or take the trolley or a bike or a scooter or a ferry. It’s already loved by older folks — and now by the young. Is the essay a bit over the top? Commuters who brave Dale Mabry, Gandy Boulevard or the Howard Frankland might not recognize the Tampa extolled in this sentence: “Millennials and Gen Zers aren’t as symbiotically tied to cars as older generations, and you can get by without one here, thanks to a downtown extra-welcoming to saunterers and cyclists.” But let’s accept the praise, and keep fighting the “car-centric urbanism.”
Farmers fallout. It’s bad news that Farmers Insurance is dropping home and auto policies across Florida, potentially leaving tens of thousands of policyholders looking for coverage. It’s also more evidence of an unbending reality: Florida is a high-risk state, and rates are likely to keep rising for those who can get private insurance at all. That’s the actuarial reality, absent a radical, fundamental rethink of how properties are insured in Florida. Still, it’s not helpful when Gov. Ron DeSantis blithely touts his insurance reforms to a radio host: “I think (insurance companies are) going to wait through this hurricane season, and then I think they’re going to be willing to deploy more capital to Florida. Knock on wood, we won’t have a big storm this summer.” We shouldn’t be relying on superstition to save the Florida property insurance market, particularly since it hasn’t even been a year since the state endured Hurricane Ian, its most expensive hurricane ever. Florida needs to make some of its own luck by doing more to seriously reform the insurance marketplace.
Energy inefficiency. Gov. Ron DeSantis has quietly rejected about $377 million in federal dollars for energy efficiency and electrification, including improvements to cut consumption and rebates for buying energy-efficient home appliances. Forget politics and remember the practical: We all benefit when less energy is used to cool our homes and cook our meals. It’s silly not to help Floridians save money on their skyrocketing energy bills. After all, the cheapest energy of all is energy that is never used in the first place.
Editorials are the institutional voice of the Tampa Bay Times. The members of the Editorial Board are Editor of Editorials Graham Brink, Sherri Day, Sebastian Dortch, John Hill, Jim Verhulst and Chairman and CEO Conan Gallaty. Follow @TBTimes_Opinion on Twitter for more opinion news.
