Mayor of Tampa; Florida

Robert Francis "Bob" Buckhorn Jr. (born July 29, 1958) is the mayor of Tampa,

Florida.

Born in Evanston, Illinois, the eldest of three sons, Buckhorn grew up in Falls Church, Virginia. He graduated in 1980 from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in Political Science, where he was on the college lacrosse team. He is married to Dr. Catherine Lynch Buckhorn and they have two daughters.

Previously, Buckhorn was the Director of Governmental Affairs for the Builders Association of Greater Tampa, and in 1987, became the Special Assistant to Mayor Sandra Freedman. In 1995, Buckhorn was elected Tampa City Council and was reelected to the Tampa City Council for a second term with 75% of the vote.

Having previously come third in the 2003 mayoral election, Buckhorn announced his intention to run again in the Mayoral election, and received an endorsement from outgoing incumbent Pam Iorio.

As Tampa's mayor, Buckhorn has stated he is committed to continuously looking for ways to reduce costs while improving efficiency in city government. In June 2011, he formed the Economic Competitiveness Committee (ECC) to review the City of Tampa’s permitting and regulatory processes and to look for ways to improve the system. The ECC made several recommendations, and the City of Tampa is in the process of instituting those, including the implementation of Accela to allow for permitting to be done online.

Through the Invision Tampa plan, Buckhorn outlined his commitment to creating a more connected, livable city by focusing on the city's underutilized riverfront, generating a strong mix-use pedestrian environment, building links between neighborhoods, and developing an urban pattern that supports transit. He has also invested in the urban core, working to restore the street grid, foster new retail opportunities, and tried to work to attract new high density residential development such as the Residences on the Riverwalk and Skyhouse Tampa.

Buckhorn also secured a Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery Grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to complete the Tampa Riverwalk, which has been in the molding process by city officials for more than 40 years. Once complete, the Riverwalk hopes to generate new possibilities for economic development along the Hillsborough River.

He has also supported the expansion of mass transit  and bike share.

Tampa

Tampa, is a city in and the county seat of Hillsborough County, Florida, United States. It is located on the west coast of Florida on Tampa Bay, near the Gulf of Mexico, and is part of the Tampa Bay Metropolitan Area. The city had a population of 346,037 in 2011.

The current location of Tampa was once inhabited by indigenous peoples of the Safety Harbor culture (most notably the Tocobaga and the Pohoy, who lived along the shores of Tampa Bay). The area was explored by Spanish explorers in the 16th century, resulting in violent conflicts and the introduction of European diseases, which wiped out the original native cultures. Although Spain claimed Florida as part of New Spain, it did not found a colony in the Tampa area, and there were no permanent American or European settlements within today's city limits until after the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1819.

In 1824, the United States Army established a frontier outpost called Fort Brooke at the mouth of the Hillsborough River, near the site of today's Tampa Convention Center. The first civilian residents were pioneers who settled near the fort for protection from the nearby Seminole population, and the small village was first incorporated as "Tampa" in 1849. The town grew slowly until the 1880s, when railroad links, the discovery of phosphate, and the arrival of the cigar industry jump-started its development, helping it to grow from a quiet village of less than 800 residents in 1880 to a bustling city of over 30,000 by the early 1900s.

The Greater Tampa Bay area has over 4 million residents and generally includes the Tampa and Sarasota metro areas. The Tampa Bay Partnership and U.S. Census data showed an average annual growth of 2.47 percent, or a gain of approximately 97,000 residents per year. Between 2000 and 2006, the Greater Tampa Bay Market experienced a combined growth rate of 14.8 percent, growing from 3.4 million to 3.9 million and hitting the 4 million population mark on April 1, 2007. A 2012 estimate shows the Tampa Bay area population to have 4,310,524 people and a 2017 projection of 4,536,854 people.

Tampa was ranked as the 5th best outdoor city by Forbes in 2008. Tampa also ranks as the fifth most popular American city, based on where people want to live, according to a 2009 Pew Research Center study. A 2004 survey by the NYU newspaper Washington Square News ranked Tampa as a top city for "twenty-somethings." Tampa is ranked as a "Gamma+" world city by Loughborough University, ranked alongside other world cities such as Phoenix, Charlotte, Rotterdam, and Santo Domingo.