Andy Ross, Mayor, City of Temple Terrace
July 2026 — Temple Terrace, which was one of many incorporated during Florida’s 1925 land boom, is directing substantial resources toward crucial but often overlooked infrastructure projects, according to Mayor Andy Ross. In an interview with Invest:, Ross spoke of the need to look forward, even as the city celebrates its centennial year. “I think it’s important for us to celebrate and understand our heritage, but only because it informs our future. I really want to focus on the next hundred years, not the last hundred years,” Ross said.
How has the city celebrated its centennial year?
We’ve had a tremendous year filled with a lot of community events. One thing I like to point out about the centennial celebration as a note of interest is that 1925 was a big year in the state of Florida. I think there were more cities incorporated in 1925 than in any other year in the state’s history. It was the last year of the big land boom of the 1920s. Then toward the end of 1925, the bottom fell out of the real estate boom in Florida. So, some of those cities that incorporated in ’23, ’24, and ’25 disbanded and no longer exist. We’re one of the survivors.
When I met with the Centennial Committee, one of the first things that I emphasized was that I didn’t think this year should just be a look in the rear-view mirror, or looking at a bunch of old black and white photographs of the 1920s and dream about what things were like and the good old days and all that. I think it’s important for us to celebrate and understand our heritage, but only because it informs our future. I really want to focus on the next hundred years, not the last hundred years.
What is the most important area now for the future of the city?
If you look at our budget, we have been very focused on the non-glittery stuff, the infrastructure, the bones of the city. That wasn’t just a result of the hurricanes last year. We have been doing that since about 2020. In our budget, we’ve directed a lot of resources toward things that people don’t really see: sewer mains, water pipes, stormwater, roads, and the bones.
That’s difficult for elected officials to do because they all want to build something glittery and say, Oh, look what I built. I built this park. I’ve got my name on it. I’ve got my name on this building, and I’m going to leave this as my legacy for the future. That’s great until the stormwater doesn’t flow, or the sewer system doesn’t work, or the lift stations don’t work. So, we’ve really focused on infrastructure.
That was important because, for a variety of reasons, including the economic downturn in 2008 and some of the struggles that we had subsequently, a lot of that maintenance was deferred. A lot of cities had the same issue. When you’re struggling under debt or some other challenge, that’s not the time to dig up and do an $8 million sewer main project.
We’ve worked hard to put the city on a good financial footing. We’ve paid down a lot of debt. We restructured the debt we have, and we have very little debt for a city of our size. As a result, we’ve freed up a lot of capital to do some of the things that are not really sexy. They don’t get a lot of headlines, but they are important: the lift stations, the sewer stations, the water system. We continue to work on those things, and we’ve made a lot of headway.
What are some of the key challenges for the city now?
Affordable housing is always key. Although I like to say that affordable housing kind of implies subsidized housing, and that’s not really what we’re talking about. It is about the workforce housing that people can afford. That also relates to the talent pipeline, which I think we do a great job of providing given that we have the University of South Florida here, Florida College, University of Tampa, and Hillsborough Community College.
Transportation continues to be our Achilles’ heel. We just don’t have a lot of good transportation options, and traffic congestion keeps building. I don’t have an easy solution to that, but I do think we’ll get there. Transportation is probably the stickiest thing in our region.
Adding to that, one of the things that all local cities feel, not just Temple Terrace, is this constant dealing with the state government and dealing with the state preemptions of local control. If the government is looking for statewide policies to make housing more attainable for people, it preempts certain things like the Live Local Act. But at the same time, if that isn’t done surgically, you erode the local community’s ability to control how that growth occurs.
What is the outlook for the city in the next few years?
We have two major construction projects already funded and underway. One is a utility administration building, for which we received federal money to build. The second is a new emergency operations center, which we don’t currently have. So that’s a big deal to us. Those two projects are already underway.
We also recently purchased land to build a new police station. Our police department is on the third floor of City Hall, which is terribly dangerous. We have people coming here for police services, and they have to go through the building to get to the police station.
We also have a really nice riverside park that we’re hoping to build, which would serve as an anchor for our downtown development. It would be a bit like Tampa’s Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park. This would be a smaller version of something similar to that. We’re not willing to incur debt to build a park, so we’re going to have to pay as we go.
We’re very proud of that. And for the first time ever, we’ve actually hired a consultant to come in and do a comprehensive study and inventory of our trees — species, age, condition, and what the master canopy plan could look like over the next 10 to 20 years.
We’re coming up now with a forestry management plan, and I’m very excited about that. These are not things that are headline grabbers, but if you want to set your city up for the next 100 years, these are the things that you do.
