The City of Tampa is perportedly renegotiating its agreement with the St. Pete Times Forum to mandate that promoters negotiate every contract with the city of Tampa as well as the forum, a process that has apparently been somewhat informal to date, officials said after the March 8 gridlock accompanying an 8 a.m. all-day motivational seminar at the forum.

The officials said the city would no longer be allowing morning events downtown because it could not handle the extra traffic.

Some readers are dubious, like Joe Scanlon of Tampa. What of even larger events sought by the city? Should they be banned from downtown? Scheduled only for weekends?

Joe writes:

“I hope to read more about the (March 8) downtown gridlock. What about future Olympics, Republican Conventions, and other high profile affairs sought by some city business leaders?

“That Wednesday was a mockery of our big-city pretensions. (Where’s Ed Turanchik when you need him?)

“I commute daily from Westshore/Beach Park on 275 to the Ashley St exit. On that Wednesday morning as I was stalled by congestion in the right lane on east-bound 275 near the Dale Mabry exit, I saw a big electric portable sign (I didn’t even know about the downtown event) for a shuttle bus to downtown—but the advice was wrong. It said “Stadium,” but the specified exit number was southbound, away from the Stadium.

“And how did those buses fare? Not well I bet, because where were they going to go? Kennedy eastbound, Tampa southbound, etc—everything was gridlocked. Unbelievable for a city seeking metro status. It showed up our downtown transit shortcomings at a time when we’re encouraging residents, lots of ‘em, to move downtown.

‘‘Somebody needs to blow the whistle here. Is it true that the Weds. a.m. gridlock could have been avoided with better pre-planning or is it true that our infrastructure is hopelessly inadequate to handle such events with what’s under construction right now? I fear our infrastructure may be inadequate. When you look around at our city (I love it here and I’m from up north, 25 years ago ), you see subdivision streets that don’t line up, subdivisions without curbs or underground storm sewers, etc., and you wonder what kind of life we’ll have after we finish building all the permitted and planned downtown residential units.

‘‘Who cares about Art Deco facades (actually, I do, but first things first ). Isn’t there some local, knowledgeable traffic expert who can answer questions about what happened to gridlock downtown Tampa that Weds. a.m.?’’