City Council on 2026-08-06 6:00 PM - Aug 06, 2026

It's time I'll call and order the Clearwater City Council meeting for August 6, 2026. If you wish to address the council tonight, please complete a comment card. Comment cards are located by the clerk seated to the right of the dais. When called to speak, please hand your card to the clerk. I'd ask for everyone to please stand tonight as we move to item two on the agenda. For the invocation to be given by Reverend Allie Wood from the First United Methodist Church of Clearwater. And then remain standing afterwards for the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Mayor, let us pray. Loving Creator, we come to you on this very rainy evening grateful for the privilege of being a community. We are grateful for all those who make our life together and our safety possible. Our first responders, our city staff, our elected officials, those who work tirelessly on our behalf. As we gather tonight and decide on the business of our city, some small items and some large, make us mindful of all those who live and work and reside in Clearwater. Help us to remember that our city belongs to all of us. And help us to be people who think not just of ourselves, but the future. Those voices that are so often unheard. And even those with whom we disagree. We pray, oh God, that you would be with us and be with even the most vulnerable among us. And ask that we, together, would work for justice for all in the midst of this beautiful place we call home. We give you thanks and we ask this in your name. Thank you, Reverend Wood. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Before we continue with tonight's meeting, I'd like to introduce our dais. To my far left is our assistant city clerk, a deputy city clerk, Nicole Sprague. To her right is our city clerk, Rosemary Cole. Good evening. To her right is our city attorney, Owen Kohler. Good evening. To his right is Council Member Lena Tasheda. To her right and my immediate left is Vice Mayor Ryan Cotton. Hello and welcome. To my right, Council Member Mike Menino. Good evening. To his right, Council Member David Albritton. Good evening. To his right, Assistant City Manager Dan Slaughter. Excuse me. To his right, Assistant City Manager Al Battle. With that, we'll move to Item 4.1 on the agenda. I'd like to call forward Anita Berry with Johnston and Stewart for an end of legislative session. Vice Mayor, Council Members, it is wonderful to see you all. Anita Berry with Johnston and Stewart. Thank you for having us here. I also want to recognize my two partners, Jeff Johnson and Amanda Stewart, who are sitting in the back, but also here as well. Thank you for the opportunity to provide an overview of the 2026 legislative session and to discuss several of the key policy and budget issues that went on over the last several, several months. The 2026 session was one of probably the most unusual in recent history. We had only 237 policy bills passed, which might sound like a lot, but it's actually about 30 fewer than we had the year before and 60 less than the year prior to that. So I think that shows kind of the temperature of this session and some of the discord that was occurring between the House and the Senate and in the Governor's office. Lawmakers were unable to fulfill their constitutional obligation within the normal 60-day legislative session to pass a balanced budget. Most of that was due to failure to reach agreement on really those top line numbers, so what they want to spend in the large spending categories. As a result, they left Tallahassee without a budget. However, soon after, they were called into three different special sessions. Ultimately, the second of those special sessions, they came back to finalize a budget. They passed the full budget shortly after Memorial Day, and that continued significant investments in transportation, environmental protection, affordable housing, resiliency, and water quality, while also maintaining strong reserves for the states. We were very pleased to say that all three of the city's funding priorities were fully funded by the legislature in the budget that passed both the House and Senate, and I would say that that is remarkable given the budget climate that we are in in our state right now, certainly looking at some projected deficits in the coming years, and so we saw the House and Senate really look at pulling back some of their spending levels. So we were very happy to have full funding for all of your priorities come out of the legislature. The final budget signed by the governor totals about $117.6 billion. That follows $810 million in line-item vetoes that the governor issued on specific appropriations projects. Unfortunately, Elevate Bayshore was vetoed, but we still returned almost $4 million to the city of Clearwater. That includes $3 million for the lift station rehab program and $800,000 for the backup emergency power generator connection for lift stations. Many grant and infrastructure programs utilized by municipalities like the city of Clearwater were funded and received continued funding in the budget that the governor assigned. This includes the FDOT five-year work program, Resilient Florida, which I know that the city has benefited from, and beach nourishment funds. And I'll pause on that because our delegations, and Chair Hooper in particular, really championed the beach nourishment funds this session. And his work and the work done by the legislature designated $43 million for Pinellas County and the beaches here specifically. It's a pot of about $64 million, and $43 million is going back to Pinellas County. So that's really exciting for our beaches. The budget also included support for affordable housing through the State Housing Initiatives Partnership and other housing programs that assist local governments in addressing housing affordability. Shortly following the legislature's passage of the budget, the governor did call them back for that third special session to specifically address property taxes. As you know, we had long been anticipating that conversation. It was no secret that the governor wanted to reduce or eliminate property taxes. Really, the question was, what was the ultimate proposal going to look like? He unveiled his proposal as part of that special session, and it was, without a doubt, the most significant property tax reform in Florida's history. It centered on expanding the homestead exemption and setting the state on a path towards eventual elimination of most homestead property taxes. The legislature agreed with the goal of providing tax relief, but chose to adopt a more measured approach. They most notably excluded school district millages from the expanded exemption and included some clarifications, really, on what local governments could spend the property taxes on. The proposal will now appear on the November ballot, as I'm sure you all know, as Amendment 3, because this is a constitutional change. It does require a passage by 60% of voters, and so the question remains whether or not this amendment will reach that threshold. I think, over the last several years, we have seen that that is a very difficult threshold to meet. If passed, we understand that this is going to have some long-term implications on local governments and certainly create a lot of additional conversations in the coming sessions around the impact that it's going to have. Earlier this week, the Leon County Circuit Judge ruled that the ballot title and the summary approved by the legislature for the ballot amendment did not meet Florida's legal standards. This is an interesting development in this many months that we've been going through this. The court's ruling did not invalidate the budget, I'm sorry, the amendment, but they are now looking at rewriting the language of that specific amendment. Just earlier today, the governor said that they're not going to appeal the ruling, but that they are working on a revised draft. As we look ahead to the 2027 session, we do expect, of course, continued discussions around property taxes, around the state's budget climate, affordable housing, infrastructure investment, and other measures affecting local government. You know, I think we've seen a lot of different issues affecting local governments, growth management, you know, impact fees. We're kind of seeing these recurring issues year after year, and while little bits and pieces are passing, you know, I think we're, I don't see that slowing down anytime soon, and property tax reform only kind of exasperates that conversation. So, certainly, there will be no shortage of work to do in Tallahassee over the next year or two, and we're incredibly honored at the opportunity to continue representing you all in Tallahassee. With that, I will take any questions, and as I mentioned before, Jeff and Amanda are here as well and happy to answer questions. Any questions from the council? I just, I think I, when I say this, I represent the entire council's feelings that we couldn't feel like the City of Clearwater is in better hands than they've been with you and your firm in Tallahassee. You feel that when you visit there with you. We go up annually for a trip, and when we talk to legislators and folks in our legislative delegation, just the way you've communicated with the legislature on our behalf and state government has, you've done a really great job, and we feel like we're very good hands, and you, particularly, Anita, have done a good job for us, and we appreciate that. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for your good report tonight. Thank you. With that, we'll move to item 4.2 on the agenda, and it's our pleasure tonight to hear a lot about our Sister Cities program and young people that benefit annually from participation in it. So I'll call forward Amber Bryce, who's going to first present our middle school students. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Amber Bryce, Arts and Cultural Affairs Manager. We have some very special presentations for you tonight. For those residents who may not be aware, Clearwater has been Sister Cities with Nagano, Japan, going on 68 years now. We've been doing reciprocal student exchanges since 1990, and I'm excited to recognize the students that were chosen this year to represent Clearwater in Japan. These exchange programs are about much more than travel. They build lifelong friendships, cultural understanding, and shape the future leaders of our community. So first, I'd like to call up our middle school students if they'd like to join me. The middle school program is run by Clearwater Sister Cities, Inc. This is a nonprofit partner we work with. It is not a city-funded trip. It's privately funded by parents or the organization through scholarships, but the city does provide one scholarship each year for a Clearwater resident. Their trip lasts two weeks. They spend a week in Nagano with homestay families, and then the other week they get to travel over Japan. So I'd like to welcome up Sydney. She was the recipient of this year's Clearwater Resident Scholarship. Hi, everyone. My name is Sydney Tinlin, and I'm one of the Clearwater Sister Cities Young Ambassadors. First, I want to say a huge thank you to city council for the scholarship. It was honestly a life-changing trip. So for the first week, we went to Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Nara, and Hyogo. We got to see so much. In Tokyo, we saw the sky tree and city view from really high up, which was crazy because the city goes on forever. In Nara, we saw temples, deer, and shrines. And in Hiroshima, we saw the peace memorial. I also got to do some Japanese calligraphy on a wooden board. It's harder than it looks. One of my favorite parts of going to Japan was going to Sakurugoka Junior High School for two full days. School in Japan is really different from here. They have to take their shoes off when they go in, and students clean the school themselves. And they even eat lunch in their classrooms. Everyone was so welcoming. I was a little nervous at first because of the language barrier, but all we needed was Google Translate and hand motions, and we were laughing the whole time. For the second part of my homestay trip, I stayed with Sheena Takeyama. She actually stayed with my family in Clearwater first, and then I went to stay with her family in Nagano. So it was really cool to see her again in Japan. Her family was amazing. They took me everywhere. In Nagano, there are huge mountains with snow on top even in the summer. We did so many fun activities. We went up in the gondola and got to see the huge view over the mountains. We went on the ropes course in the trees. We took really cute photos in the photo booths. We learned how to roast you over a traditional Japanese fire. We went on the giant swing across the mountains. It was kind of scary at first, but I didn't at first. I didn't feel like I was staying with strangers. I felt like I was staying with family. So, yeah, this was my trip. I learned so much about Japanese culture, but I also learned that even if you're on opposite sides of the world, people are pretty similar. Thank you again to the City Council of Sister Cities program for giving me this opportunity. So next I'd like to call up our high school exchange students. This program is run and funded by the City of Clearwater. Unfortunately, we had to cancel last year's trip because of our official delegation, so we were really excited to get the exchange back on track this year. The city offers four student scholarships every year. To be eligible for these scholarships, students must live within the city limits of Clearwater, regardless of where they attend high school, maintain at least a 3.5 GPA, submit a letter of interest, two letters of recommendation, and complete an interview process. This year we had 14 applications. We did eight interviews, and these are the four outstanding students that were selected. I will let them introduce themselves, but I can tell you their resumes are incredibly impressive, from baseball to robotics to scouts, community service. These students truly are outstanding representatives for Clearwater. Three of them are headed off to the University of Florida next week. Go Gators. Good evening, esteemed members of the Clearwater City Council and those of you sitting in the audience tonight. My name is Sean Sobush. Heidi Connor. Naveen Yengara. Chloe Bird. We had the distinct honor of being Clearwater's Sister City Ambassadors for this year. We spent two weeks visiting Japan, and more importantly, our sister city, Nagano. Throughout the duration of the stay, we were fortunate enough to be taken in by three families who showed us all the love we could ask for when we were over 7,000 miles from home. They showed us around their beautiful city, and we were able to experience local attractions, such as Matsumoto Castle, Togokushi, and Zenkoji Shrine. During the week, we accompanied our host brothers and sisters to Ichirichu Nagano High School, where we were shown different classes throughout the school. We participated in a calligraphy class, where we drew the kanji for the word for emperor, Kote, and biology class, where we dissected a pig eye. We also helped our classes prepare for the school festival by turning their rooms into a haunted house, a dessert stand, a Toy Story Mania-themed room, and a casino, while also transforming one of the empty classrooms into a booth displaying Clearwater. It was amazing to see the whole student body come together to make the festival happen. The city of Nagano treated all of us very well. We were able to go on a cultural tour of the city, where we were able to experience a live demonstration of karate, a tea ceremony, and classical Japanese theater. We were also given the opportunity to participate in the tea ceremony itself, while also being able to play classical Japanese instruments like the shamisen and the koto. We also had the pleasure of meeting Mayor Kenji Ojiwara and the other accompanying members of his council, and present them with gifts from our city. My personal favorite part of the trip was trying as many different Japanese dishes as I could. My favorite part was the time I spent with my host family. They introduced me to so many delicious Japanese foods and took me to some beautiful places, but they also really showed me how welcoming the Japanese culture can really be. They're a huge part of the reason of why I want to visit Japan again, but I'm incredibly grateful for the time I got to spend with them on this trip. Thank you. I think the most enriching part of this experience was that it wasn't, like, the same as a normal independent vacation to Japan. Of course, we did go to a lot of tourist destinations, like the Skytree and all sorts of places around Tokyo, but the experience of staying with a family, being in their home, and going about the daily activities with a Japanese family, those are the kinds of experiences that we couldn't get out of just a normal vacation. This kind of program, the organization, and all the work that the council did, and the representatives, the supervisors, all the work everyone did to make this so organized, really helped us achieve that experience. I'd like to thank everybody here for that. Part of the trip was visiting the Takakushi Shrine, which is one of the first places that I visited with my host family. That was one of the most enriching experiences that I had, and I loved the community there. Everyone was really kind and giving during the duration of our stay, so I want to say thank you for this opportunity. Once again, we would all like to thank the city for allowing us to represent Clearwater on an international level while also learning about Japanese culture by experiencing it firsthand in a way that very few are able to. This will forever be an experience that influences the way that we interact with the world around us. Once again, we would all like to say thank you to everyone from the city involved in this program for allowing us to experience another culture in a way that we will never forget. I'd like to invite Indira Yungira. So, Sister Cities International, for those who don't know, is based in Washington, D.C. I recently learned that every year they hold an international youth summit, so I encourage some of our students to apply. A Florida student had not participated in that program in over a decade, so we were really excited that two of our students were selected. Only Indira ended up attending, so she'll tell you about her experience, but before she does, I want to give her some special recognition. So, you've heard from her twin brother, Naveen, who went on the trip. Indira went on the trip in 2024. She's also volunteered and served on the Sister City Advisory Board for the past couple of years in the youth position, so we want to thank her for that. And her family's been incredibly involved in the program, hosting numerous times, so I just wanted to thank them. But here's Indira. Good evening. My name is Indira Yungira, and this past June, I had the privilege to go to Washington, D.C. to participate as a representative of Clearwater Sister Cities in the Sister Cities International Youth Leadership Summit. Every year, Sister Cities International sends a group of students from across the nation to participate in the summit and learn about foreign service, international relations, and to train future diplomats. During the summit, we heard from many different speakers, including Ambassador Baugh, who was the previous United States ambassador to the Ivory Coast, multiple foreign service officers, and other members of the United States State Department. We also went on two special excursions to go see Suss the Musical and attend a Washington Nationals baseball game. In addition, we were welcomed into the Embassy of Cypress to meet the Cypress ambassador as well as other embassy officials. There, we enjoyed presentations as well as cuisine from Cypress. What really stood out to me was their hospitality and their excitement to show us what was so special about their country. Furthermore, we had a full day to tour around D.C. where we all saw multiple monuments, memorials, and visited the Smithsonian. My favorite part of this tour was finding the Florida Pillar at the World War II Memorial. At the end of the week, we applied everything we learned from the speakers to a diplomacy simulation where we were each given roles to represent a simulated country or organization to discuss and solve a simulated issue. The simulation was facilitated by active members of the United States State Department receiving their guidance and hearing their input was invaluable. From this experience, I learned so much about international diplomacy and the role that everyone serves as a citizen diplomat, and it has encouraged me to explore a possible career in international diplomacy. Networking during the week was extremely valuable, and I made many new connections and friendships. I look forward to applying what I learned and educating others with my new skills and knowledge. Thank you to the city of Clearwater for making this possible for me and for the scholarship. I hope to use these skills to help benefit our lovely city. Next, I'd like to call up Robert Kopech. So before we wrap up, I just wanted to recognize Robert Kopech. Another program through Sister Cities International is the Young Artist and Author Showcase. So students from around the world, not just nationally but globally, submit original visual art, photography, music, literature, and poetry, all centered around an annual theme. Robert submitted an annual musical, or sorry, an original musical composition, and I am proud to say that for the 15 to 18 age category, he was selected as the first place international winner. So along with his incredible honor, he received $1,000 from Sister Cities International. I also do want to recognize the Kopech family. They have been tremendous supporters of our Sister City program. His sister went in 2023. Their family has hosted numerous times. At one point, they had three teenage boys living in the house, and the mom joked their pantry was getting pretty low. So I would like to also ask anyone in the audience that has ever hosted a student or a teacher to please stand up. I would like to recognize you all and really thank you for your support. Host families are the foundation of this program. If we didn't have host families in Nagano or here, we wouldn't have an exchange program. So thank you all for your commitment and your support, and we really appreciate you. Anyone interested in learning more about the exchange programs or hosting a student or a teacher can visit myclearwater.com slash sistercities, and thank you all for your time. Well, we want to get a picture, but I just want to tell all these young people here, we are so proud of you. And one of you thanked us for supporting this. It's the community. For over 60 years, our entire community has supported this program. And we go every once in a while as a city delegation, city leaders, to Nagano. We went last year. But the most important visit, I think, is the trips that you young people are making. We bring their young people here every year, and our young people go there every year. And the friends that many of you made will last you a lifetime in Japan. And thank you for representing us so well. I can tell by your presentations tonight that you represented this city very, very. And we are so proud of you, and thank you for participating in this program. With that, want to get a picture? Yeah. Watch your step back here. We may have to stop. Hey, what's going on? How are you doing? Doing well? Okay, the real tall people might have to switch down a little bit, because you're blocking. All right. Thank you, guys. I was running down. Sorry. We're running down again. And now we're running down again. Okay, thank you. With that, we'll move to item 4.6 on the agenda. And I'd like to call forward Karen Boges from the Juvenile Welfare Board for a presentation of the Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County 80th Anniversary Proclamation. Good evening, and I just have to say, as a youth-serving organization that we are, that is so impressive, and congratulations to all of those youth. I'm going to, Karen, I'm going to read the proclamation, and then we look forward to your presentation. Having visited with you yesterday, I know you have a lot to share and powerful work you did. Whereas in the early 1940s, few alternatives existed for troubled and dependent children in Pinellas County other than adult jail, a need recognized and championed by juvenile court judge Lincoln Bogue. And whereas attorney Leonard Cooperman drafted legislation supported by the Pinellas County legislative delegation to create an independent special taxing district governed by an autonomous board to guard the rights and needs of children. And whereas on November 5th, 1946, Pinellas County citizens ratified the Juvenile Welfare Board Act, creating the nation's first independent board dedicated to improving the lives and futures of children. And whereas today, JWB strengthens our community by funding 87 quality programs across 49 agencies, providing cradle-to-career prevention and early intervention services that reached over 83,000 children last year. And whereas the Juvenile Welfare Board also serves as a convener, forging partnerships and leading initiatives to prevent needless childhood deaths, nurture early childhood development, champion children's mental health, promote guard-level reading, fight childhood hunger, and support fathers and grandparents in their caregiving roles, reaching tens of thousands more annually. Now, therefore, I, Bruce Rector, Mayor of the City of Clearwater, Florida, on behalf of the Clearwater City Council, do hereby proclaim November 5th, 2026, to be Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County's 80th Anniversary Day in Clearwater. Okay. Please, please share your thoughts with us. Yes. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council members, City Manager, and community leaders and residents. Thank you for allowing us to join you this evening as we celebrate a remarkable milestone in the history of Pinellas County, the Juvenile Welfare Board's 80th anniversary. My name is Karen Bogis, and I'm the interim CEO for JWB. It is my honor to be before you this evening. With me are one of our members of our board, Brian Unks, Jr. We also have North County Community Council members and JWB staff with us. For 80 years, JWB has been guided by a simple belief. When we invest in children, we invest in the future of our community. We are a special taxing district established by a special act of Florida legislature and solely funded by property tax. Our annual impact budget is $128 million, and last year, as previously been said, we served over 83,000 children and families countywide. Every investment we make is informed by community needs, guided by data, and focused on creating lasting impact for children and families. From a child's first days of life through adolescence and into adulthood, our goal remains the same, helping every child reach their fullest potential. And that is one reason being here in Clearwater is especially meaningful. Your city leaders embrace our mission, partner with us to strengthen opportunities for children and families. Earlier this week, Mayor Rector joined our staff at Lyft Academy, back-to-school open house. Thank you for your commitment to ensuring neurodivergent children have equitable opportunities to learn and thrive. And we regularly see the mayor and city council members aboard our summer book bus, helping children choose favorite books to take home. And the book bus is a vital part of our early readers, future leaders, grade-level reading campaign. And thanks to the collective work with partners like you, 70% of children of Pinellas County third graders are now reading proficient, outperforming the state average. Mayor Rector also champions our Turbo Babies campaign, and your library branches serve as pit stops to distribute free brain-building bags to parents of babies, birth to three. And last year, your city stepped up to expand its after-school program to the North Greenwood site, helping ensure continuity of services to children. And like the leaders and citizens of Clearwater, we understand that investing in children early and often is not just the right thing to do. It is one of the smartest investments any community can make. And today, about half of all households with children in Clearwater, an estimated 53%, benefit directly from a JWB-funded program. And across the city, 35 programs and 46 sites help children learn, grow, and thrive. And we have a map right over here, and you get to keep that map illustrating where those program sites are. The city's charting the course for youth offers vital summer and after-school care to support students, academics, and working parents. Plus, Arts for Life, Boys and Girls Club, Our Club Child Care, and YMCA of Suncoast operate similar out-of-school-time programs. And for working parents of little ones, Our Club Child Care operates Community Pride at Gateway, and Early Learning Coalition offers child care scholarships. Children's mental health services are provided by Directions for Living and Suncoast Center, while Ever Health offers integrated behavioral health services within their pediatric practices. For survivors of domestic violence, Hope Villages, The Haven offers safety and hope, while at-risk youth in crisis receiving counseling and emergency shelter at Family Resources, Safe Place to Bay. JWB funds two neighborhood family centers, Hispanic Outreach Center, and now Maddie Williams. Both are providing family support services to residents. The Healthy Start Coalition and Morton Plant Meese both offer early childhood and maternal health supports, while Healthy Families offers home visiting services and boasts a 98% success rate in preventing child abuse or neglect. And in addition, Big Brothers and Big Sisters offers mentoring services, Children's Home Network supports grandparents and other relatives caring for children. ELIOS provides family navigation and real-time help. Preserve Vision offers vision screenings and eyeglasses. And Girl Scouts give at-risk girls leadership and development opportunities. We are proud of our 80-year history of putting children first, a milestone made possible by your partnership. Thank you for sharing our commitment to the children and families who call Clearwater home. And in your packets, you all should have received an orange packet, you will find information about our investments in this community and the outcomes we are achieving together, and the resources available to support children throughout every stage of life. And as we look ahead to the next 80 years, we see tremendous opportunity to deepen our partnership with the City of Clearwater. Together, we can continue identifying needs, expanding opportunities, and ensuring that more children and families have access to the support that they need to succeed. Because the greatest legacy any community can leave is not the buildings it constructs or the road it paves. It's the future it creates for children. And for 80 years, JWB has stood alongside communities that share that belief, and we are proud to stand with Clearwater to celebrate the impact we are making today and work together to build an even brighter future for generations to come. Thank you for your partnership, your leadership, and your unwavering commitment to children and families of Clearwater. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming tonight. Thank you. Thank you for coming tonight. Good to see you today. Sorry. Sorry. Thank you. How are you? Yeah? One, two, three. Thank you. Okay, now move to item 4.7 of the agenda, Florida Water Professionals Month Proclamation, and I'd like to call forward Mike Flanagan, Public Works Director. Whereas water professionals provide essential services that protect public health, support environmental stewardship, and maintain safe and reliable drinking water, wastewater, and reclaimed water systems. And whereas these dedicated individuals include operators, technicians, mechanics, engineers, laboratory staff, maintenance crews, customer service staff, utility managers, and others who support critical utility operations. And whereas water professionals are essential first responders, as defined by Florida Statute 403.8651B, during storms and other catastrophic events, working to ensure safe drinking water and safe disposal of wastewater for our communities. And whereas water professionals also help maintain the water infrastructure and fire flow needed to support fire protection and public safety throughout the city of Clearwater. And whereas their skill, dedication, and around-the-clock service help the city of Clearwater protect residents, businesses, visitors, natural resources, and quality of life. And whereas it is fitting to recognize and thank the individuals who serve in this vital profession. Now, therefore, I, Bruce Rector, Mayor of the City of Clearwater, Florida, on behalf of the Clearwater City Council, do hereby proclaim August 2026 to be Florida Water Professionals Month in Clearwater and encourage all residents to join in recognizing the dedicated water professionals who protect our community and environment. Thank you for all you do, and would you like to say a few words? Yes, please. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Members of Council, Charter Officers, Assistant City Managers, thank you for this recognition. I'm Michael Flanagan, Public Utilities Director. I'm joined today with members of our Public Utilities Team. Darquez Whitfield, Wastewater Collection Tech 3. Devon Cushney, Reclaim Water Operator Trainee. Jason Baugh, Water Distribution Operator 2. And Michael Vodka, Water Reclaim and Wastewater Manager. First, I want to thank Council, the City Manager's Office, and our partner departments across the city for your continued support. Public Utilities does not do this work alone. I also want to thank our Public Utilities Team. The work is often quiet, technical, and behind the scenes, but it touches every part of daily life in Clearwater. Safe drinking water, wastewater service, reclaimed water, fire flow, environmental protection, and storm response all depend on people who show up every day, often overnight, to keep essential systems running. This work matters not only to the city, but to public health, the environment, the economy, and the quality of life. At the same time, there are challenges ahead that are real. Aging infrastructure, changing conditions, storm readiness, growth, regulatory demands, and the unique pressures of serving a coastal Florida community. We're proud of the work, grateful of the recognition, and committed to continue to serve Clearwater with professionalism, reliability, and care. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. On behalf of our citizens, too, thank you for all you all do. Yeah. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. All your help. Thank you. Okay. We'll now move to item 5.1 on the agenda. Approve the minutes at the July 16, 2026 City Council meeting. Is your motion to approve the minutes? So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed, unanimous. Moved to the consent agenda. Are there any items to be removed from the consent agenda tonight? No, sir. Okay. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? Move to approve agenda items 6.1 through 6.12. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed, unanimous. Moved to item 7.1 on the agenda. Approve the City of Clearwater's fiscal year 2026-2027 annual action plan, which is the second action plan of this 2025-2026 through 2029-2030 consolidated plan to implement the goals and objectives set forth in the consolidated plan and authorize the appropriate officials to enter into agreements with HUD and organizations approved for funding together with authorization to execute administrative adjustments the same as needed. Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Dylan Mayhew. I'm the housing manager. On Monday, Donia Perez provided a detailed presentation during the work session on the fiscal year 26-27 annual action plan. Rather than repeat that presentation, I'll provide a brief summary on the item. The annual action plan is the second year implementation plan of the City's 2025-2026 through 2029-2030 consolidated plan. It is required annually by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and serves as the City's spending plan for our Community Development Block Grant, or CDBG, and our Home Investment Partnership Program funds. The plan outlines how the City will invest both new entitlement funding and available prior year funding to support affordable housing, public facilities, public service programs, economic development, and neighborhood revitalization activities. And these primarily benefit low- to moderate-income households. This year's plan does include funding for affordable housing activities such as new construction, rehabilitation, purchase assistance, and tenant-based rental assistance. It also provides funding for public facility improvements, public service programs, small business and facade improvements, property acquisition and demolition, homeowner education, and program administration. The funding recommendations before you tonight were developed through the City's established public process. We issued a Notice of Funding Availability, received and evaluated applications, and worked with the Technical Review Committee and Neighborhood and Affordable Housing Advisory Board to develop the recommended allocation. The required public comment period and public hearing were completed, and the NAHAB recommended approval of the plan on July 7th. Approval tonight will authorize the submission of the Annual Action Plan to HUD. It's due by August 16th. And it will also authorize appropriate officials to execute the necessary grant agreements with HUD and our funded organizations. It will also authorize administrative adjustments during the program year as needed to efficiently administer the approved budget. Staff does recommend the Annual Action Plan as presented. I'm happy to address any questions. Is anyone here denied from the public who desires to speak to Agenda Item 7.1? Seeing none, is there any council discussion? Is room many more? Thank you, Mayor. Not a question. I've served on AHAC with you for two years now. I just wanted to let you know they appreciate your leadership and the entire team and all the work they put into making our community hopefully more affordable. And you do a great job. Look forward to moving forward. I see it on my calendar already. So you've got us scheduled. So thank you to you and the whole team. Thank you. Okay, any other discussion? If not, it's their motion. Motion to approve. Agenda Item 7.2. 7.1. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous. Thank you. Agenda Item 7.2. Appoint 10 members of the 2026 Affordable Housing Advisory Committee to include the appointment of a locally elected official and adopt Resolution 26-12. Dylan Mayhew. I'm the Housing Manager. This item was presented in detail by Chris Edwards on Monday's work session. So this will just be a brief recap. Florida statute section 420.9076 does require all jurisdictions that receive state housing initiative partnership funding or ship funding to annually establish an affordable housing advisory committee, also known as AHAC. The committee is responsible for reviewing local policies, procedures, ordinances, and land development regulations, and to also make recommendations to encourage and facilitate affordable housing within Clearwater. The city satisfies most of the statutory requirements through the existing Neighborhood and Affordable Housing Advisory Board. Additional appointments are required to ensure representation from all categories identified in the state law. That includes a locally elected official and other affordable housing stakeholders. Following the discussion at Monday's work session, the proposed AHAC membership was updated. Todd St. John Fulton, who was appointed at the last council meeting, will serve in place of Mr. Fox. And Sean Austin has been added to serve as the citizen of Clearwater representative. Approval of this item will appoint the 10 members of the 2026 Affordable Housing Advisory Committee and adopt Resolution 26-12, allowing the committee to begin its review of the city's local housing incentive strategy as required by state law. Staff recommends approval. With that, I'm happy to address any questions. Okay. Maybe we'll have a reading. Resolution number 26-12, resolution of the city of Clearwater, Florida, appointing the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee in accordance with Florida Statute Section 420.9076 and required for purposes of the state housing initiatives partnership program, providing that the city's neighborhood and affordable housing advisory board, NAHAB, among several other individuals shall serve as said committee, appointing existing NAHAB members to the committee, appointing additional members to the committee in accordance with Section 2.228, Code of Ordinances of the City of Clearwater, Florida, providing an effective date. Does anyone have from the public that I desire to speak to Agenda Item 7.2? We're seeing none. Any council discussion? If not, is there a motion? Motion to approve Agenda Item 7.3. Second. 7.2. 7.2. My apologies. 7.2. Okay. Any further discussion? Yeah, I just want to – thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to take a quick minute because she's with us this evening, Ms. Byers. You not being on this committee, I noticed this year. I just want to thank you for your commitment and your service. Your passion, your knowledge, and your expertise gifting to the community will be missed. So thank you. Any further discussion? If not, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous. Well, now, before we move to Agenda Item 7.3, At the work session on Monday, I identified a voting conflict that I have. It was identified months ago, and so I've stayed out of all discussion of this – things leading up to this agenda item. And so I will not be voting on that tonight, and I will not be participating on this agenda item. In fact, I'm going to follow the history we have with two prior mayors, both my predecessors, Mayor Hibbert and Mayor Ongst. When they had a voting conflict, they left the room during the discussion. So tonight I'll be exiting the room, and I'll be handing a gavel over before I leave. We'll recess, and I'll ask the vice mayor to reconvene the meeting for discussion of this agenda item. And then, Councilman Menino, I think you also had something to share. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. I, too, will not be voting or participating. I, too, will follow the precedent of our other electeds, and we'll leave the room and let this dais handle their business. My potential conflict has been formally submitted to the Florida Ethics Commission, and we have not received an answer back from them. So once we do receive that, erring on the side of caution, I will not be participating. So I just want to say a couple things. So in terms of conflicts of interest, there's a couple different statutes, and there's a couple different sections. So compliance with one section doesn't mean compliance with all, and a conflict with one doesn't mean a conflict with all. So the ones I've identified is 112.313, which is doing business with one's entity and conflicting contract relationships. I mean, it really relates to both of the council members, but there is no conflict with either one of those statutes. There is not going to be a contract between the city and sports facilities management or with the chargers. So there's no conflict with doing business with one's entity, and there's no conflict with conflicting contract relationships. In addition, neither one of these council members have a material interest under those statutes. Now, relating to the mayor's voting conflict, that is a conflict under 112.3143. Now, Council Member Menino's conflict is slightly different. So under 286.012, council members are required to vote. They cannot abstain unless, according to the statute, that there's a possible conflict of interest. So in Council Member Menino's situation, in the abundance of caution, he has seeked an advisory opinion, which I have sent to the State Commission on Ethics. And then once we get that opinion back, we'll determine whether or not he can vote in any future matter. So with that, we will recess briefly, and then the Vice Mayor will reconvene the meeting for the consideration of Agenda Item 7.3. There we go. We will now call back to the order of the City Council meeting, leaving off on Agenda Item 7.3. Provide direction to the unsolicited proposal submitted by Sunshine Recreational and Development, LLC, in accordance with Florida Statute 255.065 Public-Private Partnership for the Purpose of Development and Lease Hold. Interest of a city-owned property at 1875 Airport Drive, commonly referred to as a landings golf course, for a large-scale recreational and sports tourism complex. Thank you. Let me just say a couple things about the charter. So under Section 2.01, Subsection D, Limitations 5, Real Property, Subsection 5, it discusses OSR property and that a referendum is required when that property is either sold, donated, leased for a new use, or otherwise transferred. Now, if the lease is for an existing use, then a referendum is not required. We discussed this on Monday, but, you know, just keep in mind that the landings is a golf course, but under the Development Code, there's no use for golf course. The use of the property is a parks and recreation facility, and Ms. Maskey will go into more detail. So it's my opinion that as it relates to the use, a referendum is not required because it's the same use. Now, there's another section of the charter that's important as well. It's in Subsection 7, and it deals with the length of a lease. So under the charter, property may be leased for the initial term of 65 years with an extension of 30 years. Anything higher than that would require a referendum. So the council could lease property for 65 years plus a 30-year extension without a referendum. Thank you, Owen. I appreciate that. I now ask Assistant City Manager Al Battle to give the city's presentation. Thank you, Vice Mayor Cotton, members of the DAIS. I'll try to go through my presentation for Monday a little bit more efficiently, allow for as much time as possible for you to ask questions and hear from the public. However, I did want to make a declaration as I get started. My presentation will include a couple of other folks participating to provide context in certain portions of the presentation. Lauren Matzke, our Planning and Development Director, she'll get up and talk a little bit more about the planning and zoning OSR categorical use to provide some more context, as mentioned by City Attorney Kohler, as well as the Financial Analysis Public Resources Advisory Group. Wendell Gertner is here to talk more about that particular part of the presentation as well. And at the end, I'll talk about what we recommend as well as what we believe to be the next steps and also be available to answer questions for you as well. So thank you very much for allowing me a few more minutes to talk to you about this project, and we've talked about it on several occasions over the last few months, but this brings us to the finality of having a public presentation. So I'll do my best in terms of making sure that you, as well as the public, understands what we've done so far. So the particular proposal in front of us today is an unsolicited proposal from Sunshine Recreational and Entertainment, LLC. The proposal was submitted to us as a public-private partnership proposal under Florida Statutes 255.065. So what is a public-private partnership? I'm sure it has come up. It is talked about very generically. I want to do a brief description of it. It is a partnership between government and a private company to construct, upgrade, public facilities for a public purpose. The private partner may finance, design, build, or operate, maintain, renovate, and improve said facilities for this particular purpose. In this instance, Sunshine is proposing to lease the existing landings golf course and make improvements to it to turn it from a golf course into a multidimensional, multi-use sports complex facility. Florida Statutes 255.065, as I mentioned earlier, establishes the process for public-private partnerships and evaluating them, whether they be unsolicited or solicited. It allows counties, municipalities, and special districts to consider those proposals without a formal bidding process under certain conditions. The City of Clearwater follows the statutory, the letter of the statute as outlined there. There may be some confusion out there in terms of why we follow the Florida statute versus having our own P3 ordinance. Back in November, I'm sorry, back in December of 2025, we decided to repeal the existing P3 ordinance that the City of Clearwater had on the books for a couple of reasons. The main one being is that over the past about four or five years, the state of Florida has amended the P3 statute several times. And in many cases, the amendments had to do with how P3 evaluations and projects were being processed by public entities across the state. And so to avoid the confusion and also the time between a statutory amendment as well as a city amending the statute, we decided to repeal it and follow the state's protocol versus making amendments every time to keep up with what the state was doing with respect to this particular program. The process that we evaluated this proposal under is an unsolicited proposal received by the city without bidding. So because the statute talks about solicitations and unsolicited, we reviewed this project under the unsolicited part of the statute. The developer submitted a proposal, they paid the appropriate fee, and we did a high-level review. And in doing so, the fee helped us offset or pay for the professional services of the public resources advisory group and any other groups that we would have chosen to do to help us evaluate this particular proposal. The city has established its fee as $25,000. The initial review was completed over the past few months. Since we received the proposal at the end of December when, Ernest, we started reviewing the proposal in early January of 2026, it took us some time between the staff feedback as well as the public resources advisory group evaluation to bring forward what we determined from that particular review. There were questions, as you could imagine, between Prague, as I'm going to refer to them going forward, as well as between the proposer. So those things needed to be vetted, needed to be further analyzed in order for us to really get a clear picture of what we were being presented with. Today, we are having that first particular meeting, that first public meeting, as a result of the feedback they would receive, the one-on-one conversations that we had with the council to talk about, did we want to bring this particular project forward? This is that first public meeting for staff to present its findings, as well as the proposer to get an opportunity to share their proposal with the public. So if you decide to move forward in any direction, we anticipate additional public meetings would occur, whether they be duly public notice there on the slide or some other format. I'll talk about that a little bit more in the presentation. So the background, I'll go back to exactly how we got here today. Starting in November of last year, we received a proposal. We didn't deem it to be sufficient in order for us to do a full evaluation, and we shared that with the proposer and asked them if they wanted us to review it, they would need to resubmit. And in doing so, that's what they decided to do. So at the end of December of 2025, they submitted a new updated proposal in which we deemed to be acceptable, and we started the review, as well as use a portion of the $25,000 fee to hire a third party to review the financial analysis and do that part of the evaluation. Sunshine Recreationals' proposal includes the following. You've seen it all. Everyone here, as I'm sure, reviewed the proposal, multi-purpose fields, pickleball courts, sand volleyball courts, an aquatic and water park attraction, fitness and wellness facilities, restaurant and food service, walking and biking trails. They anticipate the construction to take about three years from final approval to having a finished product. The project is estimated to be about $180 million. Portions of those dollars are broken out as follows. Private loan of about $108 million. They are seeking and will seek Pinellas County Tourist Development Tax Funds of about $45 million, and they also anticipate that equity would need to be raised at about $26.9 million to cover the program. So as you can imagine, our approval is important to the process, if you will. Our approval would also provide them an opportunity to seek county funding because the city would have to be party to that particular application. The financial review and analysis, as I mentioned, was performed by Public Resources Advisory Group, so I'll ask Wendell Gertner to come up and talk through a few slides here to provide some more context in terms of the details from their review. Thank you. Wendell Gertner, Public Resources Advisory Group. We took the proposal, the written information from Sunshine. We've analyzed it. We prepared a detailed memo, which you have a copy of. That memo focused on the project, the financial structure, and the underlying numbers. We recognize the numbers are going to change and evolve as we go, but here we wanted to focus on kind of that overall structure, highlight certain areas that merit attention, either because they're a little bit unusual and specific to the project, or they could represent risks as you move forward, if you move forward. So the three funding sources for this project are typical for P3s. Typically, it is a mix of private debt, equity, and some form of government funding in the project. You also see the uses of funds. The two primary are the horizontal hard costs, which is about 39% of the overall costs, and that's driven in large part by about $40 million of site development. Basically, that's the cost of turning the golf course into the land for the large fields, the building sites, and the parking. That is a lot more than just moving dirt here because it is on a landfill, and there's a lot of mitigation costs built into that number. The vertical costs represent all of the buildings and structures on top. That is the major cost at about 47% of the overall budget. We've also reviewed the pro forma, and, again, we expect the individual numbers to change, but one of the important takeaways from this is that the financial success of the project, especially in the early years, is going to be driven by the success of the restaurant operations. In years four and five, the sports and recreation component will add more revenues, but those are also being funded in phase two, and the carrying costs and debt will go up at that point. So, in summary, it's really too early in the process to determine specific financial returns to the city, as important financial details such as the lease term, treatment of taxes, the amount of lease and abatements still need to be negotiated, but we do think there are some issues for consideration. Four of them to bring to your point here is, again, a significant cost is required to mitigate the golf course to provide for the multipurpose fields. That is an unusual and expensive cost specific to the site. The restaurant operations are going to be crucial to the financial success of the program. As I mentioned earlier, the development is happening in two phases, so the lease agreement is going to have to ensure protection of the city to bridge those two phases. And then third, because the development is under a lease, the lease is going to have to balance the needs of the lender to ensure their security and ability to default, as well as the needs of the city to ensure that the use remains what you're looking at here going forward. I mentioned earlier that private debt is common in P3 projects, and one of the benefits it provides is kind of having that entities putting their money into the project, giving us all comfort of some financial viability here. If the city does decide to move forward, we would encourage the applicant to engage their financial partner early in the process to ensure the ultimate financial structure will be acceptable both to the lender and to the city. Thank you. If you want to stop at any time to ask any questions, I'm sure you will, but we'll move on to the rest of the presentation. But feel free to jump in, and then we'll try to address them as we can. So staff evaluation is kind of the next part of the analysis. And when I say staff evaluation, we work with the city departments that would typically get involved in reviewing projects, if you will, developments, types of operations and permitting and the regulatory process, as well as departments that could be impacted by the operation, i.e. the relationship of this particular facility to parks and recs, as well as the adjacent nature of the property to the air park. So we asked a number of departments to give us some feedback on that, and that's where this next part of the presentation will lead us. So the first particular department that we want to talk about would be the planning and development group, and I'm going to ask Lauren Matzke to come up because she can provide some context that's a little bit different and unique that also buttresses what City Attorney Kohler was referencing earlier. So good evening, Lauren Matzke, planning and development department. I've consolidated my comments from Monday's work session. The highest level of portions have been on the slides. As mentioned, we reviewed this looking through several lenses, partially looking at, of course, is it consistent with the city's comprehensive plan? And there are several policies and objectives that support that. But the primary question I was asked was determining which use applies to both the proposal and the existing use. So I completed that review using the definitions of the Community Development Code, which apply to the project. And I want to emphasize that's different than what we would normally say is the specific use of the property, you know, looking at, you know, what is proposed and what would continue on it. The current recreational activity on this site is golf. So, and as Mr. Kohler mentioned, that's not exactly what the code would say is the use. So the code defined principal uses a parks and recreation facility. That definition includes publicly owned property used for active or passive recreation. So that was really the crux of it. In this proposal, the property remains publicly owned, and the main components are active or passive recreational uses. You saw the slide previously that outlined the many uses there, and the vast majority are recreational in nature. So that's why my preliminary interpretation was that the existing use is parks and recreation facilities and that the proposed use is also that. Therefore, there's not a change of use with this proposal. I also want to address the food, retail, wellness, and similar services that aren't necessarily recreational uses. These are accessory, and they have to be or remain limited or secondary to and supportive of the primary recreational use. So if at any point in time the proposed accessory uses change, we would be evaluating against that. Is it secondary to but supportive of the recreation? Examples that we're all commonly familiar with would be restaurants or concessions are very typical to recreational uses. The code limits these accessory structures to 25% of the enclosed gross floor area of the principal use, and that's a jargony way of saying it can't be too big. The structures, the amount of floor area that is taken up by all of these other uses, primarily food and beverage, but also some of the wellness components, they're limited in scope, and it's really limited even further because it's not based on the whole of the site or all of the recreational uses. It's limited based on those that are enclosed. So as obviously noted, this review was based on a conceptual plan, and so if the project does advance to the stage of planning application or building permits, we would undergo the full development review of all the details, and that would include then the water and sewer capacity, a detailed traffic review, parking, stormwater, floodplain requirements, and all the compatibility with the surrounding properties. And, of course, then there's other code requirements that would apply. But for now, that is how I got to what I did. Thank you. So as you heard from Lauren talking about it, from the planning and development perspective, we also asked Parks and Rec to take a high-level review of the project as well, and some of the comments that they provided related to general public and community access to the facility, existing recreational programming, how that could be complementary or be conflicting with the city's existing programming, the facility maintenance responsibilities. We have similar arrangements around the city in which private entities occupy public spaces. So the question was, if we have a contract in this type of role, what would be the responsibility for the city to assist or be hands-off with respect to owning and operating and maintaining this type of facility? And last but not least, how does this complement the recreational service gaps that we either have identified or that we might want to take advantage of with this type of facility if it provides extra opportunities for recreation or is this something that is in competition to what we currently offer? With respect to the public works review, traffic and parking were things that they definitely said needed more analysis. Pedestrian and bike safety was something that they brought up as something to review as well. Stormwater and the contamination and the remediation of the site was something that they brought up that would have to be evaluated and reviewed as well as the adjacency to the air park. And I'll talk a little bit more about that with respect to specific comments from the Marine and Aviation Group. They provided a full-on array of bullet points related to several FAA regulations that they would have to comply with. So that is definitely something and a point of interest to note, and that is something the applicant is aware of and they would have to address during the development review process. In addition to that, sports tourism as an economic development goal of the city is something that is specifically articulated in the city's strategic plan, promoting the city as a premier destination of tourism, sporting events, and health and wellness activities is something that we identified and that we have agreed is something that we want to go after as a city, as an administration, and as a goal in terms of bringing that type of resource, business, and opportunity to the city of Clearwater. We also reviewed the market study as provided and talked more with the applicant about the indirect and direct impacts that the project could bring potentially to the city and the total estimated economic impact in the first 10 years of development are considered to be about $560 million. The evaluation from the manager's office, again, all of these reviews and comments are at a high, high level. But reviewing the proposal, what we can tell you is similar to other projects where local development interests are able to participate, complete, and be successful in the local market is something that we think is of value to this particular proposal. This is a local developer who has hired industry experts and who specialize in certain aspects of the construction and design of facilities like this. We think that is a benefit that we would want to share in terms of our review, and we think that's a benefit for any project that's of this magnitude and in a community in which you're trying to figure out exactly if this is the right place to go in the right time to make a decision like this. As mentioned earlier, this definitely is in support of the city of Clearwater's strategic plan, and we also believe that the project is consistent with the city's investment strategy in terms of allowing private and encouraging private investment for the purposes of community development. As Lauren mentioned earlier, this type of review does not exempt the project from going through the typical regulatory review process. So we are at the beginning of whatever would happen next from the standpoint of a real review, more than just concept drawings and actually more than just designs on a paper. They would have to fully submit for the review and proper evaluation for this project to go through the regular and proper evaluation process. As far as options that you can consider for tonight, as we've talked about on Monday, there are at least three directions that you can talk about and decide how you want to move forward. After this presentation and the presentation by the applicant, the council may accept the proposal as a qualifying proposal and direct us to move forward when negotiating for an interim agreement or a comprehensive agreement. The council also has the option to accept the proposal and also direct us to move forward with soliciting more proposals as a part of a process in which you would get an opportunity to see more interest or different interests in the site and have a different point of view to evaluate the item that is in front of you this evening. And the last option is you can reject it out of hand and we do nothing more from this point. No one moves forward and the project essentially dies at this point of the process. Staff's recommendation is that we accept the proposal as a qualifying proposal and that we solicit additional proposals in accordance with Florida Statute 2550653, Section 3, Section B. So, if you agree with moving forward and soliciting additional proposals, we believe the process would look a little bit like this going forward. Solicitation would go out. We would put the solicitation out for 30 days. After the 30-day period is over, once we receive the proposals, we would share them with you, bring them back, and allow you to take that. We would evaluate them, give you our recommendation of which one we think are the ones for you to consider. You would then pick from those, and then if you wanted to select a proposal, you would direct us to move forward when negotiating for interim agreement. Again, that is if we receive anything or if no one submits anything, you still have the opportunity to review the proposal that is in front of us this evening. So, that could result in at least one or two other public meetings is what we think would be the process in order to move forward and continue to have this discussion in public about the process that we're endeavoring to pursue. So, that is the end of my presentation. If you'd like myself, Lauren, or Wendell to address any questions, we can do so. Or if you want to wait until the other team gets finished, we're definitely here for that. I'm going to come back up to the dais and join you and answer my questions from there. But myself, as well as the others who participated in the presentation, are here to answer any questions that you have. But thank you very much. Will we be good to see the other presentation, or would you like questions for staff? I'm good right now. Thank you. Thank you. I'm now going to invite Mr. Brian Oggs, Jr. to come forward with the applicant presentation. The applicant will have five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. Before I start my time, I think we're going to try to do the ten minutes up front, and then I might reserve a balance at the end. I think this would be a much more efficient way to go through the proposal, and then you'll get right to the public comment. So, again, Brian Oggs, 625 Port Street, here on behalf of the proposer, Sunshine Recreational and Entertainment, LLC, and Les Porter and Porter Development, and his all-local team of experts. Miles Balog, National Brownfields expert for NSAfe, former Brownfields expert for the City of Clearwater, founded the Brownfields program in the City of Clearwater in 1995 and shepherded that program. Also joined by Sean Cashin, civil engineer for Site Plan and Stormwater, and attenuation and water quality questions. And joined by Michael Yates, our traffic engineer, who's done a detailed traffic study and has already incorporated some of the feedback that we've received from the Marymount neighborhood and the St. Andrews Cove neighborhood. And also Joe Grossman and Eric Sullivan from sports facilities companies. They are not going to present tonight. You've heard from them on Monday, but they're here to answer any of your questions. You've heard a lot about the land use and the referendum. I'm not going to give you legal advice. That's what the city attorney is here for. And I'm not going to give you a planning opinion because that's what Lauren Matzke, the planning director, is here for. But what I'll tell you is we agree that this is a parks and recreation facility, and it has been since 1970 when the municipally-owned golf course was established. What it's not is open, green space that's available to the public free of charge. And I read a letter that was published on August 2nd that's been put out on the Internet from a reputable organization suggesting that it is, and it's just, frankly, incorrect. It is currently under a long-term lease that is operated for profit by a private operator as a golf course. It is not available to the public free of charge. There is a charge to use it. So the question before you today is not whether you're going to approve anything tonight. It's are we going to move forward as a community with a discussion on the future of the project and whether there's anything else out there that might be worth evaluating as a city for the site. And we are perfectly aligned with the staff recommendation that this proposal should be accepted under Chapter 255 as a qualified proposal, and you should open it up for other proposals to compare them. So nothing tonight is being approved. This is the end of the beginning. It's not the beginning of the end. We're going to continue to have this conversation, and Mr. Porter is committed to Clearwater, and he's committed to the community, and he will continue to be here and be active and be engaged and be available to anyone who wants to engage on this topic. Why is our proposal, do we think, in the best interest of the city of Clearwater? Well, number one, it diversifies and expands recreational opportunities on a 77-acre city-owned parks and recreation site to offer something for everyone, seniors, retirees, youth sports, young families, and even middle-aged professionals like myself. Everyone in Clearwater will benefit from this. We've already committed, even though we're not in the middle of negotiations, we've already committed to discounts for Clearwater residents. So that is something we will deliver. We will deliver accessibility. It returns the property to the tax rolls. The property's never been on the tax rolls. You have an e-mail here from property appraiser Mike Twitty from last Saturday saying that the annual ad valorem tax to the city of Clearwater would be $851,000 once Phase 2 is complete, and the annual ad valorem tax to all jurisdictions within Pinellas County would be $2.8 million. Right now it pays zero. It brings the property up to code for stormwater, for attenuation, for water quality, for drainage. As I discussed at the Monday work session, one of the residents of St. Andrews Cove stood up at our community meeting on July 21st and said every time it rains, the water comes up right to the back of my condo. This proposal would fix that. There's a ton of standing water out there, I'm sure, this week. This proposal would fix that. It would bring it up to code where it currently has not met any of the modern codes, whether it's SWIFT MUD, FDEP, or any of the modern stormwater drainage and attenuation. It also would remediate the site. The site would be at Brownfield, and it would be remediated under the guidance and monitoring of the FDEP and the EPA under the stewardship of Mr. Bollock. Mr. Bollock has been doing this for 40 years. He is helping Mr. Porter and Metro Development remediate the Raytheon site to develop over 1,000 apartment units on a 39-acre site. This is a 77-acre site. Mr. Porter is about to break ground on a 39-acre site in the Azalea Gateway Jungle Terrace neighborhood, and you're going to hear from Dr. Ed Carlson tonight, who was the HOA president of Jungle Terrace, who is a community leader, about how collaborative and what an excellent experience his neighborhood and he himself had with Mr. Porter in remediating that site and improving it for that community. The city of St. Petersburg is very happy with that process, and that was unanimously approved by the St. Petersburg City Council, and it had a tremendous amount of public opposition, as is not uncommon for developments of this type. I read something about the methane gas is going to get out. Mr. Bollock has assured me that will not happen. This will remediate a municipal garbage dump that has been sitting there for 80 years unremediated and bring that site objectively and quantifiably up to a much better environmental status than the current condition and a much better stormwater and water quality status. It will also improve the water quality and treatment of that water that is flowing into Stevenson's Creek. This is a hatch mark showing the 22 acres of the site where we've identified or where actually the prior proposal for the light industrial complex identified through their phase one of existing trash that is buried six feet underground. You've seen the proposal. It is for 12 multipurpose rectangular fields, one championship field for youth sports events like high school football tournaments, 24 covered pickleball courts. We've covered the pickleball courts now to ensure that we mitigate from that noise pollution that folks get concerned about with pickleball, and that is in the middle of the site. It's not adjacent really to any of the residential. 12 sand volleyball courts, two 18-hole putting courses, which is going to be a state-of-the-art offering like Pop Stroke, which is a very unique offering and something that's very popular with families and with basically all demographics. A family entertainment center, a fitness and wellness center, water entertainment facility, and then those food and beverage operations that you heard about. Here's the site plan. We've already told you about the neighborhood feedback we received and things that have already been incorporated. We've eliminated from our proposal the ingress-egress on airport drive. That would be subject to city traffic engineering and FDOT review, but our expert, Michael Yates, says it's fine. We can make that an ingress-egress only for emergency access if necessary, but we will eliminate any ingress-egress on airport drive for the facility. We've also agreed to have 24-hour security. Security was a concern. There is a public trail that will go all the way around this property. It's about 2.2 acres for cycling. Anything that you would want to use the trail for to be publicly accessible for free of charge, free of charge, which, again, right now that's not the case on this property. We've also – I want to also dispel another rumor or myth. We are working collaboratively with the operators of the air park. They do not object to this use. They are excited for this use. We are meeting with them next week to go over the site plan pending if this continues to move forward tonight. So I want to put that out there. We've also worked with Mr. McDonald from Marine and Aviation. This site, if it moves forward at all, will be absolutely compatible and safe from a FlyUSA air park perspective. Those ponds, I do want to point out, are dry ponds. They are not wet ponds. They show water in them, but they are dry ponds. That is one of the components of compatibility and safety with the air park. You heard the traffic analysis from Mr. Yates. We will be adding turn lanes on Keene Road. So we'll be taking property to address ingress and egress specifically to this site. So this site will be operating at an acceptable level of service on Keene Road. And, again, we will be improving that infrastructure. We're talking about millions and millions of dollars in private investment to improve a city-owned asset and municipal infrastructure. And you've already heard a lot of those benefits. But that includes improving Keene Road to add those dedicated turn lanes. And, again, we have had some neighborhood input. I am not suggesting that the neighborhood is supportive of the project. That is not the case. You will hear from them. But we will continue to work with them. And they have been incredibly respectful. We have a difference of opinion, and that's okay. It's a respectful difference of opinion, but nothing that is said or done tonight is going to stop us from continuing to collaborate and engage with anyone who wants to collaborate and engage with us in a constructive manner. Obviously, a constructive manner is helpful for two-way engagement. This also shows you the $47 million total tax benefit, whether it's sales tax, ad dorm tax, and hotel bed stays, heads and beds, and also upwards of 615 jobs created. There's a range. Prague said it could be up to words of 1,000, but, overall, a great benefit for the community. I'm going to reserve the balance of my time, and we're here to answer any questions that you have. Thank you. Does any council have any questions at this time? I do have a few for you, Mr. Onks. Just to rehash, I think you'll be able to answer all these. For those that are present and that might not have watched the Monday meeting, and you've already hit a bunch of those, but we've received e-mails, I'm sure my colleagues, I've seen them cc'd on a few of these, but noise and light pollution. Could you just real quick go over those ways that you've mitigated these things? Yes, sir. So noise, pollution, number one, there will not be any amplified noise other than on that championship field, and that's in the center of the site, and those fields will be subject to hours of operation. We're not there yet. When we negotiate these terms, we will negotiate hours of operation that are compatible with the neighborhood, and that's something the city's going to want. Just like when you negotiate a hotel development agreement, you put in restrictions on amplified noise. Okay? It's the same concept. But there will be a PA system for emergencies. For example, a missing child, you have to have a PA system that goes throughout the entire facility for that instance or an emergency, lightning strike, things like that. But in terms of the PA system, the dedicated PA system, that's only for that large field in the center, which will not be used outside of tournaments. And usually those are in the middle of the day on a Saturday. In terms of the pickleball, we did the covered pickleball courts. Again, those are in the center oriented towards Keene Road. We did agree to a six-foot-tall opaque wall around the entirety of the property except for on the air park property line. So we don't have the opaque wall there. I did confirm with the operators of the air park that they have a chain-link fence. So that property will continue to be secured through that existing fence. And the reason they have chain-link fence is because the air has to be able to flow through the fence on the air park side. So these are all things we've talked about and considered. Hopefully that answers your question. It does. The next one, just to rehash again, crime. You did state that the applicant will have a 24-hour security personnel. Yes, sir. Okay. We hit traffic Keene, new dedicated turn lanes so that traffic can be unencumbered. Parking was addressed. Can you maybe touch on that a little bit more? Yes, sir. One of the early things we heard from the initial pro forma that was submitted back in November, there was a small element of the pro forma that was for paid parking for tournaments only. And we removed that because there was a concern that if we required people to pay to park that they would not do that and they would instead park illegally or park in an inconvenient manner on street in the Marymount neighborhood. We've seen that happen in Safety Harbor. We've seen that happen in South Tampa, other communities. And we immediately recognized that as a valid concern and we've eliminated paid parking from the plan. And it will be all free parking and there's ample parking. We do have a parking demand study as well. Thank you. You touched on the flooding with stormwater and the increased infrastructure costs that the developer will be putting in on the project. Another one that we had heard was the exit onto Airpoint Drive. You did say that that's being closed off for patron access as long as it aligns with the city should this go forward. And I think that that's all of it. Did I miss anything? Did anybody have any? All right. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Now we'll move to a public comment. Individuals wishing to speak must provide the city clerk a completed comment card and approach the podium. Individuals speaking will have three minutes. Group speakers will be given an additional minute, up to ten minutes, for each individual who waves their hand on this matter. Group speakers need to submit a completed blue comment card. Is there any public comment? Brian Beckman. While Mr. Beckman comes up, I have on the queue Linda Byers and Orid Carlson or Fred Carlson. Mr. Beckman, you have three minutes. Thank you. Brian Beckman, I live in Clearwater, and I'm here tonight supporting neighborhoods. The residents that invest in those neighborhoods live and play in those neighborhoods. So a question I had really is a couple of areas that I wanted to hit on as I speak. The first one is, has the city conducted an analysis on the impact of property values? So I did not see that in the presentation before. I didn't see that tonight. And it does not appear that that's there yet. But yet it is a key criteria in the comprehensive plan. Our development code, 3-914.a.1, requires that the proposed development will not negatively impact the value of adjacent properties. So I'd ask that you provide that analysis and provide that back to the neighborhoods. This is obviously an extreme, extremely important issue for residents. No one wants their home value negatively impacted by development. I'm sure you can understand that. Will you commit to that to do that analysis? Also, please commit to meeting with the impacted neighborhoods before removing another green space here in Clearwater. A city council meeting is an important part of that process when considering development of a publicly owned property. But it does not replace the need to hold meetings with residents in their neighborhoods that's being affected. Council members and staff need to hear directly from residents. In 2020, when a development of the same property was proposed, several city council members went to the neighborhoods and talked and got that kind of feedback. Council Member Albritton was part of that council at that time. They learned a lot. In 2020, residents were also able to speak at the ballot box as they resoundingly rejected the development. Please don't take away residents' ability to weigh in on development of city property, especially green spaces, especially development inside residential neighborhoods. Please put on your residents' hat for a moment and think about it as if you were living in that neighborhood, as if you were personally impacted. Isn't that the essence of your role as a city council member? Give residents a seat at the table. Thank you. And the buyers? I would like to make a statement that some of the comments I may make may conflict with the presenter prior to me. So I just want to start the clock whenever you're ready. I am a Clearwater resident here tonight because the recent presentations that I have witnessed for the $180 million dollar landing sports complex have excluded an important, obvious, stomatic risk, namely the physical survival and the future of utility of the adjacent Clearwater Executive Air Park. Before continuing, we first must talk about safety. The FAA enforced strict safety zones over properties flanking active runways, developing the 77-acre parcel with stadium lighting, high-velocity netting, a 5,000-seat sports arena obstructs within Clearwater's runway protection zones. The FAA heavily restricts large public assemblies directly underneath flight paths, high-density crowds at water parks or stadiums present unacceptable liability next to an active aviation runway. Secondly, turning the land into sports fields permanently chokes the airport's future. The city broke ground on a $13.7 million dollar FBO terminal moderation to prepare for the next generation of technologies like unmanned cargo drones and electric air taxis. We are upgrading the airport with public funds while simultaneously proposing a project that eliminates the buffer space required to scale those exact technologies safely. Also, this land is our shield, Clearwater Executive Air Park site 71 feet above sea level, making it Pinellas County's only airport outside a flood zone. In a major hurricane disaster with TPA and PIE underwater, Clearwater becomes regional command center for emergency helicopter and aircraft relief. If the golf course is paved over, the massive open staging areas required for National Guard equipment, disaster supply distribution, and emergency logistics could be eliminated. Finally, we cannot ignore the immediate environmental trauma. Replacing 77 acres of permittable grass and mature trees with synthetic turf, concrete, and 2,000 parking spaces will trigger mass ecological displacement with water runoff issues that may affect native birds and local wildlife. I urge this council to halt further negotiations until formal FAA compatibility studies and environmental mental impact reports are conducted to protect our infrastructure, our emergency safety, and our local environment. 87, 1875 Air Park Drive was deliberately carved out as an open space buffer zone in 1970. Ma'am, that's your time. Can I continue? No, ma'am. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. That was three minutes. I'm sorry. Thank you so much. I need like 30 seconds. I'm sorry. That's too bad. Thank you. Mr. Carlson, if we can have Alexandra Gooden, Ken Jewell, and Patricia Kirby line up. Mr. Carlson, you have three minutes. I'm Dr. Ed Carlson, president of 16 years of the largest and oldest neighborhood association. In 2010, 11, I had a joy of meeting Les Porter when he developed the Shops Royale, a 12-acre infill in the busiest section of St. Petersburg on the west side by Tyrone Mall. 16 years later, that is still pristine, just exactly the way it was when he built it. So it's Shops, two-story Publix. And then we had Raytheon, which was a poisoned piece of land that they pumped out for years and years and years and finally became buildable again. And so Les has worked on that for five years, the first time COVID interrupted it, and then went on from there. I'm telling you that he is a unique and unusual developer because he listens to neighborhoods. He listened to us in the Parcs Royale. He listened to us on the Raytheon property, and he's altered his approach each time. So he's a local developer, not a national, coming in to make money and then run out. So my thing is that you listen to him, and you give his proposal great consideration. Thank you. Good evening, Council Members. My name is Alexandria Gooden, and I'm here tonight in support of the Porter Development Project. Before I talk about the project itself, I want to recognize Les Porter. As mentioned, he has already demonstrated a genuine commitment to the Clearwater community through the work he has done with CrossFit and the opportunities he has created for youth and young adults. He has consistently invested in building a stronger, healthier Clearwater, and I believe that commitment is worth recognizing. Growing up in Pinellas, one thing I always noticed was a lack of places where young adults could gather that were centered around fitness, recreation, and community. People often point to the beach, and it's one of Clearwater's greatest assets. But for many locals, it isn't always the most practical place to gather. Between the traffic, parking costs, and its focus on tourism, it doesn't always provide the kind of convenient everyday community space that this project would. Developments like this help fill that gap by creating spaces designed for the people who actually live and work in this community. As a third-generation Floridian, the safety of my community has always been one of my highest priorities. We've all seen the recent teen takeover incidents at beaches and other public spaces. Those events have understandably made people more cautious about where they spend their time. That's one of the reasons this project stands out to me. The commitment to 24-hour on-site security demonstrates that safety has been thoughtfully incorporated into this project from the very beginning. It gives me confidence that this can be a well-managed environment where families, young adults, and residents of all ages can feel comfortable. Ultimately, I believe this project represents more than just another development. It is an investment in the longevity of Clearwater. If we want young people to stay here, build careers here, and raise families here, we have to give them reasons to. I believe that this project is a step in that direction. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen in the audience, if we could just keep the applause to yourselves. Thank you. I do appreciate it. Good evening. My name is Ken Jewell, and I am the president of the Clearwater Chargers Soccer Club. We're now known as the Chargers Soccer Club. We've expanded out to Lakewood Ranch and over to Tampa. But we were founded here in Clearwater in the late 70s, and we've had a fantastic partnership with the city of Clearwater for decades. We've grown to be the largest youth sports user group in Clearwater over the years, and the demand for soccer just continues to grow, especially after the World Cup being hosted here. You can imagine there's a lot more children interested in the game. We've always had a huge demand, actually an over-demand, and due to the facilities gap in the city of Clearwater, we just haven't been able to meet that demand. We are overwhelmingly in favor of this project because it will give us, finally, as a club, the opportunity to really serve the community and the needs of the community. We have, right now, thousands of families that I represent that will immediately benefit from this project. It will also give us the ability to expand our recreational program, which today we service about 400 children. That could easily be 1,000 children. We just don't have the space, and unfortunately the city hasn't been able to provide that to us for all the reasons that you know. This immediately, you know, takes care of that need. It will also allow us to bring tournaments that we, unfortunately, have had to move down to Lakewood Ranch. We have major tournaments that we run every year, lots of economic impact that's now going to Sarasota and Manatee County that, quite frankly, we would rather have here in the city of Clearwater. Families would rather be in Clearwater Beach than in Orlando or down in Sarasota, and this project really allows those tournaments to not only be moved up here to Clearwater but also allows us and gives us the opportunity to expand those tournaments, which brings in international as well as out-of-state families in a huge way, which obviously is what the city of Clearwater is looking for. So we would hope that you would strongly consider moving this project forward. We think it will benefit, from my perspective, thousands of families that I represent here today and would be fantastic for the city of Clearwater. So thank you for your consideration. As Ms. Kirby comes up, if I can have Mr. Laughlin, Kevin Laughlin, Dominic Prioli, and Jack Prioli come up. Ms. Kirby, you have three minutes. Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to each of you this evening. I just want to ask that the neighborhood's voice be represented. I live right along Keene, and I know firsthand the feeling of not being heard necessarily with my opinion in the city, and so I ask you to listen to those neighbors. I have a dear friend when I lived in Portland, Oregon, and he worked for the city, and they had the same kind of problem where they had young people with not the best outlets for their activities, and so the city asked the people, what do you want? What will help these young people? And the citizens unanimously said, how about skateboard parks? Now, I'm not telling you to do skateboard parks, but they asked, and that's what the citizens responded. They then went out and organized citizen meetings in the different neighborhoods all across Portland and said, do you want this? Is this something that you'll be open to? And the citizens in various neighborhoods said, yes. They built 10 skateboarding parks. This is 25 years ago. But they listened to the neighborhoods that wanted it, and then the ones that didn't want it, they didn't put them there. So I would invite you minimally, please, please, please, to interact with the neighbors in that area and ask them what will help you feel comfortable with this moving forward. I'm not a huge fan of golf courses, I'm going to fully admit it, even though I have a lot of friends who are PGA champions in golf, including internationally, so mostly the ladies. But I'm still not a golfer, and there's a lot of pesticides used, but it is green space, and we don't want to lose that green space. So I would be interested in seeing something more in alignment with what the majority of the citizens of Clearwater would want, which is, I would think, an age range a little bit on the older side, like most of us here, middle age to older. What do they want? Do they want walking trails? Do they want health and spa type things? Do they want fitness things versus, like, just pickleball and sports field? I probably would eliminate the pickleball more or less altogether, but put in things that the neighborhood actually wants. But really ask them for their input. Ask them to be creative and come up with something that everybody's going to love versus something that really serves, like, special interests on one end. And I, for one, love the green spaces. I love the hiking trails. I love looking at the nature, and I hope you don't cut down a bunch of trees for this. But I really want to know that it's mitigated correctly, that the neighborhood isn't going to flood, that the sound abatement is going to be addressed, that the airport's not going to be threatened, and all the other points are going to be addressed before this moves forward. I trust you to make smart decisions for the city. Each and every one of you I know cares. And, Lena, I thank you for your service in particular. Councilman Albright, and I also thank you in particular for your service since you all, your terms are wrapping up. So I just want to thank you for being part of the Clearwater City Government. I appreciate each one of you. Thank you so much. Mr. Laughlin. Everyone. I know you all. Kevin R.T. Laughlin. When you want to win an argument and you frame it so that you can't have an argument against it, you'll find it in this program. They say, Clearwater owns properties that have three golf courses. Chichi Rodriguez, lowlands, basically filled in a swamp to put that in there. Could build this project there, but it's certainly far, far from ideal. And then there's the wonderful school. Clearwater Country Club, very rough terrain. Stevenson Creek running through it. The railroad running through it. It's impossible to build it there. The landings. Open, flat, cut down a few trees, fill in a few ponds, we're on our way. They've just framed the argument for you that you have three choices and this is the only one that makes sense. They don't explain to you why you actually need it. Okay? The city's objectives, under your responsibility for environmental stewardship, 4.3. Protect the conservation of urban forests and public green spaces to promote biodiversity and reduce our carbon footprint. Over 1.1 million square feet of artificial grass does not fit that description. Your duty is to protect that permeable land and save it for future uses. I think the Houston family deserves a little more consideration. No one has let them enter this conversation. They are deferring maintenance on the golf course, on their equipment, on their clubhouse, because this city has refused to talk to them. It happened six years ago. They've been asking to talk to you about a lease since you tried to put an industrial park there six years ago. And no one will talk to them. Whether it stays a golf course or not, you have a duty. Clearwater has 10% of our open land as green space. Your normal American city has, in their rules usually, at least 15%. And you want to throw 77 artificial grass as not green space. They can say it's as permeable as none. They say we'll make sure it doesn't drain into Stevenson Creek. If it blows over to the airport side, the airport doesn't drain to Stevenson Creek. It drains into Allen's Creek. It drains into Alligator Creek. All of our tributaries are going to be full of these microplastics from these. And if they deny that there will be microplastics, I don't buy it. I don't need any more time. Thank you for your consideration. Dominic Prioli. I heard the term earlier, noise pollution. I think the sound of kids playing is my favorite sound on earth, so I just had to say that. Let me start by saying thank you for your service to our community, our home, Clearwater. For background context, my name is Dominic Prioli. I've lived the last 21 years in the Morningside Meadows community. Before that, eight years in the Skycrest community, straight out of college. I've been a homeowner for almost 30 years here in Clearwater. I've had three kids. They're all adults now. All born in Morton Plant Hospital. All were Clearwater Chargers. All raised in Clearwater School System. And I went to Countryside High School. I also played for the Countryside Lightning, which they merged into Clearwater Soccer Club years later. So there's my context. You have a tough decision tonight, right? But you also have the opportunity to make a forward-looking commitment that's going to be lasting impact on our community, right? President Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States, once said, if you want to make enemies, change something. Half the room. Progress takes courage, and the status quo is not going to move the city forward. I mean, they brought up great points tonight. You know, any change like this that comes to the community, you've got the thoughts that came out were, whether you said noise, parking, pollution, all those things. I think they're valid. I attended the meeting two weeks ago at the local church where the Keep Keen Green community spoke. I thought they did a great job raising issues that the developer was open to, and I thought there was a good collaboration. I heard that earlier, the cooperation. I think that's a responsibility for the staff, the developers, and the final site plan. But I think we can't be afraid of change and let the status quo win today. I support the Clearwater Sports Complex. I think we have a generational opportunity to make an impact on the families of Clearwater, the community, and the economy. And what's really exciting is when you partner with the great job you guys have all done on the beach, on the waterfront, not beach, the waterfront down here in downtown, the recent announcements, the city is going to allow some of the new retail developments in downtown. I think we're going to create a buzz. I'm sick of talking about Safety Harbor and St. Pete and Dunedin and going to Tampa. I want them talking about Clearwater, right? And we have an activities-based opportunity that's not eating, drinking, and shopping that we can bring to our community, and I think everybody will win. So I'll just say that Clearwater has a – we have a unique opportunity to bring a premier recreational facility to our hometown and lead the region. And so I'd urge all of you to move this project forward, and then once again thank you for all your commitment to the community, not just the things we can measure, things you do in between. So thanks. Mr. Jack Prioli, as he's approaching, if I can have Mr. Patrick Raftery come up, Melissa Stamos, and Bill Johnson. Yeah, three minutes, sir. Hi, everyone. I just came up. I'm from Clearwater, Florida. My name is Jack Prioli. I was born and raised here in Clearwater, and I played for the Clearwater Chargers for over a decade since I was four years old. And that's always affected me that the soccer fields, we used to have to drive all the way to Lakeland, Lakewood Ranch, like he said, hour and a half, two-hour drives at times just to play soccer with my friends. And I think it would be a big deal to have soccer fields right down the street from my house. This is something that affects my generation more than perhaps a lot of the people that would oppose this. And I just think it's important that you hear from my generation that the younger people that don't necessarily make it out to these meetings are the type of people that you're serving when you build a complex like this. And that's all I had to say, so thank you. Mr. Rackery? You have three minutes. Good evening, Mr. Vice Mayor, members of the Council. My name is Patrick Rackery. On August the 3rd, the Clearwater Neighborhoods Coalition discussed this matter and made a decision which they asked me to convey to yourselves directly and to the public. I come to you tonight as Vice President of the Clearwater Neighborhoods Coalition. On behalf of the Clearwater Neighborhoods Coalition, we write to express our strong opposition to the unsolicited proposal to transform the landings into a 77-acre recreational venue. Multiple neighborhood organizations have already raised significant concerns concerning this proposal, including its potential conflict with the city charter, the Clearwater Comprehensive Plan, stormwater management requirements, environmental impacts, traffic congestion, noise, lighting, and the detrimental effect it would have on the quality of life in the surrounding neighborhoods. Most recently, we learned that approximately 22 acres of the site contained a landfill located only six feet below the surface that would require remediation before development could proceed. This discovery substantially increases the complexity, cost, and financial risk associated with this project. Beyond the environmental and infrastructural concerns, the city faces considerable financial exposure should the developer fail to deliver on its promises. When combined with what appear to be overly optimistic revenue projections, the potential risk to Clearwater taxpayers becomes even greater. The Clearwater Neighborhoods Coalition joins the growing number of neighborhood organizations urging you to reject this proposal. Of particular concern is that this unsolicited proposal is inconsistent with Clearwater's comprehensive plan, which emphasizes responsible growth, neighborhood stability, compatibility with adjacent land uses, and infrastructure that supports, not overwhelms, existing neighborhoods. By these standards, this proposal falls far short. Not long ago, Clearwater voters overwhelmingly rejected a referendum that would have permitted light industrial use of this same property. The community's desire to protect this area has not changed. Although this proposal is presented as a recreational development, thereby avoiding a zoning change and another public referendum, its scale, intensity, and impacts present many of the same concerns that residents previously rejected. The meaningful benefit offered to nearby residents is their proximity to a facility that would fundamentally alter the character of their community while diminishing the quality of life they have worked so hard to deserve. As elected officials, you have a responsibility to ensure that Clearwater neighborhoods remain a priority as our city grows. Growth should enhance our community, not come at the expense of the community. At the table of development in Clearwater, neighborhoods deserve a seat, not to become an item on the menu. The decision before you is clear, protect the surrounding neighborhoods, preserve the quality of life, and reject this proposal. Thank you very much. Ms. DeMoss, before you continue speaking, go ahead and approach the podium and make sure that your other individuals, as a group speaker, Teresa Winthrow, if you can raise your hand. Thank you. Howard Latham. Thank you. Kathy Maddy. Thank you. Greer Pascoe. Thank you. Deborah Hollander. Thank you. And Kelly Meyer. You have nine minutes. Good evening, council members. On behalf of the many residents, neighbors, and supporters who share our concerns, thank you for allowing us to speak this evening. First, we want to sincerely thank each of you for your service to Clearwater. We recognize that the decisions before you are not easy. You are balancing economic development, fiscal responsibility, environmental stewardship, neighborhood preservation, and the interest of thousands of residents. We appreciate the time, thought, and dedication you bring to these difficult decisions. We also want the public to know that, contrary to what some believe, the concerns of your constituents regarding our beloved city have not fallen on deaf ears. You have listened. You have met with residents. You have asked thoughtful questions. While we may not always agree with the outcome, we appreciate your willingness to hear and engage the most important conversation. We also want to address a misconception. Some have suggested that because neighborhood representatives and residents have met with a potential developer, we support this project. Nothing could be further from the truth. We met because we believe in participating in the process. We asked questions, listened, and shared our concerns. Meeting with a developer is not an endorsement of a proposal. It is a responsible civic engagement. Tonight, we respectfully ask you to pause this process and carefully reconsider the future of the Landings Golf Course. This is much more than a golf course. It is about the future of Clearwater, the character of our neighborhoods, and the legacy we leave behind. The Landings represents one of the last significant open spaces remaining in our city. Once this land is developed, it is gone forever. Many residents are deeply concerned about the impact this proposed regional sports development will have on our quality of life. Traffic is one of the greatest concerns. The surrounding roadway network already experiences congestion, and adding a large-scale destination facility near established neighborhoods, schools, and the airport will increase traffic, create delays, and impact daily life for residents, even with the exit closed on airport road. We must consider emergency response times, pedestrian safety, school traffic patterns, neighborhood cut-through traffic, and whether a project of this scale is truly compatible with the surrounding community. Noise is another significant concern. This is not a passive recreational use. A sports entertainment venue has the potential to bring concerts, amplified sound, public address announcements, loud whistles, cheering, yelling, large crowds, and increased vehicle traffic. Pickleball is of particular concern. With some studies liking it to living next to an expressway with noise impacts. No amount of mitigation will impact that noise. They do not stop at the property line. They become part of everyday life for families, students, and residents who live nearby. Lightings and hours of operation are also serious concerns. Bright sports lights, early morning and evening events, and extended operating hours fundamentally change the character of a residential area. Residents who purchased homes adjacent to a golf course did not expect to live next to a regional sports entertainment destination. Of particular concern are the St. Andrews condos. This development will literally come up to their doorsteps. We appreciate that the developer has made efforts to address neighborhood concerns and has been willing to engage residents. However, we do not believe those mitigation efforts will eliminate the impacts of this project. Traffic remains traffic. Noise remains noise. Bright lights remain bright lights. No amount of buffering, landscaping, or operational adjustments can fully eliminate the effects this project would have on quality of life and nearby residential values. As a real estate professional of 25 years, I assure you the development will absolutely suffer a serious detraction in property values to our neighborhoods. Ask yourselves, would you want this in your backyard? This does not belong in a residential neighborhood. That is why our concern is not simply about the design of this project. It is whether this is the right project in the right location. We have concerns about the inclusion of restaurants and food in beverage venues. The city has consistently identified successful small business as a priority, and we support these efforts. Clearwater's locally owned restaurants and businesses are part of what makes our community special. They have invested here, created jobs, and helped build the character of our city. These businesses have weathered economic downturns, storms, rising insurance costs, and labor shortages. Adding restaurants within a publicly owned development risks diverting customers away from existing businesses that are already working hard to succeed. We should be asking whether this proposal strengthens our local economy or creates additional competition for the very businesses we say we want to support. We are also concerned about the process. Many residents have questioned the financial security and long-term stability of the proposed developer. Before transferring such an important asset, those concerns deserve careful review and transparency. We also believe the public deserves to understand why this property was not offered through a competitive request for proposals. Why were multiple qualified visions not considered? Why was the community not given the opportunity to participate through a referendum? This land belongs to the people of Clearwater. A decision involving one of our last remaining open spaces deserves the highest level of transparency and public confidence. There are alternatives. Golf course could remain. It could be modernized while preserving valuable green space. If the goal is truly a sports entertainment destination, alternative locations such as Toy Town should be evaluated. Or perhaps we should consider preserving this land as a legacy, lasting open space. Communities are remembered not only for what they build, but also what they preserve. Boston Common and Central Park are examples of visionary decisions that became defining assets for their city. They are some of the most beloved urban parts in the world. What legacy do we want Clearwater to use? Do we want future generations to thank us for preserving one of the last great open spaces in our city? Finally, we respectfully ask you to consider the timing of this decision. With the upcoming elections and a proposed tax ballot measure before voters, this decision should not be rushed. Please consider placing this process on hold until after the elections and the proposed tax measure has been decided, allowing the community the opportunity to fully participate. Council members, we respectfully ask you to issue a competitive request for proposals and for a reasonable amount of time for that. 30 days is not enough for competitive developers to submit a complete vision and proposal. Consider allowing the public to decide through a referendum. Evaluate alternative locations, including Toy Town. Consider preserving the golf course or this property as permanent open space. Your willingness to pursue these options would demonstrate a commitment to transparency, fairness, and meaningful public participation. This decision will outlive all of us. Years from now, people may not remember every ordinance passed or every budget approved, but they will remember what happened to this land. Thank you for your service, your willingness to listen, and your continued commitment to Clearwater. While there are passionate opinions on every side of this issue, we believe we all share the same goal, protecting and strengthening the city we love. Because the measure of a great city is not only what it chooses to build, but also what it has the wisdom to preserve. We hope the landings becomes part of Clearwater's lasting legacy, not another opportunity lost. Thank you. As Mr. Johnson approaches the podium, if I can have Christine Michalak, Greg Erickson, Mike Reardon, and Lisa Lonza line up. Mr. Johnson, you have three minutes. Thank you, members of the council. I want to speak to the charter requirement for the open space recreation area that has been designated and the requirement for a change in the use of leases. I'm speaking as a former member of your charter review committee and vice chairman of that committee. When we did the review of the charter, we looked at the plain language of the charter in its entirety. As such, this is a change in use of a lease from a golf course to a sports complex. Bringing in the use definition from the Community Development Code sounds like searching for a loophole. After all, the Community Development Code hasn't been approved by the citizens at a referendum. In the abundance of caution, this should be the subject of a referendum to ensure fidelity with the citizens' charter. After all, it's the citizens' charter, not the council's charter. Thank you very much, and I appreciate your consideration. Christine Micheleck. Council, staff, here I am again, Christine Micheleck from Clearwater Point, speaking on behalf of neighborhoods. This time, I'm speaking on behalf of Keep Keen Green. I'm not going to go through some of the arguments that were brought before this, but I would like to share with you, beyond the fact that this will be such a threat to our environment, to our green, and this is why I believe this sports complex is a bad idea. The bottom line, Mr. Battle suggested competition. There will be competition with the Long Center, the Baylor Healthcare Center, our Clearwater Wonderful Recreation Centers, and very often personal small businesses that offer fitness, wellness. There will be competition. There will be competition with the local restaurants, as was suggested. I think you may have heard, which was shocking to me, that your own financial advisor shared with you that the restaurant portion will constitute the major income source for almost four to five years. Wow. That is of notice. And so if the restaurants of this sports complex are necessary to finance it, what will happen to all the small businesses, all the businesses that were mentioned before that have restaurants in that area? And the final thing is, agreeing to this will definitely could perpetuate sort of a feeling of discrimination, have versus have-nots. I'm sure you all know that within Florida, the minimum wage is $14 an hour. The minimum wage, $14 an hour, means $29,000 a year. How can families who live on $29,000 a year with children afford to use the amenities of this sports complex? Let's be honest. Those of us speaking today definitely make more than $29,000. So please consider those three things, competition, number two, the fact that the restaurants will suffer, and number three, that you are setting up a precedent, haves versus have-nots. Thank you for your time and for your service. Mr. Erickson. Hi, my name is Greg Erickson. I'm delighted to be here today. I'm an advocate for this facility. When I look at Clearwater, I think of tired, old, and no innovation. I've seen St. Pete become very chic and very attractive for the younger crowd. I've seen Tampa Bay take all the sports teams and collate that underneath Tampa. I think you've got an opportunity. And I think most people, when they talk about green space, let's face it, we're talking about a dump, former dump, and an airport. So if you're really interested in green space, there we go. How about that? There, in my pocket. Sorry about that. But, you know, you've got such a great opportunity here, right? And, in fact, to some degree, when I look at this proposal, it's a bit of spreading peanut butter. My son plays soccer. He plays MLS soccer. The places around here are like pastures, and the opportunity to be able to attract teams. And, more importantly, I had the opportunity to have dinner and watch a game with Dan Hunt from FC Dallas when we lived in Dallas. I saw that organization grow from scratch within the community. Just think what Clearwater could do. Soccer and basketball are two things that you can play for a lifetime. Golf as well. Pickleball, maybe. I don't know. I've never tried it. But I think this is a great opportunity. It feels a little bit like spreading peanut butter, but I think investing in kids and being able to have that, you know, I think is an advantage instead of next to an airport. And I think it's a good utilization of the space. That's just my two cents. Thank you. Mr. Reardon. Evening. My name is Mike Reardon. And probably most people here are surprised I'm here to come and agree with what I believe most of the councils are going to agree with. First of all, I don't see this as green space at all. But when I see – I've been living on a golf course for 23 years, not this one, the other with Clearwater Golf Club or whatever it's called now. And I look this up. If you had 12 hours, which you don't, but let's say you had 12 hours, most golf courses are going to send out – if you had four people in every pairing or four at a time and you won every seven to ten minutes, you're going to get between 144 and 288 golfers. But you never get that. You never get four. And you're really cutting it down to about seven to ten hours because it takes about four hours to play a round of golf. And I don't know what the handicap is on the landings, but if it's anything like Clearwater Golf Course, it's probably three figures. To me, when I think of green space, and I grew up around a lot of green space, I'm thinking about either going out in the woods and walking on natural man-made trails or maybe going somewhere where they put in, you know, wooden pavers or something so people can walk more freely. It's also a revenue thing. I mean, especially the referendum passes, we need more revenue. But also the landings is going to turn into an airport and have airplanes landing on it. I don't know anybody here except for Mr. Albright, and it remembers maybe when you were chief you were here over there. And I think it was Hoyt Hamilton who said, you know what, it's going to turn out to be a golf course. I was in favor of the light industrial with the 20 acres, with the amenities that that 20 acres had. Because I wanted to see jobs that generated better incomes to get citizens off what I call the tourism pipe because tourism jobs don't pay much. Some people make a lot of money, but most don't. So I'm in favor of this. I don't play golf. I don't care. I would love to see this on the golf course where I live, but good luck. It's a creek going down the middle of it. It's about four feet of water in the middle. They're in storms, and it's not going to happen. But it's going to turn into an airport, and every single thing you come up with, someone's going to complain about it. And someone's saying we need a referendum. I was on the Charter Review Committee twice. You don't need a referendum unless it's changing the use. And it's been made very clearly. And I've seen how, back to this green space, the amount of chemicals they dump on a golf course. Now, would I like to see natural grass versus artificial turf? Sure. Because I played soccer on natural grass. So, anyway, I'm in favor of it. I came here last minute. I was happy to see so many people here for it because I thought I was going to be, like, one or two of a few people here. So good luck, and thank you. I guess you've got a couple months to go. Ms. Lanza. Hi. Lisa Lanza, Clearwater, Florida. I live right up the street, Sunset Point Road in Hercules. I've lived there since 1978. I love the area. I'm at 78-foot elevation, which is one primary reason I haven't moved. I've watched the area for years and always thought, wow, what a gold mine that's being underutilized. And I was talking about all the industrial property in the area. So, at one point, I don't know, three years ago or so, or maybe two, I don't know. I went to Florida Pinella. I started meeting with Whit Blanton. We rode our bicycles along Hercules, talked about a new bicycle path coming from Old Coachman over to Montclair and then up Hercules and then over to the trail because I see people coming all the time along that area. And I say, well, where are you going? I'm going to the trail. Well, why aren't you taking Sunset Point Road? Well, because this is where the Google is sending me. Anyway, that's so. I've also, I went to the Florida Pinellas meeting, and they were talking about economic development. And I went to the podium, and I said, well, how about the Hercules Center? Why aren't we talking about that? There's a lot of opportunity out there. So, I just looked this up. This is, I guess this is AI, but it's true. I mean, it is accurate. The Hercules Employment District often, no, don't tell me. The Hercules Employment District, often referred alongside industrial manufacturing plants, parks on North Hercules Avenue, is Clearwater's primary traditional hub for light manufacturing, assembly, and maker businesses, located just north and east of the Clearwater Air Park. Forward Pinellas, that's a Pinellas County agency, the countywide planning council, and metropolitan planning organization, integrates this corridor into regional land use, brownfield revitalization, and multimodal transportation networks. So, you could look it up and read this. But this, we have to have the county involved in this. This is a very important economic district. It can afford, they've even talked about having affordable housing there. It's jobs. It's jobs that they've talked about, but the bicycle paths to connect the neighboring, the neighbor, the other neighborhoods all around. It's not just the Marymount neighborhood. There are many neighborhoods in that area that, and some of my neighbors actually work down there in that industrial district. I've talked to Mr. Weaver. He owns Weaver Park. He said no one's ever come to speak to him, no one from the county, no one from the city. He said, I've been here, you know, he's five generations. He said, it's taken 30 years for Pinellas County to finally stop the flooding here, and now they want to, this was when you were going to build the industrial campus on this headwaters of four creeks, which is ultimately what we have to think about. There are, I said four, but I meant three. There are three creeks that headwater. That's right there at that park. Well, take it from here. Do your own research, but there's a lot more going on here than just playing soccer. Thank you. Do we have any other speakers? With that, are there any additional council questions? Okay. Does the applicant have anything to follow up with? Just waiting for Eric to get up here before the clock starts. So, Mr. Vice Mayor, thank you again. Brian Unkstam here with Eric Sullivan. He's going to address some of the questions regarding property values based on data and his analysis and also the market study that was done regarding the compatibility of the use and the need for the use and Pinellas County's efforts to attract a multipurpose use like this for over a decade. Thank you, Eric. Council, thank you for the opportunity to address you on this matter. So, to Brian's point, we have been looking at this market research and how can we create more long-field inventory in Pinellas County on behalf of the county for over 10 years. We've looked at a number of sites in North County, South County, Mid-County, and the opportunity here to create 13 full-size regulation fields creates a regional and national destination that we just don't have right now. As you heard from some of the soccer constituents, we're currently losing out to other parts of the state for those events and competitions. Now, one of the other things I want to address real quickly is the real estate's come up a couple times. I think we've done a good job of addressing noise and lights and some other things. The national governing body for parks and recreation space is NRPA, National Recreation and Park Association. They've completed over 33 comprehensive studies, and I'll just read from the summary. According to the National Park and Recreation Association, the real estate market consistently demonstrates a distinct proximity premium for homes located near active and open green spaces and parks. NRPA highlights that there's a home value premium of 8% to 20% that is standards for properties near an active park. Properties directly adjacent or facing passive or active parks see a baseline value increase of roughly 20%. Homes that are within a two- to three-block radius drops but shifts to roughly a 10% premium for those homes. And, Eric, I just wanted to ask, is that consistent with the facilities like this one that you manage across the country, what you see in terms of the adjacent property value? It is. So this is related to a facility like this. Okay, thank you. Mr. Vice Mayor, Council, again, just closing here, I want to thank the staff. Regardless of how you decide tonight, they've put a lot of effort into this. It was a first-time process, and they've done an outstanding job. I'd like to thank Prague. And what's the harm in seeing what else is out there for 30 days and accepting this as a qualified bid? Thank you. Thank you. Now open it up for council discussion. I want to thank everyone involved, the staff, and also the applicant in bringing everyone together and really telling us about the project and making us understand. That's why I didn't have any questions. All my questions were answered. Also, all my conversations with different residents, which were many. Where's Ms. Stamos? Where did she go? Yeah, there you go. Sorry, you're behind. I mean, you are not the only one that I've had conversations like that. And as I was having those conversations in the last few months, and it started actually on Neighborhood Day. That's as far back as it was. And so every neighborhood I went to, you know, I was open to hearing. And one of the things that I have to say, I'm very pleased and surprised, is that systematically some of the concerns that were conveyed to me as early as Neighborhood Day, the applicant has considered it and many times made those changes. So I just wanted to, like, you know, let you know where I'm coming from. But I realize that this point has already been made. But I think it bears repeating. It is important that the public, you all, understand exactly on what we're voting today. This is not a vote to approve the project. It is a vote to determine whether the proposal should move to the next step, further assessments, further conversations, and whether that process should be shared with other entities. So based on all the information I received and all the communications I received from various constituents, I believe this proposal merits moving forward. And as well, I approve or support opening the process so all qualified proposals can be considered before Council makes any further decisions. That's where I stand. Okay. I remember many e-mails during the last solicitation to put light industrial buildings at the landings. That was six years ago. So initially I was for the project because Clearwater really had no light industrial to speak of. That land use required a public referendum, and the public voted it down handily. This unsolicited proposal came to us conceptually last November, and I did not embrace it because I knew the neighbors and the people around the landings and the people that used the golf course probably wouldn't support it. Most of my concerns were answered after meeting with the developer and seeing they had a few public meetings to get the public's reaction. Again, we are at the beginning of vetting this project. It does seem to align with the city's comprehensive plan, and it does seem to offer a public a wide variety of sporting and recreation amenities. However, we have a long way to go to approve a $190 million project. I'm already getting loads of e-mails opposing it. The CNC opposed it, and many who aren't direct neighbors oppose it. Most people see the landings golf course as a pristine green aquifer instead of a grass-told garbage dump. This project should or would remediate the buried trash and make the water quality that flows into Stevens Creek clean again. Perhaps the best way to start this conversation about transitioning the landings is to solicit other proposals in accordance with Florida Statute 255-065. If we get other proposals, we can hold public meetings, review, and compare them. So my recommendation is to direct staff to seek other proposals, and I would make that motion. I do want to say something, but I'll say it regardless. Thank you. So we do have a motion, and we do have a second. And that was for accepting the proposal but also moving forward with 30 days as directed by option two, I believe it was, by staff report. Very good. And before we get to a vote, I would like to say a few things. First off, thank you to the audience for those on both sides, you know, especially when I asked for the applause. You're all very courteous of each other's time, so thank you very much for that. Thank you to the applicant for indulging me. I know that on Monday we went through extensive questioning and at least going through those questioning again because, as my colleagues have noted, you know, these are the e-mails and the concerns that you have heard and that we are getting from those e-mails. So being able to honestly give a solution to each one is very comforting, and not just comforting, but I appreciate the willingness to try and come to those solutions. I do agree with both my colleagues up here of opening it up for the 30-day proposal, but to Mr. Porter and your team, thank you very much for bringing us this, and I look forward to seeing what we have going forward. So we have a motion and a second. With that, can we please get a vote? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. That was my job. Those opposed? Any opposed? Any opposed? It's unanimous. With that, we will now take another recess and get back to the meeting. Thank you. Meeting back to order and move to agenda item 7.4. Council Rule 6, temporarily restore public comment regarding matters not on the agenda for an additional period of time and adopt Resolution 26-13. So, Council, this resolution continues a temporary period for citizens to be heard on items not on the agenda. It was stored back in February of this year. It was extended for three months until May. It was extended for another three months until August. It expires tomorrow. So this resolution will continue with a temporary period for citizens to be heard on items not on the agenda. The proposed sunset date is November the 20th. And maybe we'll go ahead and have a record. Resolution number 26-13, a resolution of the City of Clearwater, Florida, embedding council rules, providing an effective date. Anyone hear from the public that I desire to be heard on this agenda? Hearing and seeing none, any council discussion? If not, let's throw a motion. Move to approve agenda item 7.4. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous. You're done in 8.1. So, council, this is my item again. It is adopt ordinance 9929-26 on the second reading, and then approve a memorandum of agreement with Duke Energy. So, by way of background, the first reading for this ordinance occurred in July. It was ordinance number 9929-26. It was for a 30-year franchise agreement with Duke. Duke would continue to operate for 30 years, and the city would receive a 6% franchise fee. Now, back in July, there was a first reading. Also, what was discussed was the memorandum of agreement. That was just a discussion item, but today, that memorandum of agreement would also be approved. I'm not going to go over the entire agreement. We went over it three weeks ago. But in Section 3 of that agreement, there's a combination of investments and benefits to the city of about $2 million. May we go ahead and have a reading on this one? Yes, will you. Ordinance number 9929-26, an ordinance granting to Duke Energy Florida, LLC, doing business as Duke Energy non-exclusive electric utility franchise to occupy municipal streets and right-of-ways in the city of Clearwater, Florida, for the purpose of providing electric and power services, prescribing the terms and conditions, accompanying the grant of franchise, providing for severability of provisions, and providing an effective date. Does anyone want to hear from the public than I desire to speak to this agenda? Yes, Jason Scott. All right. Thank you again for having me, Council. I want to start with going back to the comments I made at the last reading. I was disappointed that we did not have any public communication about the results of the appraisal. I know Mike and others have talked about how this has been a long process already with communications, but we did not talk about the results of the appraisal at all. If you go onto the Clearwater website, there is no resources to actually see the appraisal. You have to go to this agenda item to find the actual appraisal. So I just want to share the appraisal results for just public viewing. So it came back for a full buyout of the assets and going concern for eight years of $265 million under a certified appraisal. And I went ahead and did the math to update Table 4-1 to show what that savings would look like for residents here in Clearwater. It might be hard to read from there. But essentially, redoing the revenue bond, I set it to 6.5% for the interest, assuming that the actual legal costs and fees would be rolled into the revenue bond. So over 30 years, we would have significant savings. But in the very first year, we would have roughly over 13% in savings, up to 15%, and $30 million in savings for residents in the very first year. So I'm very concerned and confused why we're moving forward with benefits to the city of only $2 million when residents across the city of Clearwater could have savings up to $30 million. Now, I know that the legal costs could go above the suggested $10 or $12 million. But even then, you would still have wiggle room for savings for residents across the city. And I want to also note, this $2 million package is largely due to naming rights downtown, whereas the savings on the electric bills would be for all residents. So I want to urge you to work on public communication on this subject. I know you guys are going to vote yes on this. And I was also concerned that you guys did not remove Section 4C, giving Duke Energy injective relief. So I really wish that would have changed and there was more public communication. But thank you for having us. Thank you. Anyone else? Shane Meeker. Hello. So obviously, I'm here to express disappointment. I've been here. You guys know that. In support of public power. I'm really happy Melissa could join us after skipping the entire community engagement aspect of this meeting. It's a good sign for our agreement and engagement with Duke Energy in the future. And it was great that you guys could have led in an issue that could have affected this entire state, which, again, is why Duke was scared. But I saw in the other comments, though, there seems to be a trend in Clearwater of a lack of transparency and a lack of engaging the community in processes. So it seems that it's not limited to just one topic. And so I guess at least it's good to know there's some consistency there. And I'm sure that plenty of you campaigned on transparency. I'm sure that's a basic thing you said, right? I'm sure that you campaigned on being a man of the people, not like other politicians, right? But the thing is, people, we don't know secrets. And I guess we've not been able to understand why there's been a switch from all of a sudden being in support of public power and all of a sudden being in favor of this deal. But we did get a vague answer through our meetings and communication with city council members that there is some secret. There's some special reason or a special plan or an agreement that we can only find out tomorrow, but we can't know now. So I don't think that a city council should be making decisions on something that we can't know as citizens here. And so I'd like to know what that secret is so that, like, we all know it and then you are a man of the people, women of the people. You know, that's kind of fun to all be together on that. And so I'm also asking you to wait until after the election, especially if there's some secrets and transparency that needs to be cleared up. Let the people decide based on this on what all the answers are. I mean, maybe it's all wrong on my end. That's cool. That's fine. I hope it's that. But let the people decide. The election's coming up. That's democracy. Honor democracy. Don't lock in citizens of Clearwater to 30 years of some of the highest rates for energy in the state of Florida. And it's basically a 30-year deal with the devil that we will not be able to get out of, even if you believe we will. Duke is not stupid. So, yeah, just don't lock us in to the 30 years. Wait until after the election. Nothing will happen if you wait on signing another contract. It will continue to renew month by month. So if there's any misunderstanding on that, that's just what the case is. But I hope that you guys can defy my expectations today and stand up for the people of Clearwater, not Duke, and figure out whatever these secrets are for the people to know. Thank you. Silas Ochoa. Okay, I'm not very knowledgeable on this, like, barely. All I know is that from the experience of my family growing up in Clearwater my entire life, being raised by my grandmother, by herself taking care of four kids, because English isn't her first language, I was there the entire time, seeing the bills constantly increase, increase. And I didn't even really know how crazy it was until she's kept, like, the Duke Energy bills since, like, I don't know, like, at least 2010. She's had, she has so many records, and, like, going back and seeing a family of five, well, at that time it was six, but a family of six, going from bills that were, like, 135 to now, like, in the summer, the bills will be, like, 450, which is an insane increase. And, like, my grandma's been providing for us our entire life, and she's, like, been killing her health and her body and her mental state. And I just feel like it would just be so much better to have more, as a people, to have more input in how our city is run. I wish I wasn't, like, trying not to cry. Having more power in the hands of the people, that's what this is supposed to be about, but it's not. And I just wish y'all weren't killing people and breaking them down just to get more profit. That's all I got to say. Any other speakers? Ms. Alonza. I'm Lisa Alonza, Clearwater, Florida. In February 2017, I realized that Sierra Club, Suncoast Sierra Club, which is a Pinellas County branch of Sierra Club, they wanted to start looking at energy, study on energy. So I made a public record request, and I got the franchise agreement with the city. And I learned that the city franchise agreement would be expiring in December 2025. So I sent that out to a lot of people, including the Environmental Advisory Board, Sierra Club, and anybody I thought cared from 2017 until 2025. And it seemed like, you know, I said, like, can't we have a working group? Like, can't we, like, you know, look at different things? So I started, like usual, I just went on my merry way and started working with Duke Energy and working on the rebate program and actually got some consolidation. That's not the right word. Whatever. Compromises. No, that's not the right word either. Anyway, they raised the rebate program and got better, but it's still not good enough. And I also learned from Susan Glickman. You've all met with Susan. She's one of the energy policy experts locally. She's been my friend since Sierra Club days back in the 1980s. She sent me – it's an organization. I looked it up today. But it's – what's the name of it? They look at the different energy companies and the kind of rebates they're offering and how they're educating and consumer protection, let's just say. And I discovered that – well, Susan actually told me that Duke Energy rated, like, I think it was 42 in the nation for their rebate program. So I really started, you know, herping at writing and calling and actually developed some good relationships at Duke. And I would just like to see – oh, and also discovered that Duke does have this program for low-income people, and it's working out pretty good. They're working in North Greenwood and, I think, South Greenwood also. So there are some programs out there, but Duke's not doing a very good job. I even talked to the guy who's working on that program. They're not doing a good job of getting this information out to the public. Like, in terms of this young woman, her heartfelt plea, there is help out there. But they're looking – this is – it's not, like, per person. It's based on, like, well, we look at this particular area and we look at the income in this area and if it's a low-income area. But there's individual people that need it, not just people in a particular zip code or particular neighborhood. So that's – Duke can help the people a lot more. And I wish we had a working group established prior to December 25th, 2025, that we could have said, what kind of accommodations would we like from Duke? So there is a list. I've read the list. That list doesn't help citizens. It looks like it helps everybody else, but not citizens. Thank you. Melissa Satius. Good evening, Mayor, Council members, staff. Melissa Satius, State President of Duke Energy Florida. I just wanted to come up and thank you again for the opportunity to work with each one of you, with your amazing staff, to work toward an opportunity to bring benefits to the citizens of Clearwater, our customers, and how we can work together in the future. So on behalf of all of my employees who call Clearwater home or who work here, we just wanted to say thank you and express our gratitude for working with you over the last several months. Thank you. Any other speakers? Okay. With that, do we have any council discussion? I would just like to make one comment. There are no secrets here. This is – I don't have a card. I'm sorry, Mayor. Did you submit a card? Yeah. What was the name? Jeff. Oh, you had submitted it, I thought, under – I'm sorry. Yes, you did. Jeff, I'm sorry. It came on up, sir. Yeah. It got stuck with another card. Hello, all. I want to start by thanking the council members, Vice Mayor, and the Mayor. Thank you for hearing us about the Duke Franchise Agreement tonight. First, I want to start out by saying 30 years ago when the previous franchise agreement started, I wasn't even in school. I was just about to start kindergarten. And 30 years from now, hopefully I'll be retired, but, you know, you can't be certain about that. What you can't be certain about is that with this agreement, Duke gets paid. I know there was a lot of concern in the last meeting about uncertainty. What happens if a hurricane hits during the transition? What if costs run up? Those uncertainties are going to be there either way. What did happen, though, is when Milton hit, when Helene hit, Duke raised rates. Meanwhile, municipal power, cheaper, more reliable, and more responsive when a hurricane hit. You want to talk about uncertainty? How about when Duke violated the previous franchise agreement? Numerous times. How can you be certain that they won't violate this next agreement? At the very least, we can lower this term to 15 years. Newport Ritchie just did this. So you've got this uncertainty around the Duke, about Duke's actions, what they'll actually do once this agreement is signed. And what do we get back? $2 million over 30 years? The Clearwater citizens are going to save way more than that. And what do they do with those savings? They spend it in our communities. And that community spend drives Clearwater's economy. So all that said, and you're still going to go with Duke, I feel like you all are more certain of keeping an energy company monopoly in Clearwater than investing in the community. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Any other speakers? Well, I was getting ready to say, there are no secrets here. I don't know in the two years that this current council has been together. I don't know if there's ever been an issue as publicly debated as this one was. And we heard from a lot of folks who supported us staying with Duke, and we heard a lot from, we did hear from Clearwater citizens who were in favor of us taking it over. But there's been vigorous debate on it. But it's not, it was never, and our consultants, which we hired, never described this as a dump, easy. If it was easy or inexpensive, somebody would have done it in the past 20 years, and one has, no other municipality. So there's a lot that goes into it. And we did have to consider many different factors. And we landed where we landed. And we talked about that in our last meeting. But I just want to correct the record, and if anybody who's here tonight thinks they're a secret, there are no secrets here. This is what we felt like is the best solution for our citizens, citizens of Clearwater and our taxpayers who would be funding the bill to make the transition happen. So with that, if there's no further discussion, all those in favor? We don't have a motion. Oh, excuse me. Motion. Is there a motion? Yes, sir. Motion to approve of Gen Item 8.1. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Humanist. Okay. With that, we will move to Gen Item 9. That's citizens of the Oregon topics that are not recognized here. Go ahead, Mr. Johnson. I think that was the first one to sign up. It's okay. Go ahead. It's coming. Okay. Good evening. Again, I'm Bill Johnson. I attended the Dollars to Donuts event Saturday at the Morningside Rec Center. It was a great opportunity to discuss the budget upcoming and some priorities and to interact with several department heads in one place at one time to discuss citizens' concerns, to ask questions, and to compare notes with other citizens. Thank you for sponsoring that event. One of the conversations I had was with the City Finance Director about the upcoming finalization of the Phillies Agreement. On Saturday, he offered to help me understand several aspects of the term sheet if I send him questions. I have done that, and I'm looking forward to receiving those responses. The City Manager attended the Clearwater Neighborhoods Coalition meeting on Monday with an update, again, on the budget, and address the upcoming possible options if the November property tax referendum is approved by 60% of the voters in the state of Florida. One of the things that she was asked was whether about the Phillies' term sheet, and she reported that it is non-binding at this time. That is good considering the uncertainty with the upcoming property tax referendum. My purpose in speaking tonight is to ask that any final approval of the Phillies Agreement should also be non-binding until the constitutional referendum impact is finalized. It's additionally difficult to understand why general fund dollars would be used to fund expansion of the Phillies' ballpark complex at a time when general fund resources are lacking to maintain our premier Coachman Park today and elsewhere. I love having the Phillies in Clearwater and support enhancing the ballpark with Penny for Pinellas funds, just not with scarce general funds. Thank you. Yes, sir. Mr. Raftery, you signed up. No? Ms. Lanza? No, Ms. Lanza. Oh, I think it's a lot. Ms. Lanza. Well, I figured I haven't been here in a long time, so I might as well take advantage of the situation. I was thinking, what do I want to talk about? Well, one thing I want to talk about is a new service the PSCA is offering. It's called the PSCA Snapper. I'm reading. It's an on-demand microtransit service by the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority operating in designated zones across Clearwater and Safety Harbor. It connects local neighborhoods to major transit hubs like the Park Street Terminal and Countryside Mall. It's available Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Travel is available point to point. That's what makes it so amazing. They actually pick you up. I tried it out, too. They actually came to my door. It was amazing. And they keep making better, making it work. You know, they're making changes along the way. And now they've decided, I don't want to go into how it was, but the way it is now is you could pay, I believe it's $4.50 a day. That may be the senior rate. But you can go anywhere in the zone point to point. And let's see. So, anyway, go to the PSCA website, read about the snapper. And one other thing, the Resiliency and Leisure Board, it's not working very well because we've had some important issues that have come up relating to resiliency, which is, in particular, this Duke Energy power contract. The board never looked at it. And also this complex. The board never looked at it. And I don't understand what this board is supposed to be doing. But I don't know if you've had the time to watch the meetings. But you've consolidated five boards into one board. You've taken where we had 20 representatives. Now we have five representatives. And it's just my opinion. But I watch all the boards. And I talk to a lot of people. And I think you might want to rethink it. But if nothing else, they're going to have to meet more often because there's too much going on for them to meet every four months. Thank you for your service. And have a wonderful weekend. Thank you, Ms. Lanza. Any other speakers? Okay. I'll move to item 10, city management reports. Nothing to report. You're sanctions for the manager to return, sir. You have two opportunities tonight. Item 11, city attorney reports. Nothing to answer. Okay. Item 12.1. Started a conversation on naming city hall or some aspect of city hall or administrative complex after Mr. Horn and Councilman Bonino want to start us on this discussion. Absolutely. Thank you, Mayor. Respectfully, this discussion is not about undoing an honor or trying to rewrite a legacy. It's an opportunity in front of us before we open our beautiful new city hall to elevate his legacy a bit. And William B. Horn's impact on Clearwater for his 22 years extended well beyond just the walls of city hall but throughout the entire community. On Monday, we had a pretty in-depth conversation in our work session and discussing several of the options. And it seemed like the dais was kind of leaning in the direction of naming the plaza or park after Mr. Horn in an effort to recognize that 22 years of remarkable public service that he gave to the city. And just for clarity, I think we should all be on the same page that when we talk about plaza or park, it's being defined as walking paths and green space next to city hall. I think tonight, Councilman, our options are kind of three things. Number one, figure out if we wanted to continue down that same path of plaza or park and naming it after William B. Horn. Having additional discussions on other options, I think we all saw some recommendations emailed to us. Or the third, keep the previously proposed name on the newly constructed city hall after William B. Horn. So I thank you for the opportunity to have that discussion and look for us finding a way to acknowledge that service for the man that gave so much to our community. Absolutely. Absolutely. We all, and I've heard so many from the community just express their admiration for Bill Horn and the legacy he left here. I'm looking at what was shared with all of us a couple days ago, and I would say for me, either the William B. Horn II lobby, which would be the lobby of city hall, or I would be okay with either William B. Horn II Plaza or park, which is the walking paths and green space. So either one of those I think would be appropriate for me. Councilmember Elbritton? So I'll just repeat what I said Monday. I was leaning more toward the William B. Horn Memorial Lobby because I know the bust is going to be in there that we had made. But, you know, the plaza or park is fine with me, too. So those two, and I may be leaning more now to the plaza. It's a bigger area. I think we could have some signs out there, and it's kind of a bigger area that people could be in. I don't necessarily know. I think I'd call it a park. I think a plaza is more appropriate in the complex of MSB, city hall, and police station. But I think Ms. Horn was, Hibbert, I had talked to her, and she was very honored to have any, you know, any of the things we were talking about. So I think we've got full discretion to, you know, what does anybody else think? I would not object to any of the suggestions, but if I would have to prioritize them, it would be plaza and then lobby. Are you fine? Vice Mayor? I am okay with plaza. So consensus on plaza? I'm fine with that. That's good to me. Okay. We don't need a motion on that. We just need direction. Actually, yes. If we can have a motion, I'd appreciate that. Okay. It's through a motion. So moved. Second. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous. What? Oh. Oh. That's true. Anyone here from the public that I decided to speak to the motion to name the plaza after Mr. Horn. Bill Johnson, again. I think your suggestion for the plaza is a perfect way to honor him. I served with him for 14 years, spent an hour a week with him, and I really like that a whole lot better than a building that just functions and stuff. So, thank you. Anyone else? Kevin R.T. Lachlan. More than 10 long years ago, I was pushed by a dear friend, the late Ashley Pimley, former member of the Environmental Board, to get active, to join a board. I talked to Mayor Credos and to Mr. Horn, and because I own some properties around Clearwater Largo Road and even up in Pasco, I won't tell you how much money I lost in 2008, they put me on the brand-new code abatement board. I think that's the right name. Gosh, it's been 11 years. We didn't meet. We didn't meet. We couldn't get enough people to have a quorum. We finally had enough to get a quorum, and they said now we can actually charge some cases, some code violations. It was mostly pointed at our gateways and a lot of the seedier hotels and things. So we couldn't have a third meeting. Now three-quarters of a year has gone by. We couldn't have a third meeting. And all through this, any time I would see, and usually Mayor Credos and Bill could be found together, I would corner them and say, I've been 30 years in the marine industry, and because all that time there was an open seat on the marine advisory board, and that's what I've really done all my life. I'm now on it for 10 years. I'm the chairman, and I thank them for it because they finally broke down. They finally saw the light. They hated to lose a member of that first board because they were just getting their feet under them. But 10 years later, I couldn't be in a happier position. I love what we do. I'm anxious to see our new marina open. You had the step one to step two. You had a little ribbon cutting. You did not invite the marine advisory board. I will tell you that all of us up there would like to be at the ribbon cutting when we do open that marina because we're very proud of the work we put in. Why Mike Groman and I are still on the board, we would not leave after two terms because we've put so much work and advice into that marina that we want to see it open. So I love what you're doing. I think this is a wonderful thing. He deserves any honor you give him. Anyone else? Okay. Now, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous. Mayor, can I use this agenda item to have two requests, to make two formal requests? Would that be a good spot to do it so that I can get some feedback instead of the closing comments? Yeah, that's fine. So the first request is I would like to place on the next agenda a conversation about the county RFN and our buildings and the county's buildings. I believe a brief review would help clarify some of the misunderstandings that have been going on, and that way we're all working on the same page. So if we could place that on the next agenda. And then the next thing is... The next work session agenda. Yeah. Yeah. You don't mind? Well, we don't have a work session, and it'll get to the council meeting. That's fine. The second is I'd like to make a request of my fellow council members. Due to an avoidable family commitment, I will not be able to attend the September 14th work session. This is the first time I've ever made this request, and I don't do so lightly. I realize that this will require adjustments from all of you. But I'm asking that if there are any agenda items that are anticipated to involve any significant discussions, public comments, or significant public engagement, I respectfully ask that those items be postponed to a future work session, and I would sincerely appreciate your consideration. So that's also a community redevelopment agency meeting. And I, too, I've been invited to the White House that afternoon with a small group of mayors from across the country. So I plan to not be here that day as well. So if the CRA meets, I would hope that it doesn't have any significant agenda items that we would all five want to weigh in on if the CRA is going to meet that day. And then on the work session, I mean, it's really up to this group. But it's, you know, the purpose is to have discussion and to kind of get through, I guess, if get through some questions, I guess you could be going through things twice if we had things we had questions about that we wanted to pull from the agenda for the council meeting. So you could be asking for a presentation twice for some things. I mean, for myself, one of the good things about a work session or having this opportunity is the exchange of thoughts, right? Sometimes I come here with something in my mind, and then I hear different views, and I like that back and forth. And I appreciate those three days where I can have a time where citizens respond to what happened, or even I would just need that time to process and go back and forth with citizens and formalize my thoughts for the vote. So whether it's a CRA or a work session, if there's significant agenda items where I know there's a big invested interest from the public, and I know that it is significant, I would appreciate that opportunity to not only listen live to what you all have to say, but to respond to that and also give that space not only for myself but for the citizens to process what was discussed in the work session and then have the vote on Thursday. So I respectfully ask that you would agree to postponing any significant agenda items. On the CRA. CRA work session, whatever has the, there's a significant. Well, we don't vote work sessions. Right, but there's a conversation, right? So if there's, it all depends. Sometimes there's agenda items that are very generic or there's not that much significant engagement. I don't have, I don't have an issue with that. But if it's, if there's something important, I do want to not only have a voice, but I want to hear yours. You'll be here. Sorry. Starting to get into the conversation. But you'll be here Thursday, though, correct? I'll fly in that day. But I don't want to fly in and just vote on something important. I do want to have the opportunity to discuss and have my voice heard on that Monday and then have that feedback that I usually do and that time to process it. And if there's anything significant on the agenda, I think that the public would also appreciate that window of processing instead of just show up on Thursday and vote on something that the public might be perceiving it as very significant. I'm not talking about, you know, adding this to a contract or piggybacking this contract. And that is some, it's just anything that I would think is important enough that not only do I want to be heard, but I want to hear you all and have that three days to process. I just don't want to fly in on Thursday and just place a vote on something important. Yeah, no, thank you. We were just locked in a hallway like we were misbehaved middle schoolers. So I get what you're saying about missing something. And I think your point's been made. Your county RFN discussion will be added to the next agenda item. And you requested having a further discussion about both of you not being able to attend the September 14th meeting. I think we do as normal precedent, add this as new business, put it on the agenda. Let's have discussions with staff as we move forward over the next couple weeks and find what our options are and make a decision by then. I don't necessarily think we need to sit here and make a decision tonight. So that's fine. And regarding the CRA meeting on the 14th, though, we can put that on the agenda at the special CRA meeting that you have for the closed executive session. It needs to open at a public meeting. That can be the first item on the meeting before you go to the closed meeting. Perfect. Thank you. Anything else on that? Okay. Other council member reports? Oh, I guess we haven't gotten to that because we've stayed on the council chair. Closing comments by council members. Any closing comments? I'm the only one again. I'm the only one? I think we're just. Oh, we're just starting with me. I think we're just looking for you. Want to start? Because I look up and everybody's looking at me. Okay, we'll go this way. Council member O. Nothing, Mayor. Okay. Council member Menino. Nothing, Mayor. Vice Mayor. I'll add something to give you time. Thank you. But next week we have back to school. So all those families that are prepping to get their youngsters ready, good luck. I'm in the thick of it with you. And to all those whose children are grown and out of the nest or don't have children, please be cautious and courteous while driving. You're going to have a lot of kids out there on the roads, lots of school bus, lots of bus stops. So here's to the next school season. Good school year and good luck to all the parents. Thank you. So I want to recognize a few wonderful examples of what I think makes Clearwater so great. First, congratulations to everyone involved in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Ruth Eckerd Hall. It was such a magical evening. It was wonderful. Wonderful production. Everyone did a great job. I especially want to recognize the young actor who I just found out is Adrian Wang. He is a triple threat. I mean, he can sing, he can dance, he can act. So charismatic. We will not see the end of this guy. I think he's going to make it all the way. I have such a wonderful, talented child. I kept thinking, I wonder what his parents feel like just watching that. I mean, it was awesome. So congratulations to him and the whole entire cast. Again, that's what makes the arts so important. Sometimes we forget, but I left there very positive. Also, speaking of bringing people together, we also had terrific opportunities for community engagement. The first one was the North Ward Open House. It was very well attended. I was shocked. And it was wonderful to see so many residents being so active, talking about memories and sharing memories, even strangers talking to each other. It was great to see all those people care about something and how much value they put to that. What we think is just brick and mortar. It actually was so special to them, so I appreciate that. Also, to all those who participated to the Donuts to Dollars outreach event, it was encouraging to see them participating in such a very clear and active way with stickers and actually taking the time to think and be active in that conversation, but actually putting something on paper. It was great to see that. And finally, I can say after four and a half years, I've had my share of unexpected council duties over the years, but none of which I remember is the one that I did last year, last week with you guys, which was jumping at the long center pole fully clothed with my peers. That was the most amazing experience. And it was incredible. It was really good. And so I want to congratulate all those people and thank all those people that were responsible for that event, as well as bringing the long center back to life so that we can create more fun. So thank you. All right. Closing comments by Mayor. Just a couple things. One, the long center opening, to see those families just and those folks who have participated there for years, to be so excited about being back in there enjoying that water and seeing those kids enjoying the water was a great day for clear water. And then the other thing is, as Vice Mayor just pointed out, it's back to school. So to his point, let's all be careful. First day of school for most of the schools, public and private, is Tuesday, Tuesday morning. So let's all be more attentive to be careful to those little ones crossing the street. And let's also take a moment to thank all these folks who helped educate and develop these young kids. This morning I spoke to LSF Pinellas for the early start and head start teachers to just encourage them. You know, they really, given those kids a good pre-kindergarten education, are getting them developed. Some of those kids wouldn't get any, really, attention any other way than through their program. They're really changing this county, this city, for years to come by giving those kids the kind of development. And Vice Mayor's wife is a teacher. All these school teachers and principals, we have some great schools, public and private, here in Clearwater. And those folks do hard work, and they do probably the most impactful work in our entire city. So thank a teacher or school worker this week as well, because they're getting ready to do a very hard job, but a very important job for the future of Clearwater for our city, our county, our state, and our nation. So let's take a moment to thank them as well. So with that, if nothing else, come before the Clearwater City Council. We will adjourn the meeting for August 6, 2026.