CITY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING - May 08, 2025

Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the May 8, 2025 City Commission meeting. I'm going to call this meeting to order. We've got a full house tonight. There you go. And we'll start with our invocation with Jen. Let us begin this meeting by taking a brief moment of silence and reflection for the families of Gregory Martin and Manny Koutsourias. Amen. And then I'd like to call up Adeline and Mason Greger. There they are. They are the grandchildren of Commissioner Sandbergen, students of Curtis Fundamental, and they will lead us in the pledge. 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. Thank you. Great job. Thank you, Adeline. Thank you, Mason. We appreciate it. Let's give them another hand. They did a great job. I don't know. How did you get such cute grandkids? Come on. Shout out to Curtis Fundamental here. Okay. Okay. Well, we have a lot of presentations tonight, so we'll get started with those. And our first one is a very important one, Teacher Appreciation Week Proclamation 2025. And I'm going to turn that over to our liaison, Vice Mayor Gao. Thank you, Mayor, very much. I would like to call up Katie Ducharme to receive the proclamation. While Katie is making her way to the podium, I just wanted to acknowledge that I think everybody in here has firsthand knowledge of the value of teachers, having been raised and gone through the system yourself somewhere in your community. My father was a teacher. My mother was a teacher. My sister was a teacher. I was a teacher. So education is strong in our background. Born and raised in Dunedin. Went to San Jose Elementary, Dunedin Middle School, Dunedin High School. Go Falcons. So not only did we all go through education, but it's extremely personal to a community and the value that education and teachers play in the role in the community. So it's certainly understandable that we celebrate them with Teacher Appreciation Week with their proclamation. And I see some awards up here, so other things to follow. That's the next item. But I think, Phyllis, you're supposed to be up here now too, right? Sure. Come on, Phyllis. There's a bunch of teachers in this room, so I'll get that. I'm on their committee. It's the teacher's big day. Teacher Appreciation Week. Whereas Teacher Appreciation Week is observed nationally during the first full week of May. And whereas teaching is a profession that requires the ability and desire to impart knowledge, creativity, patience, and persistence, and to adapt all learning environments for all students. And whereas teachers dedicate themselves to their students' academic success as well as their social and emotional well-being. And whereas because of the changing needs of young people in our schools, teachers must be constantly learning and evolving their methods of instruction. And whereas besides parents and family members, teachers are the single most influential individuals in the lives of our students and their future. And whereas teachers inspire the next generation and make it possible for kids to realize their potential. And whereas devoted teachers in Dunedin are working countless hours and putting forth extra effort to help students achieve, preparing them for future education, their workforce, and their civic duties. Now, therefore, I, Jeff Gow, by the virtue of the authority vested in me by the mayor of the city of Dunedin, and on behalf of this entire city commission, to hereby proclaim Teacher Appreciation Week May 5th through May 9th, 2025, and encourage parents, students, community partners, and citizens to show admiration and gratitude for the teachers in our schools. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. This is so exciting because these last few weeks here in Dunedin, we have really been celebrating our teachers and our educators. So I feel like I should be turned to all of you and say thank you for everything that you do for our children and for our schools. And these last couple of weeks, we had a wonderful teacher's breakfast, the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce Education Foundation. We hosted a breakfast with the golf club. We had great sponsors, and all the teachers came, and we celebrated them. We gave out the Apple Awards, which you'll see here shortly. We also gave out two scholarships to two very deserving teachers and awards to different teachers that you'll hear about tonight. And then this week, we have the Chamber of Commerce Education Foundation have been going to the Dunedin schools and bringing breakfast, as we've done. This is our third year doing that, celebrating the teachers, bringing them breakfast, and just saying thank you for all that you do. I have two children in Dunedin schools, and I know firsthand how hard it is and how well and great these teachers work with our children. So thank you so much for this, and we're proud to have this. And thank you again to our teachers and educators in this community. Can I just do a picture? Okay. Our next item is right along the same theory. It's our 14th annual City of Dunedin Mayor's Top Apple School Awards. And as it says, we've done this for 14 years. I think that this whole community realizes the importance that our teachers play in the lives of our kids. It's certainly one of the reasons that make people want to be in different communities, those schools and the teachers that teach our kids. So this is very important as a community that we honor the people that are making the difference in our children's lives. And at the Dunedin Council of Organizations, I actually handed out the Apple Awards of people that were there. But this time, I get it easy. And our library director, who is our liaison with the schools, Phyllis, is going to do that for me. So I'm going to let you take the lead. Wonderful. Well, thank you. Each year, you, the City of Dunedin Commission, recognizes our Mayor's Top Apple School Awards. So we have Top Apple Awards, and then we have individual school awards. So schools that receive an A-letter grade or go up a grade win a Mayor's Top Apple Award, and those are right here. San Jose could not be here tonight, as they have their curriculum night at this time. But I'd like to invite up, I know some of our principals are here from our schools, that received an A-letter grade or went up. So we have Dunedin Elementary, Dunedin Highland Middle School, Dunedin High School, Academy Da Vinci, and Curtis Fundamental. So if they could all come up to get their Top Apple. It was in order. I'm very angry. I was perfect. Yeah. And I'm so fortunate, too, because I went to Dunedin Elementary, Dunedin Middle, and Dunedin High School. So elementary rivals. Oh, this makes it easy. So all of you get to come up front. Did I not get you? Yeah, you get me. And to do our photo. So we have our principals, Principal Kiplinger, Yvette Brown, Principal at Academy Da Vinci. We have Tina Murphy, Principal at Dunedin Elementary, and Brandon Glenn from Dunedin Highland Middle School. Thank you. I sent my regrets. It's a long agenda. I'll be here a while. And so as mentioned at the Teacher Appreciation Breakfast, that was hosted by the Chamber Education Foundation. On April 21st, our school award winners were recognized, but we also want to recognize them this evening. So we have five awards. Our first award is Achievement in the Arts, and it is Alicia Urbano from Dunedin Highland Middle School. She's coming up. So I'm going to brag about you right now. Alicia promotes and encourages arts with the students. Everyone has just said how much it has grown at Dunedin Highland Middle School. Thanks to her leadership. The students have participated in numerous art shows and have been recognized throughout the state for their exceptional art. She also had a Dunedin Highland Middle School student that won the art cover for the Chamber Directory. So thank you. We'll get to do a photo op. We're doing a photo op. Oh, here we go. We've got another picture here. Another picture. Leave one with the ball. Our next award is Excellence in Technology, and the winner is Stephanie Brosnan from Academy Da Vinci. Got a fan club going there. Stephanie is the driving force behind the weekly news show, and we loved in her recommendation that she makes sure that the students take ownership of their segments and they learn essential media skills. So thank you for what you do. Oh, this is from the, for health and wellness initiative, the winner is Sydney Hitt from Academy Da Vinci. Her work leading the school's safety patrol program and being dedicated to multiple sports, including flag football and volleyball, really exemplifies how important teamwork, health, and wellness are for our students. And we thought it was wonderful that she also participates in the school performances. So they do have a performance coming up, right? Yes. Okay. So congratulations. The award for visionary leadership goes to a group of three, and I have to call them by their proper names because my kids had them as teachers. So congratulations to Senora Vasquez, Mrs. Valentino, and Mrs. Hawks from Garrison Jones Elementary. Mrs. Valentino couldn't be here this evening, but they will be representing her. This team is part of the only school in Pinellas County with a nationally recognized dual language immersion magnet program. Their passion for encouraging students led them to spearhead the first ever elementary school Latinos in Action program in the nation. So congratulations to all of you. And I know their principal is here as well. Come on up and take your phone. You got to give the principal a shot. There you go. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Finally, we have our golden apple, which is our teacher of the year, and the winner is Janessa Bacon from Dunedin Elementary School. Okay. Everybody take a seat. I got a lot to say about our teacher of the year. Janessa is the teacher that every student deserves to have. She not only builds on academic success, but also ingrains kindness, caring, and compassion in her classroom. Mrs. Bacon is the liaison to the K Kids Club, sponsored by Kiwanis. And this year, they did a service learning project to host a uniform drive for students in need. For the past three years, one of Mrs. Bacon's students is battling a childhood illness, and she has been there throughout this child's life at Dunedin Elementary and has possibly saved her life a time or two. She is in tune to what the child needs, and even though the child is no longer in her classroom, she will miss lunch, miss planning, anything to help this student in need. So congratulations to Janessa Bacon, and thank you for being our teacher of the year. So, Mayor, of course, you know that her husband, Trevor Bacon, is an employee of the city of Dunedin as well. Fantastic. So thank you for recognizing all these amazing teachers and our schools here in Dunedin. Thank you to the Chamber Education Foundation for doing a one-of-a-kind teacher appreciation breakfast. And I love to see all of these because my kids have been through our Dunedin schools, and we have wonderful teachers. Thank you. And before anybody goes anywhere, we have a long meeting, but we don't usually get to honor our teachers here at the City Commission meeting, so I just want to give my colleagues a chance to make a couple comments, and I'm going to go ahead and start with Vice Mayor. I get to talk again. Wonderful. As I mentioned before, we've all been touched and inspired by teachers sometimes in our lives. And so just a huge thank you for what you do. I know that you are called on to do some Herculean things, and you all end up able to do it no matter what your budget is, no matter how much pressure you're under, no matter the timeline. You always seem to get it done, and that is certainly amazing. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Sandberg? When I heard the Pledge of Allegiance practiced about a dozen times at my house tonight, I guess that was their version of homework. My third grader got up this morning. We took her to school, and she said, I'm nervous about my tests. I hope I do all right. I can go into fourth grade. So I know how hard you teachers work, and thank you for everything that you do for this community. Thank you. Mr. Walker? Thank you, Mayor. I echo my colleagues' comments. Thank you for all that you do. And my personal opinion is, is we can't thank you enough, because I don't think any of us, well, I know for a fact that none of us would be up here if it weren't for a teacher. So thank you very much. Mr. Newdegard? Thank you, Mayor. I think all of us remember that teacher that looked at us one day and saw something in us that we didn't see in ourselves. And they took a little extra time to make sure we understood a problem or a concept or even how to find the principal's office some days. But we all owe teachers. It is something that, if we're truly honest with ourselves, we know we wouldn't be where we are today without them. Thank you all. And I think we've said it all, but really, everyone's life is changed by teachers. And if I had the power, I'd give you all raises. But we don't. But anyway, thank you for what you do for our community. And principals, I mean, all of you. Thank you. We really appreciate it. Mayor, one more thing. Since we have them here and it is their night, can we ask all the educators to come forward for a picture? Yeah, let's do it. We've got a wide-angle lens. Everybody can come up. We'll get one good picture. Oh, we've done bigger than that, right? Good idea. And that is principals as well. Yeah. There you go. Because you are a teacher. We don't wait to be asked. We just get it done. Don't bother you. Very good, too. Thank you very much. Lunchtime. Kate's like, okay. We have more coming, Kate. Can we get everybody in? No, not yet. No coming. Wait, wait. No coming. We're going to hold everybody up. All right, now squish together a little more. All right, now squish together a little more. I'm going to get you all in. Wonderful. All right, wonderful. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. And we always say, don't feel like you have to stay. We understand. So, okay. We're going to move to proclamation for Emergency Medical Services Week, May 18th to the 24th. And I am going to turn that over to Commissioner DeGuard. Thank you, Mayor. Could I have all the EMS workers please come forward for this? Come on up, guys. All the EMS workers that are here in the room, just stand right behind the dais right there. That's perfect. Thank you. We're going to bring everybody up if that's okay. Yeah, bring them all up. Everybody. The teachers are blocking the hallway back there. I know, you know. Uh-oh. Disorderly conduct. I wouldn't make any of them mad. Fire marshal is going to clear them all out. I don't want to give just a minute to quiet down. Wow, look at all these guys. Oh, that's a good-looking group right there. I didn't realize we had everybody. Wow. Man. I don't know who's clogging the mutton hallway. All right, I've got to stand. I've got to stand up for this one. Mayor, can I stand as I do this? Sure. All right. Okay. I think we're good. We're good. First of all, thank you all for being here. That's really important. I know, they're not going to hear me. That's going to be the hard part. I'm going to have to sit back down. All right, we'll do it this way. Recognizing you guys is something that's personal. It's personal to every person that ever gets into a situation where they may be injured or have someone they love is injured, and they reach out, and you're the team that's there. People are the happiest in the world, as you know, when you walk in the door and they've got a problem and you're helping them solve it. There's people at this dais that saw you come in the door. Broken wrist. By the way, is Derek here? No, Derek's not here. I wish Derek were here. That's what makes this proclamation. He gave me some very nice meds, and you all know that. That's what makes this proclamation special. Whereas emergency medical services, EMS, is a vital public service, and whereas EMS crews are called to care in big cities and in small towns, in private homes, businesses, schools, and on our nation roadways. And, whereas whether it's saving a young victim of a motor vehicle crash, helping an elderly patient who's forgotten to take her medication, stabilizing a construction worker experiencing chest pain on the job site, or treating an overdose on a city street, they're trained and ready to deliver a range of medical interventions and support. And, whereas access to quality emergency care dramatically improves the survival and recovery rate of those who experience sudden illness or injury. And, whereas their roles and responsibilities are growing and changing, and they're rising to the challenge. They're tasked with providing next-level patient navigation and care in new surroundings, using new technologies. And, whereas, they are there for our community, whenever and wherever they're needed. Exemplifying the theme of this year's celebration, we care for everyone. Now, therefore, I, Tom Dugard, by virtue of the authority vested in me from the mayor of the city of Dunedin, Florida, and on behalf of the entire city commission, do hereby proclaim May 18th through 24th, 2025, as Emergency Medical Services Week, with the theme, We Care for Everyone, and encourage the community to recognize these valuable, life-saving professionals. Thank you. Very kind. Thank you. Mayor, commissioners, fellow members of the Dunedin community, I was told I only have an hour for this, so I'll keep it as brief as I can. I got it down. I got the PowerPoint down to 25, 30 slides tops. That's it. Thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today as we honor EMS Week 2025 with the proclamation. It's very nice. Under this year's powerful and timely theme, We Care for Everyone is couldn't ring truer. In Dunedin, the phrase is not a slogan. It's a daily promise. And as a quiet commitment made at 2 a.m. when crews answer calls for people in distress, is a steady hand of a clinician assuring a family during a medical crisis. And it's a strength of our entire EMS system rising to meet the needs of the city, not just in everyday moments, but during the most difficult ones. In the past year, we were reminded of this and what it truly means to care for everyone. In 2024, Dunedin was struck by two major hurricanes, unprecedented events that tested the city's resilience and demand on extraordinary response. While the winds blew and the floodwaters rose, our EMS clinicians were already in motion, checking on and evacuating special needs, transporting patients through dangerous conditions, and maintaining continuous medical coverage throughout the storms and in the very long recovery process. These were not isolated acts. They were the result of preparation, professionalism, and above all, compassion. Our men and women here at Dunedin Fire don't just provide care. They deliver stability, compassion, empathy, and hope when it's most needed. Whether navigating the aftermath of a disaster or responding to the thousands of day-to-day emergencies that happen each year, our clinicians embody the very spirit of this year's theme. We care for everyone, without question, without hesitation, and without boundaries. Our EMS professionals are often the first face you see in a crisis. They are the bridge between fear and safety, between uncertainty and action. Yet, they rarely seek the spotlight. Today, we acknowledge that strength of Dunedin lies in those who serve it so faithfully. And today, we will affirm that the community's gratitude and commitment to supporting our EMS professionals, not just during EMS week, but every single day of the year. As your EMS chief, I am proud, beyond words, of the men and women and their families who wear the Dunedin Fire Rescue Patch. They do not ask who you are, where you come from, or what background you might be. They only ask, how can we help? Thank you so much. Thank you, Mark. And before you do it again, I mean, we've just got two in a row, so I'm going to use my discretion to say I think with all of you here and with the kind of year we've had, I really do want my colleagues, again, to be able to say what they feel. Vice Mayor. Thank you. Truly, thank you. Mr. Sandberg. I don't think there's anything other to say. Thank you. And I look forward to Saturday morning spending some time seeing what you guys are doing. I see you laughing. This old guy is going to, yeah, I'll do my best. And I'll keep an eye on me to make sure I'm all right. Get pictures. Get pictures. Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for everything that you do. And, you know, besides keeping our community safe and as far away from harm's way as possible, the personal sacrifices that you all make on a daily basis, whether it be away from your homes and your family for days and then getting up at 2.30 in the morning to go answer the call, you guys are just amazing. You guys are just amazing. Thank you. Commissioner Dugard, anything else to add that you already have? Just one more word. I know I sleep better because you're out there. It's good to know you're there. Thank you. So, Mark, when you made that comment about the first face you see, actually, you know, when I was laying on the ground with... I was there. Yeah. When I was actually... I'm there. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. When I was laying on the ground across from... Where was it? Salty Souls. And actually, the fire department wasn't the first face I saw. It was actually that guy over there. It was Steve Sand... Commissioner Sandberg. Anyway, but right after that, it was you guys. And I... You know, this has been kind of a weird year for me because I think I've seen way too much of you guys, between myself, my mother, the hurricane. And so, I'll take a little break personally. But what you do for our citizens, for our residents, is invaluable. We appreciate it so much. And we just can't thank you enough. And I just love that you guys are here. And I understand that some of you were first responders to the Clearwater Ferry accident. Oh, absolutely. Because, again, you know, having to deal with tragedies like that and be the first responders, it's a tough job. And we understand that. So, Chief, if you want to say that, go ahead. Did you want a picture with everybody? Yeah. Do you want to do that first or write your comments first? We can do that and then we'll... Okay. That sounds good. We'll do anything if you need. A lot of you. Just stand back here with me. Let me keep those... Where's your guys here? Okay, Chief. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, thank you for the honor. And I just wanted to... It seems timely that we mentioned this. It was April 27th of 2025. There was a boat accident, as we all know, down by the Memorial Bridge and Causeway in Clearwater. We were one of the first units to respond with our fireboat. So, we thank you for the years ago that we had our fireboat approved by the commission. We were able to utilize that. And I'd like to recognize the crew that was on that boat that night. We had Acting Lieutenant Alex Miller. What does he got? He's here. And Firefighter Paramedic Monsalve. And Firefighter Paramedic Melvin. Melvin. I'm sorry. They were the first ones there. They were... I'm sorry. Maybe not the first ones there. But they were on the scene. We were able to get two trauma patients off the boat and back to the Seminole boat ramp to get them airlifted. The crew was airlifted, correct? Or the people? Oh, they're airlifted. Yeah. They had to airlift to the trauma center from the boat ramp. So, we appreciate what they did. Our Rescue 60 crew was there, made up of Firefighter Paramedic Cook, over here. And Firefighter Paramedic Parrish, over here. And they reported to the scene and started triage patients. And I believe, by saying it right, you were where the boat, where the people walked ashore from the boat. So, we had a unique situation. A lot of times, you have an isolated area. So, your triage area is one spot. In this case, we had people getting off the boat. We had boats going to different marinas. So, it was very hard for the command in Clearwater to figure out where everybody was going. So, they helped out with that. And then our district chief, acting district chief, Jeff Trixani, behind me here. He was the district chief that went to the Seminole boat ramp and coordinated all the helicopters and the ambulances that left the scene from that location, which they brought many people to. So, we're honored that we were able to assist that night. And as the crews say, it's one of those calls you'll remember for the rest of your life. So, we applaud them for the job that they did. And thank them very much. Should we get picked just for these? Sure. Okay. Our next proclamation is going to be Older Americans Month, 2025 proclamation. I will turn that over to Commissioner Sandbergen. Yeah, we'll give it a minute to clear for a second. Yeah, good idea. I think we realize how busy they are when you can hear their radios, the squawking on their radios. So, you know, they're here. I assume they're going to be in front of us at some point. Welcome, Brett. You know, when I was asked to read a proclamation about aging, I thought about this. Even though our hair gets a little gray, our wrinkles a little more noticeable, it's not a reason to quit the active lifestyle that we have. I sat down and talked to a friend of mine. He's a little over 80 years old yesterday about what I was going to talk about tonight. And he said, when I was young, we still thought Wonder Bread was good for you. And I was way over my head, but I guess what I said. Yesterday, I had a chance to visit the Hale Center and watch the induction of the Senior Hall of Fame. I think that Chip and Susan were incredible picks and nominees, and I congratulate both of them. What you do at the Hale Center, the library, the community center, the fine arts center, we have a chance for the aging part of our community to continue fellowship, to get to know each other, bond, and find strength and security in each other. When the median age of Dunedin is 58, I think we all need to think about our lifestyle and the intergenerational commitment to ourselves and to our community. We have a number of veterans, parents, educators, and we need to be thankful to all of them for sharing their wisdom. So if I may, Older American Month 2025. Whereas the City of Dunedin includes a growing number of older Americans who contribute their time, wisdom, and experience to our community. And whereas communities benefit when people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds have the opportunity to participate and live independently. And whereas Dunedin and the Area Agency on Aging of Pasco and Pinellas recognize the need to create a community that offers the services and support older adults may need to make choices about how they age. And whereas Dunedin and the Area Agency on Aging of Pasco and Pinellas can work to build an even better community for our older residents. By one, reframing our thinking about aging, exploring and combating stereotypes, emphasizing the many positive aspects of aging, inspiring older adults to push traditional boundaries, and embracing our community's diversity. Now I therefore, Stephen Sandbergen, by virtue of the authority vested by the Mayor of Dunedin, Mo Freeney, and on behalf of my entire City Commission, do hereby proclaim May 2025 to be Older Americans Month. The City of Dunedin and the Area Agency on Aging of Pasco and Pinellas urge every resident to celebrate our older citizens, help them to create an inclusive society, and accept the challenge of flexible thinking around aging. Thank you for everything you're doing at the Hale Center and for everything that you can contribute. Thank you, Commissioner Sandbergen, for reading that. And thank you, Mayor Freeney and the rest of the Commission. We are excited to be here tonight. I'm Brett Montanay, the Recreation Coordinator from the Hale Senior Activity Center with Parks and Recreation. Vince Gizzi always reminded me to say that. And with me tonight, I have Carrie Marsalik from the Area Agency on Aging, Pasco and Pinellas. And we are very excited to be here to talk about Older Americans Month. So the 2025 theme of Older Americans Month is Flip the Script on Aging, which focuses on transforming how society perceives, talks about, and approaches aging. It encourages individuals and communities to challenge stereotypes and dispel misconceptions. Yesterday, our community joined together at the William E. Hale Senior Activity Center to celebrate the winners of the Senior Hall of Fame. Sue Glorscheib and Matthew Chip Warner, who are flipping the script every day by devoting their time and energy to serving and connecting with members of our community. Sue is a founding member of the Dunedin Ukes, serves on the board of the Tampa Bay Ukulele Society, and is an active volunteer at the Dunedin History Museum, as well as a volunteer with three other nonprofit organizations. Matthew has served as a volunteer with Neighborly's Meals on Wheels, has served as the secretary on the Stormwater Advisory Committee, and last year received the Environmental Hero Award for his work in saving Sterling Park. Although both of these individuals are retired, they contribute to and play a vital role in our community. Every day at the William E. Hale Senior Activity Center, I witness older adults flipping the script by challenging themselves physically through our many fitness classes, expanding their knowledge through our lifelong learning programs, connecting through our engaging social events, and by volunteering at the front desk, our craft shop, and during events. The Dunedin Committee on Aging recognizes the importance of celebrating the success of older adults, as well as striving to learn how we can build a better community for older adults. We will continue to collaborate with community organizations and with the City of Dunedin leadership to ensure that the City of Dunedin carries on the reputation of a great place to live, work, and play for older adults and all generations. Thank you for your continued care and support. Great. Carrie, were you going to say anything, or are you good? Okay. Anyway, thanks for all you do. We appreciate it. So let's give them another hand. Picture? Oh, yes. Pictures. I had to do the pictures. That's right. Okay. Our next item was Dunedin Environmental Hero Awards 2025, and that is being postponed until May 22nd. And so we will move to National Safe Boating Week, May 17th to the 23rd. I'll turn that over to Commissioner Walker as a boat owner, a proud boat owner. Thank you, Mayor. Well, first and foremost, can I get Commander Gordon Thomas and the rest of the present Coast Guard Auxiliary front and center? I love saying that. Proud, everybody. We recognize this every year, but I will say that probably this year it's more important than ever that we do recognize this because of what happened a little over a week ago at Memorial Bridge. Absolutely, that is absolutely horrific in terms of it could have been prevented. It could have totally been prevented had the boat been driven in a safe manner. As a Coast Guard licensed captain myself, I've seen it. I know what the potential is for people who don't practice safe boating. So, you know, I think a little bit of a poignant night for us here with EMS and then Coast Guard Auxiliary doing what you do every single day, and that is promote safe boating. So, proclamation to follow. National Safe Boating Week, May 17th to 23rd, 2025. Whereas for over 100 million Americans, boating continues to be a popular recreational activity. From coast to coast and everywhere in between, people are taking to the water and enjoying the time together, boating, sailing, paddling, and fishing. During National Safe Boating Week, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Coast Guard Auxiliary, federal, state, and local safe boating partners encourage all boaters to explore and enjoy America's beautiful waters responsibly. And whereas, safe boating begins with preparation. The Coast Guard estimates that human error accounts for most boating accidents and that life jackets could prevent nearly 83% of boating fatalities. Through basic boating safety procedures, carrying life-saving emergency distress and communications equipment, wearing life jackets, attending safe boating courses, participating in free boat safety checks, staying sober when navigating, we can help ensure boaters on America's coastal inland and offshore waters stay safe throughout the season. Whereas, National Safe Boating Week is observed to bring attention to important life-saving tips for recreational boaters, so that they can have a safer, more fun experience out on the water throughout the year. And whereas, on average, 650 people die each year in boating-related accidents in the U.S., and 75% of those fatalities caused by drowning. Whereas, in fiscal year 2022, the Department of Public Safety Boating Safety Section responded to a total of 38 distressed vessels, one capsized vessel, four overdue swimmer-fisherman-divers, and two stranded swimmers, and three near-drowning cases, with one drowning case resulting in death. Whereas, the vast majority of these accidents are caused by human error or poor judgment, and not by boat, equipment, or environmental factors. And whereas, a significant number of boaters who lose their lives by drowning each year would be alive today had they worn their life jackets. Now, therefore, I, Rob Walker, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Mayor of the City of Dunedin, Florida, and on behalf of the entire City Commission, do hereby support the goals of the Safe Boating Campaign and proclaim May 17th to May 23rd, 2025, as National Safe Boating Week and the start of the year-round effort to wear a life jacket while boating and promote safe boating. Thank you, Mr. Walker. As you know, most of you are familiar with this group. I'm Gordon Thomas, immediate passport telecommander. Mr. Walker is very familiar with us. He's dealt with us before. And he's still kind enough to invite us back again in spite of that. So, I just want to point out, he pointed out something that was really, really important, and everybody needs to know, boat safety is everybody's job. This is really critical. And as he said, there's a lot of accidents out there. Every year, we have more and more boaters coming along. And with the more boaters, you get more injuries, more accidents, and more deaths. There's no way around it. But our group, the Coast Guard Flotilla Auxiliary of 1110, your flotilla, we're out there working to make this a safer place. One of the ways that we do that, we work with the Coast Guard. We are under the Coast Guard, under Homeland Security. We go out with them training. We train them often as much as they're training us. In addition to that, we'll go out and do vessel exams. If you have a boat, we will do a free vessel exam for you. We'll check your boat, make sure you have everything, make sure it's in good working order. And if it does, you get a nice little sticker. And it's not like a star in your head that you might get from your teacher. It means something when the Coast Guard sees that. So that's important. One of the real important things we do, too, is the Coast Guard boat safety course. This is a really important course. And we do that at your Dunedin Marina, by the way. Again, we're your flotilla. And we're there doing this every single month under our little PE guy here, Buddy Casal. But it's an important course. This course takes eight hours to get through it. This is not a penny-any course. It's an eight-hour course, followed by an exam that they must pass. Then they get a safe boating certificate, ID card. So this is a really, really important, critical thing. These statistics that some people don't know, there's a graph that shows the percentage of deaths. The percentage of deaths on water, if you never took a boat safety course, is 77%. So 70% of the people that die in the water never took a boat safety course like we offer. If you took a course like we offer, or the FWC, guess how much percentage you come under for the deaths in the water? 0.08. So you have 0.08 versus 77. So it makes a difference. Just think, if everybody took a boat safety course, we could reduce deaths by 77%. Theoretically, I guess that's possible. So the important thing I want to offer tonight, again, we are your flotilla. We cover the area of responsibility is Dunedin. And if you ever need anything from us, let us know. Just ask, and we'll be there, and we can do it for you. So the librarian had asked us to do a small little course in July or June. I don't remember what the date is. We're going to go and give a little 20-minute safe presentation. That hopefully will lead to others maybe taking our big boat course on top of that. And maybe we'll even be able to do some vessel exams. And sometimes we even get more Coast Guard auxiliary members from those courses, too. So, again, we thank you for your support. We appreciate it immensely. Can't tell you how much. Just ask if you need our help. And can we get photos? We need to get a picture, too. I'd like to get a picture, gentlemen. They're all good. Move on to citizen input. Does anyone in the audience wish to speak on a topic that is not on the agenda? This would be your time. Come forward and just give your name, address for the record. And you have three minutes. Good evening, everyone. My name is, can you hear me? My name is Nancy Enders. I live at Mediterranean Manors, 2700 Bayshore Boulevard in Dunedin. And having just celebrated my 70th birthday, I am proud to be considered an aging Dunedin resident. So, but what I'm here to talk about today is that our group, the Gulf Coast Gals, proudly supports a vibrant community of over 300 senior women by promoting friendships, health, and enjoyment through various community programs. Our group is dedicated to creating a pickleball home for women with little or no athletic experience. And our members have played twice weekly at the Highlander Park Courts since our group's founding just over two years ago. Today, we are here to talk about our free pickleball program that supports women's physical and mental health by helping them develop skill in a sport that they can play as they age, while also providing a safe place to play pickleball and to meet other physically active women. Our group has had the good fortune of receiving free instruction for a year from a local Dunedin resident who is also a certified pickleball instructor. We have found the new pickleball courts at Eagle Scout Park to be too crowded to accommodate the large number of players that we now have. Unfortunately, the currently posted playing rules at the Eagle Scout courts allow more playing time for the experienced pickleball players and take away playing time for those who are beginners. We expect that finding a place for us to play as a group will become an even bigger challenge in the summer when the hot, humid weather results in unplayable outdoor conditions for much of the day. We are asking you to keep the Highlander Park Courts open for pickleball play when repainting the new lines on the four courts at that location. Our group is a vital part of the Dunedin community, and we would be grateful for the continued opportunity to access the Highlander Park Courts for our free beginner lessons, skill development, and practice drills for local senior women. We thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration of our request. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. But we're going to not do clapping, but thank you. Appreciate it. I think you stood. That was a good way to show solidarity. That's fine. Okay. Anyone else wish to come forward and speak to any issue that's not on the agenda? It's wonderful. My name's Joanne Holiday. I live at 952 Virginia Street, Building K, Unit 106 in Dunedin, Florida. It's wonderful to hear about these lovely ladies who are very active, and they love pickleball, and it's good for their mental health. However, if you live right behind that 10 courts right there where I live, it becomes a mental health issue in the opposite direction. And I know we've been here, and I don't want to recapitulate everything that I have been, you know, saying the last few meetings that I've been here. But my concerns are, are there ordinances or zoning for the light, public lighting entering residential units? Because it's in my home, it's invading my home. Unwanted guests, the noise, the cars, the trucks, over and over again. I mean, it's just, I don't think when you put the courts there you realize that there were people living in those condos. But there are people living there, and it's important that we have a life that is also going to flourish. My life is not flourishing with the noise, the cars. Can the cars be moved to another side? Are there engineers that you can consult? Obviously, nobody was consulted about these people living in these buildings and how the courts would affect them. Can you talk, can you see about maybe moving the parking? I mean, if you look at that whole field, I mean, there's a walking park. Nobody walks in that walking area anymore because it's too noisy. But that walking area would have been nice next to the residential where you have the cars parked. Can you flip some of this stuff around and make it so that life will be easy for all of us? I have put my trust in coming here weekly and talking about all my concerns. And I have put my faith in that something amicable and fair will be done. I'm trusting that all of you can come up with a perfect resolution so that I can live in my home and not feel like I'm being invaded. My personal space has unwanted guests. My house has unwanted guests in there. And I would like to live in my home peacefully. And I don't know what else to say. If you can look into these issues with the lights, I mean, I don't know. I can't walk from my kitchen to my living room without them beating down on me. There's 20 floodlights. Thank you, Joanne. I know that the city manager is looking into that. And we'll have her give a little bit of an update. And thank you for your time. Thank you. I am trusting you will do the right thing. Thank you, Joanne. Anyone else in the audience that, before you all leave on this side, just so you know, and I think somebody got the message that you just gave tonight about the lines. And I think I tried to pass back. I know that Jocelyn, who's our Interim Recreation and Parks Director, they're doing a study to see the usage. And so it's in process to look at that. So nothing's ready to be done. Okay. But we appreciate your input. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else wish to come forward and speak to this issue? Hi. I'm Jane Powell. I live on Virginia Street, right behind the Eagle Scout Park. You all know me by now. I've been here enough times. I, the last time that, or the first time that we were here, we had Deputy, I'm going to slaughter her name, Papa Hamel. She was wonderful. She was working second shift and she was available anytime. I, you know, I've called only two times, but both times she answered. And, and she said, Hey Jane, you know, and, and she was, and she was right up there, very responsive. Now she's on first shift. We have nobody. I called, um, because, um, kids were out at 11 o'clock at night playing pickleball under the light on the, on the road. Right. The pickleball quarter is supposed to be closed at 10. So I called, um, it was 45 minutes before they got there. And, um, the person that I spoke to said they, what's the address? What is, what's Eagle Scout Park? Where is that? Um, and they said, well, we don't really know if we have a jurisdiction over that or what the rules are. And it's like starting from scratch again. They have no idea what we're talking about. Is there a way that we can have somebody dedicated that's going to be there at 10 o'clock at night and make sure that these people leave. And this morning we were woken up with a car alarm at 6.30 this morning because someone was over playing pickleball at that time and their car alarm went off. So, you know, is there someone who's going to be there? Just drive in and out and make sure that people are not there before they're supposed to be and are gone when they're supposed to be. Um, also, um, the part, they're still parking across the sidewalks and they're still parking in the handicapped parking spaces and they're still turning their headlights on and, you know, shining them into our condos and the, the, um, you know, it's a 55 community and, you know, definitely our mental health and our peace of mind is, is shattered right now. It really is. We have no peace and quiet. No, no silence and not a time when there aren't blaring lights and, um, and noise. Really loud noise. Music playing, people yelling all the time. Um, I know that, um, I, we had mentioned before that we wanted to be involved in whatever discussions. We haven't been called. We haven't had our phone calls returned. We haven't had our emails answered. We, we have had nothing. So we feel as though we are just cast aside. You know, we're coming here to these meetings. We're taking our time and we're coming down here and we're speaking to you. And I'm here to give you an update, but I would like an update from you. I'd like to know what there is that's going on. The city manager's ready to give one. Okay. And I would like to know if the, if the time is going to be changed to, um, later in the morning, earlier at in the evening, at least eight to eight, at least we think 12 hours is enough time to go and play pickleball. Um, and also, you know, how are you going to keep people out when they decide to play? Um, I'm happy that we have people here that were, you know, that are interested. We're, you know, we're aging. We want to get out and do things. Um, I'm happy that people are doing that. But, you know, we live there and we have to live with this every day. Thank you, Jane. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who wishes to come forward to speak on an issue that's not on the agenda? Do it and then run over here. Uh, name and address for the record in three minutes. Thank you, Stephens. I live at Heather Lakes in 952 Virginia Street K building and Unit 306. I am here also speaking about Eagle Scout Park. Um, I looked out at grass. Now I look out at five courts, half of it. It is noisy. The hours are 15 hours a day till 10 PM. And not really, because again, this morning, it started at 630. People are there after 11 o'clock. We had a fabulous sheriff person helping us to run people off. Now, when you call the sheriff's office, it's like, we don't think we have jurisdiction there. No. How can they not know if they, if that park is in the jurisdiction when they are giving dozens of tickets out on Virginia Street every day? How can they not know where that park is? Okay. The lights are high and bright. I can turn my lights off and it's like I have my unit is completely lit up and I'm on the third floor. I look at lights. Figure this is right outside your door. Um, I can no longer use my patio unless I want to hear pongs of balls constantly. It is annoying. There is no quiet enjoyment. I used to live next to a park. Now I live next to a stadium. I have lost value on my unit. The unit beside me, they wanted to rent out and everybody that looked at it said, oh, I'm not going to live here next to that. There is no way we can ever sell our units and get the value out of them. On top of having soundproofing and spending money to block out the sound. But it doesn't block it out completely. And the noise and the cars and there's no quiet enjoyment. We've come to you before. We are not getting answers and it doesn't seem like anything is being done. We have tolerated this for six months. Imagine some annoying kid moves in next door and plays basketball for 15 hours a day, banging it against the garage. And then, oh, when it's dark, let's get a floodlight of cars shining in your houses. How would you feel? Because that is the only way I can explain this. I am annoyed. I have put money into my unit that I never would have put in. When I found out pickleball, okay, we had tennis courts. They were to the side of me. Now, we were never told, first of all, what the plan was. You doubled the size. The parking is atrocious. And then in order to keep the parking all on our side, you put posts up. There is no happy reason. Why would you not work with us? I have invited you to my home. There is, you need to come see what I'm looking at. Along with my other folks that have come here to see their view. Like, you do not know what it's like for 15 hours a day. Thank you. And we will give you an update here shortly. Anyone else in the audience that wishes to speak on an issue that's not on the agenda? Right over here. First. My name is Ted Haynes. I live at 952 Virginia Street. I will make it brief. Number one. Three neighbors. Three units in our building. Soundproofing. Spending $25,000 to keep out pickleball. We are doing, we're subsidizing that 10-ring circus out of our backyard. We've, I mean, it's horrible. But it's expensive. The parking, there has to be done, something done with the parking. We wake up every morning to a sea of cars. The only break we've had here recently is the heat of the day. Most people go away for about an hour or two and then they'll come back. We left the house. When I left my condo tonight, there was 18 cars parked out in front. By the time we left for this meeting, there was 25. And when I get back, there's going to be 45. That's just the way it is. And that's not right. We have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars just to insulate the sound from our units. And that's the people who can afford it. There's others who cannot. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Anyone else wish to speak to an issue that's not on the agenda? Name and address for the record in three minutes. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. My name is Marisa Chavez. I live at 2009 Harvard Avenue in Dunedin. And I am the person who taught the gals here for a year at Highlander. I want to talk today about the play, the actual play at Eagle Scout. Most public facilities, what they do is they dedicate with signage a certain amount of courts for advanced players, a certain amount of courts for intermediate, and a certain amount of courts for beginners. What does this do? What this does is it makes sure that we can get beginners on the court. The more beginners on the court we get, by the way, the less noise you guys will have, because they just can't sustain a point for more than three or four volleys. But I am always the person in this sport that is making sure that we all have a chance to play. The reason I worked with the Gulf Coast Gals is because I think the last person who would ever get invited onto a court is a senior woman with limited mobility. I cannot tell you how wonderful it has been to see so many women increasing their fitness, being healthy. It's also very social for them. It's not really competitive. So, my suggestion, please, is to think about a simple sign. And this is, I can give you examples of other public facilities. This is how they do it at G.G. Bray and Bradenton, Sarasota Pompano. We have ten courts, if we could make two for the advanced or three for the advanced, majority for the intermediate, because that's where most people are. But please make sure that a beginner can play. I'm going to read you one note that I received from a friend last night. On Monday night, Marisa, there was a mother that was there with her son. Maybe he was ten years old. And they waited forever to play in the court that we got kicked off of. And they went in and played, and the son was pretty good. But the advanced players just cremated them, and then they left. I felt so bad for them. And that's what happens. What we have now is we have racks for paddles at each court. That does not promote community, and it doesn't promote fairness. What we need is whatever grouping you're going to dedicate for advanced, one rack. Whatever you're going to dedicate for the intermediate players, one rack for them. Whatever you're going to dedicate for the beginners, one rack for them. I would really love to discuss this with the appropriate person just to make it more fair. And I can guarantee you it will reduce the noise because, you know, and remember, this is humanity, human beings. We are not so nice sometimes that we'll just creme somebody to get to court. Thank you. And I think you just gave our interim rec and parks director some thoughts to think about. And so maybe you two can get together. Anyone else in the audience who wishes to come forward to speak to an issue that is not on the agenda? Okay. Do you want to come forward or? Okay. Okay. So on that note, then I will turn it to our city manager, and I know you do have an update on what you're doing with the park. I do. Thank you, Mayor, Vice, Mayor, and Commissioners. There are certainly a lot of moving parts, as you can see, with Pickleball. And there has been a lot of work done in the intervening period. We are developing the plan, and we'll sit down with the stakeholders once we have a good draft moving forward to get your input. So we need to close the courts down, half of them at some point and the other half, to fix some of the cracks that have resulted. They were new construction, and that happens, and they're getting a lot of wear. We are, the plan moving forward is to close the courts, and then when we reopen them, reopen them to limited hours. And so we're looking at, in the morning, no earlier than 8 a.m., and then evening, 8 or 8.30. And then everything goes dark. The lights turn off. So they won't be able to play using those lights. And we need to confirm the new hours, and we will sit down and speak to all of you about those new hours as well. We're going to add additional signage in the parking lot to respect your neighbors and so on and so forth. We can look at the parking, whether or not we can figure that more oriented away from your condominium association. We're getting feedback right now on some of the acoustical windscreens and whether or not they're useful. We're getting the feedback that they won't work as well as we want them to. We have heard trees are definitely more effective. There's not a lot of room. There is a stormwater easement on the Heather Ridge side. So we can look at that as well and talk to your condo association. As far as the spill and the lights go, there are guards that you can put up on the lights, and that's something that we're looking at as well. The lights were designed to not illuminate beyond the courts. Apparently, that's not working, and so we need to definitely address that. We will reach out to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. We placed on the pickleball court something called a directed patrol, which means it gets special attention. I'm disappointed that it's not. I'll take care of that tomorrow. Rene P., that's what I call her. Deputy Rene was our CPO for downtown, actually. And she happened to be here that night when all of you were here. And she's amazing. She's so responsive. She did assume a day shift, as you said. So I need to work with the Sheriff's Office to find out that deputy in the evening, because they certainly should not be on the court. At this time, after the lights are out, they need to leave. As mentioned before, we need to combine all of this with how we're going to keep people out after the lights are turned off, because the kids will get, you know, kids are kind of like water. They'll get everywhere, no matter where you are. And so that's something that I'll be working with Parks and Recreation about as well. We are going to talk to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee. It's a group appointed by the City Commission of Citizens that review essentially all of our current practices in Parks and Recreation, and we're certainly going to bring this before them for their ideas. As we commit this plan to paper and decide which direction we're going to go in, we will, as I said, we'll sit with all of you, get your input, and then bring it back before the City Commission to chat with you about how we're going to move forward as well. We're hoping that once the novelty wears off, that perhaps they won't be as heavily used, certainly not during the hotter hours. And we are looking at what we can do to address from what we understand is folks coming from other areas to play on those courts as well. Not necessarily all of our own citizens and residents. And so, but we will be circling back to you. It's not that nothing has been done about it. There's a lot going on in the background right now, a lot of moving parts to this program and this initiative. And we should, like I said, the courts are going to close down May 22nd and May 23rd, and that's when we want to cement this. We'll sit down with you next week and go through all of this. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Jennifer. Okay. So, we're going to be going to our consent agenda now. And so, I'm suggesting we might want to take a five, ten minute break and then we'll come back at the rest of the agenda. Does that sound good, everybody? Okay. So, take a short break. Thank you, everybody. We started, and the first thing is our consent agenda. We have approval of the minutes for the February 14th strategic planning, March 20th special meeting, March 20th regular meeting, April 1st work session, board and committee appointments, one to board of adjustment appeal, library advisory. We have the after the fact ratification of approved purchase order for emergency repairs to the stormwater system at 1457 Santa Ana Drive to TLC in the amount of $60,359.03. We have approval of the purchase of Marina Shore Power Pedestals from Marina Electrical Equipment of Williamsburg, Virginia in the amount of $210,696. We also have the award of the installation of Marina Shore Power Pedestals to Buell Electric Inc. of Dunedin, Florida in the amount of $38,960. Anyone want to pull any of these items before I ask for a motion? 2E and 2F, please. 2E and 2F. 2D as well. 2D. Good thing we took that break. Yes, it is. Okay. So, excluding those three, can I have a motion for the rest of the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Third. Okay. Third. Okay. Oh, any public input on any of the consent agenda items? Do you wish to come forward now? Seeing no one. Okay. I'll close public input. And all in favor. Mayor, I'm sorry, real quick. Who was the motion? I heard two. Motion was Commissioner Degard and seconder was Commissioner Walker. Thank you. Hmm? Yeah. Sure. That's the way I got it anyway, so. Okay. All, did I say? All right. All in favor? Aye. Aye. And that motion passes unanimously. Okay. So, we'll go to 2D, which is the emergency repairs on Santa Ana Drive. Do you want a full presentation or just have a question, Commissioner Degard? I think a full presentation is what we require here. There's some questions about the effects of this particular project on flooding in the area, and I've had several inquiries on that particular issue. Okay. All right. So, we'll turn it over to Sue and Clay, I guess. Good evening. Sue Bartlett, Public Works Director. Clayton Watkins, Utilities and Engineering. So, this item that's before you was an emergency repair that was approved by the city manager and then, of course, brought before you for ratification. There was a failed stormwater pipe in an easement, an existing easement, that ran through property and under the home at 1457 Santa Ana Drive. We enlisted engineering's help in looking at the entire situation. And knowing that we had to make an immediate repair, we engaged TLC to grout the pipe and remove the damaged pipe, and this also outfalls to a pond near there. We also abandoned the rest of that pipe. And engineering is currently working on rerouting that pipe permanently. It has a temporary measure now. We have a pump in place with, we've already pumped, actually, with the means to pump the water away from the area for that. There's two inlets, three inlets? There are. There's three inlets in the area, yes. That actually feed this outfall. It was built in the 50s? No, I think it was more close to 1930. 30s. And, again, the pipe was actually failed under, you know, in several places, actually, throughout the length of it, from the catch basin, through that block, through the next block, and then to the outfall. We found, at the end of it, that frontier had gone through it in two spots when they were doing right-of-way work, you know, their cable work. But, nevertheless, the pipe was rather, I mean, 1930s. It was pretty old. So, we have found an acceptable route to reroute that water through engineering. We've already engaged the consultant for engineering for stormwater survey, for the survey of all the topo. I'm sorry for not just stormwater, but topo. And, I'll let Clay talk about the potential, the design. Yes. So, we just received the survey, I think it was two days ago. We do have some comments on some stuff, some information they missed. But, we are still moving forward with an in-house design. Looking at some of that topo, I know there were some questions of where the inlet is. As you get close to the inlet, there is, we did some, recently did some curbing work. I'm not sure of the year. But, from that point, that's sort of the high point in the road. It's about at the south of the driveway to the now, excuse me. It's on the south side of the driveway, south of the parcel. That's the, sort of the high point of the road. There's about a two-tenths of a foot difference between the flow line at the curb and at that high point. So, with the pump in there, that should handle the flow. But, if there's something that happens, you might have two and a half inches of water in there before it starts flowing south down Santa Ana to Wilson slash St. Chris. That's where we're going to run the pipe from that storm structure down into a storm structure at the northeast corner of St. Christopher and Santa Ana. The existing, the other existing drainage that feeds in has not been impacted or affected. It's not failed. It is working properly. This is, again, the opportunity to replace this pipe with new infrastructure. It does reroute to a different manhole. It doesn't go through and under people's houses or through, it goes through the right-of-way in the front of the, on the side of the road, behind the curb. And because this was an emergency repair, it was an estimate of $60,000, but the actual work that was done was $53,530.03. I mentioned that it went under the house and where it was failed, there was a void and we had to fill that void. So, what people can't see from above is that we actually have not only our infrastructure being impacted, but potentially other infrastructure as well, and, you know, their yard and their home. And so, we, the city took immediate measures to get those, get that resolved, get that filled so that it won't be a problem in the future. Okay. So, questions, and I guess since you had this, do you have your, you want to go first? Thank you, Mayor. The most important question I have has to do with capacity of flow off of Santa Ana. How, can you comment on whether it's equal, greater, or less than the historic flow off of those three outlets? So, it depends on how you're going to look at this. If you're talking about just the flow as it sort of stages up and may go down the road, it might be slightly higher. But the ultimate outflow for where it used to go, to where it'll go to now, was San Christopher's Wilson, that then went out to St. Joseph's Sound. So, when it's installed, it'll just sort of bypass, it'll just, it's the same amount of flow going through. We're just short circuiting the pond at Paloma. So, we have the same amount of flow, it's just a diversion? Correct. Correct. Okay. That's all the questions I have. Okay. Anyone else have any questions? Commissioner Walker? Vice Mayor? No questions. Commissioner Sandbergen? No additional questions, Mayor. And I don't have any either, so I would ask for a motion. I will, I will give that opportunity. Can I have a motion? Then I'll ask for public input. So moved. Second. Okay. And so now I will ask if anyone in the audience has any input on this item, you can come forward now, give your name and address for the record, and you have three minutes. My name is Jane Moden. I live at 1415 Santa Ana. That's right at San Christopher where the storm drain is. And I don't think we really need any more coming down that way. But I have other residents close to me that live on Santa Ana too, and we're all a little concerned about that storm drain at San Jose and Santa Ana. It is San Jose, isn't it? The road you live on. San Juan. San Juan is a one block street, and it goes from Santa Ana to Douglas. And right here at that intersection there are three storm drains that have worked very well in the past couple years, especially the last year. And to see it concreted up, you know, we saw, we walked down that street every day with the dogs, and one day there's a huge hole in the front yard. The next day we see the big pipe sticking out, the next day the concrete trucks come from Dunedin, and the following days it's all flattened over. And my neighbors will come and speak up too. But they've seen the big hole in the backyard, and a woman, Amy, who will speak, I hope, she got flooded out of her house on Douglas, and now she's sitting right behind that 1457. And there was a pipe running next to that house that she's running now. It went right out to the pond. So all that storm drainage went right out there. And now where's it going? It's getting blocked there somehow. I can't believe water is going to flow as easy making a right-hand turn going down St. Christopher than it did before when it went straight out to the pond. So I think it's a hasty thought to do what they've done. And I hope they reconsider and do something different. And I'll get them to respond when everyone's, you know, given input. Right. So I have some neighbors. I hope they get up and speak. Yeah. I'm sorry. Can you repeat your name, please? I didn't catch it. Jane Moden. M-O-D-E-N. Thanks so much. Thank you, Jane. Okay. Anyone else wish to come forward and speak on this issue? Name and address for the record in three minutes. My name is Diana Hartman. I live at 1444 Santa Ana. And yes, there used to be three storm drains. Imagine three storm drains on one corner. There's a reason for that. A lot of water on that corner. San Juan is a one block street and it's incredibly flat. It's like it's hardly graded at all. When the street was black topped recently, we had to have them come back because there's only three driveways on San Juan and all three of them backed up after the black topping. And they had to come back out and redo them. And still, all three back top blacked, all three driveways after a good rain back up. We've got three, six inches of rain in our driveways every time there's a good rain. And there's a good flow of water down Santa Ana. It's a good flow. It's very distressing to think that they're just going to cement over a storm drain and expect that the water is going to go a certain way. Now, I have seen all the little pink and orange flags all over. And I think that's what that's about. And I know engineers know a lot, but water goes where water wants to go. And it does not make right hand turns. It wants to sit right in that flat area. And if there's a storm drain there, it's going to go down. And if you want it to go down to the corner and make a right turn, you're going to have to do a lot more than engineering. It's like a will of God or something. So we're kind of in a dip. It's not quite a dip. It's a flat spot. And it really liked to have three strong storm drains on one corner. It sounds like a lot, but it needed that to keep the water flowing. And believe me, with a good rain, it was a flow. It was like a small running creek running down both sides of the street. And you don't see that on every street. So there was a lot of water. And, you know, you were talking about that being a little bit high. Well, I'm on the downside of that street. And it doesn't make you happy when they put concrete in the storm drain across the street from your house. So I would like there to be some assurances that my house is not going to get wet. Okay. Thank you, Diane. I appreciate that. Anyone else wish to come forward to speak to this issue? Name and address in three minutes. Hi. Hi. My name is Suzanne Duff, and I live at 1505 Santa Ana, which is right next to 1457. And I've been there 13 years, and I know that tenants, we've seen people come and go, and it's been flipped several times in that house. But tenants have left because there was dampness and mold going on. So finally these owners have found out that there was a problem with that pipe running underneath. My question is, we know they put 28 yards, we were told by one of the construction people, 28 yards of concrete in there, I imagine, to fill the void. But has the house been stabilized? And the amount of dirt, I mean, it looked like it could have been every square inch of their backyard up against our fence. Like, is it all stabilized? Has it been proven to be stable? Because we're next door and we all wonder if we're going to be going down. So that's all my thing. And when do we expect to have this water diverted to go down towards San Christopher? We're looking at hurricane season, and what kind of timeframe are we looking at this pipe that's been cut off now diverting water? Okay, that's all. Thank you, and we'll get those answered when we're all done. Anyone else wish to come forward to speak on this issue? Just a name and address for the record in three minutes. Hi. Three minutes. My name's Amy Wilson. I'm currently living at 1500 Alamo, which is on the pond at Paloma. But my official address is 1841 Douglas Avenue. And I think we're all aware about the flooding issues on Douglas Avenue. My house is, the rental house that I'm living in now, is immediately in front of where that pipe went into the pond. And so I watched right in my front yard while they were sealing that up. And I'm now concerned that the water's going to come from a block behind me and flood the rental house that I'm in. And I've got to tell you people, if I'm in another flooded house, I don't think I can, I don't, that will be unacceptable. I've got problems in my life. Everybody does. Ninety percent of my problems would vanish if I had never seen the town of Dunning. I don't want to hear, oh, the water will be fine. It will be diverted. It'll be, it'll be okay. I've heard that before. It's not. She's right. Water goes where it's going to want to go. If it wants to go to where those three drains were and those drains aren't there anymore, that's a problem. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else that wishes to come forward to speak on this issue? Okay. So, I'll kind of turn to Sue and Clay, and I've got several things. I mean, I think just the overall concern about the flow, how it's really going to go. I had, you know, when is water actually going to be diverted? Is that kind of a next step? Yeah. Yeah. So, I'll go into some of the clarification. And is the house going to be, is the house stabilized too, you know? Yeah. That's why there was 20 yards of, you know, that'll help. The stable, that's, so the flowable fill was there to stabilize underneath the house, so you didn't have any issues anymore. So, the house is stabilized. Correct. Now. So, so that, okay. It was not unstable before, but yes. But this just makes sure there's no surprises. Yes. The voids are completely filled. That's why there was 28 yards. That's why we used, and I know they said concrete, but it's called flowable fill, and it does have concrete in it. But it is a mixture specially designed to do exactly that, to go fill the voids in a pipe that you're going to abandon and or that you need to have stabilized. So, answer this in your own way, but I, certainly the way I hear it is, you saw water go down three drains, and now the three drains don't exist. And how can that possibly work, and how am I not possibly in harm's way? So, the three drains will still exist. Correct. The pipe that left the third structure. So, what happens is, generally speaking, so if I can try to, you've got the two, there's two structures on Santa Ana, yes. So, there's one on Santa Ana, one on San Juan, two on San Juan. So, they're collected, they're all connected into the, and run to the pipe that, or excuse me, the structure that is on Santa Ana. From Santa Ana, then it was all, went to Lake Paloma. That's the direction the flow pattern went. The structures are still going to be there to collect the water and all that. What will happen is, in the meantime, the final structure will have a pump in it that will send the water down Santa Ana. And then, in the future, we will replace, the replacement structure will be piping in the ground from Santa Ana structure to San Christopher slash Wilson, that sort of intersection. The structures are staying in the ground. Those are not moving. So, the way the water pattern was flowing, it'll still collect the way it's collecting today. So, I think there was some mis-clarification where I think people thought that we were going to remove those structures. Those structures were still there to collect water today. They will stay there. And then, there's, is there anything between what you've done now and what's yet to do that's going to create concern, especially during storm season? Well, one of this, this area, we do have a pump. And it is, those in neighborhoods that have some of this, have had flooding, and not particularly this neighborhood, they will attest to the pumps that we use and we work. We monitor it. We already have been monitoring it to make sure that that bypass pump is always operating. And even with the rains that were forecast now, our staff has been out. They will check the pump and make sure that it stays running. We have a backup pump. So, should we need to bring that out? We will do that until they can get a pipe to replace the failed pipe. And, in fact, even if we ran the pipe the same exact way and we had to replace it, we would be doing the exact same thing. We would, we block it so that it's not creating any more void. And then, we reroute the pipe and the water that's flowing there already temporarily until we can get a permanent engineering solution, which is another pipe put in from that same inlet. And they are correct. I mean, there, there's a lot of water that, and it will continue to go right into those inlets and then be pumped down the street. The difference is this bypass that will be a temporary measure that will take the place of the underground pipe. Once the pipe is replaced and it will be underground, it will be large enough to take the flow. They do drainage calculations. It's a relative, relatively smaller area. A couple acres, I think, is what. About 2.3 acres total. So, and we, we have pumps that take 50 acres and pump the water. So, that's why we have confidence that we can take the water and move it no matter, you know, the rain that comes for that particular area. Where I noticed, when I wrote, I know the pipe went into the pond and then, and there was concerned about some water blocking, but the water does not go down that way. We did remove all those, that pipe that went to the pond and the connections to it so that it will flow down Santa Ana underground, not over, not over the roadway. It's not going to add more water to the roadway. It's going underground just like it did before. It's just going a different direction. And it, and it will be gravity once it's permanent and it'll have a flow on it so that it, it actually exceeds the, the outfall or the rate that it went to the pond. It'll actually go faster to that manhole that's there that is fully capable of taking that pipe. Do you remember what pipe size it jumps to? So, the pipe from the, the manhole you'll tie into to San Christopher is a 24 inch pipe and then the pipe running east on San Christopher, I believe it's at least a minimum of a 60 inch pipe. And then, so this is a 15 inch pipe that, that failed. So, the, both pipes are larger that, that will be taking that water now, taking it away from the, from that Santa Ana. So, if there's any other questions, because we can't really do it tonight. If there's any other questions, can the citizens call? What would you suggest, city manager? I'll go ahead and give them my card and they can reach out to our office and we can most certainly sit down with them to explain how it is that this is going to flow using the plans that we have. So, I think that that might help. It sounds to me, Mayor, that, that we are doing exactly what we need to do as far as ensuring that the, that the water will continue, the storm water will continue flowing via pump. But we just need to be able to, to, to show it to them on the plans. And I think that, that if I give you my card, you can reach out and we'll, we'll have a meeting and show them that. Yeah. And Sue, if Jane has another question, could you answer it so we, cause it'd be important. Oh, the pump, the pump is not, it is not fed by electric. It is, um, it's got a motor with, with fuel, uh, you know, diesel. So we actually provide that. Okay. Um, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna move, but seriously, ma'am, the, the city manager will give the card. If, if the neighbors have any more questions, obviously we care about this. I think the staff was trying to, you know, solve a problem, honestly. And, and, and so we've just got a cost benefit issue here. And I think if there's other questions, they'll be available. So if somebody wants to get the card from the city manager, that would be great. Okay. Um, all right. So we're back to, I have a motion to approve. And I think I had, um, commissioner to guard. It was the motion and second by commissioner Sandbergen. Um, so I'm going to call for a voice vote unless, uh, anybody else wants to do it. Do you want to say anything as a motion or any other statements from you as the second? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. And that motion passes unanimously. And thank you. Please, please take advantage of the staff. They will help. They will help. Please, ma'am. We'll move on to, um, the approval of purchase of Marina shore power pedestals and also the installation. Probably can do those together. Commissioner Walker, I'll let you kind of explain that. Yeah. I, I pulled both because they're related. Um, so really I just have a few questions on this. Um, in terms of, it appears just based on the latest update that the receipt of those, um, pedestals is basically delayed past, uh, I believe the date that we talked about back in February with regards to getting the pedestals installed. Um, can you, uh, can you elaborate on, on where we stand with schedule as it pertains to the, it looks like a delay. And if it's not, I'm just correct me. I'm yeah. Yes. Good evening. Lori Ferguson, harbormaster. Um, I have not reached out to the manufacturer as of yet because we're awaiting approval. Uh, I will be doing that tomorrow. We did reach out through, um, the purchasing agent and the answer that we got on the manufacturing and receipt of the pedestals was eight to 10 weeks. Um, economy has changed. Availability of, of materials has changed. My plan is to contact them tomorrow. Uh, if at all possible, talk to, you all met through, uh, Zoom, Chris Dolan from MEE. I would like to be able to, if it's possible, get them, not all 97 at a time, but in lots. If I can get 12 pedestals, I can put 24 boats into the marina, um, and do sections. So, I will be finding out more about that tomorrow. Okay. Yeah. I'd like to get an update on that. Certainly. The, um, the other part that's concerning me is the fact that if the, you know, and I'll just, if it is a delay, it's going to delay the stabilization of the docks and the plan to and the plan to get, uh, a doc and B doc open. Is that correct? So, updating you on the stabilization, I, I got a message from the contractor today that, uh, mid June to late June, they would be able to come and do the stabilization work. And it's only, according to the contractor, he believes it's only going to take him three or four days. So, for that part, um, there won't be, it won't be dependent on the power. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Um, yeah. So, um, obviously, and this maybe just for an educational moment here, um, the boats that, that need the power have gone without power for quite some time. And obviously, in terms of charging batteries and such, um, the, uh, you know, it, you need the power to charge those batteries. And if the batteries drain to a, a low enough level, it'll completely destroy the batteries. And, you know, I, I myself, has experienced $4,000 in battery replacement as a result. And that wasn't in the marina. So, this is just, this is just an overarching problem with not having power. Um, so, um, so I think, uh, in, I think in those terms, it, it, it, it's important we press forward and, and get that power restored as soon as possible. I think we all share the same concern that basically we're replacing the, what's there right now with brand new pedestals and going into storm season. Now, um, and I, I, I tried to extract these from my notes. But the pedestals that we are buying, those are, are they more saltwater resistant than what's currently in place? Are they more robust? No, they're going to be the NEMA 4R? They're the same pedestals that are there today, which are the highest NEMA level that is available for those pedestals. Yep. Thanks. Okay. Um, all right. Uh, so I, I, you know, I think that takes care of my questions, but I, I would like to get an update on where we stand, uh, in terms of the, the, and I appreciate the efforts that have, you know, ongoing with regards to keeping the marina updated on, on what's going forward. But, uh, I think, I think we need an update. We need it soon. We need to understand what these delays are going to do to the plan that we talked about in February. Um, cause those are the dates I'm tracking to and I, I'm not the only one. And so, uh, commissioner, you mean the city commission updated during a formal meeting? Yes. Okay. Very good. I do have some dates to share. I'm excited to have dates to share. If you want me to share them with you, um, the stadium lights are scheduled for, uh, Monday, the 12th to be repaired three out of the four. One sank. Um, we can't repair that one quite yet. Uh, we do have the fire suppression company coming on the 12th and they will be fixing doc C. Can't fix doc A until the dock stabilization is done because of the rise of the pilings and the pipe has been severed. Um, we're penciled in for the week of the 19th for the boat club. Um, so that will be. Nineteenth of. I don't know. And like I said, we're penciled. I mean, May. I guess. Mm-hmm. Yes. Um, we know. I do know that all of the wastewater equipment was removed yesterday and that was the final, uh, final project that we had to do. So that's the demo. Yes. Um, and, uh, I'm gonna wait for the pedestals and I will let you guys know what that is gonna look like. Okay. And just to kind of close the loop on that, um, you know, I, I think for the most part, things are still relatively on track. I just would feel a lot more comfortable kind of getting a more integrated holistic picture of where we stand. And. I still believe that we will start to populate the slips in June. Okay. I mean, it won't be June 1st. I don't believe that. Um, we do still have the agreement to finalize and once that agreement is finalized, uh, we will be sending out emails asking for all the documentation and I'll start working on the agreements. So. That's the new slip renter agreement and it's been before the Marine Advisory Committee. They've forwarded comments and then we'll bring it back to them again. That's great. Thank you. We're moving. Okay. Um, anyone else have any questions? Commissioner DeGuard? No, we're answered. Thank you. Okay. Uh, Vice Mayor? Commissioner Sandbergen? I do not. No. And, um, I think my questions have been answered too, but I did have a question about when people can go back there to start to watch the sunset by the boat club. And, um, and based, and also it just seems like I keep hearing late June, which makes me very nervous. Um, I think that's probably what you're, that we're not going to make our June date. So I think it's great to have a update. Okay. Okay. So, um, so we're going to, unless you don't, you don't want to, we'll do 2E and 2F together? Yeah. Okay. So we'll be looking at approving 2E and 2F. So if I could have a motion. So moved. Second. Good. Okay. And is there anyone in the audience who wishes to speak on this issue of the Marina pedestals? Okay. Seeing no one, um, I'll ask for a voice vote. All in favor? Aye. Aye. And that motion passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Lori. Thank you, Clay. Good job. Good questions. Um, okay. First reading of Ordinance 25-01, approving and authorizing the execution of a development agreement between the City of Dunedin and the Flats on Main Street, LLC, for the Flats on Main Street affordable housing project at 1422 Carnation Drive. Jen, could you please read Ordinance 25-01 by title only? Ordinance 25-01, an Ordinance of the City of Dunedin, Florida, approving and authorizing execution of a development agreement between the City of Dunedin and the Flats on Main Street, LLC, and providing for an effective date. That was Ordinance 25-01, read by title only. Okay. Can I have a motion? So moved. Second. Okay. I have a motion and I have a second. And I will ask for staff presentation, George and Bob. Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, uh, members of the Commission. Uh, George Kinney on behalf of Community Development Department. Seated to my right is my colleague, uh, Robert Ironsmith with the Economic Development Division. Um, before you tonight, the applicant developer, the applicant is also in the room, uh, Archway Partners. Uh, they are requesting to enter into a development agreement with the City of Dunedin for the Flats on Main Street, a proposed affordable housing development located at 1422 Carnation Drive. Uh, the project is preliminarily anticipated to provide high-quality housing to low-income households, serving individuals and families with income levels ranging from 30 to 80% of the area median income. Uh, procedurally, uh, I want to mention that it's very important to understand that this development agreement represents the first of a two-step process and project approval process. Um, specifically, this development agreement is the first step and essentially defines the developer and city obligations. The second step, which is to follow, is the design review and approval process, uh, should the development agreement be approved. Uh, it is the design review process that will analyze in detail site development items that include but are not limited to stormwater, infrastructure capacity, height, mass, uh, transportation, design, landscaping, et cetera. Uh, city staff is currently working through that analysis, but, again, that would be the second step following, uh, the development agreement. On February 6th of this year, the city commission authorized the city manager to pursue negotiations with the applicant relative to entering, entering into the development agreement for this project. Um, at the conclusion of those negotiations, ordinance 25-01 and the negotiated development agreement was presented to the local planning agency for recommendation to the city commission. Uh, those that occurred on April 8th and those meeting minutes are in your backup material. Uh, pursuant to the content of the development agreement, the applicant was initially seeking, um, really three exemptions. Uh, the first being a Parkland impact fee exemption at 100%, which is, which is permissible through our land development code, section 104-26.2. Uh, the second piece they were looking for was a density bonus of 50%, also permissible through our land development code, section 105-27.2, and a public art exemption for half of what that, uh, uh, impact fee in essence would be. And that is permissible in our land development code pursuant to section 110-21. While the LPA recommended development agreement with all three of these provisions for approval to the city commission, subsequent discussions have occurred, uh, with the applicant and with the city manager, uh, and city attorney. Uh, and that has led to a mutually agreed upon revised request, um, that does not include the Parkland impact fee exception. So you'll see that in exhibit B. You'll see that struck. Um, um, so the staff recommend recommendation, therefore, is to approve the development agreement as recommended by the planning commission, except as it pertains to the Parkland impact fee exemption. And just for the commission's, uh, understanding the value of that, uh, uh, impact fee exception is about $195,000. That would be coming back to the city. So that's really, uh, our technical presentation on the land development code as it pertains to the development agreement. But I know Bob wants to also say a few words on the structure of the deal itself. Uh, thanks, George. Just a little bit of background. Obviously, uh, uh, staff, city manager, we've heard for a number of years affordable housing is a high priority. You know, how do we get something going in the city of Dunedin? As most of you know, we've tried for the last four, four and a half years, and we kind of came up empty. Uh, on this time, uh, we came and put together a great team. Uh, Archways is a first class developer. They're here. Neil Brickfield, Pinellas County Housing Authority, is also here, who's, uh, participating in the program substantially. And we were able to go ahead and apply through the developer to the state of Florida for tax credits, which really helped make this project feasible. So we put a lot of effort into what we have today, so we're pretty excited about it. This is, uh, family oriented. Um, these are 78 units. Of course, it's all 580. They're behind, uh, kind of like Lukens Liquor, if you will. Uh, also the landowner is here, Mario Constantine, who has really had a lot of patience with us. We've worked with him for the last three or four years and kept asking him, please, uh, stay with us. And he did, because as we all know, there isn't much vacant property in the city of Dunedin. And this represented a great opportunity for us. So we're excited to get this, uh, to you. As I said, uh, Archways has done a number of projects in the county. Uh, all been very, very successful. They have one going on in Seminole. And Neil Brickfield, Pinellas County Housing Authority, brought over, uh, $10 million in credit vouchers to reduce the rent that someone would need to pay on it. The $30 million tax credit, you put it all together. That's why we're here today. This project is very feasible, very viable, and very, we're very, as I said, very excited about making this happen. So we're here to answer any questions. And as I said, we do have, uh, the players. This has really been a team partnership along many lines to get to where we are today. Mayor? May I add something? Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um, I just want to talk a little bit about that Parkland impact fee. Mm-hmm. The, uh, when we first started negotiating with Archway, um, given that this is low and low-moderate income housing and that, uh, we are in, in need of that type of housing, that it shows up on every single one of our citizen surveys and our business surveys and, and our employee surveys. Um, we started negotiating, as I said, some time ago. In the intervening period between when staff put the Parkland, uh, uh, impact fee on the table and going through LPA, um, we have experienced a great deal of, of, uh, price increases in our pool. And our pool has got to be replaced. We also have the Gladys-Douglas property that we're current, currently developing phase two of the Gladys-Douglas property, the kayak launch two of the observation deck and so on and so forth. And so I really did feel that the public interest is better served in ensuring that the Parkland impact fee is paid. And so I asked, uh, Bob to reach out to Archway, which he did. Um, the total cost of that Parkland impact fee is about $330,000, but they get a credit for the recreation center, recreation area that they're putting in, uh, to the development. So it turned out to be 197, I think you said, Bob. Um, but I do want to thank Archway for, uh, working with us on that and being a good partner. I think it's really important, um, that, you know, this pool is going to be most certainly used by the future residents of, of this, this project. Um, and, um, as I said, I just wanted to, to intercede a little bit here to thank them for being a good partner with the city. So thank you, mayor. Thank you. Okay. Um, so questions for staff. I, I guess I'll start over with vice mayor. Thank you, mayor. Uh, first of all, thank you for the Parkland impact being back on the table. Um, critical for the city. Um, your retention pond, how do you, how do you calculate the size necessary for a retention pond? Well, the, in this case, in Georgia Canada consultant will come up with their engineering plans and then staff, uh, Clay, their engineering department will review that and ensure that all the water is contained on site. Okay. So there is some sort of calculation. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And you get out your slide rules and whatever. They'll look at impervious area, look at how deep the pond is, all that will come into, into play. Sure. Okay. And so all the, all the, um, uh, stormwater runoff on that property goes into that retention pond. Will there be any stormwater from any other properties that would enter that storm, that retention pond? Geez. Uh, not to mind, you know, I'd have to defer to engineering. Frankly, when they look at it, they'll study all that for sure. Um, but they shouldn't have to self-contain. Well, here's Clay. Let me answer. So to, to answer the question, the, the city's, um, land development code does set forth what requirements they have to meet when it comes to the pre and post discharge rate that leaves from the pond. And also you cannot, if you have to maintain the historic flow. So if there is water that comes onto your site, you still have to take that water into consideration. Okay. Because I know, uh, the rainfall last year was, was, was not normal. And we all recognize that, but we also might recognize that our normal isn't going to be normal anymore. So we're going to see increases in levels. And so within your calculation, do you take into consideration that the average rainfall, excluding last year, is not the, the concern that it's not going to be the future average rainfall? So the current- Are we planning for the future? Right now, the current code sets the rainfall events for the 25 year event, which is nine and a half inches of rain over a 24 hour period. And the 100 year storm event, which is, uh, 12 and a half inches of rain over a 24 hour period. And, and I don't want to put you on the spot. Can you remember what rainfall was last year? Uh, Milton had it between 12 and a half and 14 inches. Okay. Okay. Unfortunately, I know that number well. No, and that was, okay. Um, that's all that I have right now. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Sandbergen. It's, uh, at the beginning, and there's a term, uh, stating 9% low income housing credit. Who does that go to? Is that, where is that? You know, certainly the developer can talk a little bit more, but it goes to the developer. It's over a period of time. It's streamed, uh, I believe over 10 years. And this is the equity that they use to make the project happen. So what they do is they sell the, and you know, Brett is here. He probably can talk to a little bit more than I can, but they sell the tax credits to other companies to offset capital gains. And then they use that to help build the project for the equity. So, uh, we'll let Brett talk. I might, I might be off Brett, but, uh, if you want to go ahead and handle that one, that'd be great. Uh, Brett Green, uh, with Archway Partners, 7575, Dr. Phillips Boulevard. So as Mr. Ironsmith mentioned, uh, the tax credits are obtained through the federal government. Uh, we use those tax credits to essentially bring the rents down on the development. Uh, when we obtain, there's a, there's a competitive process to obtain those tax credits through the state of Florida. Uh, it's a very challenging process. Um, there's hundreds of applications each year. As, as Bob mentioned, uh, we've applied several years to, to get the tax credits for this development. Fortunately, finally this year, we were able to, uh, to, to be successful in getting those. And, um, so we'll sell those tax credits to, uh, like a Truist or Bank of America or other large lending institution who are vested in local communities and they partner with us to, to make projects like this happen. Okay. Yeah. Extremely competitive. They pick only one in the county. Uh, so if this, you know, if it's, if this were to continue to fly through, uh, what happens to the developer, a development agreement? If this group was to sell that property, vacate this property for whatever unknown reason, what happens to the? Maybe the city attorney. Yeah. The development agreement, I think, has some provisions in there. So. So. Thank you. So under the development agreement, there's a, a timing associated with that agreement. And then they've got certain criteria that they meet. And so it's kind of locked in for that time period. And if they can't meet it that, or they can either come through and terminate it. Um, or if the city, it feels that they're not in compliance with it at some time, there can also be an agreement where we suspend the development agreement. And the city has taken both of those actions with other development agreements. Okay. So if some major developer came in and bought the property, it could no longer, it would, there's a possibility it's no longer, and I don't like that term, affordable. No. They could change it. No. No. That was if, if something went wrong. Generally, um, when the develop, when a development agreement is signed, that doesn't necessarily preclude the developer from transferring that to a subsequent. There could be. It's, it's, it's, you know, Brett can talk a little bit here. It's got to remain affordable for those tax credits. They have stipulations, too, that they need to be kept in shape. Yeah, if I might. Go ahead. So when we obtain those tax credits, we're required to sign a 50-year long-term affordability. Uh, covenant that will be recorded on the property, it will never, it will never not be affordable. Okay. You said 50, five-zero? 50 years. Okay. Okay. Okay. Uh, you know, and Bob, the city's putting a lot of city money into this, and it may not be possible. But is there any way that we could limit this to Dunedin residents, current Dunedin residents, any way to vet the, uh. Yeah, I know. Sorry about that. I know that's, I know it's coming up before. We can't preclude it. We certainly can make it available. Okay. And let everyone know about it. But we can't just preclude it, because frankly, they will become a Dunedin resident right when they're here. I guess, yeah. Go ahead. And Bob's exactly right. There's fair housing issues associated with setting aside units for just the local residents. But one thing that we can do is market the property to local residents, you know, be first to make sure that all the commissioners and there's flyers when we start to do the lease up. Lots of signage out front so that the people that are in and around this neighborhood will get flyers out to the local businesses and things of that nature, hospitals, you know, teachers, things of that nature, so that we can make sure that we serve the people here. More often times than not, we're leasing up these developments to people that live here. It's unlikely that people are going to come from South St. Pete, you know, Pasco County to rent these units just because they'll go pretty quickly once people hear about the previous thing. Right. It's going to go fast. I wanted to mention the leverage on this is phenomenal. $30 million tax credit, $10 million from the Housing Authority, and we have $610,000 or so in it. The leverage ratio is phenomenal. And my last question. I was reading the formula how rates are set, I guess the rent amount. Is that looked at periodically? You know, things change in someone's lives. You know, they get some massive promotion in their job. Man, I am so sorry. No, I'll just stay here. It's no problem. You might as well stay there, right? So, yeah, there is provisions in that. It's to encourage upward mobility. Okay. If you move into the community and your income goes up, you're not evicted. You only have to move out if you make almost two times what the area median income was, so 140% of AMI. If you go in at 80% of area median income, if you go above, it's either 140 or 150% of AMI then at that point. So it still does promote people to better themselves. Yeah, it does encourage people to continue to have upward mobility. Great. Thank you. That's all I had, Bob. Sure, sure. Thank you. Anything else? Okay. We'll go to this side. Commissioner Walker. This is really more just kind of a clarifying question for me. The exemption that, so it looks like basically we put the parkland impact fee exemption back in play for the developer, right? No, basically the developer is paying the same that any other developer market rate would pay for the impact fee credit. Okay. So in recent discussions with the city manager and seeing the situation we were in with capital programs, it was let's get the parkland impact fee cost back in there. So they're a team player and they're going to bring close to $200,000 to the parkland fee. Okay. And then the converse of that applies to the density bonus and the art exemption. Yeah, these are all things, as George mentioned, that's in the land development code. If you're past commission here a few years ago, we came up with an affordable housing toolkit. And basically because we wanted to see affordable housing happen. And in that toolkit, what I got addressed in the land development code was increase in density. And this is comparable to any other municipality around in addition to go ahead and go half with the public art ordinance fee. We needed to get some stimulus because we knew we couldn't compete with market rate. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner DeGuard. Thank you, Mayor. I have two areas of inquiry. First, I'm still concerned about safety issues on this piece of property relative to fire dangers. And I want to be sure that if there were to be a expansive fire that we have evacuation opportunities for the residents. So that's number one. And number two, we have a few concerns by residents within the area relative to this fitting within the community. I'd like you to address that as well. Thank you. As far as the, you know, fire accessibility evacuation, they were part of the development review committee that George kind of runs. They took a look at it. And they didn't have any additional comments that I was aware of. No, I don't think so. And they would be obviously once it goes, if and when it goes to construction, all fire codes and building life safety codes would apply. Just like they would for any other new built structure. So, you know, as part of the design review process, the fire department will apply their turning templates for their vehicles. And they'll be sure to have adequate access in and out of the site. I know in the initial conversations they were looking at a secondary access or they were looking for a secondary access. But again, that's those are things that we're still kind of working through right now. And that would be part of the design review that comes to the commission at a later time. Yes. Commissioner, as far as the second question, the property is owned for multifamily. I think it's a good fit. We made sure that we wouldn't go up four stories. We wanted to keep it to three stories. There's on the east side an additional step back of about 10 feet or so. So from my view, I feel it's pretty compatible based on what's out there today. You got commercial in the front. You got some, you know, you do have a couple of homes. And, of course, on the back side, St. Christopher, you got the villas in there. But, again, the zoning is multifamily. Was it 12.5, I think? I think so. Yeah. And I would add, just from a planning perspective, it's an excellent transitional piece. Because you're looking at it's behind that commercial atmosphere that fronts Main Street. And then it transitions into the rear to the more modest single family and duplex kinds of units. So from a density perspective, it kind of makes sense. It's that nice transition. There are some PSTA route stops out front. So it makes it very convenient for those folks to be able to use transit. So, again, but a lot of that detail will come in that next step with the design review. Yeah, the additional things you mentioned, the bus stop. Of course, grocery stores close by. We look at all those different planning aspects, too. And that's one of the reasons they, frankly, got the state application for the tax credits. They take a look at all that. What's close by? You know, hospital, grocery, and mass transit. Thank you. Yep. Good. Thank you. A couple questions. So the two apartment buildings are three stories. Correct. 48 feet. Is that what it is? That's the concept plan. That's the concept. And then what's the concept of the clubhouse height? I believe that's one story. I think it's one story. One story. Yeah, a single story. So, really, since I know we're not dealing with all of the kind of the site plan and all that today, or the design, but when I go to 4.2 in the development agreement, I mean, it makes it feel like we're agreeing that what they're showing. So, legally, we have, when it gets to design, we're not hampered by something that's in here. I don't believe so. Mayor, there's some provisions in the front part of the development agreement that talk about the design review process and how that might adjust that illustration. So, I think we can probably work through that. Yeah. Well, I'm going to ask our attorney. Yep. One more point, too. What you'll see is that it also identifies that the renderings, the site plan, the renderings are subject to the review and approval of the city's design review process as set forth in 104-24 of the code. Okay. So... I mean, when you read it, it's like, hmm, is it saying that? Okay. As long as, in legal speak, you're comfortable that we have the power we need? Yes, and I believe that we've also confirmed that with the developer in speaking with them with regard to this. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I don't like it. I'm just wondering why, you know, maybe we didn't internalize the site a little bit more versus all the parking more internalized. But anyway, but anyway, we'll deal with that. It's a great point, Mayor. And as you know, as part of the design review process, we do do that compatibility analysis. So, that's where a lot of that will possibly adjust. Okay. All right. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't. Okay. All right. I'm good. I don't have any other questions. So, I will go to public input. So, if there's anyone else, if there is anyone in the audience who wishes to come forward and speak on this issue, come on down and give your name, address for the record, and three minutes. How are you doing? Hi. Good evening, everyone. Nancy Schmidt, 1380 Daffodil Place, St. Christopher's. Good evening, everyone. I have some concerns about the proposed Flats on Main project and a few issues to address. First, I take exception to the late notification of the local planning agency meeting to discuss this proposed project. Received this notice only a few days before the planning meeting. No diagram was sent with the meeting notice. No specific details of the buildings. And how were we expected to speak? How were we expected to speak to the details of this project? The second thing I'm concerned about is, oh, it's probably about five years ago, I came before this commission. I was very concerned about a project that was being built west of, I mean, yeah, no, east of our complex. I was concerned because it was green space, about an acre of land, and it was going to turn into cement. And I was concerned about water runoff. There was a slope there. And I was assured by engineering, I was assured by the developers, all that would be taken into consideration when they built this project. Well, about a year after that, I asked City Engineering to come back to St. Christopher's after this building was completed because we have a lot of water runoff. It's ongoing. This has nothing to do with the rain that we had last year. This is years that we've had this. And it doesn't end. The water's getting, I mean, the road is getting stained, and it's costing us a lot of money. I think I've heard in the neighborhood of over $20,000 trying to remediate the water that comes onto our property. And it raises our rates, I mean, our monthly fees go up to pay for this. And yet the people who are north of us have absolutely no consequences whatsoever. Again, I was told all engineering guidelines would be followed, the design guidelines would be followed. Well, there's something wrong with the calculations or the design, because we are still dealing with this five years later. And this project that is being proposed for just north of us, I mean, just get my directions, but the Flats on Main has a similar issue. You've got nearly four acres of trees and grass, and it's going to turn into cement. My last issue has to do with three-story buildings next to one-story homes. It's entirely unacceptable. We're a complex of 112 families, not counting the other houses that are around us. And now you're going to put three-story buildings right up against us. And I'm concerned about the water, I'm concerned about property values, because you're sacrificing 112 families or more for 78. And I just have real difficulty with this. To me, it's like trying to get a square peg in a round hole. My three minutes are up. Thank you, Nancy. Thank you. I do have one card, and then if anyone else wants to come forward, but Rob Refo, and I think he's got four names, so he can speak for his 10 minutes. I've got Julie Cruz, I think it is, William Harris, Ms. Harris, Carazon Harris, it sounds like, and Kathy Wheeler. And so, Mr. Refo, is it? Come forward. Rob Refo. I live at 1341 Azalea Drive, Unit 2, Dunnean. And I don't plan to take the full amount of time here. And I know I can tell there's a lot of energy behind this and a lot of momentum. I can tell Mr. Ironsmith has a lot of passion for this, and there's been a lot of work put into this. One being ants at a picnic. I can tell there's a lot of momentum with this, but what I'm wanting to do is really allow you folks to pause and look at closer at some of the points that may not have been stressed along the way. I brought a handout. I brought some handouts up there that you can look at afterwards. I'm sure you're very familiar with this schematic, and the way this is described is two three-story garden-style affordable housing apartments, 78 units with adequate parking that meets the needs for a size that it is, stormwater pond, all that. And I don't doubt it's going to be a nice-looking building, and I don't doubt the quality that the developer produces. And I appreciate some of the questions that you asked, sir, is then it's not just looking at this, because on paper, that's right, it fits. There's parking. There's the buildings. It fits in that space. But what I would appeal to you to do is to step back and really look at where this is. When you look at it on a map and you see just how small that lot is and how many people you're fitting into that. And I'm going to break this down instead of just looking at 78 units. When you look at this, and that's kind of what I'm wanting to say from the get-go, is that this, and let me pause for a moment. At the local planning agency, there was a lot of concern about stormwater runoff, things like that. And that will definitely come up. I'm not going to address those here at all. I'm going to focus on just a couple of issues. And the general concept of that is that the scope of the proposed development is just, it's based on the location, the size of the plot of land, the surrounding residential neighborhoods. It's just not appropriate for this. Now, if you stop, there's 78 apartment units, 42 one-bedroom, 36 two-bedroom. When you break that down, that's 114 bedrooms. And one of the questions that I had asked the developer, and it took four weeks to get an answer to this, which I was a little surprised at how long it took to get the answer, is the general guideline for affordable housing occupancy is two people per bedroom with an allowance for an additional person, even if it means exceeding two people per bedroom. So you start doing the math on this. So hence, if there were residents occupying 114 bedrooms, two residents, there'd be 228 people in a very small area. So there's, and you can get as much as three. Now the developer did yesterday at a meeting say they could adjust it where it's just down to two. They could require that. They could make that a limit. Now, I don't know how they go about doing that or how we get that solidified. But he did offer that up. But as of right now, the maximum capacity of that facility would be 342 people. You would be allowed to get that many people into that little space. So just take that in mind, 114 bedrooms, 228 people. And the point that I would want to make here is, and if you see, you'll have a copy of this. You can see where it is, where it's located relative to the businesses and such. And then there's another, the first point I'd want to bring up is, and this is probably the most important point I'd want to make. All foot traffic, all vehicular traffic, bicycles, wheelchairs, scooters, whatever, will enter and exit one access point off Main Street, which will be accessed through the Lukens Liquor parking lot along with what used to be the Dollar General or Family Dollar store. So I've provided this for you. You can see this. This is one, and you don't even see a sign for Carnation Drive when you're there, but that's Carnation Drive. And I outlined here, these are all parking spaces. So just keep this in mind. There's one access point. I assume it's here. I can't say with certainty, but it's logically, it's going to be there. You have, you have cars parking here, cars parking along there, and all those parking lots, all traffic, pedestrian, bicycles, kids, whatever it is, are all flowing through business parking lots, in essence. That road runs through there. Now, I invite any of you, I know you're very familiar with this city, you represent it. Go buy Lukens Liquor. Keep in mind, there is no establishment there currently. There's two or three houses back there with very few people in it. You're now going to put 200 or some odd people in this area. They're all going to, there is no other route going in and out. They're all going to go through that channel. There's no light there. Now, that may be part of the plans. I don't know. I'm not privy to this. There may, they may put a light there. And let me also ask you this. People are, if they're wanting to get across that street, you're begging for them to run across Main Street. If they want to get to Country Boy, Dunkin' Donuts, there's not a close. Crosswalk. We're talking practicality here and how do people act. That concerns me. So keep in mind, in this facility, there's probably going to be, I'm going to guess, 40, 60 children as well. So they're going to be, again, that's their avenue to access Main Street or to get out of the complex. And so the next point, that's the most important point, is the safety point that must be taken into consideration and the sheer size of this development. The next part is parking, which this is what I'm going to bring up. When I've asked the developer, what they have planned is 117 parking spaces. Right there. Here's the next schematic they give us, where you can see, impractical, like a satellite view. You see where the lot is. Let me go ahead and say, this is not totally accurate. The southern border should be a little bit further down, just for the record here. But you can see where the cars are. And you can start seeing the scale. You can see the size of the Lukens Liquor building by a satellite and how it would fit in there. That's, this is a, not a large lot of land. So you're, you're definitely packing people in there. The, again, so the, to stay on topic here, the parking spaces, 117 parking spaces, that was survived by 1.5 cars per unit. Okay. So with that, there is no overflow parking. I asked the developer this as well. So what happens if there's more cars? If there's 140 cars, let's say, where are these going to go? This is, this is like a real world question. It's not just, well, we have adequate parking. It meets the, it meets the requirements. But what happens when there's more park, more cars? I couldn't get an answer, an adequate answer from the developer yesterday at a meeting. It's, it's like, well, we don't have that as a problem. But what happens when they're, when that, they will overflow into perhaps the business parking lots or down Heather Drive or Friendly Avenue? I don't know. But they're going to go someplace that we can agree. They're not just going to, the cars don't evaporate. They're going to go someplace and they're going to have to park someplace. So those are, those are the primary concerns that I would bring up right from the start that don't get talked about a lot. And we're, we're, and again, I would invite, just go over and look at this lot of land. Walk down Carnation Drive, look around on it, and you start looking for yourself. How is this, this, they're really going to cram this in. The, the final point that I would build on is something that I think Nancy just mentioned, which is, is the point that we, we didn't get much notice of this prior to the local planning agency, the, the notice I know was mailed out 14 days, supposed to be 14 days ahead of time, and it was mailed out right at 14 days ahead of time. And on this, I'm just going to leave it so I don't go on, onto matters not as important. I'm going to leave it with those two matters. I think that it's something that I really just ask that for the city commissioners, that you, you really look at that and look at the numbers of it and, and how it works in the real world, in, in our community, within the culture of the town as well. Thanks for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Okay. Is there anyone else in the audience who wishes to come forward? You were ready to speak before, weren't you? Come on down. Name and address in three minutes. I am Megan Beach at 1445 Heather Drive. And I, first of all, thank you for your time tonight. And I do want to express that I understand there is a need for affordable housing in the city. However, I don't believe that this location is the right fit for it. It would have an impact on our community. You know, my husband grew up in this area, and this is a beautiful city. My mother-in-law grew up in this city. We are, you know, we go several generations back at this point, and we fell in love with the quaint city that it is, and it seems that this is going to be something that's changing it up a little bit. First and foremost, the development is just too large for the area. You saw that within the documents that Rob did provide. The increase in the population density, I do feel, would put a strain on our already overburdened infrastructure, which could lead to, you know, traffic congestion, noise pollution, a strain on our public services, our infrastructure, specifically our drainage, plumbing, we are seeing issues with those, and adding to this could cause more issues for the community that already exists. Additionally, the construction of this could result in significant environmental changes, water runoff issues, sinkhole issues, and the destroying of natural habitats. The housing being proposed is not in keeping with the character of our current neighborhoods. It could drastically alter the aesthetic of the area, replacing the existing greenery and open spaces with high-density housing complex. The development will consist, as you know, two large three-story structures that will be overlooking single-story dwellings and reducing the existing residents' privacy within their properties. Homeowners have invested in this area with the understanding that it is primarily residential, and introducing the large-scale development behind our properties could have an adverse effect on our investments and the culture of our city itself. And, you know, we look to preserve that quaintness that we do have. We want to keep what we fell in love with. Additionally, another concern, you've heard it, is the stormwater. We were, my property was impacted by the stormwater, you know, and we had floodwaters come into our property. And having this covered by impervious structures takes away that empty land and the opportunity for this water to absorb into the land. And my question is, what happens to the water? Where does it go when there's no longer land for it to sink into? So, again, you know, I do strongly believe that there is a need for it, but this spot just isn't that place. So, I do hope that, you know, everything will be taken into consideration and that everybody will consider the interests of the residents that already live in the community. Thank you, Megan. Thank you. Appreciate it. Anyone else in the audience wish to come forward and speak to this issue? Name and address for the record in three minutes. Hi. My name is Laura Brummett, and I live at 1437 Heather Drive. I'd like to say good evening to everyone here as I stand humbly as a resident of Dunedin. And my property would be right here as it would be to the pond. This canal, as I call it, there's a lot of canals that run through Dunedin and through the other side of Main Street and continue going down. This, as it comes off of San Christopher, this also comes behind our home. And it does accumulate water as it rains, any rain time or what have you. And I do believe there's not a, it doesn't show it, but it does accumulate water back here. A lot of the folks that have already spoke on our behalf of the community show our concern about it being, having, you know, the greenery not being there. We consider, you know, how the fire, actually, you know, the thing of it is, I'm not against it either. I just feel that this probably is not the right location. There were some great locations in Dunedin through the last couple of years that have been built, different things that that would have accommodated being right on Main Street or what have you like this, but a three and a half acre of, it's set back in a place where the access to, through Lukens and just all of that is just concerning. And especially the water, just figuring out, you know, how this, you know, how elevated is this going to be? Is it going to be higher than us and it's going to come down and will, you know, will this pond handle the accumulation of, you know, what considers? And knock on wood, I love being on Heather Drive. I, I'm so thankful that how we don't have the problem like some of the other folks have gone up after the building went up with the, with the other condos and whatnot. So, you know, I don't know how that tension is and unknowing of what Mother Nature can do for us and what happens through this. So, you know, I, I'm just here as a concern. You know, when I bought the property, I wasn't thinking I would ever look out in my backyard and see a three-story, you know, structure being, being in a residential type area. And, um, so that's what I got to say. Thank you. Appreciate your input, Laura. Um, uh, anyone else wish to come forward and speak on this issue? Name and address for the record in three minutes. Hi. My name is Nick Anasasakis. I live in, uh, 888 Emerson Drive. I own a business in Dunedin. I've been here for 40 years. I believe that affordable housing is needed here. Um, we have a lot of modern stuff, you know, modern homes, but nothing for people that could afford it. Um, after I got out of school, I came here. It was very hard for me to find, you know, rental property. So it's needed here. That's all I could say. Thank you. Thank you, Nick. Appreciate it. Okay. Anyone else wish to come forward and speak on this issue? Name and address for the record. Three minutes. Hi. Hi, my name is James Beach. I live on 1445 Heather Drive. I do not agree with this being here. It does not fit within the community. I grew up in the home that I'm in right now. My parents bought the house in 2001. Went to school in this area. Me and my wife, we bought the house from my parents. My kids, our kids go to school in this area. Our oldest is going to Dunedin High. Our youngest is in Garrison Jones going to Dunedin Middle. We are on the west side of this property, and we have seen water. All that water comes down towards us. We are on the lower end. If you put this property in there, take all this greenery away, all that water is coming towards us. As you can see in the prints that they're putting that retention pond right there. That's going to be a second retention pond right behind our home. And the other one, it's already flooded halfway into our yard, the last rain. So all these engineers that can go through all this property, as we've seen and heard throughout the community from other areas in Dunedin, that there's a bunch of draining problems. All these people have said, oh, they can handle this, they can handle that, whatever the amounts are, but it doesn't seem to be working very well. So who's to say later on, Mother Nature, we can't predict Mother Nature. You can do all the studies you want, but we cannot predict Mother Nature. You build all this, you're going to take away sunlighting from other homes because these are massive buildings. And this is a residential area. I grew up in here, and I like the quietness. The community is great. Dunedin is a smaller community. It's not like Seminole. It's not like Clearwater. It's not like St. Pete. It's not very massive, doesn't have a lot of huge, huge structures of that nature. And this just doesn't fit in that particular area. There could be some other areas that are better. I don't disagree with the affordable housing, but at the same time, it doesn't fit in this particular spot. So that's all I have to say. Thank you, James. Anyone else wish to come forward to speak on this issue? Okay. Name and address for the record. Three minutes. Hi. My name is Eddie Reed, and I live in the San Christopher Villas on Azalea Drive. I have a concern about the access where there's only one input or exit out of the property. It seems like Friendly Lane should be involved in this. What happens if there's a fire? I talked with the company yesterday, and they're using wood trusses in the floor systems, and I'm sure that the roof systems are wood trusses also. If this catches fire, I know they have water sprinkler systems like a large building would have, but if you have heavy trucks coming in there, ladder trucks that have a heavy footprint, what's going to happen to the systems in these older roads that are there? I think there's going to be trouble. If you look at the access through Lucan's parking area, I went and measured it this morning on the width, and if you take an average Ford F-150 and park it in towards Lucan's, and another one on the opposite side, all you have left over is 19 and a half feet, and that cuts each lane down to nine plus, ten minus feet going in and out of there. And there's quite a bit of traffic in that area daily, not considering adding a possible 100 to 117 vehicles that it's capable of holding. I really think, and I strongly urge the members to walk through there at an average time of day, not at 5 o'clock, because we know it's going to be busy then, but 1, 2 o'clock or lunch break or something like that, and see exactly what's there. The sidewalk is three and a half feet wide on the Lucan side, and I don't know if an electric wheelchair can physically make it down through that. I do have these concerns about that property, and I think the building and the quality looks great in talking with the company. I don't see a problem or an issue with that, but I think it's absolutely the wrong location without a second access. You can't drive a fire truck around the buildings. It's limited to one side, lighting a fire, putting hoses up on it. I think more thought needs to be put into this. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Is there anyone else who would wish to come forward? Name and address for the record in three minutes. Hi. Good evening. My name is Peggy Fast. I live at 1310 Powderpuff, unit number two. And I think affordable housing is needed in this area, but we have a major concern, and for me, it's the flooding and the drainage of water in the community that I live in. Before Twin Valley Way was built, which is the northeast corner of the San Christopher Villas, the drainage problem wasn't an issue. Since then, we have spent over $20,000 in the last few years to correct the problems from the Twin Villas coming down the east side of our property and flooding the homes in the last hurricanes because the water was supposed to be diverted to the drainage. And I did walk with two engineers through our complex within the last month to help us fix the problem, and one engineer said, well, the drainage pond for Twin Villas is uphill. Water flows downhill. So where is it going to go? It came into our complex. And the engineers had approved it, but we have the problem, and we have to fix it. So I'm asking for the city of Dunedin to look at this with this new complex. It's big in a small area, and there are geotechnical products that are available, and at the meeting I brought it up yesterday, one of them is true grid for pavement is one of the things where the drainage, the water can go through instead of accumulating. And also, we want to look at the water that's draining off going into the water here, goes out into the gulf, and then we have red tide. So what are we doing about that? And I think that needs to be addressed. And again, it's a big place and a small unit. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else wish to come forward to speak on this issue? Okay. All right. Seeing no one, I did go through some questions that got brought up here. I tried to catch, I think, the major ones. There was an issue of the late LPA notice. So you might know, commissioners, that we draft the letter of notice, but the responsibility for actually mailing the notice goes to the applicant, and I believe that they confirmed that they did that in a timely manner, consistent with our land development code. Okay. Well, I think we just need to confirm that. Yeah, and they will get a second one. So this letter of notice actually goes out for the development agreement. There will then be a second letter of notice that goes out for the design review. Okay. So there will be, well, for the second reading there will be one, or no? No, no. So the letter of notice goes out for the development agreement. It goes out for the three meetings, the LPA, first read, and second read. Okay. Then a separate letter of notice will then go out for the design review, which is the same thing, LPA, first read, and second read. Okay. Thank you. And the parking at 117 places, we have any concerns of overflow parking, and what would people do? Mayor, quite frankly, too early to know. We haven't really poured into that evaluation. I do know at this point that it is code compliant at one and a half spots per acre, but I also know that the developer is hearing this, and there's probably some creative ideas that they can do to think about. So that can all be dealt with in the site plan design review? Absolutely. Okay. Okay. And then the whole issue of Carnation Lane, or what drive, I don't know what it is, but being the only in and out, is that a concern from the safety point of view? So, again, a little bit too early, but we do have the traffic impact study from the applicant. We will do a peer review on that traffic impact study, and then we'll have some possible improvements or some suggestions that come out of that review. Okay. And I do know next week, Ford Piniella is looking at the 580 improvements, and I think there's some improvements there that are going to impact, you know, the potential for this development if it occurs. Okay. But, again, those are all things that are going to be looked at at that next level of design. In much more detail. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Okay. And then concerns of strain on the infrastructure, our infrastructure for water, sewer, stormwater. Oh, can I get Clay still here? It's kind of a Clay question here. Clay, we need you tonight. So, as for water and sewer, there is two 8-inch lines. One's going up Carnation. The other one is coming up Friendly. We're going to have them loop that system so it will provide a better fire flow system and potable water on that. And then the wastewaters, we have plenty of capacity to handle this. Okay. And then, of course, I think the biggest question that came up a lot was, you know, you're building big buildings. Where's the water really going to go? Is it really going to work? And, obviously, you know, we all worry about that right now, especially with the storms. I mean, they're going to have to meet the requirements for the land development code when it comes to the design of their pond with what storms are supposed to meet, pre- and post-development runoff rates. And there's also a requirement in there for a one-foot freeboard from that stage elevation to the top of the pond. I don't know where their proposed discharge point is at this point in time. We'll obviously get to that when they get to that design phase. Okay. But a lot of these things will happen during design review as well. Be discussed more in length. Right, George? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, there'll be a lot of time for more discussion on this. Okay. That was the first step. Okay. Okay. Then we are going to go to closing public input. And then, Commission comments, do you all want to take a five-minute break or you want to go ahead and forge on? Forge on? Okay. All right. So, I am going to go to Commission comments and I will start with the maker of the motion, which was Commissioner Sandberg. No, it's been a long time coming and I support this agreement. And the rest of my questions will come up after the design review meeting. I mean, it's, I got about half a dozen of them already. So, I, you know, we'll wait until that night for sure. But otherwise, I support the development agreement. Okay. And seconder was Commissioner Walker. I got a couple questions. You know, looking at this diagram, you've got a, to the west of Heather Drive, there's a, looks like a stormwater retention pond. Then, to the east of Heather Drive, you've got another, in the, in the actual development itself. Is, are we concerned about that? Well, I think, strange, if you look closely with our engineering, about the fur to clay. So, the, the, the body of water you're referring to on the west side of Heather Drive is, I can't, it's slipping me the name. But that, that body of water actually drains from, why can't I think of the direction? And it drains underneath 580 and then runs north and ends up getting into Curlew Creek and out through. So, that's a Jerry Branch. Thank you. So, that is Jerry Branch of Curlew Creek. That's the, sort of, near the headwaters of it. So, during the design review, do we get an opportunity to talk about more than one way in and out of the property? Because it looks to me like a friendly lane, and then, of course, there's the access there through Lucan's parking lot. Yes. And the answer to your question, Commissioner, is yes. But FIRE is, is deeply involved in the design review process. So, they will be, in fact, I know they've already looked at it kind of preliminarily. But if, you know, they will definitely be, their comments will be brought through that design review process. Yeah. I do mention that we did look at friendly lane. It's got some constraints there. It doesn't have a full width throughout that area. So, there are some problematic areas in that friendly lane. Okay. But we did take, we did look at it. Yeah, Clay and myself looked at it. Yeah. Well, you know, the, this has, this has been in work for, for a long time. And I know that there have been a lot of looks at this. And, I mean, this, this is, this is one of our number one issues that keep coming up on our citizen surveys. You know, I, I just would like to be comfortable that these are issues we can address during the design review. Certainly. Most of it can be brought up. And as George said, he's going to have a peer review on the traffic aspect. And so, everyone will be taking a close look at this. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I'll go to Commissioner Gard. This is when being a city commissioner is no fun at all. We know we have a need for affordable housing. Every time we ask that question, it's almost unanimous. Let me give you a picture here. And I'm getting out of the question zone. And I'm definitely in the comment zone. But we, we only have one fireman that lives inside our city limits. How many of our school teachers have to drive great distance just to come teach our children? Nurses can't afford to live here, particularly on a single income. This is tearing us right now. And we know that this is going to be a challenge. This is a challenge spot. There is no easy spot. We've looked. We've looked for the last five years. And we know that we've been insufficient in supplying affordable housing. Is this a perfect answer? Absolutely not. There isn't a perfect answer. We're nine square miles. And we've got a bunch of people that want to live in it. At this time, as much as I hate to say it, because I know the citizens around this are concerned. And we will deal with a design review. But we've got to go forward with this. Thank you, Commissioner. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. You know, affordable housing does come up all the time. And it's always at the top of our citizen survey. So it's what the resident wants. And this is what affordable housing looks like. I know that, I don't want to make this a long story, but my father in the mid-60s, was heavily involved in getting the city of Dunedin to purchase what's now Hammock Park. And this is in the mid-60s. And the reason he did that was because he was concerned about overdevelopment in the mid-60s. And since that time, wherever you all live, I can tell you that in my lifetime is when your house was built. And so that's just society. That's the way it is. I can tell you, I remember Amberley being built, Rancho Wood Estates being built. Wethersfield being built. Granada Plaza being built. And just the changes that have occurred in my lifetime. Panemis County is the most densely populated county in the state. The most densely populated county in the state. Land is a premium. Dunedin is quickly, well, we're already there, unaffordable for many. Commissioner Dugard talked about the first responders and our school teachers. We all love and talk about our downtown. Our downtown needs food servers and entertainment. Where are those people living? And how are they getting around? Heard a great concern over parking and the amount of parking. And we might be underestimating the spaces for parking. And we are, by calculations, that's what we do. But you look at any commercial development, and those parking lots are not built for capacity of that project. Look at all the stores at Granada Plaza. There is no way, if you took the max capacity of all those stores, there's enough capacity there. You look at our hotels, and you talk about high season. There's not enough parking spaces in the hotels for full capacity at the hotels. And so you just can imagine, look at the amount of parking spaces we have throughout the city, throughout the county, throughout the state. We talked about green space, and look how much land, green space, we're taking up for our automobiles. According to AAA, we spend between $12,000 and $15,000 a year on our cars. Between your loan payments, and interest, and fuel, and insurance, and maintenance. For a car that sits idle 95% of the time, and it's your most expensive, non-appreciating asset you will ever own, that's got a useful life. And at the end of that, you have to buy another one. And that's where we go through life. This is affordable housing. What do you think the thoughts are on the people who are going to be living there at their income bracket, that they're going to be able to afford one car, two cars, three cars? You know, and so while we're concerned about parking, I appreciate that. But instead of being an advocate and concern over the cars, I'd rather have you be a concern over where people can live in our community, and maybe fight for the way that we, our transportation infrastructure. We should be fighting for public transit. We should be fighting for walkability, bikeability. We should be fighting for multimodal forms of transportation that reduce the needs of cars. I'd rather see with this project that I know that a, Bob, you mentioned a grocery store is close by. I'd rather not have the demand for food dictate how they get there, make it walkable. We should have walking spaces along 580 that beg people to walk, that beg them to leave their cars at home. We should be creating a society that offers people the opportunity to get where they ever want, to get where they want to go by the type of transportation that they can afford. And so I'm greatly concerned on where are kids going? I've got two young adult children. They can't afford to live in Dunedin. They're waiting for me to die. And hopefully, and then they probably can't pay the taxes on them. Affordable housing is a crisis, an absolute crisis, and something has to change. I hear you and I understand where you are on your concern for the stormwater runoff, and I get that. And I know that's normal in certain times, and I know that we're all having the stress over just last year's storm, and I get that. And I am hoping, George, Bob, that we can talk about that more during design review. But this is a project that we've been trying to get done since my time on the commission, and it has to get done. We have to have affordable housing in Dunedin. And you can't get affordable housing without building more housing stock. And if you look around, there's not a lot of land left. So how are we going to do that? Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Well, I mean, look, I understand everyone's concerns. I do, and I guarantee you all my colleagues do as well. You know, it's tough up here sometimes. I mean, I clearly, I support this. Affordable housing always is in our top three, always. We don't have many pieces of land we can do this. We've been trying to get it done on this piece of land for a long time. It is zone multifamily, so it's already in that zone. And so, but we have opportunities as we face our design, the design layout, the buffers around the neighborhoods. And so all I can promise you is that as we go through that, that I, and I think I can probably speak for all of us, to say we, we will do everything we possibly can to minimize the impact to you. Because we understand, we do understand, but I also support this project and support the development agreement. And a lot of the issues that got brought up tonight, we can look to and work to creatively during the design review. So thank you. And sure, go ahead, if you have one more comment. It's hard to follow that eloquence, but I do want to compliment the developer. You are a good partner. That's apparent in the financial agreements you've come to. And I wish to recognize that as a last comment. Thank you. Thank you. And we're going to be asking a lot of you during design review, too, so we can keep this thing going forward. Okay, roll call vote. Commissioner Dugard. Aye. Vice Mayor Gow. Aye. Commissioner Walker. Aye. Commissioner Sandbergen. Aye. Mayor Franey. Aye. And that motion passes unanimously. The second reading of this will be on June 5th of 2025. Thank you, everyone. We do appreciate your input. Okay. You all want to take five minutes or you want to keep going? You want to take five minutes? Let's take five minutes. Second time you ask. Okay. First reading of Ordinance 25-03 to contract approximately 0.70 acres of real property located at 2201 Main Street, identified as Pinellas County Tax Parcel Number 30-28-16-0000320-0200, generally located at the intersection of Belcher Road and State Road 580. And I will, Jen, if you could read Ordinance 25-03 by title only. I know you'll be repeating those numbers. I will. Ordinance 25-03, an ordinance of the city of Dunneedin, Florida, for the voluntary contraction of the city boundary by contracting approximately 0.70 acres of real property, identified as Pinellas County Tax Parcel 30-28-16-0000-320-0200, and generally located at the intersection of North Belcher Road and State Road 580, as more particularly and legally described in this ordinance, providing for the amendment of the city's boundaries to contract the subject parcel, providing for notice to appropriate agencies, providing for severability, providing for conflict, and providing for an effective date. That was Ordinance 25-03, read by title only. You were way more deliberative about how you did the zeros. I figured you'd fix it if I got it wrong. Okay. I'd like to have a motion, if I could. So moved. Second. Okay. Commissioner Degard, Commissioner Walker. Okay. We'll go to staff presentation. George. Thank you, Mayor, Vice, Mayor, Commissioners. Again, George Kinney on behalf of the Community Development Department. Before I start, I know Sue Burness is probably watching this, and I want to be on the record of showing this PowerPoint, is in the new branded format, just in case. Just in case she's watching. It's pretty bland so far, so we'll see. I'm not excited yet. So, let's see, it switched on the screen, but didn't switch up top here. Slides are not. However, it doesn't work. Really branded, and it doesn't work. It's moving forward on the screen. Well, Katie really wanted to wait until the end of the meeting anyway, so it will take time, and no. Yeah. There we go. Yay. Okay. Thank you. So, thank you, Mayor, Commissioners, Vice Mayor. So, just a little bit, very quickly, on the application and property information. This is Ordinance 25-03. As was mentioned, it's a contraction request, so it's something that you don't normally review. Typically, you're looking at the annexations, and instead this is really kind of the opposite, almost a de-annexation, if you will. The project name behind this particular ask is a freestanding emergency room brought by the Largo Medical Center. The representatives are Hillward Henderson, and I think Katie's behind me, along with their engineer. The street address is 2201 Main Street. It's about seven-tenths of an acre, no flood zone, has an underlying land use of retail and services, and the current zoning district of general business. When I put this slide together, it was vacant land, but if you've been by the site, you can probably see that there is some activity happening out there. And then, just very quickly, to the right of the slide, you can see the subject parcel outlined in red. And then, in the next slide, you'll see the two pieces that the property owns and that the project spans both of those properties. So, just a little bit on the project description, and again, the picture to the lower left is the area, so the parcel that's in the city of Dunedin is actually right in that southeast corner, and then that property that you see boxed out to the right along Main Street, that's the property that's already currently located in the city of Clearwater. So, as mentioned, the Largo Medical Center intends to construct a new emergency medical facility there. It's underway, and it is in that location. You can see the site plan above that aerial layout, and you can see what, and I believe that's already been permitted through the city of Clearwater, and includes about a 10,000-square-foot facility, with the Dunedin parcel being mostly constructed as a parking area. There's some, I believe, some dumpster enclosures in there as well, but mostly for parking and stacking. As mentioned, the applicant owns the adjacent contiguous parcel located in the city of Clearwater. The contraction request is permissible through Florida Statute Section 171.051, and really the reason for the contraction is to unify the development site, so you don't have a different set of rules in each jurisdiction. And it allows us to make sure that we have a unified approach from an emergency services perspective, from a utilities perspective, all of those types of things. And this discussion has been ongoing for basically about two years to get to this point, and we've worked with the city of Clearwater pretty intensively, along with the applicant, to kind of come to this conclusion. And, you know, contraction was one of the options that was analyzed. There were several options that were thrown on the table, including an interlocal or a memorandum of understanding between the two municipalities. But this is really what really worked out to be the best solution. And some of these other bullet points will kind of point to why that's the case. But the cost of new infrastructure for improvements on the Dunedin parcel to improve the existing Dunedin collection system is really not cost effective for the developer. Clay's, I think Clay is still here. So there is a pump that's serving the site that was extended to that site solely for that site only. And if we get into some utility questions, I'll ask Clay to come up and talk a little bit more about that. I will point out also that the city did financially assist the redevelopment of the site back in 2014. It was a used car lot, as you know, and it was there was some economic development money and some utility fund money that went into rehabbing that site in 2014. But obviously, since then, that parcel became the use basically went away. The parcel became vacant and the property owner has obviously sold it to the medical center. You know, last bullet, just to kind of recap, again, there were several meetings with the City of Clearwater. We had several joint meetings, and that also included the developer and applicant in each of those conversations. So just by way of kind of how this, in essence, cleans us up from a planning perspective, this is our project planning area that is agreed upon, you know, with Pinellas County as our annexation area. And you can see that the parcel that we're talking about is the only parcel that is east of Belcher and south of Main Street. And again, I'm not quite sure, you know, how we got to that point and why that particular parcel was included, but it is the only piece on that side. So by contracting that piece, you tend to clean that corner up. And then this kind of takes home the fact that you can see the City of Clearwater is outlined in yellow there, the City of Dunedin in pink, and unincorporated Pinellas in blue. And again, on that side, where you see south of Main and east of Belcher, the only piece of Dunedin is the piece that we're talking about tonight while you have the City of Clearwater basically surrounding that property on at least two sides. Oops, I'm sorry. And so the other aspect to this is not just the planning perspective, but the fiscal perspective. In this slide, you'll see the 2024 trim notice that was provided for the—that we secured for the property. It's very—obviously, you can't read it, but outlined in red is the tax bill that was—that that property was subject to in 2024. It's a little more than $3,000. And you can kind of see through some of the photos on the left how the property has kind of gone from where it was an active used car lot in 2023 to a vacant facility in 2024, assuming that's when the trim notice then was applied, and that was the use at the time. And, of course, currently, that structure, which is really the structure that was subject to some of those improvement dollars, has been removed. And then if you've been by it, like I said, the construction for the new project is underway. We did share this ordinance with the local planning agency, and on April 9th, they did review, recommend, approve of the ordinance, and subject to these following findings, and I'll read them into the record very quickly, that the contraction effectively streamlines the utility service areas for both Dunedin and Clearwater, that the contraction allows for the unified development of the overall site, that the City of Clearwater is able to service the site with all required facilities more efficiently, that the cost of improvements to the nearest point in the existing City of Dunedin collection system is not cost-effective, that the contraction provides for a unified code compliance, permitting, and development review approach in Clearwater. Tax implications are minimal, and only a parking area and solid waste receptacles are noted on the site plan for the Dunedin parcel. Contraction streamlines the Dunedin planning area by removing the only Dunedin parcel on the east side of Belcher and south of Maine. The contraction is being made consistent with Sections 171.051 of Florida statutes. The LPA did make the recommendation to the City Commission with one condition of approval, and that was that the applicant forfeits and is not eligible to request any repayment of any previously expended funds, i.e. impact fees, so any impact fees that the developer might have paid previously, that they have basically suggested that those are not to be recaptured by this development. And then finally, next step would be second read on June 5th in front of the Commission, and with that, I'll kind of stop and try to answer any questions you might have. Okay, questions for George or anybody else. I'll start on this side this time. Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. Are there any previous expended funds like impact fees in play here? So there is, from 2014, the City did put some funding into the redevelopment of the site in 2014 to get it back up and running. There was about $18,000 in utility fund money that was expended by the City, and there was about $12,000 in economic development funding money that was spent as well. And that economic development money was really with regards to some facade improvements, while the utility money was for that particular lift station that serves the site. All right. This may be a silly question, but do we get any of that money back as a result of this? I would defer to the applicant on that, Commissioner. If that's something that you wanted to discuss with them, they are definitely here. All right. Thank you. Commissioner Dugard. I saw that the tax bill was going to be $3,000, and that's what we would lose on an annual basis. Is that correct? That's correct. And we asked the applicant to put together what they think that the tax bills would be going forward post the new development, and their assessment was they believed it would be right in that same range, about $3,000 a year. Okay. That's not a lot of money on an annual basis, but over time that adds up. And so that's – is there any consideration about that loss for the City? Because that will now go to Clearwater, of course. That is true. It was discussed. I don't know if we felt that there was enough there to warrant the overall planning considerations that would come out of this particular improvement. We'll trade them for them all. Okay. That's all I've got. This seems rather straightforward. Vice Mayor. Thank you. George, what happens if we say no? What's the downside? So, one of the options that was considered over those two years, and I'll let Katie talk to you a little bit more about that, was the memorandum of understanding between the two municipalities. It was just very difficult to figure out who was going to service what. Like, just for instance, if you think about something simple like a code compliance complaint, where does – if that happens, who's going to that site, who's going to handle the code compliance. So, there was just a lot of details to be worked out. Utilities was obviously the biggest one. So, as they analyzed all of those options over time, the consensus was to kind of – that contraction seemed to make the most sense, just to make – from a unified planning perspective. It makes sense cleaner. But so, it could – could it result in – Clearwater gets utilities, but we get the taxes on that portion of the site. Is that the way that would work? I'll maybe defer to the applicant on that. I'm sure that MOU can set it up, you know, can be structured in a number of different ways. I don't know if, you know, if that particular aspect was considered, but, you know, I'll kind of – What part of this agreement benefits the residents of Dunedin? The – I don't know if there's a benefit one way or the other. You know, we have a single utility serving this site just for sewer. So, there is no water to the site. So, I don't know if I can say that there's a benefit or not a benefit to contracting or not contracting. You know, again, it was just one of the options on the table as we kind of looked through the – Uh-oh. Uh-oh. We got it. Uh-oh. Oh, man. Quick answer. Good evening. No long answer. Good evening, Vice Mayor. I thought I'd throw a Georgia bone here. I don't know that it's a benefit. It's a different component of wastewater flow to our treatment plant. Previously, it was a car lot with very low flows. Um, this is a different makeup in sewage flow. Um, and to be perfectly honest, I'd rather it go to Clearwater than it come here. Okay. So, if – so, uh, Jorge, you might need to stay there. Okay. That was good, Jorge. But I don't know. You'll make that – you'll make that decision. Uh, and so, I'm just trying to understand this. And so, when I talked about Clearwater gets utilities and we get the tax revenue, with Clearwater – when I said that, I was implying wastewater. And so, could that happen? So, basically, that wastewater line into Dunedin becomes a deadline. It's not used. Clearwater does what it needs to do, whatever that is. And so, again, I'm just trying to understand why we would want to do this. Well, aside from – the billing component is a nightmare at best. Again, it's Clearwater water. It's – Dunedin sewer. Previously, it was Dunedin sewer. That means the billing is actually done through Pinellas County. It's just very difficult in that regard. The force main that was constructed for the discharge associated with the previous car lot is not adequate to supply what these flows are. So, in that regard, it wouldn't be taxes. It would be enterprise fund dollars paid towards sewer. But, again, given the service area that is adjacent to the fact that Clearwater is already providing water, it just – Right. If Clearwater is providing – I'm trying to figure out what utilities would Dunedin have if Dunedin says, Clearwater, you can have the utilities. We just want the tax revenue. Well, you could only get the tax – Again, I'll defer to Katie to speak to some of that in more detail. But it would only be the tax revenue for the portion of the site that's within Dunedin. The entire site is not within Dunedin. Right. I understand that. So, I'm trying to understand. So, for that portion that is under Dunedin, that would have to stay Dunedin utilities. Is that what you're saying? No. Okay. Sorry. And, again, the tax value – See, student, I guess. Sorry. From what I understand from prior site plans, the tax value would be associated with, like, the stormwater components as opposed to the majority of the building construction. My understanding is falls within Clearwater. So, the tax value for the portion that would remain in Dunedin would be substantially different than, I think, the tax value associated. Oh, okay. So, it's no longer $3,000. It would drop because – I think – About the same. See, we have the same. Okay. Katie Cole with the law firm of Hill Ward Henderson, representing the property owner and applicant. To be clear, we did not run a tax analysis on that. We just simply used some looking at the – how the property appraiser does assess taxes. So, if you want to go back and look at the site plan, there's a couple of factors to answer your question, Vice Mayor. I think one of the benefits of Dunedin is – to the residents of Dunedin is providing a unified site plan with a world-class healthcare facility in this location, giving access to an emergency room that doesn't currently exist. That's something that throughout the county is an important aspect of all of the municipalities in providing that healthcare access, and this is an area that's been identified as needing that access. So, that was the first goal, obviously, why HCA even sought to look at this site. So, when we first came to Clearwater and Dunedin together, as you can see, the building is 100% in the city of Clearwater. So, the very first ask to Dunedin was, how do we get through permitting when the parking lot's going to be in Dunedin and maybe some stormwater infrastructure, but the buildings in Clearwater will use to see your powers of inspections and permitting to Clearwater so they can look at it as a unified site plan. We talked through that for several months, and then we started getting into the details of the utilities. Water was Clearwater always serving this property. While there was an existing two-inch line, City of Dunedin did not feel that that force main would be adequate in that two-inch line. City of Clearwater did feel that it would be okay. So, there was some back and forth there about how to service that. So, Clearwater has a sewer line that is near the site. There is also a sewer line in the church lot. So, there were other options for Clearwater to serve the property. And I think that's when, as Mr. Kinney said, there was a lot of discussion from the staff side of Dunedin. If you have a issue in the parking lot, which police department? Does the sheriff get called or does City of Clearwater get called? If it starts in the building, which is City of Clearwater, then it spills out into the parking lot? If the garbage is created in the City of Clearwater, but the dumpster is in the City of Dunedin, who's paying what from a solid waste collection fee? There was a very long list of what-ifs in those questions. And I think, as the City Manager explained and Mr. Kinney explained, the end result was it really needs to be in one or the other. This isn't the type of development and the type of plan, despite the fact that the engineers and the designers worked very hard in an attempt to segregate it by putting the building in one jurisdiction and the parking in the other. This really wasn't the type of facility and unified plan that could be developed in joint jurisdictions. Honestly, there are situations that that has happened in unincorporated and incorporated areas. But it's usually maybe a residential subdivision where the stormwater pond remains in unincorporated or something much more simple like that. So in this instance, it just became quite impractical. Clearwater parcels are generally the same size, about 0.7 acres, 0.65 acres each. To your point of the tax value, my expectation is when the assessors look at it, they'll obviously value the improvements on the Clearwater parcel because that's where the building is significantly higher than the parking lot. So that is the short answer of two and a half years of many, many discussions about how to bring this development to fruition that they got us here. And I know, Katie, how excited you must be to go through all those negotiations and you get before a commission and you're going, really? Seriously? We are so close. It's like, oh, killing me. And it's really just kind of a mental exercise, but I'm trying to understand it. Sure. And so you're saying that if we were to keep it the way it is, that issues even like law enforcement would have to be decided. Correct. I mean, and I don't want to- Because we don't own the property. No, you don't. Right? You don't own the property. And not to make light of it, I mean, your city attorney and I, we think we're probably an uncharted ground. There aren't very many contractions in the state of Florida, right? So we worked really hard to take a look at this and to see if this really was the right, most direct path for all the parties. And I know it's an unusual request. We appreciate your consideration of it because it really is the best way because there are a lot of continued questions, code enforcement, public safety, utilities. Obviously, there are joint agreements countywide for first responders. But when it comes down to it, somebody has to take charge. Who's taking charge? Who's filing? There's a lot. You know, if it's our parking lot, Jorge, maybe we could pay to park. We could- We could charge- Katie. Was there any consideration for us working with the applicant to encourage the rest of the property to become Dunedin? Candidly, I'll speak on the city's behalf. It really never came up because from a practical standpoint- I'm a revenue-driven kind of person. You know, it's like I hate giving up revenue even though it's $3,000 a year. Well, you know me, Vice Mayor, I'm kind of revenue-driven also, but I- You're cost-sensitive. That's all your state- Well, that too. But, you know, I'm looking for the edge always on behalf of Dunedin. But, you know, we did- I interacted quite a bit with my counterpart at Clearwater to try to come up with what makes the most sense. And I think Katie just articulated why we think this makes the most sense. All right. Because Dr. Credit worked so hard and he was so passionate- I'm going to miss those billboards. He did that connection. You know- Yeah. Like- One more question. No. I- Listen- We've got a lot left to do. I have been asking questions. I know you have. I have been asking questions that I thought were legitimate to the- They were very legitimate. Thank you very much. I just asked you if you had any additional. Uh- Apparently the hour is getting late. Um- Thank you, Katie. Thank you, George. Thank you, Mayor. Uh- Commissioner Sanberry. With that construction going on there now, is that Dunedin permitted or- Who's- who's issued those permits? Clearwater. Even though it's still ours. Demo permits were issued by Dunedin. Yes. Okay. We did issue the demo permits on our property. And construction permits issued by Clearwater. Okay. I'm just curious on that. Thank you. Because we'll stay there. And then if you guys want to ask a question of Katie, too, I'll circle back to you. Um- So, um- Well, first of all, is Baycare in favor of this? Just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding. Okay. They might take, you know, not like that. Beginning statement with your ER. Okay. Okay. Well, it's late. Um- Uh- What's that corner going to look like for Dunedin? If we let you go and do what you want to do, what's it going to look like? Is it going to look any different? Is it going to look okay? Okay. It's going to be, um, probably a bit better than a used car lot, if I had to say. It's going to be a beautiful building. Well, you got a point there. You have a really good point there. Uh- And, Dr. Credit, I appreciate. I think when I turned 16, I was also looking for my first car in that car lot. So, um, with my grandfather, who lived right up the street there. So, I'm looking to see. Mayor, I don't think I brought any of the elevations. George, do you have any- I don't have any of the elevations of what this is going to look like. However, I can tell you that if you've been driven down Gulf to Bay, there is a HCA freestanding emergency room on Gulf to Bay at just east of Belcher. Obviously, you're not going to want it to look bad. It will not look bad. And it will, um, it is- It won't have a balloon. No. It won't have a balloon thing. It's good advertising. Yeah. And I have to say, going back, I mean, this is not directly on point to your question, Mayor. But, you know, the very first call I think I made to Mr. Kenney was, how do we permit this parking lot? What standards do we apply? Where do we look? How much landscaping? Do we need variances? What are the setbacks in all of those? And so, um, he and Joey took a look at this proposed site plan compared to the Dunedin, um, Land Development Code. And, uh, ironically, surprisingly, happily, there were very little differences between Clearwater and Dunedin. And so, it- I don't think we've changed much on the parking lot side since that very first, uh, review that met the Dunedin Code, so. Okay. We'll make it look good. My final question is, um, it appears to me that everybody's going to do well by this. I mean, I think this is good government. Having somebody who's seen all the enclaves and the protectionism, you know, that's not really good government, um, I think this makes sense. But, um, my only hesitation is everybody wins, but we've got $18,000 of sunk cost that I feel we should get back. So, are you guys willing to give that? Are you guys willing to make that part of the deal? I agree. That goes right to the heart of your question. I- I think that, well- Well, whatever it is. I think as to the $18,000 from the utility fund, um, yes, our client would be willing to repay that, or not repay it, would be willing to contribute that back to the city. Great. So, you ask your question then. You just said you think it's $30,000, so- Well, it was $12,000 CRA and $18,000 utility. It was that, yes, and I- as I shared with the city attorney and city manager, I- very respectfully the- the $12,000 for the facade improvement to a building that was already vacant and able to be torn down the day after the city wrote that check, I- we weren't as inclined to- to pay, but the, uh, utility fund, I think, uh, we are certainly, um, happy to pay. Yes. Well, that- that- that makes sense to me. I'm good. Thank you, Katie. So, and- any other questions of Katie, since you guys didn't get a chance to do that? No. Okay. Okay. But thank you for that, for the 18- we appreciate that. We do appreciate it. I mean, we did not- I don't think anybody knew about the, uh, city grant until the day before the LPA, so- so that was something. That was not something that was discussed long ago, um, but, uh, this- this was a very long process. I know the utilities group and Jorge, uh, the city of Clearwater staff have- everybody has put in a lot of time. Um, Ms. Cowan spent a lot of time on the phone with me and one of my colleagues, uh, walking through the state statute, looking at contractions. How would this work? What would an MOU look like? How- how would we even address the taxation issues or impact fee issues, or- and- and it really- to- I think you summed it up well, Mayor, that this just is good government. And, um, I- I- I hate that it might not feel that way to you all and appreciate you all being considerate of what is good government and- and making this happen. So, thank you. Thank you, Katie. Okay. There you go. Do we- do we have history on why this little piece- this was, um, not- either theirs or ours? Sure. Well, so- Because it sounds like you've got that. No, I- I really don't. I don't. Believe me, um, it became a pet project of one of the county staff people and I, and- and we have dug through a lot of- because I- you know, sometimes these things are just interesting. So, we did find a special exception in 1967 from the county. So, in the 60s, it was part of Pinellas County. But then we also found, um, going back in- when, um, the comprehensive plans were adopted in the mid-80s in Pinellas County, it was already part of the city of Dunedin. That said, uh, we did discover that the grant in 2014 is because this property, as well as all the properties to the east, were on- on septic, and the properties to the east are still on septic. Um, it seems, but in 2018, uh, the owner of this property abandoned his septic tank. So, that must have been the- so, my guess is that when he was closed and wanted to reopen, the city probably said, with new codes, you have to have sewer if you're going to have public bathrooms, and just a guess. Total speculation. But it seems like it fits the story. Thank you, Katie. Appreciate it. Okay. Uh, I'm going to open it up for any public comment. Anybody in the audience wish to come forward to speak on this item? Okay. Seeing no one, I will close public comment. Uh, go to commission comments, starting with the maker of the motion, which was Commissioner Dugard. When I made the motion, I thought this was a lot simpler than it ended up being. Um, my comment is I wish there were a trade out somehow in this, but I looked at the properties. There is no trade out. This is just something that hung out there, probably over a sewer issue. Probably that's it. Um, in the interest of having another emergency clinic along Maine, I'm in support. Okay. Okay. And the seconder of the motion was Commissioner Walker. All right. I'm willing to cede that parking lot for $18,000. In return, we'll take countryside. Okay. Okay. Vice mayor. I do think we could hold out for another 12. I, and make, make Dunedin whole. Um, and I'm serious about that, but I know I'm not on the majority side of that, but so nothing to say here. All right. Okay. Commissioner Sandberg. I've been building for over 40 years and I had no idea that it was in the city of Dunedin. I just, everything over the outside. It just kind of flows together. So I'm good. Yeah. And, and as I've already said, I mean, I've seen the maps of all the enclaves and so many of them make no sense. And so many of them have their own story. Uh, but again, I mean, this just makes sense. I mean, um, you just cause so much, um, confusion when you don't link these things. So I am supportive of good government. So, um, I think, and I appreciate the 18,000. I think that's a great thing. And, uh, so we'll go to roll call vote. Commissioner Sandberg. Aye. Vice mayor. Aye. Commissioner Walker. Aye. Commissioner Dugard. Aye. Mayor Franey. The reading will be on June 5th, 2025. So we'll see you then. I think we're going to march over and it's fine and it's taking over Clearwater. Although I don't know that we want Clearwater. Yeah. Oh, I see that. I think I need to spend more time on this. Okay. There we go. We are going to go to resolution 25-12, providing for the adoption of the updated 2025 Pinellas County Local Mitigation Strategy. Uh, Jen, could you please read resolution 25-12 by title only? Resolution 25-12, a resolution of the City Commission of the City of Dunedin, Florida, providing for the adoption of the 2025 Pinellas County Local Mitigation Strategy and providing for an effective date. That was resolution 25-12, read by title only. Okay. Can I have a motion? So moved. Second. I think you win for seconder of the night. No, I am not on my game tonight. That is it, man. Okay. Uh, staff presentation. And Michelle, I saw you sitting out there all night. Aren't you happy you came to this? Sue Bartler, Public Works Director. I'm very happy tonight to introduce Michelle Monteclaro, who will present this item. Yeah, I am awake. Good evening. Uh, Michelle Monteclaro. I'm the Environmental Program Manager. Um, so this is the Pinellas County Local Mitigation Strategy for 2025. It was adopted originally in 1998 by Pinellas County and subsequently updated by Pinellas County in 2004, 2009, 2015, and in 2020. The county, along with its municipalities and stakeholders, began basically a comprehensive update of the Local Mitigation Strategy. The purpose of the Local Mitigation Strategy is to provide a unified and consistent course of action needed to reduce the impact of disasters and threats to Pinellas County and its municipalities. In addition to preparing government officials and residents for the potential impacts of various types of hazards, the Local Mitigation Strategy, otherwise known as the LMS, also allows the county and its LMS partners to receive federal funding in the event of a declared disaster through the prioritization of projects that address hazard mitigation. So the LMS plays an important role in the community rating system and by virtue of municipalities adopting the LMS and thereby being eligible to receive points towards our CRS score. On April 22nd, 2025, the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners adopted Resolution 25-0322, providing for a five-year update of the 2025 Pinellas County Local Mitigation Strategy Plan, which will be in effect from May 6th, 2025 through May 5th of 2030. The city attorney has reviewed and adopted Resolution 25-12. And just for record, in our Resolution 25-12 on page two, there is a reference to Exhibit A that is in fact Exhibit D in your packets. And that is the Pinellas County Local Mitigation Strategy Plan. So staff hereby recommends the City Commission approve Resolution 25-12, providing for the adoption of the 2025 Pinellas County Local Mitigation Strategy this evening. Okay. Questions for staff? And I want to make sure if anybody did read the 969-page document, please tell us. So, okay. Go ahead. Any questions? Commissioner Sandberg? No questions. Commissioner Sandberg? I have no questions. Commissioner Walker? I just have one. What are, oh, I just lost my place. Oh, yes. Community Rating System. What is that? So, the Community Rating System is basically a program that we participate in. And we can receive, actually, by participating in this program, we receive reduction in our flood insurance premiums. Okay. Yes. Okay. Commissioner Dugard? I have about eight pages of questions here. No. But I do have one. And that has to do with local concern around extreme heat, because I think we'll be facing that in the future a lot more. I'd like you to tell me what our mitigation strategy is for extreme heat. So, right now we're in phase one of our vulnerability assessment, which looks at flooding risk. We'll go into a phase two, which we'll look at specifically heat and heat islands in the city. And we can pull funding from Resilient Florida for that type of vulnerability, which is focused on heat. As we build new projects, and there's a number of new projects that in order to proceed they must remove trees. And trees are a great mitigator of heat. Do you have anything that deals with the flora inside your plan as well? And maintenance of it? Inside the Pinellas County plan? Either Pinellas or Dunedin. Yeah, it is. Thank you, Jorge. It is part of our land development code. And also, as we go into phase two, that will be looked at as to whether there needs to be revisions, you know, what will help us mitigate. So, currently it is addressed in the land development code. And the dream plan. And the dream plan. Yeah. That's true. So, just to add, we're also looking at doing a tree inventory citywide to understand, you know, what native or invasive species of trees that we have. We can actually do a little bit more work doing some remote sensing to understand canopy across the city and maybe where we need to plant more trees using that type of mapping. Yeah. Natalie Gass has been coordinating with us as well as parks and looking at CRA and these islands. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have. So, with the community rating system. So, I don't know. I got my bill for $6,000 and I'm like, really? What's the savings? You know, I don't know. I get that question from other residents. Is there really a savings? Does it really matter? What's your response to that? It's a discount. I mean, and the better rating we have, the greater the discount. So... Do you really ever know what their base really is though? I mean, or is it just adjusted for... I don't know. I'm just asking the question. It is part of their formula. Yes. Absolutely. All right. Okay. And then the other thing, and this is more of a city manager to the city manager. I don't know. What are we doing? Are we planning any... Somebody just gave me the idea that maybe we should be putting out a letter to our citizens. Hey, we know what we all went through last year. You know, we care about you. We're here for you. Here's what you can do to help you. Letters are expensive if it goes mail to mail, obviously. So, I don't know if that's a good suggestion or not. But, I mean, the most important thing is how do we message that out in the most effective way, whatever that might be. Well, certainly throughout... Where it's the... Yeah. What is it today? The 9th or... Right. I know that Sue, besides the Hurricane Expo, but Sue does some PSAs. I actually videotaped the Your City at Work this morning and mentioned that we need, you know, residents need to start preparing their emergency plan. So, we start messaging and the... You know, Sue meets regularly with the county emergency PIOs as well to... And essentially, we push out their program and their messages as well. So, we will be all along sending out through every social media outlet, you know, all the information that we have as far as getting ready for storm season. The county's sending out. Don't they do their insert thing too? Their big insert that Hurricane... Yeah, a flyer. Yeah, in the newspaper. Okay. I mean, I think that there's a value to making sure, just as hurricane season starts, and many people are not done with last hurricane season, that, you know, we're kind of saying we care. We're here. And also, here's some things you can do. Sure. I mean, and I'll tell you, one of the things you need to put in that is about boats. Because I can tell you right now that I know a couple of neighborhoods where big boats were in, you know, in their driveways. I mean, and those boats would have been in those houses had they been there. But anyway, there's just some good public messaging. But anyway, I don't really, sorry, I didn't even, that wasn't a question, I guess, kind of. Okay. Thank you. I will open this to public input. If anyone wants to speak to this issue to come forward. Seeing no one rushing to the podium. I will close public input and commission comments, starting with Commissioner Sandberg. No, I just appreciate your hard work. I mean, the time you've put into this and your recommendation, I fully stand behind you and support it. Okay. And seconder was, of course, Commissioner Walker. You know, after having read 900 plus pages of this, I am a firm believer in that risk should be mitigated. So, I like the plan. Hi, Commissioner Degard. On 782. Yeah, this is, this is, this falls into the no brainer category in about six different ways. But the only thing I am concerned about is the fact that most of our citizens don't understand the value of this. And I think there are things we need to do proactively to try to encourage that understanding. Like saying, if you own a piece of property of this amount, if we didn't have this, X would be the additional that you'd be paying on insurance, something along those lines. Because it's just not valued. It doesn't hit the consumer in between the eyes. Other than that, I have no further comments. Okay. Vice Mayor. No comments. I'm in favor. That's cool. Okay. I have no comments either. And so, yeah, now he wants to go. I know, right? I did. Roll call vote. Vice Mayor Gow. Aye. Commissioner Degard. Aye. Commissioner Walker. Aye. Mayor Franey. Aye. And that motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Okay. It is approaching 10 o'clock. We need to take a vote on whether we continue or move these items to a different agenda. Aye. So, all in favor of continuing past 10 o'clock, say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Nay. Just kidding. Unfortunately, you don't get a vote. And thank you, Michelle, for staying. Yeah. Okay. All right. I need a motion to put this item on the agenda before we even take it on as an item. So. So moved. Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. So now that it's officially on. Award of bid number 25-2517 for construction of the lift station number 32. Rebuild project to TLC Diversified Inc. of Palmetto, Florida in the total amount of $2,092,430. And I need a motion. So moved. Second. Don't ruin your. Okay. And, okay. Staff presentation. Wow. I'm lost on my cheat sheet here, though. Okay. How quick do you want it? Yeah. No. Quick. Yes. Good evening, or maybe good night, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commission Clay Watkins, Utilities and Engineering. Item 3D is the award of bid 25-2517. For the construction of lift station number 32 rebuild to TLC Diversified of Palmetto, Florida, in the amount of $2,092,432. This lift station is located at Greenbrier west of Indigo Drive. This service is the Greenbrier area in unincorporated Pinellas County. In 19, excuse me, this area was taken in by the City of Dunedin in the early 80s. The existing lift station number 32 was identified by City staff to need to be redesigned and reconstructed in order to upsize the capacity and accommodate current and future wastewater flows. In 2018, the City was awarded a Hazardous Mitigation Grant Program funding from FEMA and brought through the Florida Department of Emergency Management and for this lift station. The contract work consists of construction of a new triplex sanitary sewer lift station adjacent to the existing station that will be removed and demolished, along with installing bid item, alternate bid item number one, for a permanent backup diesel pump that will operate in any emergencies. The project was competitively bid, advertised as described in the purchasing agenda attached, excuse me, yeah, the purchasing agent agenda attached, excuse me, it's been late. There were four bids received ranging from $2,092,430 to $2,608,034.90. City staff reviewed all the bids and determined in TLC. Diversified Inc. of Palmetto, Florida was the lowest responsive, most of responsive and responsible bidder with the amount of $2,092,432. As such, staff recommends the award of bid 25-25-13 for the lift station 32 rebuild project to TLC Diversified for $2,092,432. That includes my presentation here for any questions. Okay. Any questions for Clay starting with Vice Mayor? No questions. Commissioner Sandbergen? There was six addendums. It seems like an awful lot of changes. Any idea why? I think there was some clarifications because a lot of times we just bid out the entire pump. You just bid the full station. So some of those questions were regarding those and sort of working our way through that process. Okay. Yeah, TLC, they are currently doing a lot of work in the city. Any concern about getting a little top heavy? Are they, you know, I'm sure they're doing work other than just Dunedin. Yeah, they are. Well, actually, quite frankly, most of our wastewater collection facility folks were pretty excited that they were on. They're pretty happy with the work they do for us. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Walker. Thank you, Mayor. This, the cost of all this is covered by the hazard mitigation grant, right? It's a 75% coverage. 75-25. 75-25. Okay. Yes. Thank you. And then, yes. Okay. Commissioner Ducard? No questions. Okay. And I have no questions. And so now I'll go to open it for public input. Anyone in the audience wishing to come forward to speak on this issue? Seeing no one, I'll close public input. And I will go to commission comments. And the maker of the motion was Commissioner Ducard. I recommend it. That's all I have. Okay. And the standard seconder of the night. Go ahead. Infrastructure is our number one priority. I am in favor of this. Order in the audience. Okay. Okay. Vice Mayor. It's all about the infrastructure. And Commissioner Sandbergen. Let's get it done. I'll second that. Let's get it done. Okay. And so a voice vote. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. We will go to, thanks Clay. You get to go home now? I think. Yeah. Okay. Proposed agenda for May 22nd, 2025 commission meetings. Any additions or changes? Okay. Anything? Everybody good about that? So I just need a motion to approve. So moved. Second. No one's taking that spot tonight. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. And the motion passes unanimously. Okay. We are. I can only say that when I used to be on staff, we loved to be at the end because the commission was tired. Okay. All right. So. Exactly. Okay. We have informational items, commission discussion, which of course is everything. Everybody's updates on things now is all into this one thing. But we'll go ahead and start with Vice Mayor Gal, because since I know he wants to bring up an issue. I do. And you all know what the issue is. We do have commission comments. Oh, I thought we were doing one linked up. Do we just have one thing or two? Oh, because we do have one, right? Mm-hmm. Yes. It should just be discussion. Okay. Got it. Discussion. So. Cross that out. I'll fix that up. Okay. First, just want to announce the Dining High School chorus concert next Wednesday, May 14th at 6.30. And the band concert is Thursday, May 15th at 6 o'clock. Wonderful program. Support our schools. Support performing arts. Now on to commission discussion. Well, to go through the whole thing just as briefly as I can, if you all think it's necessary, that I first went, we decided to move forward with an Elliott Tartan as Dunning's official Tartan. I was talking to Clan Elliott about that at the Dunning games. And so I was trying to talk to them about, it would be great since we adopted the Tartan in 1983, that there be some sort of reaffirmation or something like that, a letter or something, since we couldn't find one in the file. And the reason why I couldn't find one in the file is because we never got permission to wear the Tartan from Clan Elliott. And at the Dunning games, they were quick to tell me that verbally. And right off the top of the head, they acknowledged, we gave permission to the City of Dunning pipe band. We did not give it to the City of Dunning. And there's, we don't know why, we don't know what happened. My speculation probably is at that time, the pipe major was Sandy Keith, he was actually an employee of the City of Dunning, so the City of Dunning might have felt that that permission for the pipe band did extend to the City of Dunning, possibly, don't know. But anyway, so I followed up with him a few days later about who I would write that letter to who would receive it, and they gave me that information, but declared again in writing, hey, we never gave you permission the first time. And so that gave me pause that apparently this is an issue for them. And then they acknowledged that the person that would give permission lives in Scotland, but she would actually be in the United States Memorial Day weekend at the Gainesville games for a Klan gathering, and that I could either, we could send the letter to the President, it could go through channels and get to her, or I could just go there and hand deliver it to her. There was a, and at that point she would decide. Then I got a follow-up kind of emails about a week later, and then, hey, we've had some further discussion where they acknowledged that, yeah, she's willing to give permission on their letterhead. So how do you want to handle that? Do you want us to amend it to you, or to have their state representatives come down? And so the question is, after that first email, I thought it was important to go to those games and meet with her in person. And I still think that is true today. So I went ahead and I purchased the pint ticket, the rental car, the hotel. I'm set to go. And the reason I think it's important, even though they have given permission to just by letter, is because it's not just a business deal. I don't want the city of Dunedin to look that, oh, the moment we don't have to do it after I committed and told them I'd be there, that all of a sudden, ah, well then we'll take the cheap way out and just send them a letter. I think if you talk about a tartan, it's different than just a business logo. It's not a Nike swoosh. The tartan is important. It's culture, it's character, it's pride, and it's wrapped around family. And you don't treat family that way. And so I'd like to hand deliver it in person. And because it involves the city of Dunedin having the official tartan and giving permission, I think it's an appropriate ask. Since we haven't talked before about travel, then I think it's an appropriate ask to ask my colleagues if the city should afford my travel or not. Anybody have any questions? Yeah. I mean, one of mine was going to be, did you have any questions before I ask the question? I mean, one of my questions is if we could achieve the same thing through, you know, calling and talking, and obviously we did, I mean, you know, historically, I mean, it's a little, I mean, I had a few reservations about it when I heard it just because it opens a, like, we've always used, you know, the taxpayers' money to go to Scotland, which if we'd known, that would have obviously been a perfect time to deal with it in Scotland. And then we've always, you know, done the chamber trip with Toronto Blue Jays and that. And so, yeah, so that was going to be one of my key questions. Could we achieve the same thing through the letter and the phone call? But clearly you feel like it's really important to solidify the relationship. In addition to my previous comments, like our trip to Scotland, I think there's not only does this open up the doors culturally, and it does expand our tourism trade. I think there's economic value in doing it. I think there's cultural value. I think there's heritage value. And so I'm incredibly confident that we'll get the money back. And I just have one other question. You actually have money in your particular travel budget. Yes. I haven't gone anywhere this year, so yes. I mean, yeah. And I hadn't planned on using it, and this came up. Does this, I can't remember exactly, but the Dunedin High School Pipe Band, you said this also impacts them as well, right? Or there's somebody else, some other organization wearing the tartan besides making this an official city thing. The band that got you, that did get permission. The band. The band. He's talking about the band that did get permission. Oh. Well, yeah, well. Or no. Yeah, well, yeah, okay. That's where I got confused, but go ahead. No, yeah, the, the, well, the city of Dunedin, or I'm sorry, the Dunedin High School historically has worn the dressed Stuart White tartan. And I, I, I have asked about the letter, but it's always been rumored that they got permission because it's the Queen's tartan, and they actually got permission from the Queen to, to wear the tartan. The Royal Stuart, which is the tartan that the middle school wears, is a public tartan. I'm not aware that they got permission from anybody. And in full disclosure and transparency, from what I understand, the Elliott tartan is a public tartan. We do not need their permission to wear it. Right. What does it make? We had to go to something different. I, I, I, I, I'm, I'm relatively new to this city commission, but, you know. But you can't, but you can't use it. Right, but when I saw that, all those differences. Right, right. Some of the, and, and I don't, you know, I don't know the history of tartans and, and how they all work. But, but, oh, you, you have to turn the mic on if you want. Uh, that, uh, for a certain period, one, each official tartan is actually registered, uh, with, in, in Scotland. And so it has to meet specific, uh, guidelines to be, uh, considered a tartan. And then it is protected by the owner of that tartan for a certain number of years. And then it becomes public. And so there are some tartans that are private. You absolutely need permission to wear it. And probably couldn't get a tartan without permission. And one example of that would be the Edgewater tartan, which our city of Dineen pipe end wears. You cannot just order that tartan. It just can't be made for you. Um, but then other tartans are public. The, the reason I feel that given it's public, and we could wear it anyway, goes back to, one, our standing as an official governmental body that I think it's appropriate, whether we can or not, to ask permission. I think it's out of respect. I think it's a pride and duty, uh, to the plan that we do that. You know, sometimes just because we have the right to do it doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. You have a question or comment? No, I have a comment. Okay. Yeah, no, go. This is free-flowing, so. Um, I tend to lead in Jeff's direction on this one, uh, but I have a couple questions. First of all, if we are going to honor our Scottish heritage, it is important that we stay not only within the bounds of the rules, but the bounds of what is proper. And this falls into that category, I think. Um, Jeff, do you have sufficient funds within your allowance to cover this? Or is this an extra ask beyond that allowance? No, no, no. It's all, it's already been budgeted. Ah. I'm in support. Okay. Anyone else? Jeff? Okay. Comment? Um. Yep. So, yeah, I, uh, I'm, I'm leading the same way that Commissioner Dugard is. Um, the, you know, if it were anything else, I know what my answer would be. But in this particular case, I am just, you know, you take a look at what our Scottish heritage means to the city of Dunedin. The fact that we host one of the biggest Highland games in the nation and, uh, the fact that, you know, in the interest of embracing our Scottish heritage, we should follow protocol. And at the end of the day, uh, vice mayor has, he, he's has the money in his travel budget. I, and I, I, I, and I believe the, I believe also that, um, I, I think there will be there, there, there, there, there are, um, intangible benefits to this. So. And I, I, I do, I, I want to be insanely transparent about this. So my ask, when I say that I've already purchased the tickets, that is me personally. So what I'm asking is to be reimbursed by the city. So when I say I purchased them, it's not through the city. And so I just wanted to, I didn't want you to feel pressure that we've already bought them. What do I, I've done it personally. And I'm, I am planning to go. And so if you're under some pressure, well, what happens? Then you won't go. I do plan on going. And so this is just as for reimbursement. And so if you aren't comfortable with that, then, then don't vote in favor of it. And I'm, I'm fine either way. So is this, I just, um, um, okay. I just want to ask Commissioner Stammer or yes. So when we go to Toronto, the city buys my ticket. Yes. I buy my wife's. Yeah. Yeah. And is that similar to what we're talking about here? I guess I'm, I'm. Yeah. He's just asking for himself to go up as our city representative. Okay. And you know what? And I almost can compare that to Toronto. We'll be up there waving the Dunedin flag. I know you're not going. So you would go on this and wave the Dunedin flag. And it's, it's, uh, it's the money's already in your travel budget. Right. Right. Then I would, I would fully support that. I didn't understand it at the beginning. And I didn't plan this trip. It just came upon it. Okay. Yeah. And, and you know, I, I, I obviously I'm supporting you. I, you know, sometimes I have too much history. And so I'm, I just, I think it's really important for us to talk through this stuff. Right. Because of, of what it is. Now I think, and I think you used the words in this instance. I think this is a unique instance. We do not want to. We're already with our own, all of us with our own money, ready to buy kilts. Yes. Including the city manager. And I certainly don't want to wear a kilt that somebody doesn't want me to wear, even though I have a right to wear it. And, and, and, and we want them to be excited about us wearing it. And that builds goodwill. And it's trying to determine whether or not we had that permission letter. I searched when I was, you know, I didn't search for it specifically. But when I was researching the Tartan and when we adopted it, nothing popped out at me. Because I would have gone, oh, isn't this cool? But nothing ever did. But since this came up, I have reached out to the city clerk's office. They have also researched it. And to their ability, we do not have any type of permission letter. I actually tried to, I tried to find Mayor Mary Bonner, which I think she's still alive, but I sure couldn't find her. And I actually got ahold of Carol Ford, who used to be director of what she was like over administration. And she was there at the time this was all done. And I asked her, she's, she's in Oregon now. And she's like, I have no clue what you're talking about. So, so I, yeah, I, I, I, and I appreciate it. And I, and quite frankly, I know this has been your passion. And I know that you'll, you'll represent us well. And I, and at the end of the day, both parties should be excited that we're getting these kilts and, and we're proud of it. So. And if it helps, I'm in, I, I'm under the block room category for Clan Elliott. And that saved us $150. Good. Good. All right. So, so mayor. Yes. If we're going to do this, we'll do this in style. And we will send, uh, Commissioner Gao, uh, up with some, some gifts from the need. Oh, that's a great reason. Um, yeah. That's a great idea. Yep. Yep. The chamber chamber'd probably add to that. Um, yeah. No, we need a motion. Yes. I mean, let's do a motion. You don't want to do a motion. Just do consensus. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I'm sorry. That's okay. Um, I think he was just bringing it up to make sure everybody was comfortable with that expenditure. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Right. So I, yeah, I, I think that makes sense because historically it's different than anything we've done. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, all right. Well, we have consensus direction. We're good. So, um, thank you. So now. There was a part two to that and it was just whether I, no, no, no, no, no. This isn't easy. Well, I don't know if it's easy or not, but if it's not easy, no, but do I receive the letter from, uh, Lady Margaret Elliot or do we want the letter presented to us at a future commission meeting by the students to state commissioners. Oh, I. Of the plan Elliot. I, I, I like the spectacle and the pageantry, so I would say have it presented to us. I say have it presented to us. That way it keeps me from folding it, spindling it and losing it. Yeah. No, I think that'd be kind of cool. I had a trumpled wand up ball when I got back and. Just get a copy so we can go ahead and order our kilts though. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Sandberg and you got to follow that. Fire operations 101 on Saturday. Oh yeah. I'm old. It's going to be hot. And commissioner Dugard is my observer, whatever that means. Is that it? Okay. Commissioner Walker. Thank you, mayor. Um, so I've been, uh, I've been working with the Dunedin public theater. Um, and I have to tell you, they've made tremendous amount of progress, um, through their 5013C, through the amount of money they've raised, which is very impressive. And, uh, they've even identified a facility where, um, they, they, it's looking highly likely that they're going to be able to launch. Um, as part of that for the design part, um, they have, uh, hired a, um, independent research firm to do their feasibility study. And, uh, in the interest of engaging with the community and the public, they are holding a public meeting on this May 15th at six o'clock at CC Riders. So, if you are interested, highly encourage you to show up. Um, I, I think that you will be very impressed with what they've done. And, uh, I gotta tell you, I, I, I think we're gonna have a theater. So, that's, that, then that is, you start looking at the, the, the, the, the legs of the, of our art community here. That's the one thing that's missing. So, um, and then we had some great, you know, the history museum gala and, uh, um, sit, but that was it. Citrus gala. Yeah, I'm tired. Um, yeah, the citrus gala and, uh, the, what was the other gala? What's it? What was the other gala? Library. Library. Library. Library. Library. Yeah, the library. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I better stop talking now. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner. And, uh, Commissioner Dugard. I share the enthusiasm for the potential of a theater in our community. Um, there is one thing I would like to get on our agenda, uh, sometime with the mayor and the manager's cooperation and coordination, and that is trail safety. Uh, we still are dealing with some perceptions of the trail not being safe, and therefore, I don't know what we'll discover. We may discover it's simply a perception or that we may need to take actions to promote trail safety. Uh, I do know that where there have been some conversation between the manager and the county authority on this matter. I think it's time for us to update the community on what we're doing. So I'd like to see that agenda, uh, be agended at some point in the future. Are you thinking like a work session? More of a workshop? That might be the best place for it, but I'm going to let you two decide that. Okay. No. That sounds good. Thank you. Okay. Um, I guess I'm last. Um, well, I won't be at the theater thing. You asked me to be at the theater thing, but I will be at Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council Sustainability Conference, and you will be as well. Um, and we will stand in all of your stead. Um, because I don't think anybody else is going to travel. Yeah, you're going to be traveling. Okay. So, um, um, I, let's see. The Mayor's Council was yesterday. We honored the city clerks. So that was awesome. And, uh, I did go to the Citrus Gala, and I was auctioned off for a day. So, well, or a date with the mayor. So, anyway, so we'll, uh, we'll see how that goes. And I actually, it was a respectable amount of money. I'm not going to announce it here, but, you know, it could have, what do you, Alan, was it? It was respectable. I, you know. Yeah. I mean, it was $700. It's not bad. Yeah. $700 to spend some time with me, so. I didn't know agenda briefings were $700. Anyway. Uh, okay. I think that's all, all I had, too. So now we'll go to city clerks update. Thank you, Mayor. And we, what a nice lunch we had yesterday. It was very good. Thank you very much. Appreciated that. Um, I just have one quick thing, something actually pretty exciting. Today, we opened up our, um, applications for the Fall Citizens Academy, and we have already had eight applicants. Wow. It's that, I mean, pretty amazing in basically an afternoon. So, um, so those will be going, I believe, I don't want to misspeak, but I believe June 20th, um, they will close, and then, um, the first, uh, Fall, um, where all of you, it will be on your calendar is, I think it's already on your calendar, is September 2nd, and then I'll go nine weeks from there. So, um, but I just wanted to share that because I thought that was pretty impressive. That's great. Great. And nothing else? Is that good? Okay. And, uh, city manager's update. So, so two things, really quickly, um, two really good things. Well, actually three. Three. Well, I don't know. So, um, at the, uh, Florida Municipal Communicators Association, I think I said that right, um, we actually won two awards. So, kudos to the communications department. We won, um, second place actually for collaborative video, uh, promotional or special event, and, um, actually we won an award for that. Um, we won second place for crisis response for, um, our response to the hurricanes, and we were second place to Tallahassee. Right. So, that's a big deal. That's great. Because they're a lot bigger. And then the promotional video was last year's State of the City opening video. Last year. It wasn't our blooper reel? No, not the blooper reel. That, that's coming next. But no, kudos to communications. Those are really big awards. You're doing great work. Well done. You know, the state organization. So, I'm really proud of them. And then the other thing is we received word, um, this afternoon that Nicole Delfino is a home rule, rule hero again. Oh, great. So, she won that award. She deserves that. She works hard. Yeah, she really does. She's worked really hard. So, I'm really proud of her and all the work that she's done. So, thank you, Mayor. All right. Yeah, and that reminded me, we've got a Future Regents Award, which is Friday. Yes. Next Friday. Yes. And maybe. We're going to get something. Maybe. We've got a good group going. Okay. That sounds good. There's more to that effect. Mayor, I do have a question for the City Manager. Yeah, sure. Just, Rebecca kind of reminded me of Citizens Academy. When, if they haven't, when are the applications for aid organizations? I've been getting questions about that. Yes. And so, the applications are out right now. And I believe that we're doing, in fact, there was an email today. Middle part of June is when we will be meeting as a group. First of all, we collect the applications. Then we ask you for permission to seat the committee, which is usually the same three people. And then we'll forward them to you in August, I think. If you have any questions now, just send, you can just go ahead and send them to me. And then Finance will send out the application in its entirety. Okay. So I'll just connect you with them through email? Yes. Okay. Yes. And if it's Greg Long, I did it already. It's Greg Long. Yes. I did it already. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions for the manager? Okay. All right. City Attorney. This is it. You're the finale. I know. And I'm the only thing standing between us and CAKE, so I don't have a report. Okay. All right. Good. Thank you for having cake for the mayor. It's birthday. Yay. Meeting adjourned. Happy birthday. Yeah.