CITY COMMISSION WORK SESSION - Feb 04, 2025

Commission workshop session. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Before we really get going, I do want to acknowledge, we do have a short board this morning that our vice mayor can't be with us today. She is with family mourning the loss of her mother and our hearts and community are with her this morning. And Commissioner Steve Bergen is out ill this morning, so he will not be attending as well. So you've got the best and the brightest up here. Let me see. Listen, you guys, be nice to me this morning. Okay, so I do need a voice vote, if I could, on accepting the two absences for the vice mayor and the commissioner. You need a motion first. Do I need a motion? So moved. Second. All right, we have a first and a second. All righty, voice vote, all in favor? Aye. Those opposed? Ayes have it. All right, very good. And I found this out this morning, I didn't know that we referred to you as Jen. So, Jen, would you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? I'll be happy to. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and to the Republic of State. And at this point, we will move on to presentations. And Chief Parks, would you like to come forward along with Steve Santana? I wonder if he brought his guitar. Wonderful. Good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Commissioners. I'd like to introduce our newest Division Chief of Logistics, Steve Santana. And Chief Santana joined us in September, beginning of September. And I'd like to read a little bio. Chief Santana has military experience reaching the rank of Sergeant U.S. Army after serving for over 12 years. He's a firefighter in Atlanta Fire Rescue for just over five years before moving to Florida. He retired from St. Petersburg Fire Rescue after 26 years of service, reaching the rank of Division Chief or Division Captain. He has multiple deployments with the USAR Florida Task Force 3 unit for Hurricanes Harvey in 2017 in Texas and Sally in 2020 in Florida. And he operated at the Surfside Collapse in Miami in 2021. He has extensive experience in instant command system. He has a bachelor's degree in fire administration from Waldorf University and an AS degree in network engineering database administration from Southwest Florida College. He's an instructor for various emergency management classes such as IS-300 and IC-400. And with that, Vice Mayor, if you'd like to go ahead. I affirm to the best of my ability To faithfully support and uphold the mission To faithfully support and uphold the mission Of the Dunedin Fire Department Of the Dunedin Fire Department I fully commit to help protect my fellow firefighters I fully commit to help protect my fellow firefighters With the same enthusiasm With the same enthusiasm Civility and professionalism that I employ Civility and professionalism that I employ In protecting the citizens of Dunedin I agree to be fully accountable morally and ethically to my fellow firefighters and am willing to hold others equally responsible to the standard of production and behavior that is acceptable. I will be diligent in my commitments, keeping my word and following through on all pledges and promises. I will guard against complacency in my skills and conduct in pursuit of continued improvement. I pledge to honor those who came before us and pave the way for those who follow. Congratulations. Are we done? Can you come? Some words? Here's my hearing, Deputy Mayor, City Attorneys, Commissioners, my fellow crew, people who I work with. I'm horrible at speeches sometimes. I appreciate the opportunity, Chief Parks, for bringing me into the department, taking care of the guys, the girls, the citizens. But ultimately, I want to thank my wife for supporting me. She's my rock, helping me through all this, making decisions. And I wouldn't be here if it was without her. But thank you. And again, I tend to work harder than all of y'all trying to make this the best department. Not in Los Angeles County, in Florida, but in the country. A picture with, does she want everybody? Commission? Put this up there. Where I'm going? What am I doing? Come on down, guys. Oh, come down. That was funny. Yeah. Thank you. I've got to stand next to the guy in kilts. Well, I hope I did that justice, that it deserves. All right. We will now move along to citizen input. Is there anyone in the audience that has anything to comment on that is not already on the agenda? Please step forward. State your name and address for the record, and you have three minutes. Hearing none. Seeing none. We will bring it back to the commission. Okay. The consent agenda. I have approved the minutes of the 12-3 work session and the 12-5 regular meeting. So moved. We've got to wait until they're all done. Boards and committee appointments and the ratification of the emergency purchase order issued to the TLC Diversified Corporation for Emergency Repairs, 20-inch diameter water main located in the right-of-way of the causeway near the tidal relief bridge. Are there any items that anyone wishes to pull? Hearing none, I will entertain a motion. So moved. Second. All right. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Oh, yes, I do. Citizen input, is there anybody who has anything to say about anything that's on the consent agenda this morning? Hearing none, seeing none, bring it back. We have the same motions in a second. Those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. The motion carries unanimously. So we are moving right along to action items, which is the proposed agenda for the February 18, 2025 meeting. Is there anything we wish to add or change? We have the Peace Bowl Proclamation. Approve the minutes. Flanagan's Patrick's Day celebration revocable license agreement. Dunedin, the DDMA Mardi Gras celebration revocable license agreement. Ward of General Engineering Consultant for services. Rebecca, do you have anything to add or change on this? Senior manager, how do you feel about this agenda? I feel good, Vice Mayor. Make sure you keep warm and fuzzy? It is. It's a good agenda. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. So can I have a motion? So moved. I feel good. You feel good about it? And I'll second it. I feel great. Oh, man. See, I love this. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. Unanimous. Okay. Okay. We have the workshop items. State Road 580 study project presentation by Jensen Hackett, project manager for Florida Department of Transportation, District 7. All right. And there will be a staff presentation, George and Kathy. Jensen. Are they ready to go? Or do you want to lead in? Or just? I think they're ready to go, Vice Mayor. Are they ready? All right. Welcome. All right. Good morning. Thank you so much for having us here today. My name is Jensen Hackett. I am the project manager from FDOT, District 7 for the State Road 580 project. Just going to do a quick little introduction of it. It actually kind of goes full circle for me. I did a presentation for you all back when I was a master's student at USF in the urban planning program for a couple of recommendations that we recommended after a walk study on the corridor. So, driving here, being a project manager now at DOT, kind of brings it full circle for you guys. How long ago was that? That was back in 2018. And look at that. It's 2024. Yep. That's how long it takes. Yep. It sure does. So, just for a quick little background on the project. The corridor that we looked at stretches from Bass all the way out to the Pinellas-Hillsboro County line. And we looked at lots of recommendations for anything from potential capacity improvements to safety improvements to intersection improvements to bicycle and pedestrian improvements as well. And what we did is we essentially came up with the recommendations that are here. It is in a final draft form. We still have to go through a couple internal reviews in the department office. But we essentially have everything ready to go. And this final report will be released later on this spring into the early summer. So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to our consultant project manager, Jeff Novotny. And he is going to walk you through the corridor as well as the recommendations that we have come up with part of the project. Does he want to just sit right here instead of stand? Excuse me? I didn't know if you wanted to stand or just sit right here at the presentation table. I'll stand here. This is fine. I have a helper. Good morning, commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity for us to present on this State Road 580 project. We did have a public meeting back in September of last year to go over all the recommendations that we found. Rich, if you can move forward. So, as Jensen mentioned, the project extended from Alternate 19 at the far west end all the way to Tampa Road on the east end. We tried to look at the corridor holistically and look at improvements that might be needed, as Jensen mentioned, from a safety perspective, bike and pedestrian mobility. Also look at capacity and safety issues. So, we wanted to make sure that we evaluated the corridor as a whole. So, we had some driving forces that we're really focused on in terms of the corridor vision. One is to improve safety for all users, not just drivers, not just pedestrians, not just bikes, but everyone. Develop context-sensitive solutions that are sustainable so that the roadway is a little bit more in keeping with the community that it traverses through, knowing that it goes through not only Dunedin, but Clearwater, Oldsmar, and Safety Harbor. So, these were some of the overarching elements. And we had a project advisory group that helped guide these elements, including representatives from all the agencies as well as the department staff to combine all these efforts. We also evaluated other projects that had been ongoing or were upcoming within the project limits, including those that are within the city of Dunedin. So, we looked at a number of different steps that we took to reach the final conclusion in terms of what are the existing conditions are, where are the safety issues, where are the capacity issues, where are the operational concerns, do we have bike and pedestrian accessibility throughout. We looked at the future corridor needs in terms of what the future traffic would provide in terms of the area. What is really the purpose and need? And then developed conceptual plans and improvements. Some are short-term improvements that could be done more quickly than others. And we knew that that would allow an opportunity for funding to come from a number of different sources and not necessarily just focused on one major or large improvement. So, we've developed a corridor development plan report, as Jensen mentioned. That draft document was available at the public meeting we had back in September. We did get some great comments and input from the public. We asked for their priorities in terms of which projects they may prefer that we focus in on first. And that will be summarized in our final report, Rich. So, we had a number of criteria that we looked at in terms of specific improvements that would provide either safety benefits, is there an area that had more extensive crash history, and that would include the number of crashes, but also severity of crashes. We looked at multimodal use. So, where do we have an opportunity to provide better access and connection to pedestrians, bicycles, but also access to transit? We looked at traffic operations. We also looked at cost to build. Maybe some of these projects are cheaper to do, and we could do them faster. So, we looked at pulling some of those out to look at opportunities for funding, either through a maintenance contract, a resurfacing contract, or for some other opportunities. So, using this information, we identified the dozen or so short-term improvements that made the most sense to evaluate. We ranked them based on those five criteria, came up with a rating system. Those projects that were lower cost, provided great benefits in terms of safety and operation, they bubbled up to the top. Those that may not have had as much extensive elements to them, they were a little bit lower, but they're still priority, and they're still improvements that we feel are important to make. We identified short-term improvements being those that did not require right-of-way acquisition. Right-of-way acquisition, we know, extends the length of the development of projects and adds maybe a year or two to actually implementing those. We also identified long-term improvements that would require right-of-way acquisition, and they're more extensive in nature. And we separated those and ranked those accordingly, presented those rankings to the public. I'll go through a few of those improvements that are within the city area. We looked at those that improve intersection signing for pedestrian safety. This is where pedestrians and vehicles mix, and providing better signage for the vehicles to know that the pedestrians are more active in these areas. And we identified four intersection locations where these improvements could be made. Again, these are lower-cost opportunities. Next, we're pedestrian crosswalk improvements at Keene and U.S. 19 frontage roads. I'm sorry. Can I just have a quick question? Sure. I just need to be clear on this. One being higher priority, three being lowest, or how? In terms of the numbers, so the higher the score, the higher the priority, the better the benefit or the better the improvement ranked. Thank you. Pedestrian crosswalk improvements to either shorten the distance for pedestrians to cross, making it more efficient for them, safer, but also eliminates some of the downtime that traffic realizes for crosswalks. Next, looked at opportunities where we can extend some turn lanes or separators to provide better safety at the intersection locations, as well as corridor-wide traffic separators to look at opportunities to maybe better control access, but really for more of a safety perspective, so vehicles aren't crossing in front of each other as they approach intersections. We know that adding traffic separators throughout would require additional public coordination, as well as local acceptance from the local government, wherever these median improvements may be. But we wanted to identify those as being, you know, viable solutions to move forward. We also looked at opportunities for some mid-block crossings, so that pedestrians seem to be crossing at certain locations or wanting to cross at those locations, so we identified a few of those. Those would also require some further evaluation through the agencies, as well as public meetings, to confirm. In terms of long-term improvements, as I mentioned, we wanted to focus those on those that require right-of-way acquisition. An example is to add a right-turn lane for the eastbound movement at US-19 at the frontage roads. That would require some right-of-way acquisition for the business in front. We also looked at a few other locations where it's really outside the realm of this planning study to focus more on grander improvements that might be needed more at Keene and Belcher, where there's heavy traffic, and the impacts of any major improvement would be pretty substantial. So we identified those as possible for innovative evaluations at a later time under different means. As I mentioned, we had a project advisory group, which include four cities involved, also forward Pinellas, PSTA, and Pinellas County. We held four meetings with this group early on throughout the middle as we were identifying improvements and then before a public meeting so we can get final input in terms of the improvements. As I mentioned, we had a public workshop back in September. We had 31 persons attend from the public. We received great input from the public. There was no one that was opposed to making improvements on State Route 580, and they all recognized that there are opportunities to make improvements throughout and enhance the corridor. Those that received, what we asked is that everyone provide votes. They voted on their top three priority projects so that we had a mechanism to summarize that input and make it part of the overall evaluation. So provide those projects that had public support, greater public support. So those that received the highest votes included traffic separators throughout Countryside Boulevard intersection improvement and Alternate 19, and then long-term improvements, U.S. 19 and Countryside intersection. Those, what we did is we then took that information and added it to our evaluation matrix, and that allowed us to maybe break a few of the ties that we had in our initial scoring and allow some of the more supported projects to move up the ladder in terms of priority. So the next steps, as Jensen mentioned, we've taken the input from the public and from our final project advisory group meeting, have added it to our final document that's in draft form. The department's going through a final review of that. We'll be coordinating with Forward Pinellas in terms of prioritizing and evaluating improvements that can be added to the program of the MPO, either the TIP, the Transportation Improvement Program, or in terms of long-range transportation plan opportunities as well. Certainly, relative to your role in this, you know, being the city, providing input to Forward Pinellas in terms of improvements that may be beneficial to the city and what you all see, also provide opportunities for funding scenarios to allow these future projects to come to life. So with that, we wanted to at least take a few minutes to walk you through what we have. We do have some boards that we had out from the public meeting outside, out in the lobby out here, as well as our project website has all the materials from the public meeting as well. So with that, I appreciate your time. If you have any questions, you can call Jensen. I reach out to him if you have anything in particular. So thank you for the opportunity, and we're happy to answer any questions you might have today or even in the future. Thank you. Yeah, are there any questions? Rob? I'll start with Rob. Yeah, thank you, Vice Mayor. So just so I'm tracking here, we talk about the Alt-19 intersection, intersection of what? Which road? This would be the intersection of, as Main Street kind of dives down and goes south and Skinner Road comes across, so it's really the 580 portion that extends out to Alt-19. It's really where those proposed roundabouts are going. So it's just west of there at Skinner. Okay, great. And we recognize that the city's improvements that were happening through that area, we showed those as being an existing condition in the future. So we didn't look at piling on additional elements to those recognizing that you've all, and through the department, have already gone through the rounds of evaluation. So we looked more at just the intersection at the far west end and safety improvements for pedestrians there. Yeah, thank you. That was my second question, but I actually let in with questions before. Just an observation. Yeah, this is a very comprehensive study. You know, there's a lot of things here, and that's great. There, in terms of, and I agree, you know, with the safety being the highest rated criteria, but what I'd like to maybe get a little bit more explanation on is when we start talking about pedestrian safety, there's a whole lot of other issues going on there besides just the markings and the crosswalks and all that as we watch people run across the six to eight lanes in between two crosswalks. Was there any thoughts given to that? Yes. We looked at a number of different areas where part of the pedestrian element, we had, you know, the safety benefits, but also where the crash history was. And a lot of times the more, the higher degree crashes, the more severe ones do involve pedestrians and injuries and fatalities. So those are the elements that we consider as part of that safety component. We did look at two specific locations for mid-block crossings to add an additional pedestrian crossing off from where the traffic signal is located. Those would, you know, require some additional further, you know, evaluation for the exact location, but we've kind of pegged two locations as being, you know, reasonable to evaluate further there. We also looked at not just the striping and the signing, but at a few locations where adding an island may allow some refuge for pedestrians, you know, to queue up, but also to shorten the crossing distance that they would have to cross both the right turn lane and then, you know, six lanes of traffic and others. So those are all ways that we were trying to, you know, improve safety from not just, you know, signing and marking elements of pedestrians. So, yeah, I have to think that that's a significant challenge because obviously, you know, my thought was on the median, you know, that may mitigate some of that. But kind of related to that, at which point, because, you know, that area is so congested with businesses and, you know, it's the main corridor and, you know, we all know what the challenges are there. But I have to think that some of these recommended, you know, improvements or things that came out in the study are going to impact traffic flow. So, you know, in terms of, and maybe it's too early in this process to start talking about a traffic analysis, but, you know, there's a lot of volume inflow and a lot of volume outflow. And I'm just kind of curious as to what your thoughts are, what the next steps on that, because that's obviously, you know, it's going to impact, you know, how, you know, what we end up going forward with here, I would assume. Yes. In terms of traffic flow, we did look at, one of the first steps was not only to look at what the existing conditions were in terms of traffic issues and signal timings and things like that, but what does the future traffic volumes look like over top of that? And are there locations that would require a higher level of improvement, you know, to actually better solve the traffic problem? We know there's competing interests in terms of cars and pedestrians and bikes and businesses and access points, and a lot of things are happening in a lot of short distances there. But in terms of improving the intersection and intersection flow, those are elements that I think can help the overall corridor operate more safely. We didn't look at adding a lane to each direction of 580, because we knew that that was going to be an extremely difficult thing to happen relative to adjacent businesses and adjacent properties and the extent of right-of-way and the cost of things like that. So we tried to look at, you know, what we call sometimes the low-hanging fruit. Where are the little nuisances that we have within the quarter that we can fix? And if we can fix enough of those that I think, you know, in the long term, a more laminar flow of traffic can exist that allows, you know, traffic to move safely, but also, you know, interact better with the other modes. And, you know, the other element is obviously making sure that transit and buses can make their movements as well. So through coordination with PSTA, we have, you know, coordinated some of the elements so that improvements that we make may affect how their bus stops are situated in the future. And that may help, you know, overall safety and flow as well. Yeah, and I put that to you actually, you're one question ahead of me. So PSTA, and I'm honored to be sitting on the PSTA board. My question to that would be, at what point in the process does the coordination start coming into play with regards to, let's just say, positioning of the bus stops, you know, providing a, you know, a relief lane, if you will, that sort of thing? Bob, I mean, PSTA was part of our project advisory group from day one. So we had early coordination both in terms of what their conditions are now, what their future is. We know that they have, we'll call it the transfer area right around U.S. 19 just to the east, where buses queue up and kind of transfer, you know, users from one to the other routes. And we had coordination with them as to are there things that we can do to improve their situation with that, but also pedestrian safety relative to that. So they've been part of that conversation. In terms of the improvements, you know, and elements as these projects go into design, that's a connection point, again, with PSTA in terms of, you know, where they're at relative to the route system, but which routes would be impacted by a specific improvement, which one can be improved relative to, like I said, you know, maybe moving a bus stop to the other side of the intersection and things like that. All right, well, thank you very much. Tom, anything? A couple of things. First of all, congratulations on putting this extended turn lane at 19. That's going to be a very big relief. But back to my colleague's point, there is a coach stop just up from that as you go west, and that coach top heads east for a bus drop. A relief lane there would do a lot to reduce that congestion. I mean, we're all, everybody that's trying to get right, some people are turning into lanes, and that stop right there just blocks it whenever the stop, and, you know, we don't want to complain to the bus driver about what he's doing, but if he had a relief lane, that would make everybody a lot happier along that particular intersection. I am interested in the elimination of suicide lanes, turn lanes. They are just flat dangerous, and if anybody's been on this road, and I bet everybody in this room's been on it frequently, when you're sitting in a turn lane wanting to turn left in either direction, and a car's coming at you, you just pray they see you. So that is a concern I'd like you guys to start looking at a little bit more. Yeah, and with that, one of the improvements we had is what we call the corridor-wide median improvements, access management improvements, and we focused in on those areas where the two-way left turn lanes, you know, exist. Are there ways that we can make those, you know, areas safer by introducing some medians, either cutting off some access that is causing problems in terms of conflicts with vehicles, in terms of left turn accessibility, so. It's a tough job. You've got to work with what is to get to where you want to be. Yeah, and there's a dozen or so locations that we identified that, you know, are needed in terms of the overall corridor. Not all of them may, you know, may ultimately be implemented, but obviously through coordination with the local agencies and the, you know, business owners and the public, making sure we identify in the future those that make the most sense. One other question. As you turn on to 580 from 19 to go to downtown Dunedin, there is a segment of the road that is 35 right after you turn onto that road, and then it goes to 45 immediately. I don't understand that. That seems to jam back into the intersection. I'm just making that observation. Okay. We appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. Right. This is all about safety and flow and making sure that things flow properly. You had mentioned you did look at lane expansion, at least a brief consideration. That's just too costly, cost prohibitive, resident wouldn't deal with it. I'm wondering, and those are my words, not yours. From an overall corridor perspective, yes. Right, right. Did you consider lane diets? We looked at areas where intersections can be improved such that we can get better flow through them, and some of the longer-term improvements may relate to adjusting the laneage of those intersections slightly. They would require some innovative intersection types, not necessarily roundabout, but other more innovative types in terms of turning left before you actually get to the intersection, displaced left turns and things like that. Those, again, would require a larger footprint, which is why we identified those long-term improvements that would require a PD&E study, a much more extensive study that would evaluate the environments, the business impacts, and things like that. We didn't necessarily look at road diet throughout. We did look at the area where the bus transfer station is, and is there an area there that could be more used for buses strictly, provide that transfer to occur in that outside lane and allow the traffic to go through in the other two lanes. So, again, that ends up being one of those coordination points down the road. Yeah, that transfer station is, I don't know if it's a station, right, but that's what we call it. It's informal. It's always been a pain for everybody, including PSTA. So I get that. Because I look at the Skinner Project, which is wonderful. I think it gets us much farther along in where we need to be as a community in a multimodal sense and really looking at things through the lens of pedestrians and bicyclists. And I know they're different projects, and I get it, but they are drastically different projects. And so I'm wondering, when you're looking at the changes you're looking to for 580 in this project, could they have matched that Skinner Project better so that we can see some progression? Because my concern, because it's a wonderful opportunity, and my concern is that Skinner Project is wonderful, what's next, and I don't see the what's next. And so the Skinner Project is kind of it. Ooh, we're going to have half a mile of wonderful and then back to same old, same old. And so was there any consideration on those elements we're using at Skinner to be part of this project? I think the Skinner Project provides a number of vision elements that are very similar in terms of safety improvements, slowing traffic down, the roundabouts obviously providing better movements, enhanced pedestrian mobility. So a lot of those concepts that the Skinner Project is bringing were elements that we looked at trying to best incorporate into the balance of the corridor. I think what will come about is once the Skinner Project is constructed, that will provide us really good input as to how that might be evaluated further down the line, further to the east, if you will. And down the line, in my head, because of the number of projects that you have to deal with, you're going to do this project and you're moving on. So your down the line is going to be 30 years we'll circle back and try and look at those adjustments that we made. And by the time you do circle back, our transportation infrastructure, the demand for it is going to be, DOT is going to be so far behind in what the community is asking for. And so I don't know, how do you address that? Because we are really, we're in a change. And so I don't know how you keep ahead without trying to guess too far in advance, but you've got to manage your budget. So what's that process? Well, one of the elements of this study is that we don't envision that all the improvements are going to be made at one time and that's it. We think, we always felt working with the MPO, with the cities to identify those higher priority ones, that this would be done in like, in a series of improvements along the way. So as an example, a little to the east of you all where the resurfacing occurred, that was an opportunity to alter some of the bike and pedestrian movements. So as these improvements are identified in our study, as the department has other projects that they're planning on, they could be implemented with those. So we think of this as not just one big project, but a series of smaller ones that could be implemented over time. As the funding opportunities come up, there could be a flush in, you know, who knows, in five years of certain safety dollars that fit the profile of three or four of the projects here, maybe better than they do today. So I think, you know, it will be extended time to look at long, long-term improvements down the road, but I think there will be an opportunity over time here to implement these, you know, as they occur, as time goes on. So I wouldn't say look at State Road 580 as being, quote, ripped up for, you know, 10 years to implement everything, but I think it will be a series of smaller opportunities to make the best of your dollar and the MPO's dollar as they can. And if I understood you correctly, part of this and part of your measure is to analyze traffic flow, to make traffic flow a little easier and maybe encourage, not necessarily encourage, that's the wrong word, but you're anticipating increased traffic flow with this. And so I'm wondering if the improvements you're making for bicycles and pedestrians, are you anticipating greater use for those modes of transportation as well and how you will measure those? Yes and no. We don't necessarily have a model that tells us where the bikes and pedestrians are going to move in 20 years, but we do know in terms of traffic flow where they're going to be competing with a higher volume of traffic, vehicle traffic. So our first goal is to make sure everything's connected, and then secondly is where can we make enhancements to make things safer for, and I think each step will be make things a little bit safer, a little bit better at certain locations where, you know, hot spots or issues begin to occur. I don't think this study is like the end-all, be-all of improvements along 580. As improvements are made, there may be a safety issue that pops up in a different location because the profile of the traffic has changed a little bit based on that. So, you know, it's reacting to those adjustments and continually, you know, looking back to say, is that the best improvement here today? We've got a good list to work from. So, you know, maybe in five years, you know, the improvement of Patricia, let's say, should look a little bit different. So, but flexibility. And I might just suggest that the destination for cars, bicyclists, and pedestrians, they're all going to the same place. It's just which one you make allowances for, right? So if you make allowances for safer bike lanes, they're going to the same places as cars, pedestrians. I know I grew up, my mother was saying, no place is too far to walk if you have the time, right? So every place is walkable. The medians that you're putting in, what do those look like? Are those just concrete bunkers, big giant speed bumps, or? Because the current median is only about, you know, 14 to 20 feet wide in some locations, there's not a whole lot we could do to expand and make them, you know, wider and grass. So in general, they're going to be more like concrete traffic separators, like you would see during a, you know, adjacent to a normal turn lane. The only other way to, you know, take land for a wider, let's say, a grass median, would be to skinny up the lanes further or move the lanes out, which, again, gets into right-of-way acquisition and things like that. So we were proposing essentially traffic separators. What are those lane widths now? Lane widths range from 11 feet to 12 feet, depending on kind of where you are in the corridor. You know, it's roughly a standard lane width. Obviously, where we have buses, we want to make sure that they have, you know, safe mobility in terms of the outside lane being a little bit wider. And you can't skinny up east and bound on the inside lane to 10 feet and give two feet. Because I'm concerned about heat islands and our environment and climate change. And if you can create a width that is allowable for grass and trees, that can help, one, produce oxygen and also help with our heat island problem. And I would think that if your concern is, well, then who maintains it, then I would ask you to reach out to the city and see if a partnership couldn't be made. And I can't speak for the city, and I'm only one commissioner, but I would think that would be something that you'd at least entertain. And so, one, it would also be beautiful. One of the challenges we have with walkability is that 580 is ugly. Who wants to walk on 580, regardless of how safe you feel? So, if we can add some beauty, and I would think nature and trees fall into that, you can encourage more walking on 580. Yes, sir. So, I was just going to come up here. So, not only am I the multimodal project manager for the district, I am also the bike ped coordinator for the district. So, surprise. I just wanted to touch a little bit on the separators and the landscaping as well. So, what Jeff was kind of hinting at there was that a lot of these projects are going to be broken up into smaller size projects. We're not going to go with a big corridor-wide improvement. And so, the department has its own resurfacing program. So, every about 10 to 15 years, if we have a pavement condition, we'll come back and resurface. And I know that he touched on the one resurfacing that was out to the east that we just completed within the past, I think it was, year. When we go through the resurfacing process, we will look and evaluate any of these potential recommendations that we have as part of any corridor studies that are previous. We'll reach out to any of the local jurisdictions, so Pinellas County, you all at the City of Dunedin, also the MPO, to see what types of things are they wanting out there currently in conjunction with any previous studies such as this one that will be existing. So, when we come with those resurfacing plans, if there is money that we have in addition to just the plain resurfacing of the roadway, we can evaluate some of those things and incorporate them in. So, if it is taking lane widths from 12 feet down to 11 feet to allow for a little bit more separation for existing bike lanes, for any sidewalks that are there, or if it's to put in some sort of additional median enhancement. So, if it were to do a resurfacing that also included traffic separators in the center, is there enough room to then put landscaping as part of that by potentially going from a 12-foot lane to an 11-foot lane? And again, you hinted at it as well. We would work with you all if that was something that you guys wanted to increase landscaping. We can go and install that, but as long as we have a maintenance agreement with you all to maintain it, that is perfectly fine. We are working on a project down on Roosevelt in the City of Largo where existing conditions, there's a 5-foot bike lane. I want to say the lane widths are at least 11 or 12 feet on each side, and I think there's like a 22-foot median in the middle. A resurfacing project going on, I think it's from US 19 to Belcher in that kind of realm. What the city wanted is they wanted some additional bicycle and pedestrian improvements along the corridor to kind of be a little bit more safe than just a 5-foot lane with a stripe separating you from vehicles. So, we are coming out with a resurfacing program. We worked with them, and they are actually funding additional improvements outside of our resurfacing that we are going to be implementing as the implementing agency. I don't remember the exact cost of it, but essentially what they are doing is they wanted to skinny up the median by about 8 or 10 feet to allow to put in separated cycle lanes on each side. So, this will be physically separated from the traffic lanes, but how we did that was we incrementally went inside instead of outside. I know this corridor is a little bit different because the median is a little bit skinnier, but those are some things that we can look at in the future. But, again, the city of Largo came up and wanted to add the additional funding so they could provide that as part of that project. So, with these improvements that are going to be recommendations in the report, what we don't want to see is we don't want to see them just kind of sit in a report for 20, 30 years, and it just looks pretty on a shelf. What we want is we want that kind of dialogue to continue so when we come up with projects as a department along the roadway, we can take these recommendations and implement if there's funding available. You all, I think, could be really big advocates in this toward the MPO with Ford Pinellas. They're the ones that prioritize transportation projects for state and federal funding across Pinellas County. So, I think that you guys, if you see projects that you know you want to have completed, advocate for yourselves to them to get them to prioritize projects that then we can fund incrementally to get exactly what you want on the corridor to be existing out there. So, I think that goes from what you were talking about with the Skinner project, with the roundabouts and the lane repurposing that we did, to get those incremental changes. I think that all of these different agencies and departments need to kind of work together to kind of get that, what it is that we're looking for in the future. Thank you very much. And I will say that Dunedin is very vocal with Ford Pinellas, and we fight real hard. Those, God, just concrete and just asphalt just sounds so 1970s industrial. It's God awful. Is there a need for those medians to be there? Can we create the same type of safety situation that those concrete medians serve their purpose without actually putting in the concrete medians? I know we're far along in the project, and this is just a presentation. I get it. So, we have some different tools in our arsenal that we can utilize that aren't putting in full concrete. We have a lot of temporary. Well, I'll call them temporary, but they can become more of a permanent structure. But there's Zikla zippers is a term that can be utilized. There's another one that's an armadillo. They're all different types of separators, but they aren't full concrete. They can be removed at a later date without needing a full backhoe that needs to go in and dig everything up. So, there are things that we can utilize. We would normally utilize them in more of a safety element. So, our safety office would evaluate some of these recommendations that we have. If there's a needed crash history or if there's several fatalities or serious injuries that occur in a specific location, they could go out and do some quick modifications and put some of these more temporary barriers in if that was something that came out of the specific recommendation. So, there are things that we can do more temporary rather than just putting full concrete medians throughout the entire quarter. Thank you. And one last question, but it's A and B, and it involves paint. When it comes to the lining of the street, the crosswalks, things of that nature, who maintains those? Who maintains the schedule for those as far as the repainting and keeping up with that? So, that's also us. If there are things that you would like to see that are different than what is out there, that's something that could go into some sort of maintenance agreement for the maintenance of that. But if there are things that are glaring, we have crews that go out and kind of scout things out to make sure that everything is there. But if there's things that you know of specifically that need to be retouched up, like crosswalks or those type of things, please let us know. And we can send our maintenance crews out there to get things rectified very quickly. Okay. Because I think that making sure, especially the crosswalks, making sure that they are always bright, fresh, new, not waiting to, I can hardly see them before it's time to repaint. And they should be encouraging people to walk instead of, well, roll the dice, take your chances, you know, type of thing. I just think if we can make them more inviting, that would be great. And along the same lines as paint, I know with the Skinner Project, we are incorporating green paint into those contact points along Skinner for drivers and bicyclists. Do you anticipate any green paint on this 580 project? And if not, why not? So, on this one, nothing that I can think of currently, but that's something that we'll be in communication with our safety office to see if there are any points that need to be evaluated. From a district perspective on the green painting, some of our new projects, like Skinner, that was a recommendation that came from you all, which is why we're using that a lot of those. As well as creating more visibility because the roundabouts are kind of a newer concept, and so we want to make sure that everybody is seeing all different modes of travel as they're traversing through those. For the district policy on some of the green painting, we don't put it everywhere, what we like to do is we like to put that into those high conflict areas, we don't want it to be mundane across the entire district. And we think that if we put green painting everywhere, it's just kind of blend in eventually to, especially vehicular drivers that see green paint, okay, perfect, it's just there. But if you come up on an area that you're not used to the green paint, and it's in a high conflict area where there's a lot of bicycle traffic or pedestrian traffic, oh, there's green paint or something is new, it kind of draws my eyes to what is going on. So, some of those areas can be evaluated at some of the higher pedestrian and bicyclist crossings on this corridor, and those actually can be implemented, again, through our safety office, separate from some of the recommendations that are coming out through the report. Okay, it's just that there are so many contact points, right, it would almost be a solid green line, because I would also argue then that if you put the green paint down, because I think if you build it, they will come, so I think that if you encourage more bicycling, more bicycling will occur, but even on the Skinner project, we're going to lay green paint down, and we're not going to have the bicycle traffic that bicycle haters think we should have. They're going to see the green paint, not see the bicyclists, they're going to get upset that you're wasting green paint on things that never come, and because they don't see the volume of bicyclists yet, why do I need, it's like the stop sign, why do we need to stop if there's never cross traffic, so you end up having people run stop signs, right, and so I think that also leads to that as well. But anyway, those are all my comments, thank you gentlemen for being here, I will open it up to the audience, is there anybody, any citizens that have a question on this project at all? Yeah, three minutes, three minutes, look at them, hurting up, my wonderful, no, I'll bring it back to the board, thank you gentlemen very much, and you all, all questions, ask and answer, before I close it out? Just a couple comments, one, just, this is actually a question with regards to the process, obviously you've gone to great lengths to provide some priorities, and I think, I think the way that you've categorized those is exactly the right way. So basically, after another public hearing, essentially you'll kind of establish what the hard list will be, and then basically it'll be up to us as a community, a commission to work with Ford Pinellas to get the actual funding in place and start that part of the process, is that right? Okay, yeah, I just, my comments really though, they're, within a 10 mile radius of here, I would say 580 is the second most dangerous corridor in our area here, number one is the 19, and I fully support this because I do believe that there's a lot of improvement that needs to happen as well, you, you've articulated, so I think that's great. And the one thing I do want to say, and this is to Commissioner Degard's comment on the middle lanes, it's kind of like the wild, wild west in those middle lanes, and basically any turn arrows are more a suggestion than anything else, and so I would say that would be a great place to start. So anyway, my comments, thank you. Tom. Thank you, Vice Mayor. First of all, commend you on a good presentation, I appreciate it. I know you've spent a lot of time on this, and it's an important thoroughfare for our community. As I look at what you're trying to achieve here, I have no arguments at all with your goals whatsoever. As you mentioned, though, I am interested in seeing how we're going to keep improving this particular road. If you could prepare some kind of schedule for us so we'd have an understanding of that, I think that would add to this substantially. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, and I would just like to thank you, gentlemen, as well, for being here this afternoon. I know that you've gone out for comment to the public several times, and I've been at those as well. It is progress, and so while it's not to my satisfaction, it is progress. So thank you all for doing what you do. And I do like the idea that you mentioned some forward-thinking concepts, and so the next stage, whenever that happens, or what you're thinking of, and I know there's no plans, but the idea that at least you are, you have this other bucket you're putting ideas in is just wonderful. So it does, I'm going to ask for direction here, because it asks for commission comments and direction. This is a state project. This is a state project. Is there any direction to go forth and multiply? It is, no. I think, Vice Mayor, it's the input of the commission to FDOT at this point is what we're seeking. So just our thanks is good enough? Yes. The landscape medians like that one. Yeah. The landscape medians. If you guys can make it happen, we've got a lawnmower. So, all right. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. All right. Let me see. It's 10 o'clock. Do we need to take a break? Yeah. Can we take five just so we can do some things? Thank you all. Presentation and discussion pertaining to federal recovery program and information. And so we got George. Are you going to kick this thing off? Very quickly, Vice Mayor. Thank you. George Kinney on behalf of Community Development, Vice Mayor, Commissioners, thank you for having us this morning. A few weeks ago at one of the commission meetings, one or more of you brought up the fact that you'd like to hear from FEMA on some of their programs and how they kind of operate and work with the state on deploying resources and such. So we are very fortunate tonight or this morning to have with us. And I've only got three names, so it looks like there's more than three of them over there. So I'm only going to go through the three that I have. But we have Molly Kapoot. We have Yuzit Henderson, and they're both with the floodplain division. And we also have Millie Diaz, who is with our assistance program, or with the FEMA assistance program. So they are really here to kind of offer you a really brief presentation. And really, it's just a question and answer for you. It's an informative discussion, no direction necessary. But I will turn it over to FEMA at this point to kick it off. Thank you, George. Hi. Molly Kapoot with the FEMA's local plane management division. Next to me is Giovanna Garcia. She is our intergovernmental affairs and external affairs person. So she's going to keep me in line to keep me in the right way. So George and I met when I was doing my type of FEMA work, where we go and talk to communities about their post-disaster recovery in terms of their floodplain management and their building code permitting, administration, and enforcement. But FEMA has a lot of programs that come and support post-disaster. So if you have any questions about individual assistance, where people receive money from FEMA directly for losses to their property, Millie Diaz is here from individual assistance. We also, as the federal government, pair with other federal agencies post-disaster. So you'll see our Small Business Administration friends in the back. People don't realize that the Small Business Administration gives loans to individuals, not just small businesses after an event. So they're here as well if you have questions for them. But FEMA is a large complement of programs that come and support communities post-disaster. We say that disasters are locally executed, state-managed, and federally funded. So I'm here to answer any questions you might have. My particular topic is, like I said, post-disaster floodplain management, substantial damage determinations, and building code enforcement and administration. But we're here to answer any questions you may have. And like George said, he told me it was informal. So I don't have any, like, formal remarks prepared. Oh, we love a PowerPoint. All right. Well, thank you very much, and welcome for being here this morning. I'll kick it over. I'll start with Tom this time. Tom, any questions? Thank you, Vice Mayor. I know just enough about FEMA to probably be dangerous, and I think that's kind of the situation many of our residents are in right now. In fact, FEMA, before the last four months, was probably not on the minds of many people in this community, and now it's a top-of-mind issue. We have a number of residents that are relying on you, and our community is relying on you. So that reliance and the fact that you're there is both comforting and scary all at the same time. And so my first questions are, well, first question is, when we see residents frustrated, concerned, how do we respond here as a city, and what are we doing to help them get through your process? I know your team has been here and met with residents, and that's very laudable, and I appreciate that. But I have some good friends, and they're experiencing this. They had trailers that were totally destroyed, and some are getting great help right now. In fact, I think we kind of have little FEMA celebrations when the check comes in. So help me understand how we educate our people and how we keep ourselves educated in what you do, how you do it, and what our expectations can be. So I don't know, Millie, if you want to talk about individual assistance at all in the disaster recovery centers. Do you? Yeah. Sure. Okay. Okay. Good morning. My name is Millie Diaz. One of the first things that I want to stress is that when we, I'm individual assistance, so we have two programs under our scope. One, it's the housing assistance, which is limited to a certain amount of money, and we have the other need assistance program, which is also limited. Our housing programs are here to help with repairs, rental assistance, and longer-term housing needs. There's a little misconception when it comes to our programs that when FEMA comes in, we're going to resolve everything. And we have limitations in our programs, and most of them are based on some of the losses that are not covered or fully covered by people's insurance. So the first thing that we recommend is whomever has any kind of insurance, whether it's flood, whether it's homeowners, whether it's whatever insurance they have, to go and make that appointment first with their insurance. Because unfortunately, because we don't duplicate benefits, we have to know what it is that their insurance is doing for them. So when we fill out these applications at the beginning for people, if the person put yes in that question, yes, I'm insured, immediately we're going to wait for two things from them. And this is all in the survivor's desk. They have to either send us an insurance denial letter or that settlement letter to find out what is your insurance doing for you, if any. Because we do know also that there is some insurance that, you know, people say, I have insurance for hurricane. And yes, this is hurricane Helene and hurricane Milton. But unfortunately, their damages are for flood. And most homeowners insurance don't cover flood. And then it comes to questions whether or not they have additional insurance for flood. So it's really important that they know that when we come in, the expectations of FEMA solving all their problems, it's a little misleading. So we're here to provide this kind of grant. And whatever we can cover, we always have, like Molly was saying, the Small Business Administration that comes in and help them with loans and low interest so they can get back in their feet. So in terms of our housing assistance, again, we help with some lodging assistance. And I'm going to read real quick because I don't want to. We have funds, and these are grant funds for temporary housing. While they're unable to return to their house, we can assist them with rental assistance or reimbursement of hotel costs if they were forced to leave the house. We also have funds for repair or replacement of homes that are occupied and it's their primary residence. So that's really important. It has to be their primary residence, and they have to be occupying that residence at least for six months out of the year. We also have the temporary housing units, which is approved for this disaster. When there are not any other available resources for them to rent around, then we can help them with those. We also have funds for hazard mitigation, which is for eligible owners to replace or rebuild stronger and more durable homes. And we have funds for other uninsured disaster costs and expenses and serious needs, which is the famous $750 and $770 that not everybody got, but they all thought that they were entitled to. There is a lot of things that can stop for survivors to receive these funds, and one of them is if they're insured and they have additional living expenses, those are already covered by insurance. We cannot give those kind of funds to people. And then in the other hand, the other need assistance is for personal property, and it's limited to essential items. Okay, we can cover for transportation, disaster-related expenses like funeral for people that have lost a loved one, dental, medical expenses, child care, moving and storage, and miscellaneous expenses. Like, for instance, people that have purchased some generators due to a medical reason, and if they have those expenses, we can help them cover those as long as they have a receipt within those dates. And that's, in a nutshell, we do, the individual assistance have other programs, like crisis counseling, crisis counseling, sorry, disaster legal services. We have also disaster unemployment, which is other programs that are activated immediately after the disaster for survivors to, you know, apply for them and make sure that we can help them get started to get back in their feet. And that's most likely, in a nutshell, what this individual assistance does. Thank you. Giovanna has a couple items to help you guys explain some of this to your residents. Thanks. Giovanna Garcia with External Affairs. One of the things that we have seen in the past that has helped a lot with the community is we send out a lot of documentation, a lot of fact sheets, a lot of recovery updates. That information is very important, not only for yourself, but for your city and for your constituents. I think that by the information that we provide and we send out, there are certain areas within those packages that you can probably post in your local page where people have access and are always in tune to what's going on with the city. I've seen it happen where in other states and other cities, they've had a web page within their city of the recovery update during Hurricane Helena Milton. It has been very positive. And people that do have questions, continuing questions, can literally go there. And, you know, if you add on different links to it, it would be a little bit of easier access for people. As we just closed out the Disaster Recovery Center here in Pinellas County, we've had over 9,400 people come in to either apply, update, provide us with documents, meet with other federal partners, state and nonprofit organizations. And what we're telling people now is, aside from coming to you all to ask questions and see what else can happen, to really go on and contact us directly at our 1-800-621-3362 line and also go on our disasterassistance.gov page. But I just wanted to add that the updates that we are sending to everyone, especially the county and the city, it's actually a key component for the recovery process. Thank you. We have a particularly mature population. Our median age is 57. That means we have a number of seniors, many of which are challenged by any bureaucratic system and entry point. What particular services do you offer those people that need special assistance? So, at the beginning of the disaster, since we're four months in, the same services are not available now. And, Millie, you can correct me if I'm wrong. But initially, when the disaster occurs, we send teams out to go ask for people to sign up for individual assistance. So, we have folks in the field that call our disaster survivor assistance teams that will go out to individual homes so people don't have to leave to come visit us. And then, after that, we set up those disaster recovery centers so people can come and talk to multiple programs at the same time to get their needs met. That's the disaster recovery center, she said, just closed for Pinellas County because we weren't seeing the folks come in that were. But after the disaster, we provide those services, individual assistance is there, small business administration is there, national flood insurance program insurance folks are there, hazard mitigation folks are there to help them recover in a more resilient manner. We also have, you can go online to apply or find out information or you can call that 1-800 number that you mentioned before. So, we do offer a wide variety of ways for our people to access our programs post-disaster. Some of those roll back a little bit as the disaster progresses more into the recovery phase. And, there are less of those needs from the elderly population. If I may, Vice Mayor, we did have a disaster recovery center here at City Hall for a couple weeks. And then, on some of these public meetings, as you see, we have a team here from SBA. But, some of the earlier public meetings we were doing with communities, we would bring those individual assistance teams to interact directly with the public that showed up to the public meetings. Thank you. That's very helpful. We are still in the disaster phase right now. And, we will be in that probably for a long time. But, one of the things I think we have as an opportunity is that we have the attention of our population on our vulnerabilities and sustainability. And, therefore, they're going to be quite responsive to any future preparation moment right now. So, we can start with the psyche where it is to begin to make sure the next storm isn't quite as devastating. Tell me what we can do with you to get to that end. Sure. So, my particular specialty, floodplain management, and what I come and talk to your building official and I come and talk to George about is making sure that you're administering and enforcing your building code and your floodplain management regulations as you have adopted them. The point of those is that we're going to make that existing built environment more safe for future flood events by elevating structures, by tearing them down and rebuilding them, by making sure that we are mitigating the effects now when we have the time, the people, the resources to leverage those to make our built environment more resilient. In addition, Millie mentioned, we have the hazard mitigation grant program and we have FEMA FMA SWIFT Current, flood mitigation assistance SWIFT Current. The state of Florida manages those mitigation recovery dollars and right now they are setting up a program called Elevate Florida and I can provide more information to you guys through George about this. But they're really focused on making sure that they get those recovery mitigation dollars to residents this year. So, they're focusing on residential mitigation grants for the local communities. And so, they manage those recovery dollars as far as mitigation is concerned at the state level. So, we give them money and then they manage the money. So, I can provide more information about their focuses, elevation, mitigation, reconstruction. And so, those dollars, I think I heard yesterday, combined with the hazard mitigation grant program and the FEMA SWIFT Current, it's about $2 billion in recovery money in that area to mitigate effects of future disasters. Thank you. That's all I have, Vice Mayor. May I also add that we're currently also working with our long-term recovery groups and our interagency recovery coordination, where they will be having different types of workshops and meetings with the community to be able to see how they can incorporate other organizations and nonprofits to be able to basically better prepare for something to happen or how the community can come in together to be able to continue the recovery process. So, the long-term recovery groups and the IRC and interagency recovery coordination will be having meetings with you all pretty soon, along with our external affairs component to be able to just sit down in a group and discuss what's best for your community. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So, just to cut to the chase, A lot of the comments we get back from our community, our constituents, is that FEMA is extremely bureaucratic, that they are hard to work with, that they are slow to provide, and, you know, to the point where... Is Tetra Tech here today? Yeah, to the point where we have to hire, you know, a consultant to work directly with FEMA. Now, that's okay, because Tetra Tech has done an amazing job, and I'm not questioning, essentially... Well, I am questioning a little bit in the process. This might be for staff, but I'd want to understand how the substantial damage assessments get done. I know that's a letter, right, that we generate from the city. I'll invite our floodplain administrator up, Joseph DeFosco. He can talk a little bit about that on the city. Is this a FEMA Tetra... Are they involved in this process, Joey? So, first of all, substantial damage assessments are part of our obligation under the program, under the FIP program. And so, here in the city, as you know, we've engaged Tetra Tech under that existing contract to do those on our behalf, and that would result, that is going to result and has resulted in letters being mailed to those affected property owners who own those buildings that, by and large, were affected by the flood. It wasn't necessarily wind events. As we know, it was a flood event. We've provided about a little over 350 letters to date. We're getting batches sort of regularly from Tetra Tech for our review and approval, and then they get mailed out. And so, we will continue to do that until everybody's notified via letter, whether they're determined to be substantially damaged or less than substantially. Everybody who's received an assessment will receive a letter with a summary report included in that letter. And that will continue until that process is done. Okay. I appreciate that. Because, obviously, those have been a little slow to getting to our residents, and I just kind of wanted to understand what that process is. And, you know, so I appreciate that explanation. I want to touch a little bit on the housing assistance part of this. You know, one of the challenges that we have is that the state of our insurance here in Florida is in significant flux right now. And we still have a lot of people who had substantial damage to their homes that basically, and I'll use an example of one of the residents I know well, and that she and her husband are living in a van in their driveway because of the fact that, you know, they still have a mortgage, and the cost of the rental, especially now during season, is high. So I'd like to understand that process a little better because I heard, what I think I heard was is that the homeowner needs to provide you a letter of what the insurance company is covering and what it's not. I guess the question really is, is what kind of relief do people who are homeowners who are out of their homes, living in their driveways, what kind of relief do they have available from FEMA? Hi. So in terms of housing, if they already applied with FEMA, we offer certain programs for those to be, obviously, comply. It's kind of concerning, obviously, that they're still living in a van outside their house when this is really specific to a case, so it's going to be really difficult to explain. But we have our TSA, which is our shelter transitional program, which is when we paid the hotels for people to stay at. So it will be, obviously, you know, looking at that specific case on what kind of insurance they have or whether or not the insurance paid additional living expenses for them, because if that is the case, obviously, we can't do anything about it. So I get, you know, what I'm trying to say is in those terms, it's going to be really specific to, you know, what that person has. But, you know, we have alternatives for those people that are living in their home. If it's a choice of them that they want to leave there for whatever reason, we have some survivors that have, you know, wanted to stay in their property because they're afraid of, you know, looters and other stuff. You know, there's really, you know, it's a choice of them. We can't do anything about it. And those people were actually TSA approved, but they chose to stay in their property because they want to be close to home. So there's certain things that we can control, but the things that we can control, so we have the sheltering program. If they were approved, it will be interesting why they didn't choose some people. It's just the hotels that they find is too far. They're doctors, they're children, they're grandkids. They go to school. So there's different things that can obviously trigger the decisions that they make. But because they're so specific and if they have insurance, it will be more targeted of what it's their insurance offering. And because we can't, by law, if they, you know, duplicate those benefits. So we have to, you know, rely on, you know, them to make the better decision for their family at that point. Okay. And I appreciate that. I, you know, and this goes back to Commissioner DeGuard's comment. You know, we, you know, our median age here is 57? 57. 57. And a lot of these, a lot of our constituents are on fixed incomes. And, you know, maybe they have a part-time or job somewhere here in the area. I, and again, I don't know the answer to this question, but I, I'm just, I would, I'm interested to kind of understand. And, and, and again, this doesn't, and I'm not pointing, I'm not pointing the finger directly at you because I think it becomes also a public education and information program as well as to what's available and how do they access that. So, I, you know, I think that there's, there's a, there's a measure of, of, of, there's a gap there in my, my, my perception. Let me, let me switch gears here. Because I, I know that we experienced this right after Milton. You, do you, you guys, do you outsource the people that go house to house asking if the residents have substantial damage so that they can make an assessment on who gets that, that $750 check? Is that somebody you outsource to or are those actual FEMA employees? You're specifically talking about our inspection services people? Well, yeah, I guess that's what they were. I, they, there was a whole group that came through the neighborhoods and would door to door and ask if there was any, any damage incurred by the, the household. Um, and my understanding from talking to the individual was, is that this was the basis by which the $750 check was being made. Okay, so at the beginning of the disaster, a lot of things happen at the same time. I think what you're talking about is our disaster teams that go door to door, knock to see if they have any source of damages and help them fill out the application. Um, some of those people are FEMA employees and, uh, some of those people are also, um, from the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. So they come from, um, TSA and other agencies under the umbrella of TSA. They go to training and, um, um, the training, it's basically help, you know, the survivor go through the process of filling out the application that it's at the beginning of the disaster. And that's, you know, um, teams that we build and they're composed of both FEMA employees and this components under the DHS umbrella that help us magnify our employment and workforce in order to do things quickly and rapidly to help the survivors that can go into the internet or don't have internet because of the lack of power or whatever. So we can get through the process, but to your point, some of these people are FEMA employees and the other ones are, um, employees from, um, the components of, um, the Homeland Security to help us out to get the process expedited. And then, sorry, there are a lot of inspections that occur post-disaster. One of them is to, um, identify major, minor, destroyed for individual assistance to get that funding from FEMA. And that's usually started by the local community and supported by the state. Um, and then after that, if it is declared a major disaster, the disaster survivor teams go out and talk to folks. So there's a couple different inspections that occur. And then later, if you do apply for individual assistance, you might have a FEMA inspector come to inspect your house. And then the substantial damage that you talked with the building official about, um, is, it's done in this case by Tetra Tech. Lots of inspections. Right. Well, it's, yeah, I can, you know, I understand why. Um, uh, another question, uh, is how don't, conceptually, I don't understand why TSA would be involved. Oh, so the Department of Homeland Security, after large events like this, Helene affected multiple states, and we needed to surge our capacity. And so we have the capability of asking for other federal employees to come help with our mission. And so other, other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, including TSA, but some of our other agencies as well, um, they allow their staff to deploy for 30 to 45 days to support these missions. Got it. Okay. I get that. Um, organizationally, um, how, how does it work from a, from a state and regional response? Are you, were you, were you guys, do you have a, this group core, this core group here co-located somewhere, or how does that work? Um, there are thousands of FEMA employees down here supporting, um, multiple counties. Um, right now, we're organized in a branch system, a lot like the, a Florida Division of Emergency Management, and we have resources from multiple programs in those branches. For example, my group that I'm working with for floodplain management is working anywhere from Hernando County all the way down to Charlotte County. Um, but there, there are other folks that are assigned different regions of the state. Okay. And you are assigned to which region? Well, so I, my, my, when I got here, me individually, Hillsborough and Pinellas County. Got it. Okay. We, we also have division supervisors for FEMA that kind of organize the FEMA response to talk to individual counties. So your county is Pinellas, right? Yeah. Correct. So, um, we work very hand-in-hand with our division supervisors who work directly with the emergency managers and the city directly, um, in public works and et cetera. And the other counterpart, which will be myself working directly with our city officials. Um, and most of us are located in the branch six, seven, and nine, which will be the Hillsborough, Pinellas, Manatee, Paschal, et cetera, areas. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I appreciate that, too. Um, yeah. So please just understand my, my line of questioning. I, um, I do have an appreciation for what, what y'all provide. Um, my line of questioning is just to understand this because I don't. Um, and I've been, I've worked in federal government for 30 years. I, you know, so, and I guess I don't understand with, with the, all the people that FEMA employs and that, you know, that you have surge, uh, you have surge capacity through other agencies. Um, you know, we spend a lot of money on a consultant to really basically interpret this for us. And that's fine because they do a great job. Um, but yeah, please know that my line of questioning is really to understand this better. I, you know, um, I do appreciate what you provide. I, I do think that, and I understand there's a due diligence aspect of this. Um, but I, uh, the process takes a long time. Um, and the bureaucratic things I get back from the constituents, and we were lucky because we didn't experience any, a whole lot of damage. But there are others out there that their homes are completely wiped out, and they are still waiting. So anyway, I, I just think we really need to think about how we make this process more streamlined and more serving to our community. So anyway, thank you. Thank you for answering my questions. Um, first of all, thank you. I don't think we did that right. We really appreciate what you are attempting to do in our community, and we're grateful for it. There is frustration, though, and I think you can sense that. Can you give me a sense of open cases, case status, calendar of resolution? Can you give me a sense of that for this particular storm, set of storms? So are you talking about individual assistance? Yes. Okay. I don't know if you have the case numbers with you. No, but. I, I don't. I don't have that with me. Again, I was, um, yeah, prepared for something different. We do that. Sorry. Um, but we can get those, um, data, um, to you through George, I guess. Okay. Um, um, but there's, uh, um, a lot of open cases. Most of them are, um, right now because of insurance, people waiting for documents from their insurance. Um, also, the little I've seen, um, and this is all over Florida, not just specific to the area. It's, um, people that, um, received their, um, their letters, whether it's a approval letter or denial letter, but, um, and our letters are very specific, you know, in terms of, you know, this is what you need in order to move forward. Every time they receive a decision letter, whether it's good or bad, they have 60 days to appeal. And, um, we, we have, we don't receive those in time. And it's, that's the first thing that our letters specified. You have $60, 60, 60 days from the day of the letter to apply to the decision and all FEMA decisions are appealable. So, um, so it's really important that, um, people read their decision letters. Um, but we have a lot of cases that are still being to be work because insurance, um, that is, I think, the biggest, um, um, number that we have right now. Thank you. Okay. There's numbers. Thank you. Okay. And this is for all Debbie, Helene, and Milton. Okay. Okay. So, um, right now, individual assistance has approved $1.3 billion in assistance for all three disasters. Um, we have people that are in hotels, what we call the program to transitional shelter assistance as of today, 24,462 people. Um, and this, this are just, um. And this is in the entire, in the entire storm catchment area or just in. This is Florida. Florida. Yes. For all three disasters. Okay. Um, yes, Debbie, Helene, and Milton. Um, as per, um, dollars approved for, for public assistance. And this is not my, my area of expertise, but public assistance has approved $1.55 billion in assistance. And right now, um, and FEMA reimburses Florida at 37 point million for 37, for 35 point in cubic yards of debris removal. So this is also part of public assistance. Um, so this is, again, this is just overall. It doesn't speak, you know, truly to the, your point of cases that are being, um, you know, what, what, what, what have we worked and what we have outstanding and the reasons. But those, I can certainly get it to you through George, um, by disaster and probably by county. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, one of the dilemmas many of our residents are experiencing is having trouble with their insurance companies. And of course, you can't get started until there's a determination on insurance coverage, whether it's a denial or it's a payment. You just, you, you're, you're kind of in limbo. And I'm sensing that some of our residents are very frustrated with being caught in that place. Do you have a sense or a recommendation on how we can better serve our citizens when that issue occurs? Sure. So, um, the, the survivors have the option if they know that their insurance company, it's going to take longer to come back to us and we can help them, um, to probably with some money, but they have to keep in mind that once their insurance kicked in, they have to return that money back to FEMA. So in essence, you do loans. It, it, it's, it's part of the program. We, it's not called loan because we don't get interest or anything of them. But if they, if their insurance company, it's willing, because that's another thing. The insurance company has to say, we're going to take this long in order to make a decision of your case. If that is the case, um, and we get that in writing, we can be able to work with the survivors to see what we can do. So in the meantime, while they're waiting for their insurance to make a decision. So, and also they have $60, 60, I keep saying that, 60 days for, from the letter that they receive, you're ineligible due to insurance because we do send those letters. You know, you said at the time of the disaster that you were insured that right now you're being ineligible, ineligible due to that. If, and that it's an, that it, that starts the clock for them of 60 days. If they let us know within that time that they still haven't received anything from the insurance, we start just, you know, getting those cases aside and we keep calling them just to make sure that we... Is there something called a de facto denial because the insurance company is just not responding? Okay. But, okay. So, because I'm not a case worker on the case. I don't know if that it's, if we can work on that, but I can certainly check that, um, for you, because I don't want to get into the weeds of how we work cases because I'm not, you know, there's a lot of things that we look when we, but I can certainly look at that and make sure you have a response on that. All right. Thank you. And thank you for allowing me to resume. Excuse me. If, if I may add, um, we have so far to this day have received 1,300 or a little bit over 1,300 inquiries through our congressional and our, um, city officials and state. And so far we have resolved about 60% of those inquiries. And these inquiries are directly from constituents, um, concerning about their individual cases, um, in, in the area. So I just wanted to bring that, um, up to your attention. And, uh, to echo their comments, I know I said it before, but thank you all for being here. Thank you for what you do. And I know sometimes you feel, um, you're not being thanked and, uh, you, you, you really are. Um, when it comes to your federal agency, so you don't just don't deal with Florida and hurricanes, right? You deal with earthquakes and fires and snow related events and storms in the Northeast as well, wherever you, you go wherever the disasters are. Uh, can you tell me, do the, does the insurance industry in other parts of the country function or not function like they do in Florida? Do you get better responses in other parts? And I know that you don't, but do your survivors get better responses? Is California getting a better response with their insurance companies than Florida or those survivors in the Northeast? Do they seem, because we think, and it's true, our insurance industry is a mess in Florida. And so, is there something in that environment that we can take back to our state legislators and go fix it? I can't speak to it. Yeah. And I'm not trying to point fingers and put anybody. No, I mean, because it's the private insurance industry, I, I have no idea. I, I, you know, I think they are having problems in California with insurance for fires. I mean, we're, we're getting that message just from the public, you know, from the media. But I, I don't know anything specifically about insurance and payouts in other parts of the country. Okay. And I know that there was a time when FEMA did not exist. And at that point, I guess, resident citizens were kind of left on their own. It was between them and their insurance companies. Um, and I know things get more and more complicated. I'm wondering what are, through the course of disasters that have occurred, um, and especially who was it that hit Louisiana? Is that Charlie? I can't remember. I can't remember that hurricane. Katrina? Katrina. 2005. Thank you, Katrina. Oh my God, now that you say it, how can I forget it? I apologize to all those people in Louisiana and Texas and all that. Uh, that, that really brought on a redevelopment or a re-imagine of, of FEMA and, and how it operates. And are, are we learning from different disasters? Are we honing that skill on what residents need and the priorities of those needs with each storm? Yes. Um, I will say after every major hurricane season, there's usually a bill passed in Congress that amends the Stafford Act because we've learned from a disaster. So there's PECEMRA, which was the post-Katrina. We had one post-Sandy. And then, um, after the 2017 disaster season of Harvey, Irma, and Maria, the, um, disaster recovery reform act was passed. So every large event or a large season, there are changes made to the Stafford Act, which is the authorization for FEMA in how we do our work. We also recently made significant changes to the individual assistance program to help get more money to survivors quickly. And so we passed a couple federal rules that went effective, I think, mid-2024 that really changed the way that we do our individual assistance. So FEMA is learning. Um, a lot of our authorities come from, um, congressional acts. So as we move forward, those changes have to come from Congress to impact the way that we do our jobs. And do you ever hold workshops or anything throughout the season for municipalities or elected officials on, this is how FEMA operates? And the foundation of that question is, even living in Florida, there's a difference between being immediately impacted by a storm and not. Right. And so for the number of years we've all lived in Florida, this was our first time or in a very long time that we were impacted. And so even as cities in our city did phenomenally well, so I'm not pointing fingers anywhere, this commission did phenomenally well on responding as quickly as we could. It was a learning curve for everybody. And so I think even our residents, even the city, elected officials are all much better prepared if anything emotionally for next season. And God forbid something happens next season. And so I'm wondering for those cities that have been impacted and those who haven't, if there is a place they can go to get educated so that they can understand. And I don't know whether I could be talking to the wrong organization. No, that's not what you do. It's not in your wheelhouse. But is... I can answer some of that. But so I will say for my program, so I work in floodplain management, which is part of the National Flood Insurance Program. We have people who work with communities, blue sky in normal times and gray sky disaster times. And the floodplain management group does meet regularly with local officials, floodplain administrators, building officials. We have developed trainings for floodplain managers for local elected officials. So we, our group does focus on that. Also, a lot of your touch points with the local community or FEMA are through your emergency management community. And so they are regularly talking to FEMA, regularly getting trainings. So it depends on what group of people interact with what parts of FEMA, because we have so many programs. You have different parts of your city working with different parts of FEMA. It was interesting when this guy was commissioned earlier. I can't remember the gentleman's name. He teaches ICS 300 and 400. That's a FEMA course to learn how to stand up in emergency management. So I have ICS 300 and 400 on my training schedule to learn. So it's interesting. You have somebody within your organization that understands parts of FEMA. That's the response phase of FEMA. But then there are also recovery phases of FEMA. So since we have such a wide variety of groups, they touch and train your city and your citizens in different ways. I would add, if I may, Vice Mayor, that we actually have many levels of ICS. Yeah. Yeah. And all of our emergency managers have all the levels that they need. Incident command structure. Incident command structure. Yes. And certainly, you know, it's not the job of the commission to get down into the weeds. We'd want to stay at that 30,000-foot level. But if there are some of those courses that might be made available to elected officials, just so we have an understanding. So when we talk to our constituents and the citizens, we've got an idea. Certainly don't want to make a decision to get at your level, but just an idea. And I know that, right, kind of back to unless you've been through one, you don't understand it. And so this is the first time for any, for all of us. Have you come across in your survivors, they don't know their own insurance policy? All the time. All the time. I couldn't tell you mine. Right. And I know I pay a premium and scream and holler about my premium every year, but I pay it and put it in the drawer. And so the other time we get it is in a disaster. Is none of their classes. Because a lot of this was just the newness, the shock, being overwhelmed, stress, anxiety, not being informed as a resident, not being informed as what's available to me, not knowing my own insurance company. So it just creates this whirlwind of I've got to yell and scream at somebody, which is us, the city, you all. Is there a list of all of our emergencies? I got it. My house is on fire. I'm leaving my home. Water's coming. Leave my home. Grab that packet of information. Is there anything that we can tell our residents? Hey, it's June 1st. It's hurricane season. Understand your policy. Yeah. Talk to your insurance agent. Talk to. I will say the biggest thing is homeowners does not cover flood. And that's a huge thing. That, I mean, every year somebody's like, I have homeowners insurance doesn't cover flood. So I have, I actually, my sister got her insurance policy recently and it said, this does not cover flood. So great. Good job on the insurance company. But as far as flood insurance is concerned, we do have a lot of campaigns that FEMA puts out to encourage folks, especially before June 1st, to purchase flood insurance. We have a website, floodsmart.gov, where you can go and find a lot of information for residents, local elected officials, community officials, floodsmart.gov. But also we're working on a way, you know, how you can fill out on private insurance like Progressive or Geico, put your information in and get a quote. We haven't had that in the past and we're really looking to make that part of our floodsmart.gov so people understand how much their premium could be without having to talk to their insurance agent. So we're trying to get to that point where you can fill out your information on your home and get a quote right away. We don't have that capability right now. So that we're hoping that that capability does produce more people to purchase flood insurance. So we're really big advocates for flood insurance. It'll make you closer to whole than individual assistance will. Yeah, I currently don't live in a flood zone, but I have flood insurance. And it really is a peace of mind that the whole argument over property insurance, is it a wind claim, is it a flood claim, is it, oh my God, it just gets insane. I would ask the city, Jennifer, if you can, during our hurricane preparedness, and we do do a lovely job, it's wonderful, y'all need to attend. May 3rd. May 3rd, put it on your calendars, save the date. If you can incorporate a segment of that just to remind the residents to understand your policy and to even discuss it with their insurance agent. Help me go through this. It's hurricane season. And so they're already a leg up if the disaster hits. I think that would be wonderful. May I add one? Sorry, one thing. Post-disaster, we have NFIP experts in the insurance field come out and go visit insurance companies. So we're currently in that mission right now. We heard in another county, not Pinellas, insurance agents were saying, hey, you can't buy flood insurance. There are very, very limited circumstances where you cannot buy a flood insurance policy. So we do the outreach to educate flood insurance companies, I mean insurance companies about flood insurance, because sometimes they don't underwrite flood very often. So we make sure we go out as FEMA and educate them on how to write flood. Thank you. And I think the time is coming to where we'll have to have flood. If you live in Florida, but that's up to the state legislature. It was mentioned, and I can't remember who said it, but you all talked about as far as finding temporary housing, if they are forced to leave their homes. And I'd just like a little clarification on that. Is that during the storm, if fire rescue says you need to leave your home or just afterwards, that their home is unhandable? What does that force look like, and who is telling the residents they can't live there? So the temporary housing or the displacement assistance obviously provides money to eligible survivors that when they are forced to leave and return home and the house is inhabitable, then we can, you know, help them with that displacement money. Some of the displacement money can be used for them to look for another place to leave, like put a down payment for a lease property. And then they can come back to FEMA and say, I already used my displacement money. I need help now renting that place. So it's just, you know, again, it depends on, you know, if the house is inhabitable when they come back to it. So for one moment, our first responders will take those that have to leave the house during the event to a shelter. And then from there, they have the resources for the next step. But FEMA does not have the authority to condemn a building or say that it is unlivable. FEMA does not make that decision. So it's somebody else telling our residents you can't live there. Usually it's building safety inspectors. Correct. That will tell local building safety inspectors. Okay. So if they are forced to leave, they're told they can't live there, that's a true thing. It's not all subjective. But for the most part, yes, somebody in the official capacity is saying you can't live there. It's not an insurance company. It's not FEMA. FEMA, it's not. It is somebody that is concerned about their health and safety and well-being. Yes, and it's usually made at the local level. All right. Okay. Thank you very much. I know that you provided us with a lot of wonderful statistics and wonderful and all disastrous, the sad part of that, but that's the world you live in. When you do your post-event, here's how it functioned, what we can do better. Within your what we could do better, is there any part of that that is focused on efficiencies? And we've heard complaints, you know, we've talked today about here's what we're hearing from our residents, they're frustrated, they're angry. And I know part of that is because of not understanding their own insurance policies, their insurance company not giving them the information they want or the timeline that they want or need. But is any part of that actually FEMA? And can you do a better job? You know, we can tighten this up and we can respond better or communicate better so that they at least hang up the phone or walk away with a timeline or something. Do you all never go through that process? Always, always. Always. We have a group continuous improvement program within FEMA that evaluates our operations, but also is our current, one of our strategic goals is reducing the complexity of FEMA. Is that one of our current ones or was the one before? Yeah. So we do focus on efficiencies and reducing the complexity of FEMA as an agency looking towards those things. Okay. And I know that right after the storm, you had teams go out and knock door to door. Is there, and I'm going to apologize for my ignorance because you can say yes, Jennifer, but I'm unaware of it. But do we know you're coming? And do we know, okay, post-storm, we have our first responders go out, make sure the roads are safe. But then is there a checklist that we can tell the residents FEMA will be here this afternoon or starting tomorrow, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Because a lot of it is just communication and understanding. We usually do that. Sorry. I'm here. We usually do that. We use a lot of social media for that because at that point, if there is no electricity and there is no means for people, we go to the media. And the media can help us obviously say, hey, we have a major declaration for the state of Florida. Here are the counties that are declared. Here is where you're going to see FEMA presence available for people that want to register if they have any kind of damages to their house or their personal property. If there is no electricity, obviously people can watch TV. But we know that there's a lot of people that still have some sort of communication through their phones and they have social media. So we have been really proactive within the past years using Facebook. I think we also use YouTube and other channels to communicate where we're going to be. And this is more on Giovanna's side of the shop, which is external affairs. But we do our due diligence to communicate that we're going to be there. We make sure that all this information, it's in different languages too. So people that, you know, we already, when all this is going on, FEMA, especially the IA portion of the house, and it's looking at the path of, you know, the hurricane or the storm. We look at those vulnerable places and that includes languages, that includes age of the people, that includes a lot of things. So when we start doing all this messaging, it goes in different languages and very, very clear for population that, you know, can understand the message. And, you know, sometimes we go to places and people are not there because they were forced to leave or, you know, they'd rather be with a family member because there's, you know, feel better self-secure there. So there's many things that affect, you know, people registration. But we do our due diligence through the social media and other methods in order for us to put that message out. This is where we're going to be next. And I'll let Giovanna to. So let me just add a couple of things on there. When the event is occurring, we do have specialized teams that are already assessing the communities as far as languages, as far as access functional needs, as far as, you know, the demographics of the community. That team will be deployed out from headquarters to start that process. But we have our division supervisors that work very closely with our emergency managers. And the emergency managers will pinpoint and give us areas that we should immediately focus and target. So we go based on that, those assessments, because that would allow us to basically start the process as far as deploying out the disaster survivor assistance teams to the specific communities and try to basically start it and immediately assist those survivors in that aspect. And, again, as I mentioned, with not only the language services but our access functional needs, you know, when we see that there's a high percentage of senior citizens or a lot of survivors or applicants that are living in certain communities that might not have direct access to us, we'll go ahead and deploy disaster survivor assistance strike teams out there to be able to register them or start the process. But we work very closely with the emergency managers. Okay. Thank you. You know, and I know I grew up as a kid here in Florida that during, after, well, before hurricanes, you would see a line on the interstate, and you can still see it today, of power trucks, right? They're ready to come in like the cavalry and save the day and get the electricity kind of focused. And now we're starting to see that. You see the power company. Now you're seeing Tector Tech or those companies that we've contracted with, and they're coming in. So the focus has really changed to how quickly can we get back to normal as quickly, smoothly, as efficiently as we can. I think FEMA plays a strong role in that on the personal side with our residents, that if the idea is how quickly can we get our residents back to normal or a new normal, if there is one, would be greatly appreciated. So that as part of our hurricane prep, we can tell, and I know that you just talked about the social media, and I'm hoping that social media, you're also talking to local city government, so we can help you in that social media. And I can't speak for all communities, but Dunedin is insanely connected to the residents. And you can't sneeze without somebody knowing about it. Maybe that's a small town. I don't know. Vice Mayor, may I, Sue Bernass, our communications director, she attends when the storm is approaching during and after a regional PIO meeting. And everything in FEMA is on the call. The county is on the call. Just about every agency is on the call. And every bit of information is pushed out by the cities and the agencies at the same time, the same information. So they're very uniform. I'm impressed with the communication. The hospitals are on. The power companies are on that call. So it really is a very organized push to get information out. Wonderful. And that's as it should be. It's great that we're finally there. That is wonderful. I think that's it. Other than to say thank you for what you do, and I know sometimes you feel like you get beat up on both ends. Because either you're a government agency and you're just wasting money, or you're too slow because you're too concerned about wasting government money. And so it's a no-win situation. But I'm glad you're here. And I think the residents, most of the residents actually appreciate that you're here. Some of them, understanding, they're in that situation where they're frustrated and mad and angry, and they're in some spot they can't get out of. But they'll continue to talk to you, talk to us, talk to us, we'll talk to you, and make it resolves. But all in all, I thank you. Thank you again for being here. Is there anybody from the audience that has any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions? Hearing none, seeing none. Are there any final comments? Yeah, and I do want to just reiterate, you know, y'all are on the front line, and you do provide a peace of mind to the residents in terms of at least having some element of a safety net. Just to kind of drive home a couple of the lines of communication here, I think education is a big piece of this, because, you know, I'll be, I don't know what I don't know. And, you know, that's part of it. The other part is, and, you know, as we get into legislative season and all the things associated with that, obviously one of the huge gaps here, and, you know, unfortunately, I do know that FEMA gets a lot of the blame for this, which you are blameless in, and that is the very poor state of our insurance industry here in Florida. And so I just want to say thank you for being here. You know, I think what you provide is essential. I would, you know, and I think we've all said it in one way, shape, or form, but the, you know, to impart some efficiencies would really be extremely helpful, one, for our understanding, and two, so that we can communicate with our constituents. So thank you. Yes. As we get to know you better, I've added about 60 questions, but I know nobody at this dais wants me to pose those, but I do have one more. We have acquired the services of Tetra Tech to properly position ourselves to more correctly work with you and optimize our outcome. My church, who is also impacted by the storm, did the very same thing, which was to contract someone to help them, because those particular contractors have a linear relationship, and we have an instance of relationship. I'd like your reaction to that, how you like working with those. Do those bother you? Is that the best thing for us to do, and should we be encouraging our residents to do the same? And that's my last question, I promise. So my understanding for Tetra Tech is they're collecting your substantial damage information. Are you using them beyond that? Are you using them beyond that? Yes. Okay, okay. So I can only speak to that one portion. And it is very normal for communities that need help post-disaster to look towards contractors who do have the experience that they don't have. The reform acts that I was talking about before that happen after every major event, One of the reforms that came out in 2018 is that FEMA will now reimburse for post-disaster floodplain management and building code administration and enforcement. And so this is a new eligible activity for reimbursement. So a lot of communities will focus on expanding their workforce by hiring contractors because they get reimbursement for that type of work through the public assistance program. So it's very normal for a community that doesn't have those capabilities normally on staff for them to look towards those contractors with experience and then submit that to our public assistance program to get reimbursement. So it's kind of like cheaper help because you're paying 25% of the contract as opposed to the full contract for the help. Does that make sense? Yes. So you're positively inclined toward those kind of contractors for the community, and do you work well with them overall? Well, so in my experience, FEMA for floodplain management doesn't work directly with those contractors. We're working with your local community, and you're getting the results from the contractors. I think FEMA has been set up for a long time in these public assistance projects to work with contractors because they have the experience to write the projects to do the work. And so I think it's just been set up that way that we reimburse work, and that's how you do your surge capacity is through those contracts. Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you very much. And I think that's all we have. So thank you all very much. Yes, sir. No, I'm sorry. We can't do that. No. We've already asked for comment, and so I do. Yeah, I'm sorry. We can't let you speak. I'm sorry about that. He's part of SBA. Then speak. He was just going to mention the Small Business Administration and what they can provide to your community. Sorry. Sorry. It's okay. He's part of our group. Sorry. Hi. Thank you so much. My name is Harold Nunez, Public Information Officer. Is it here? We just wanted to remind everybody. Can you step closer to the microphone? Can you guys hear me? No. Sorry. Yeah, sorry about that. We just wanted to remind everybody of our deadline. Our deadline was January 7th to apply for these disasters. Right now, we are in a 60-day grace period, so that is March 7th. After that, if there's no extension, it'll be really hard to get, you know, residents to apply for our assistance and get those sort of, like, assistance in our centers and get those personalized help that they might need. And the Small Business Administration, again, can do low-interest loans for individual homeowners when they can't get that insurance coverage as well. So it is open to individuals with disaster impacts. And is that on social media somewhere? Is there a post, something we can share, or can you get that information? Can you get them information to share on their website about SBA? Okay. So they would have had to apply before January 7th, but like you said, grace period. So we'll make sure we connect you guys so you can get that information on your website. Can we also get information on the displacement stuff, the programs that you have in place? Sure. Okay. Thank you. So what we'll do is we'll have, we'll set up a package and send it out to everyone so that you have everything overall sent to you directly. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. And we will move along to informational items, commission discussion. I didn't get any emails, but I did send one. And so real quickly, I just wanted to get some feedback from the commission. And for the Highland Games, we, I have invited some school board educational people, a superintendent, the city's coming, one of our school board members, Eileen Long, is going to attend. And the director of performing arts for the school system is attending. And my goal in inviting them was to show them around and show them the value of these Highland Games, that it's much more than a festival. It's incredibly valuable and important to our Scottish community and our bagpipes and drums and dancing, et cetera. And so in, in that framework, I wanted to include in my invite, uh, uh, extend the offer to our VIP and, uh, so they can get to know some other people. But that incurred the cost on part of the city. And so I put our just around about figure, but up to $500. I can't remember what the VIP room is. So I just want to know if you guys had a flavor of that. Is that acceptable? Do you have concerns over it? Well, I appreciate that. And I most, I certainly do understand the, the potential benefit here. I'm, I'm just a little bit, um, I just kind of want to understand, um, there, there, well, first of all, the optic of this, um, I, I think I see the benefit, but, um, have we, have we done this before? Not to my knowledge. Okay. Um, and I guess the other question that I would have on this is, is that, um, is there, why, why is the commission we would be making this decision to do this? Because somebody has to. What about, uh, the Scottish American society or the Scottish, uh, performing arts? Uh, you know, I haven't talked to either one of those organizations because it was my invite. And typically I invite them because it's much more than just an invitation to attend. It's having the time and opportunity to walk with them, to know the knowledge and the history and, and share to understand. So it's, it's a, it's a meeting of understanding and, uh, I don't know that the Scottish arts foundation puts on the event. And so I don't know that they have got the time to also walk people around. So that's kind of what's behind it for me. And I, I haven't asked them directly. I haven't asked any of the other organizations. Okay. Um, but you know, to me, this list is, is, is not necessarily all inclusive, um, because there are a lot of other people that, that provide benefit to this. And I'm just wondering if we set the precedents as the city and the commission making the decision to do this. Um, I just wonder, you know, if, if we're, we're opening ourselves up to, you know, other stakeholders in this. Uh, I, and honestly, I can't really see where you're going, uh, but because we have a partnership in the program, it's not just, they hold this event, but we have a financial state, we have a cultural state, we have a historical state in the event and our culture that, um, I think it, it goes to the sustainability of the program and enhancing it. Uh, the reason that certainly that list is, uh, could be expanded greatly. Um, I try and keep it small. So it's conversational. Uh, we don't have a herd of a hundred people, right? It's so every year it would be so many different, something we can do, uh, right. I didn't, right. You'll notice that there's only one, uh, school board member because I was concerned about any sunshine, right? So only invite one school board member at a time so that they have the opportunity to talk and share. Yeah. And I don't even know that they'll accept that offer. They could say, yes, we're coming, which they already have, but no, it's on our dime. We're fine with it. And they, and they may not even choose the VIP. I'd say the VIP was something special to offer. You know, they, they, they, they could accept the, um, entrance fee, you know what, 10 or $50, uh, but say no to the VIP. I, I, I don't know what will happen. Um, yeah, um, well, um, I, you know, I, in the end here, um, you know, I, I do see the benefit. Um, I, I just not sure this, this is a, this is an optic that we want to incur for future precedents. Okay. Um. Now, would it look differently if we bought a table and then just invited them? Or is that, is that a, is that a possibility? No, I'm just trying to look at the differences from an optic standpoint, um, you know. Well, I, uh, I, you know, I'm not sure. And I just, this, I'll, I'll be just, I'll be honest. No, please be honest. I'm uncomfortable with this decision. Okay. All right. That's fine. Um, yeah, I, yeah. So that's where I'm at. All right. It is, it is something that you wonder if you're opening a Pandora's box. And that, that's what I think gives hesitation for my colleague, Commissioner Walker. And I worry that an affirmative vote on our part might open things up to other such requests. And then we have trouble dealing with that from a budgetary and management perspective, because we're disinclined to say no, um, to anybody, because there are so many worthy organizations. Uh, saying that, um, I can't even say how I'm going to vote for this if it comes to a question. I mean, if we're going to put it to, are we putting this to a vote? Yeah. Yeah. This would be it. Okay. I want to acknowledge we're also a short board. Okay. So right now, with, with, uh, Commissioner Walker's comments, yeah, it's no. So this is a discussion portion. I think there'll be at best consensus direction. Ah, okay. Staying corrected. I'm not sure if you wouldn't like to allow the other two commissioners to discuss as well. Yeah. What kind of timeline are we working with? Do we have to decide today? Oh, no, no. Okay. The holiday games are April 5th. Okay. I understand that, but I was wondering if there were other mechanics we can't see that you wanted to meet a deadline around. Oh, no, just in time for them to, a timeline of giving the, uh, extend the offer to those that have accepted. As there are only three of us, I would like to defer this discussion. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I, I would feel very comfortable with having the other two voices on this. Um, again, I, I, I do see the potential benefit, but, um, you know, to me, you know, you kind of look at this in terms of the, you know, the, the city that we support, this is our business. So, you know, essentially this is a business expense. And I just wonder from that perspective, is it, could it be a business expense for them, for the people that you want to invite? Because I just worry about, you know, um, making a very small list or, you know, giving them in their positions, definitely you could make the case as you were doing. Uh, but I would also say that, um, I, I think we, we are setting a precedence here that, you know, could be essentially unsupportable or unsustainable in the near future. So, that's, anyway, but I'd like to hear the other, other members of the commission. Thank you all for your consideration. Appreciate that. Uh, we will move on to city clerk's update. Um, I just had a, just a quick update, um, at the next work session and, um, regular meeting on the 18th and the 20th. I will be out of town, so Michelle will be sitting here. I have, um, family coming into town, so, um, I'll be out that week. So, it's on, I believe it's on your calendars, but I just wanted to, like, give you a heads up. Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh, city manager. Yes, uh, thank you, vice mayor and commissioners. Uh, Sue Berness, our communications director, actually asked me to touch upon Highlander Park and where we are in the process right now. Um, we have reached out, uh, and communicated through our social media outlets, but there are people who watch the meeting and don't necessarily read social media. And so, I just wanted to bring all of you up to date on, um, exactly where we are with Highlander Park. Um, as you know, it was our largest laydown site for, uh, construction debris and for what we call VEG, which is trees and landscaping materials, live things, um, from, from all those areas that were the worst hit, uh, by, uh, by Hilton and Debbie, not Debbie, actually just, uh, Hurricanes Helene and Milton. We actually had another laydown site, which was behind the, the, uh, Emergency Operations Center, um, Belcher, and that was just for the VEG, just for the landscape, uh, debris. So, yes, there is, yeah. Our condolences to Debbie for being forgotten, but we'd like to forget her. So, yeah, yeah, we, absolutely, we would. And so, um, we, uh, um, the news is very good moving forward. Uh, Helene, um, uh, rather the Highlander Park served as a, as an excellent laydown site. It was close to those areas that had the most damage. And so, we were able to haul from the damaged areas to Highlander Park, uh, Tetra Tech was monitoring the debris that we were, that we were laying down there, and we could get lots of trips in every day, um, and so that was the whole purpose of, of a close laydown site. So, we could remove the debris, uh, very quickly. Uh, um, so by December 9th, uh, we had, um, actually, earlier than that, we had removed, uh, we had laid down the debris and removed it. And, uh, at that point, then, we, uh, filled in some areas of the site, and we, uh, we graded it with, with fresh fill, um, and then we did a soil boring test on December 9th. I, I forgot a big part of this. We actually did a soil test before we started laying down, um, in, in, um, September. The, uh, the, of course, the test in September was clear. Uh, there, the site was, it was good and ready to go, nothing to concern us. Uh, then we, we did put a cover over the site, did the laying down, removed all the, uh, C&D and the veg, uh, put new fill in, and did new soil boring testings on December 9th. And the news is good, very good, that we're also in the clear with, with, um, that, that test. Um, the fence, we fenced around the site, as you know, the big nasty fence around there. Uh, regardless, we have, um, uh, now that we're clear, we finished grading and, uh, Parks and Recreation, our, our maintenance staff started, uh, installing irrigation in the area, uh, yesterday. So we're very busy on the park right now. Um, and then when they're done with that, we will, uh, hydra seed, which means we essentially just spray, um, water and seed on the site. That actually grows very quickly, the, the seed. Uh, we, we anticipate that, that the growing will take probably about a month. Um, and then we will remove the fence and we'll be ready to go for the Highland Games on April 5th. And so, um, we're, we're pleased with, with the way the debris removal went to begin with, and that Highlander Park is now clear and on its way to being Highlander Park again. So I often talk about the time that we can kind of put the hurricanes in the rear of your mirror and say, this is a memory for us and, and not a reality. And so it's, it's in, you know, Highlander Park, once we lift that fence up, it's going to be a memory and in, in our, in our rear view mirror. So thank you. Wonderful news. Wonderful. City manager. Yes. I do want to say that, um, you and the staff did an absolutely remarkable job of, of making the right decisions at the right time. Um, and, uh, I, uh, you know, I've, I've talked to a number of our counterparts in different cities and we were so far ahead of the debris removal. It was impressive. I, you, you did an amazing job. Thank you very much. And thank you, commissioner. And I have to call out solid waste and our public works staff and our parks and rec staff and, and staff in general who just kept on it, uh, kept on going. Um, we, we were communicating with Tetra Tech and Crowder Golf on a, uh, you know, 10 times daily basis to, to get everything moving. And I really appreciate it. Um, and I think that those kudos and the way that the process worked are, are directly due to having experienced staff in place. People who knew, um, how to conduct themselves during the course of crisis management and emergency management as well. So thank you, commissioner. All right. Uh, city attorney's update. I have no update tonight. No update. Very good. And then I'll turn to the commission. Tom, anything? Thank you, vice mayor. First of all, thank you for chairing the meeting in the absence of our mayor. Great job. Appreciate that. You've got a little experience at it, but still good job. Um, there's a couple of things and I too would like to share a little bit of praise on both our manager and our city. Uh, I haven't been here three months yet, just so everybody knows. And one of the things that I've been doing is visiting all of the departments that they can get me to with a limited schedule. And I will tell you, there's a culture here that I had no idea existed. Uh, there's, uh, if you go into solid waste or any of the departments, some of those that you wouldn't want to visit if you would, the pride of the staff is absolutely astounding. The culture is, um, it would surprise every citizen that walked in the front door. Um, and I've enjoyed that very much, although I don't own my own calendar, I've discovered. But nonetheless, I've enjoyed it. Um, there was an event just this weekend in which I learned our city manager is a good drummer. Um, and you're surprised by those kind of things. Uh, soon we'll have a state of the city report and I'm excited about that state of the city report. Um, because while we remember this year for all the pain and we just got reminded of it today, uh, there's something else here that I think every citizen can be proud about. And we'll be talking about that in the state of the city report. Um, but those are my comments for now. And I'm also, one more thing, honored to work with four other individuals whose motivation is superior, that's mindset is excellent. Um, if I had to give a report on the city, I don't know where I'd find ways to improve. Thank you very much. That sounds wonderful. I think that's your state of the union. Vice mayor, if I feel that I need to, um, first of all, thank you very much and thank staff for all the tours of the various departments. I think that they're enjoying that as well. But I also want to, um, you know, it's, it's difficult when I call out various departments and divisions, if I forget one, but I do want to call it utilities also for all their hard work during, during the, the storm cleanup as well. Thank you. Thank you. And really is a team effort. It takes all departments. So wonderful. Wonderful. Rob. Uh, thank you, vice mayor. Uh, Friday we celebrated the maiden for, well, we being collectively the city of Deneen, city Clearwater and PSTA celebrated the maiden voyage of the Clearwater ferry. Um, I will say that, uh, we were well representative. Thank you, commissioner to guard. Thank you, city manager. Um, yeah. And the one thing is, is, you know, the good, the good part of this is, and the, is that there is a couple of graphics floating around out there, pardon the pun, um, that have the dotted line from Clearwater to Dunedin. So we are still, we are still, we, we are the expansion route of the Clearwater ferry. Um, but with that said, you know, it doesn't hurt to continue to beat that drum. And, uh, I know the city manager's been doing it. Uh, I most certainly have, um, and, uh, I'm looking for the day when we are able to get that dock back and we can get that service started. Uh, this Friday, uh, Dunedin Fine Arts Center, uh, Founders Lunch, um, and, uh, if, I believe there's still tickets, so if you feel so inclined, I will be there. Um, and, uh, on our, on our Dunedin Triathlon that we're doing on, uh, February 15th, Saturday, uh, don't forget about the Fine Arts Center, 50th anniversary, and we have a table, and I think we're all situated for that. Uh, the Dunedin History Museum has truly come alive with their events, and, uh, for, uh, the, the big one is, is that we've, we've always, uh, the, the, the History Museum has always had the, uh, Citrus Gate, uh, Citrus Festival. Uh, this will be the first ever Citrus Gala on May 4th. Um, additionally, there have been several other things that have been rolled out, um, one that I'm very interested in is the historical walking tour. Um, this actually has been a long time in the making. Uh, we've talked about doing this for at least, at least two years, um, and that, that would include some of the historical residences in Dunedin, but, um, they're focusing on some more of the historical streets, but, um, I, I plan to participate, so, uh, take a look at that, and, uh, I think that's all I've got. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you, guys. Yeah, I don't have a, a lot to talk about other than, you know, I've, you've heard me make comments before about people who have suggested to me that they're driving, driving by, uh, our community schools. You have no idea what's going on, and then once you open up the doors, you see great things, and so I was on my way to the VFW, um, on Saturday for their Family Fest, uh, which was a wonderful event, and I saw the entire parking lot was just full of cars, too many for just SAT testing day, and, uh, so I kind of slowed down, and there was a small sign that said robotics competition, and I thought, oh, how cool was that, uh, I'm on my way to VFW, oh, so I got to the VFW, I got a text from, uh, the robotics teacher, who is Dr. Judy Dealey, who was top ten teacher of the year this year, she, she almost got there, uh, who does a phenomenal job with what she does, and so she texted me and said, hey, we've got this going on, uh, stop by if you can, and so I did acknowledge you guys that we did our thing at VFW, and I had to leave, and, uh, inside the gymnasium was just, it was just amazing that the number of, the number of parents, especially with band camp, band camp usually held the last two weeks of summer, and the number of squeals you get from parents, you're taking the summer away from my kids, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, but the kids love being there, and it was the same type of thing with this robotics, you had kids that were spending their Saturday hanging out with, with their colleagues, and, uh, other students, and competing against other schools, and getting to know, and it was just, not only just the bonding and social aspect of it was wonderful, but just the technology that was going on, and the, the, the pride in their, their robot, and being able to control it, it was just a wonderful event, so I just wanted to acknowledge that there are great things going on at Dunedin High School, and, uh, just, it's hard to get the word out, uh, that's it, we talked about, um, Scottish stuff a little bit today, but just wanted to acknowledge that, right, April 4th is a Friday night, that's our pipe band march, and then Saturday is the Highland Games coming up April 5th, uh, because of the tight weekend, this is so hard this time of year, because we had another Highland Games, um, we had one in, in Sarasota, but I could never attend those because of city events, uh, but I know that a whole team of people went there representing Dunedin from our middle school, high school city bands, dancers, uh, and so it's just nice that, um, Dunedin is represented so well, and, but I don't have any results from that, other than our Suncoast Scots pipe band, uh, won first place is grade five, I do know that, but haven't seen much of anything else, so, and make kudos to them, and that's all that I have to report, uh, unless there's anything else, we will adjourn this bad boy, thank you, Moe.