going to go ahead and get started. Staff, just bring your conversations down. Thank you. I know we don't always get a chance to get together, so we play catch-up, but it's good to have everybody here this morning. I want to welcome the Phillies organization who are here today. Good to have you in the room. I know we'll be having a 10-minute presentation. If there are specific questions from the board on the presentation, they can ask Brian at that point, and then we'll kind of go into some open discussion, and any questions about things from that point will be towards staff. So without further ado, we've got a really busy schedule today, really important, exciting topics to discuss, and I look forward to that exchange of thoughts and ideas today. With that said, Brian Ungst, Jr., come on up. Good to hear from you this morning. Welcome. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a great
honor and privilege to be here today representing the Philadelphia Phillies, who have been intrinsically intertwined in the fabric of our community for nearly 80 years. As you all know well, the Phillies have the second longest spring training relationship with the city of Clearwater in Major League Baseball history. We're only one year behind Lakeland and the Detroit Tigers, so we're doing pretty good in terms of being a trendsetter and leading the charge for local commitment to spring training and really that sister city, sister community relationship with the city of brotherly love. As you know, the Phillies exude excellence throughout their entire organization, whether it's here in Clearwater in Pinellas County, in Philadelphia, or anywhere in between where they have a footprint, they are the longest continuously operating single name, single location team in the history of Major League Baseball. They are the epitome of stability. Founded in 1883, again, they've exuded excellence as an organization that entire time. They are the largest media market in the United States with only one major league baseball team, and they're the fourth largest media market in the country. As you know, their fans are committed, and they're committed to Clearwater, and they're committed to Pinellas County. We received the updated statistics for the 2026 spring training season. We had an attendance, paid attendance of 143,352, which is consistent with how we have performed every year over the last 25 years of our relationship at Baycare Ballpark, which, as you know, is the current home of the Phillies organization in Clearwater. The Phillies led the Grapefruit League in percentage of paid attendance. We had 106 percent capacity, so percentage of paid capacity, and we also had the highest single attended game in the Grapefruit League this year. So this is a relationship that has been nurtured for generations from yourselves, from your predecessors, and it will continue with the renewal of their lease, which expires in 2028 for an additional 20 years until 2047, which will have kept the Phillies continuously operating in Pinellas County for 100 years. And I'm very, very hopeful that I can make it to see that day, because that will be a very, very special day. But you are laying the groundwork to continue that proven success and that commitment and that dedication to nurturing that very special relationship with not just the Phillies organization, but with the entire Philadelphia community, that entire multi-state area, whether it's Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland. They're committed to us, and we're committed to them. These are some statistics on the historical funding. The ask today, you can see in the second part of the slide. Either way, whatever direction you provide today, the total commitment from the county in the entire 80-year history will add up to less than $100 million. As you know, the city of Clearwater commissioned an economic impact study which analyzed historic data over the last 20 years, so not speculative data, but actual economic data, and found that the Phillies have an economic impact of about $80 million per year going forward and on a going forward basis over the next 20 years based on that historic data. So that is a $1.6 billion minimum economic impact over the next 20 years based on the historic performance of this asset and of this relationship. So essentially, whatever funding level of TDC funding, tourist development dollars that you commit today, will be recouped in the first year of the renewed lease in 2028-2029. This is the marketing assets. As you know, the Phillies provide significant marketing assets to visit St. Pete Clearwater. That total was about $587,650 recently. In 2021, that contractual obligation to provide those assets ceased, but the Phillies continue to do it anyway because it was the right thing to do and because it's mutually beneficial for the Phillies to encourage and to continue to encourage the promotion of visit St. Pete Clearwater. They work very closely with Mr. Lowak and your consultants on updating those assets, making sure those assets are oriented to the things that you want to promote and that we want to demonstrate to the market about visit St. Pete Clearwater. And you're very familiar with those assets and you've seen a lot of those assets in your one-on-one meetings. And you've also seen them in practice when you visited Philadelphia. You've seen the folks who come here for the Phillies and their recognition of everything we have to offer as a community and their deep appreciation for everything we have to offer as a community. That's why you have thousands of people who get second homes here, who retire here from that market. That's also why it's no coincidence that Philadelphia is the number one feeder market in hotel revenue for Pinellas County. This is a slide that was presented to the TDC, I believe last month or maybe February. And you can see there, Philadelphia doubles the revenue from any other major market except New York City. And it's still about a quarter more revenue from Philadelphia than from New York City. So even though it's the fourth largest market in the United States, it's still the number one market by far for Pinellas County. And that's not, that's simply not a coincidence. It just shows that that seed that was planted in 1947 has grown into this incredibly, incredibly beneficial relationship. I want to make it very clear for the public, and you all know this well, the money that you're talking about today is tourism development dollars that come from tourists overnight stays as a tax on tourism. It is not ad valorem property tax dollars. Not one penny of ad valorem property tax dollars is coming from Pinellas County to this project, and nor did it in 2004. That figure that you saw before was all TDT money. Not one penny is going to the Philadelphia Phillies. This is going to the city of Clearwater for their asset to renovate and bring up to date through 2047 this asset for an A-plus tenant, the Philadelphia Phillies. So this is all part of the lease renewal with the city of Clearwater. I also want to make it clear, not one piece of public property is being transferred or conveyed to the Phillies. The Phillies actually invested in the southern portion of that shopping center to the tune of 22 and a half million dollars, which is a key activity center corner under the U.S. 19 plan to activate that corner as a mixed-use development consistent with the U.S. 19 plan. So not only will the continuity, the renewal of this relationship benefit from a tourism perspective, but it will also benefit from an activation and revitalization perspective for this key activity center corner on Drew Street and U.S. 19 for the city of Clearwater, and we hope will act as a catalyst to redevelop other portions of that key activity center corner as well. You will not be able to read this, but it is available in your packets. This is the aerial site plan, and every box that you see there is tied to a key project component that is part of the term sheet that we've been negotiating with Administrator Burton and City Manager Poirier and your teams. Each one of these aspects of the project is laid out in a detailed narrative and also has a specific budget. So you will be able to see that when we get to the term sheet. Some of the fan amenities that you can see here are the video board replacement, replacing the field lights, larger concourse, upgrade to the West Plaza, expand and enhance concessions, entirely new fan seating, center field fan deck, which I'll show you in a minute, retail store expansion, which I know is very important to some folks because it is very difficult to get into that store during spring training. There are long, long lines to get into that store. Center field restrooms and new service to the berm, the diamond dugout restrooms upgrades, an enclosing first base club area, and the suite hallway, addition to the south and west fan servicing elevators, refresh suite interiors and home plate concessions, and upgrade grounds crew area wayfinding signage. So I've got some aerials here. This is the aerial looking at the left field corner on the third baseline. You can see that the playground and the picnic area has been expanded and moved actually to the east of the concessions and the Frenchy's Tiki bar. That Frenchy's Tiki bar is staying put, but it is going to be expanded, so it's going to increase its footprint and increase its access. That picnic area and playground area will also allow for greater ingress, egress. As you know, that area gets congested during the spring training games. We're adding concessions there to the left where the current playground is and also some additional fan amenities in that area. This is the batter's eye, which you know exists today, but what we're going to do is we're going to put outfield restrooms on the bottom floor behind it and then we're going to put a fan amenity area above it, which will be a really unique feature and will really activate that batter's eye, which right now is kind of dead space unless you're trying to hit a fastball. So that will be another innovative fan amenity that we are providing as part of this project. This slide is looking from carpenters complex on the left you can see that playground area and that picnic area and then behind that that facade would be the concession area and then this is a image of the player development area and expanded administrative area. That concludes my presentation. I want to thank express my deep sincere gratitude to Administrator Burton, City Manager Poirier, all of you County Commissioners, Don Crowell, Mayor Rector, all of the City Council members, because you all have been actively involved in understanding and participating in nurturing this relationship and really being involved as leaders to ensure that this relationship will continue for decades to come through the 100th anniversary of the team here in the City of Clearwater. So that concludes our presentation. I very much appreciate your consideration and looking forward to getting some direction on the TDT portion of the funding so we can finalize the term sheet here with Mr. Burton and City Manager Poirier and your teams. Thank you. Brian, thank you. Before we go to,
staff's going to have a small presentation as well. Before we do that, does anybody have any questions on the presentation that Brian just gave us? Yes, Vince. Thank you, Chair. Brian, you said that the
contract ended, but Philly continued to keep paying that advertisement or something. What was that
amount? Yeah, so the Phillies were contractually obligated under the original funding agreement to provide roughly $587,000 in marketing assets to promote Visit St. Pete Clearwater. That ended in 2021, but we continued to do it and continue to do it. And we won't have a contractual obligation to do it even with this deal until 2028 because the current deal doesn't expire until 2028. So we're going to continue to do that for seven years. And that value as of today is $650,000. So today we're providing that value for free and we're continuing to work directly with Mr. Lowak and his team in a very collaborative way. And I think you've seen the commercials and stuff. They're really well done. They're very, very good. And that comes from the expertise of your local team in what we really want to promote to the Philadelphia market. Thank you. Thank you.
Any other questions? What's the dollar breakdown on the fan enjoyment piece versus the, you know, facilities? Just give me a rough idea like of the... It's about half. About half. Half going for fan enjoyment, half going for development of facilities. Yes, sir. Non-related to the fan experience. Correct.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I noticed this year I went to a game or two and noticed that there were some improvements already, like a scoreboard that wasn't there last year. Did the team pay for that and how much improvements cost-wise have been made already to the stadium and who paid for it?
Yes, Commissioner. Thank you for that question. That's an excellent question. And the answer is yes. So again, showing the excellence exuded by the Phillies and their commitment and their partnership with this community. The Phillies have already started this project even without having a a lease renewal. So we've put in about $49 million already into this project. So this project has already completed phase one. It's ongoing. And you've seen the berm structural improvement, which was something that was a structural engineering thing that needed to be done. But that berm is incredibly popular. It's very accessible. It's not an expensive ticket even for spring training. People love that area. Fourth of July, it's just an excellent, excellent area. And you've seen the scoreboard. You've seen the batter's eye. So a significant number of things have already started. And the Phillies have fronted all of those costs with no reimbursement or anything like that. The other thing that we need to remember, too, is that the stadium did flood from Alligator Creek after Hurricane Milton from the rain. And that did cause about $7 or $8 million in damage. And the Phillies have fronted those costs as well. Now, obviously, there'll be insurance claims and things like that. But the Phillies went ahead and took care of all that so that they were spring training ready for 2025, which they were. And that spring training was, of course, a huge success, as they all are. So, yes. Thank you, sir.
The just looking back on on on the last two years, as the storm, the memories of the storm fade, people are still working to get their places fixed up. And I just really wanted to publicly thank the the organization for how they stepped up the month after the storms, because, again, people were doing, you know, we were all kind of scrambling, trying to figure out what next. And they were at the ready and came to the assistance to some degree with our residents. And I think that's I think that's notable. And so just to
your comment, Mr. Chair, if I could just on that note, the Phillies did donate a million dollars to the Amplify Clearwater Hope Recovery Fund, which was matched. And that went directly to local businesses and homeowners who could not afford their repairs. So and again, that had nothing to do with this. It was just the right thing to do. And Mr. Middleton himself came down, you know, to present that check to Amplify, which, again, just shows, you know, what a great, great partner
they have been talks about the community and how important that is as well. So thank you. Thank you, sir. I'm not I'm not seeing any other questions. There's a couple. I'm sorry, Commissioner and
Commissioner. Goodness. Go ahead. So and I know I talked to you and I talked to the Phillies back when I was chairman. So it's a long time ago now about when we invest with TDT dollars that we should look at in particularly North County, how those investments can be made as an asset during emergency management. And since you brought up the storm, I wanted to bring that up because it's my understanding you're making changes that could then make that an asset to Clearwater and or the county. We're utility staff that don't have a safe place to be if we get 20 inches of rain could possibly be there and could quickly be executed into the community once the storm passes. Could you talk about that? Because you didn't talk about that. And you're really like the first ones that have if you if we give this, you would be the first ones that are following up on that kind of a commitment to provide an extra asset to the community during emergency management. Commissioner again,
thank you so much for that question. And also for your leadership on that issue. We know that that has been something that's been incredibly important for you to have that resiliency and that emergency operations ability for for response. And so this Southwest building, I don't know if you all can see it. I'm got my pointer here for the commissioners on the rear screen. This Southwest building is is designed to house emergency response, whether it's linemen, whether whoever it needs to be during a hurricane and is being built with resiliency and redundancy in mind, particularly from the lessons that we learned over here from the flooding over here after Hurricane Milton. And this the stadium itself is already obligated to be a staging area for the city and is utilized, I believe, by Duke and others for staging now. And that will obviously continue. But the ability to actually physically house people and to keep them safe and electricity and fed while they're out there doing that hard, hard work of of hurricane recovery will certainly be something that we provide.
So thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate it, because North County is short on assets. We're currently building a shelter and we just don't have that many assets up there in North County. So this this is a true community benefit in a whole nother way. So thank you. Thank you, Commissioner
Peters. Commissioner Flowers. Thank you. For earlier discussions, Barry, I don't know if you remember this. Um, one of the things that was presented to us was, um, the space where the players actually go where they're fed or whatever, um, um, during or after practice and whatnot, and that they needed some support or desire some support in that area to kind of enhance it. I didn't see that in the presentation.
Did I miss that? You can cover it. Yeah. Uh, so Matt, Madam Commissioner, thank you again for that. That is part of what we're doing, but, um, we've already kind of accommodated that with a, it's not really a temporary structure. It's, it's really like an industrial grade. They call it a tent, but it's, it's very permanent. It can be moved, but it requires almost like a military level of engineering to move it. Um, but that is part of the, of the project is the player development aspect, just like the blue Jays had. And, you know, the blue Jays were in the world series. Uh, and part of that starts here in Dunedin. It starts here in Dunedin. It really does. Um, so those things are all required by major league baseball to retain spring training teams. Um, there are certain requirements that have to be met and we're doing, we're meeting those requirements as part of this agreement. And that will again, allow major league baseball to allow the team to remain here for the next 20 years. So yes, thank you. That is part of it. And part of that has already been completed, but, uh, there will be some additional parts of that. And that's really this area here. Uh, so from this part, this part of this building is offices, and then you'll have some training and player development and cafeteria here. And then obviously this entire area, which is currently existing as carpenter complex is getting an upgrade. And this will be specifically a new baseball lab for the player development in that, in that respect. Thank you, ma'am.
Commissioner Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you very much, Brian. Good to see you this morning. Um, Commissioner Flowers partially asked, uh, asked my question. Um, but of the $49 million affiliates have already spent, um, is any of that on required MLB upgrades?
Yes. And that would be the batter's eye, for example. Um, and there were some other things, the lower level, right? About how much? I'm looking for help from the, uh, from the manager.
About $10 million. Is any of that, um, money that's already been spent envisioned to be for the Phillies to reimburse themselves from the, from the public ask?
It's a credit. It's a, it's a credit towards the 75 million that the Phillies are committing to put in. So of the 75 million they're committed to put in, they've put in 49, approximately 49.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you, Brian. Thank you all.
Good morning, commissioners. Um, so in rebuttal, no, actually, you know, this has been, this has been a very, um, uh, collaborative process. It really has been between the city, uh, between the Phillies and the county and, you know, everything that Brian, uh, just, uh, just presented, you know, we agree with the reason we're here is because the Phillies do, um, travel well and, and it is an economic engine, not just for Clearwater, but for all of Pinellas County. What we've provided you is is some comps and, you know, and, and we've had these conversations individually, uh, but we really needed, you needed to have this and discuss it as a board. There's many different thoughts individually as I've talked to, uh, talked to each of you and the Phillies have met with you, but you need to collaborate as a board and give direction to staff to where we can finish the term sheet. Uh, there are several key provisions that based upon the discussion today will enable us to go forward and do that. What I, what I put up here, as you can see, pick a facility around the country and each one of them has a different flavor and each one has a different commitment, not just in terms of capital outlays, uh, but then in who's operating the facility and the cost associated with that, the capex. Um, so we put, um, some of the slides up there that, that you can use for your deliberation, but what we really wanted to get to, and I asked Brian to come up is because of the impact that it has, um, as Brian previously shown for the economic impact. What's being requested, um, from the Phillies was $80 million from tourism development tax. As he stated, uh, the, the, there is a state grant of 20 million that'll be paid back a million a year. So the net present value is about 15 million. Um, and again, the team, uh, committing to 75 million of which 49 million already been spent, but they've also, um, as part of the agreement, will assume any cost of a rents associated with the project. That's very, um, uh, that's significant and needed because as you look at stadiums around the country, not many have come in under budget. They've typically come in over budget. So we did our own analysis and confirmed, um, the, uh, estimates of the team using, uh, one of our outside estimating firms. Um, so, but as you can see, and you can certainly ask Brian any, any questions, but you know, you can see it's not just the visitors that come during spring training. It's visitors that come year round because this becomes a destination part of their home. Um, and we, we do receive a significant, um, impact, uh, economically from, uh, our Philadelphia partners. Uh, the investment tourism tax will be not just for, uh, in the, in the form of that, but we'll get a return through the marketing piece and the marketing benefits. Again, all of this has been presented. You can read that at your leisure. Um, but what we need, you know, direction from today is they've asked for $80 million. How much of that are you willing to commit? Um, we've also asked, uh, for a marketing term as, as they said, it was, it used to be 500 and some odd thousand dollars. We've asked for 850,000 in annual marketing assets, but we've also asked for a 3% escalator to where the marketing dollars 20 years from now, um, are, are based upon the market cost at that time. Um, and so we, we have also requested that to be part of the term sheet and those are be happy to answer any questions. Brian's here with me. Um, but you've heard this before. And so with that, that ends our presentation. Thank you. Um, any questions for
staff before we kind of get into our, I have some questions. Go ahead. Commissioner Shearer.
Uh, yeah. Uh, Brian, the, um, you have in here the 380,000 total visitors from Philadelphia. How long do they usually stay for? Uh, two to three days, four days. I don't have a good answer for
that commissioner. Um, if you give me some more time, I drill down to it, but I don't have one
for you right now. I just, I was looking at some of these numbers and they, they look very low to me. Uh, $300 million in annual economic impact divided by four nights or divided by the number of visitors. It's like $789 that a person would spend on their trip here. I don't know how they would do that in three nights. I'm just, it just seems very low. Uh, $780 is like $197 a night. That's, that's extremely low. I, I would think to people are, if people were just spending a thousand, I'm just trying to, my numbers are right. People spent a thousand dollars while they were here on hotel rooms, tips for their valet, the beer, 12 pack for the room. They're going to be well over a thousand bucks in four days, you know, that's what I'm seeing. I just, I think at least a thousand dollars, that would be $380 million in impact. If they spend $1,200, you know, you're talking 475 million. Those, that $380,000 number is huge. So I just thought that was low because anyway, um, uh, I wanted to ask you on the, the Brian for the, I mean, uh, Barry for the, uh, TDC dollars, what do we have on hand in cash and what are we projecting in the next year? I mean, we're going to have to write a big check. I don't know what the
we have sufficient cash and reserves to be able to cover this using cash. We don't need to bond it. Um, and, and that is even with the, um, look after doing the beach nourishment. Yeah. I mean, we can go through this in detail, but looking at all, all of the projects, you know, even after we drill down, pay for the, uh, the cost of the, um, uh, beach nourishment and everything, we still have sufficient reserves. Okay. I was just trying to get a handle on what
we'd have left after the, this year and next year, if we, we fund this in 27, right?
Well, no, it would be actually paid out over a couple of years. Um, part, so this was going to be an, a non-binding term sheet. Okay. Uh, the term sheet will generally outline, uh, the project. We will come back to you with definitive documents later after they complete the design, but they don't want to go forward with their detailed design unless they have a commitment. Um, and so part of that would be on the constructability review and what type of phasing they're going to do for building, do the renovations. And so you'd probably do it over two years. Okay. So we'd have one, one year and another draw the second year. We're going to set that through a construction funds, trust agreement that then we'll, we'll handle all of the dollars. So it'll be a perfectly distributed based upon project outcomes. All right. I'm good. Thank you,
Mr. Flowers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So total, total costs for the project. Total, total costs, the team's money, our money, city clear water money, total costs for the project.
205 million is the estimate. Um, the, and again, the, the city council hasn't discussed that yet. So that's what they're, but that's a general, um, what they're looking at based on what they're
asking of from us. What is your recommendation that we, I didn't put a recommendation in probably
one of the first times I haven't. And that's, that's kind of the reason that we, we did the presentation the way we did. And, and the reason for that is because you, you all have had direct discussions on this and, and there's many different thoughts amongst you. So I wanted to hear the debate today. What the team's requested is 80. Um, obviously I'm your administrator, so I negotiate, right. Um, you know, and always want, you know, the best deal possible, but, um, but that really is a policy call and how much, how much you choose to put forward in the project, both on terms of
the, the item, what you want out from marketing. The reason I'm asking is because if the team's doing 75 million, the request from us is 80. And then I believe up on the screen, I saw the 20 million from the state. It only gets us to 175 million of a $205 million project. Am I missing
a number other than the city of Clearwater? Well, that's the final number is the city of Clearwater and they have, they're going to take that up at a future city council meeting.
Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chair. So estimated at 205 and anything above 205, uh, is on the,
on the Phillies? Correct. Uh, commissioner, uh, well, they depend upon the, how much you provide. Understand. But whatever, whatever we provide will be capped. Okay. The same way with the city.
Commissioner Latval. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. That, uh, pretty much, uh, answered my question. My question was going to be, what was their total ask from, uh, in terms of public dollars between the county and, um, the city? Uh, I have heard that it was 115. Um, but then I guess you add in the state dollars, um, which also goes to the city, correct?
It does. It comes in. So the city's going to have to front that, um, and then get paid back a million dollars a year. So, you know, so it's $20 million. Net present value is about 15 million.
And then net present value is real. So it's amazing. It is. Right. Price the money. Yeah. Um, and so, uh, again, I think one of the things that we're going to talk about is the, the escalator. Um, and I, you know, just from my perspective, um, one of the things that, uh, gave me heartburn on a previous deal that we were working on was the amount of ad valorem tax dollars that the county or the city, uh, residents of a particular city south of here was going to have to pay. So that bothered me that it was so high that, um, we, we had, we were significant contributors to that deal. So for me, just from the deal that I'm, you know, that I'm looking at, um, less ad valorem tax dollars are good in my mind for this residents of Clearwater, which are also residents of our, of our, of our county. So it's not just city versus county. Um, so from my perspective, you know, I'd like to see a little bit more flexibility there, but at the same time, I'd like to see the Phillies step up on the 3% escalator and maybe from a lower starting point than eight 50, maybe it's a six 50, seven 50 number, but see that regular escalator because the value that we're seeing, we just talked about, you know, that 15 million versus 20 million it's real. And so if we don't get any escalator going out, the value that we're getting is not the same. So, but I would appreciate maybe a, a, a, a lower starting point than the eight 50 for the escalator. Maybe it's more like six because we weren't, they weren't required to do that for the last several years. In my mind, some compromise on that starting point makes some sense. And then the escalator also makes some sense. And it's their piece of the pie that we're, we're getting from them while we're maybe doing a little bit more on the ad valorem, excuse me, on our contribution versus city of Clearwater. Just a general thought that's, I just wanted to throw it out there for, not for you. That's, that's, that's the reason we're here is to get that type of board
direction. So, uh, just good with that. We'll put our presentation and sit down and you can. Yeah. So I
think questions are, are done on the, on the presentation. Did you have a quick, okay, go
ahead, commissioner Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, so Brian on the $850,000, uh, annual marketing ask that was, how do you feel about that? Cause didn't we start the conversation
higher than that? Yeah, I, I, uh, we feel strong with that $850,000, uh, annual, um, marketing contribution so long as it has that 3% escalator in there. Um, and I think the $850,000, uh, $850,000 is, you know, in discussions with the teams, um, they, they feel the $850,000 is a good number. It's just that escalator where, um, we may disagree. Thank you. Any other questions,
uh, or, I mean, they're not going anywhere. So if we, in our, in our discussions and dialogue, if we want to ask them any questions, of course we can do that. Um, I'd like to have all the questions directed at Barry and, and Brian. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. Um, so again, I think in an effort to kind of give that direction, uh, not only to staff, uh, to finish out our side of it, but also to the Phillies, the city of Clearwater, I think it's incumbent upon us to maybe provide some of that direction today. It's not that we have to, but I think it's healthy for us to do that. Um, and so I told you kind of just some general thoughts on my, from my perspective, I think less property tax dollars is good. We're having visitors pay more. I think that's a good thing. Um, and, um, we have a, a good partner at the table. Um, I think having an escalator on the, on the, on the advertising makes total sense to me. Uh, I think maybe starting a little different spot. I mean, I understand Brian's comment on that, but again, we've, we've been doing pretty good the last four or five years where it wasn't actually required. Um, so maybe a lower starting point, 3% escalator, um, maybe 85 million on the, on the TDC money. Um, and that would bring Clearwater in closer to 30 million, at least the way I'm doing numbers and maybe my maths off, but I'm also talking 15 million on the state. It's not 20 is 15 today's numbers. So, um, just kick it around. So any thoughts
from the commission? Any, um, yes, commissioner. Thank you, Mr. Chair. As the, uh, other single member commissioner who represents Clearwater, I wholeheartedly agree with you that the less, uh, tax burden we can give to the residents of Clearwater, um, and put it on our tourists, the better, um, and, uh, using our, uh, bed tax dollars, uh, for this project. Um, I agree with and so I support the, um, doing, uh, uh, 85 and if the math is correct, uh, 85 from the county and 30 from the city. Um, and so I support that, uh, as for the escalator, I, uh, you know, whatever the
board wants to do, I'm fine with. Yeah. Thank you, chair. Um, as I said, I, I think the economic benefits are greater than they're, they're outlined here. Um, also, uh, on the, on the, um, advertising, when I first started evaluating this over a year ago, I, I saw the advertising dollars. I was like, well, that's a benefit that people weren't talking about. And I did ask, uh, Brian Lowak to try and get more. And he did, uh, and moving up to 850 is a big number to move. I was really happy to see that. And then the escalator on top of that's great. And I understand what you're saying about coming in lower and then adding, getting the, uh, accelerator in there, the CPI or whatever they're using, but I don't like to take money off the table. So I, I like that 850. I'd rather, but you know, I, that's just my idea. Just leave it. I, I'm pretty happy with the deal that they've negotiated because it's a big increase and it does have an escalator after 29, 20, 29. So, uh, also on the dollar itself, any chance we get to use the TDD, TDC dollars, in lieu of, uh, property tax money, I think just helps our affordability, uh, problem and Penelope County. And so I'm, I'm, I'm for using more TDC dollars and, and then it's proposed. So 85 might be the number, but I'm, I'm in favor of that. So, and then, uh, just, uh, the other benefits, you know, I, I toward the, we have the emergency quarters coming up, which is great. I mean, I think that would be great. The emergency facilities. And, you know, I did a lot of, I toured the facilities a couple of times and looked at the plans and I, I, I'm comfortable with the costs of the project as a whole. So that's where I am on it.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, a hundred percent agree, um, with Commissioner Scheer on, uh, the 850 number. Uh, I don't think we should back off of that at all. And I think we need to make sure that we get that three percent escalator in there as well. Um, I absolutely believe in the, in the Phillies partnership and that the county needs to be at the table and part of these discussions. It's just at what level that I'm comfortable with the, I want to do this in a way that honors the partnership with Phillies, but also respects the taxpayers, whoever those taxpayers are, wherever the money's coming from, whether the TDC, whether it's the city or whether it's the state, because I don't believe that a state, local or federal taxpayer are three different, are three different people. So when this conversation started, we were at 40 million and now we're at 80 and maybe 80, 85 million. And, and I was on board as this escalated up until about, we got north of 65 million because then I started looking at the numbers and what's the breakdown between public and private money. And that's where I'm a little challenged with this, because I always believe that something like this, that public dollars should be the last dollars in. And that's the way that we approach any type of grants that we do, whether it's employment sites program, whether that's capital funding, whether that's elite funding, whatever it is, we're always the cherry on the top. We're not the base, we're not the base of the cake. So what's being proposed right now has with the county in it at 80 and the city at 35 and the state at 15, that is 63.4% public money and 36.6% private money. That's, that's a challenge for me. I always feel that we should be the last dollars in or at least pretty darn close to 50, 50, because that's where we were with, with the raise. Now, if you put a credit back into that for the value that we're going to get, assuming it's 3% adjusted for visit St. Pete Clearwater over 22 years, and that comes into just under $25 million in advertising value, that's still 58.4% public and 41.6% private. So I'm, I'm still, I'm still just, I'm just challenged with that. I'm just, you know, just bringing this up and I just kind of want to want to talk through this. So I started kind of looking for some, some objective criteria of how do you value a spring, a spring training game. And you know, what we did last year with our capital funding projects for TDC is TDC made a recommendation and then we all got lobbied like crazy for, you know, this group should have more money. We think this group should have more money over here. And we asked Brian and his team to go back, go back and come up with a, with a different, more objective process based on measurable metrics that takes emotion and politics out of it as much as could be possible. So we approved a new set of standards for capital funding. In our meeting last, what, two weeks ago, we approved new criteria for elite funding as well, elite event funding. So that got me thinking about looking at a spring training game as an elite event. And if we looked at a spring training game that way, how would we fund that? And we've got five categories for, for elite event funding. The top is, is $250,000. And there's only two events to get that. And that's the Firestone Grand Prix and Valspar that takes place over, over multiple days. And you got to have 40,000 attendees for that. 40% of them need to be tourists. You got to have 500,000 broadcast views, et cetera, et cetera. And that's up to 250,000. So spring training game, you know, wouldn't qualify for that. And then you got on a category three and it's 15,000 attendees. Well, spring training game would almost qualify for that, but that's up to 75,000. Well, then criteria number two is 40,000 attendees, which a spring training game doesn't meet, but 250,000 broadcast views, which it does. So I just took that number of up to $150,000. And if we applied $150,000 to every spring training game over 20, over 20 years, okay, that's 16 games a year, let's say that's 312 games, that comes up to $48 million, which is not too far from where this conversation started and a number that I was very comfortable with. If you inflation adjust that number at 3% a year, it comes up to basically $65 million, which is a number that I was also comfortable with. And if we applied that number, $65 million to this and gave the credit to visit St. Pete Clearwater, $25 million in advertising, that gets a split of 50.1% on the public side and 49.9% on the private side. That's the number that I'm comfortable with. We get north of that and then I'm not quite so comfortable. So I just want to kind of put that out there just for thought.
Thank you. Anybody else? Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I mean, I'm supportive of a less burden on the ad valorem, you know, property taxpayer. And so, I mean, without really knowing, you know, how much actual cash, you know, we have on hand, if we're very flush, I mean, you know, why stop at 85, maybe go to 90 in support of not having a burden on resident taxpayers, put it more of a burden on the tourists. So I would be 100% in favor of, you know, 90 million. Anything we can do to reduce the tax burden on local residents, you know, as Commissioner Scheer says, you know, you said, Chair, I mean, I think that's, you know, what we should be exploring. And, you know, in terms of the escalator, you know, I would be okay with an escalator if we start at the point where we credit three million dollars that they've already paid over the last, you know, four or five years that they weren't required to pay. I mean, which would probably be like 20 plus years of them not having to pay the escalator, because they've already paid, you know, three million dollars that they weren't required to pay. So I'd be, you know, in favor of an escalator once they're credited the three million that they weren't required to pay, but have been paying. So I'm in favor, you know, whether it's 85, 90, anything we can do to reduce the burden for the ad form taxpayer, I'm in favor of. And then in terms of the raise deal, I mean, I was under the impression that it was a third from the city, a third from the county, and a third from the team, not a 50-50 split.
Barry, do you know? It was a 50-50 split, well, roughly. The team took on anything above the 50%, which it escalated while we were in negotiations. But it was 50-50, us in the city, and 50% team.
Okay. But then they took on all CapEx. So similar like CapEx, like with this cost overruns in this deal. That's correct. They took on all cost overruns, and that is the same with the Phillies deal. And then what was the marketing contributing from the raise? How much were they?
Brian, do you remember? We have a marketing agreement with them,
but I really don't recall. I don't know the answer to that.
Okay. Yeah, so I mean, I'm in favor. I mean, I would be in favor of going up to 90 to take the taxpayer burden off the table. So if we're flush with a lot of cash, you know, I don't know why we wouldn't put more of the burden on tourists versus the taxpayers, especially, you know, we're facing any possible, you know, things from the state, you know, with reducing property taxes, I think it's more incumbent to put the burden on tourists than our local residents. So that's where I stand, Chair. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay.
Since we're talking about my least favorite subject, I wanted to chime in. On the raise deal, weren't they getting a land deal separate that wasn't part of what St. Pete was contributing as well as infrastructure improvements that were like $125 million from the city taxpayers? The land deal by itself was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The development deal? Yeah, the development deal. So that, I mean, it wasn't exactly a 50-50 split. Um, I mean, in all honesty, if it was just, you know, 300 million from the city and 300 million from the county, which that wasn't really truthful because we had to bond it. So after we bonded it, it was close to a billion. So to say that it was just a 50-50 split, I don't think is completely accurate. Um, on paper, it was a 50-50 split, but once you dig deeper, um, you know, I would say that it wasn't so much. That's why I opposed, um, the raise deal. And I opposed it for the same reasons that, uh, Chair Eggers did, was because the residents of St. Pete were getting hosed, uh, especially on their ad valorem, uh, taxes and other fees.
Any other thoughts? Um, you know, just in having the conversation today, we have, it looks like we have four, at least four that have spoken in favor of, of more, more TDT dollars than the 80 million that's on the table, um, in deference to our ad valorem taxpayers of Clearwater. Um, I'm not saying that that's where we're going to finish. I'm just saying that's kind of what I'm just, the numbers, one of the four suggested 90, um, and three were, uh, suggesting the 85 million. Um, I think everybody seems to be on board with an escalator. Um, a couple of us talked about the, some, some kind of recognition of the, like the last four or five years, uh, you talked about a credit. I talked about maybe a, uh, a little, uh, lower starting point. Uh, the escalator is real, and I think it's really important for us. Um, and I think it's, it makes the value of, of that package, um, well, stand on its own. It's really what we should do. Um, so I think maybe that starting point is little, um, in flux. Uh, we had, uh, a couple of people that talked about that. We talked about it specifically. Uh, you were a little bit open on it. Um, and Commissioner Shearer, you were okay with the, with that number?
I'm happy with the advertising numbers the way they are. The way they are now.
I'd rather not reduce them or take your money off. Start 850 in 2028. That's what we're talking about, right? Yeah. 850 in 2028. Um, and so that, I mean, I, I think we're a little bit all over the board on that, on the escalator piece, just, just differences here. Um, but I, I, I think we're kind of moving in the direction of, well, at least four of us moving in the direction of, of more TDT dollars. Mr. Chair.
Yes. Um, you can add me to that. That's comfortable with more TDT dollars.
More TDT dollars. So we have five more TDT dollars. Um, a couple, uh, still kind of mulling things around. I'm not, I'm not going to put words in the mouth. Commissioner Scott, you spoke, uh, to your point. Um, and, um, can we give any more thought and just, again, we'll just pause for a minute, take a deep breath. Uh, if we're not prepared to today, that's, that's okay. But, uh, can we talk a little bit more to the, the advertising? I think I'd like to hear more, a little bit more from staff about the advertising since 2021, when they were not required to do it, what we've been collecting since then, what we are supposed to be collecting from now to the start of the new contract in 2028. So we can just see what that number is. Um, and then, and then the, the deal on the table starting at 850 in 2028 with escalator. So maybe we could just do that
summary again. So, you know, I have, I asked Brian to come up on that because, you know, he can really speak to that, but let me just start by saying that that's jointly beneficial, right? They're, they're marketing their team and, and they're marketing, you know, themselves and, and obviously it promotes our market. Okay. So it's, it's jointly beneficial to that, but Brian speak, speak to that and how do you got to your recommendation?
Yeah. Uh, if you're asking me to do math up here, that's a, that's a bad question. Uh, so, um, when the last agreement expired, uh, last payment was made in 2021, um, after that ended, the Phillies continued to provide those, uh, marketing deliverables. Um, so we, uh, up to this point, an additional three years of those at the 650, the, the latest, um, value on those assets was about 650,000, um, annually. So for three years that was provided. Um, what we talked about moving forward was continuing that, uh, and starting that advertising. Uh, we've worked very closely with the Phillies team, um, to already produce, um, what we would use for 2026, uh, assets and the thought process on how we structured this, um, is that every year we wanted to leave it open and broad because every year, um, assets are going to change opportunities are going to change the way we market to people change. So we meet every year annually, talk about what worked, what do we want to, what do we want to do differently? Are you, are the Phillies willing to do something that maybe we, we haven't thought of yet? And so that's why we did it the way that we, that we did. And I think we came, um, to that number. One of the things that, that we, we wanted, we don't have as a billboard, uh, in the outfield wall and they simply don't have the, the real estate for those. Um, you can only, you can only have so many billboards in the wall and right now those are all taken up. Those are multi-year deals. So that just wasn't an option. And so, uh, when we thought about where we, uh, what, what we wanted to get in advertising value, um, that consideration was made and that 850
is where we came to 850 is where you came to for what year? I mean, just for the starting point in
2028, the starting point in 2026, what we proposed was that it would start in 2026. Okay. So what we've been getting those is the 650 value. Three, the three, the previous three years, um, we did not. Yes. That was what you're saying is that they built the green monster out
there. We'd have room to put a sign up. I don't know the MLB rules. Okay. And, but you know, and commissioner real estate is what I was getting at. Just understand that was a compromised amount.
Okay. They started higher. They, they wanted 1.1 million. Okay. Right. And, and, and so that was a, that, that was a modified amount and was negotiated and, and agreed upon the 850, the 850 for 2026.
Correct. But escalator was not discussed in part of the escalator was discussed. The Phillies
disagreed with that, with the escalator. Um, we don't, it has what you agreed on was the 850. Correct. Not, nothing beyond that. Nothing beyond that. And just so, just to put it in dollars and cents. Okay. Over a 20 year period, that's about a $5 million. No, it's a big number. Yeah. That's why,
that's why my thought about backing off the 850 to start makes some sense. Cause with that escalator, you really get caught. You catch up pretty doggone quickly, at least in value. That, that was my only, my only thought on it. It's not, this negotiation is not going very well up here. No, I'm, I'm, we've, we've been at this for a while guys. Well, we haven't. I know. So we're, we're, we're, we're kind of coming into it right now. So, but the wrong way. Yeah. Well, that's your thought. Um, any, any other thoughts on? Yeah. Just, just one final
thought. I just wanted to be clear on my comments earlier. I'm not questioning at all the value of the partnership with the Phillies. It's just, it's just for me, it's the value of the spend and the, the split between public and private dollars. I absolutely agree that TDC dollars are better spent than ad valorem tax dollars. But I think what really makes this deal better for me is more private dollars, just not more public dollars. So I just wanted to be really clear on that, on that point. And I also think that, you know, the public is wary of big subsidies for professional sports teams and in an environment that we have right now with affordability that, you know, the, the timing of this isn't good timing of it's probably never good, but you know, with $5 gallon gas prices and the affordability problems that we've been having, it's just the optics of it are not good. So that's all. Thank you. Any other closing thoughts? Um,
well, it sounds to me like, um, at least you have some direction on 85 million, Barry. Uh, it seems like we have four, four of us, four of us have said 85. One of us said 90. Um, what's that?
I would support 85 too. Okay. No, no, I understand. I just wanted to, yeah, there's,
there's five of us that would support the 85. 85 and what about on the escalator for the,
I think the escalator, we're seem to be chair. I just want to be clear. I'm, I'm good on 85. If it's a equal reduction to the amount that Clearwater has to kick in. Correct. I don't want to extra five floating around. Yeah, it would be that the city would read, right.
I just want to be clear. It's got to be, I mean, it would come off the city side, not off the Philly side. No, I totally agree. Okay. Um, and I think the escalator is something that we all feel pretty strongly about. And it sounds to me like we, the idea of starting with the 850 in 2028 with the escalator seems to have some legs here. I'm not, I, I'm not quite sure how to point to it. I mean, I'm not saying everybody. Well, um, I'll put it in the term sheet. And if you,
you mean, if you want to start the escalator in 28 and, uh, and have the base amount in 26, um, that's, that's a compromise. I mean, um, I'll bring that back to the Phillies. I'll bring it back in the term sheet. We'll, we'll have that back to you in a few weeks and you can make the decision.
You talk about having a base of the 650 for three years and then starting at 850 in 26. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's a compromise. I know. Well, well, what's the compromise? I mean, I mean, I know how we got to where we, I got, but I'm saying, where are you compromising now? On the 28 and starting the escalator in 28. Oh, starting the escalator. Okay. That's what I wanted to hear. Okay. Very good. Um, I'm not, I'm not hearing pushback on that. So that's kind of where we're going to land at this point. Thank you very much. Thank you. In our, thank you. And in our, um, effort to, um, move our facilities to Olmerton and Alt 19, there are a number of facilities here, a number of pieces of land here in downtown Clearwater that, um, would be made available, uh, to sell. And, um, and so here we're going to talk a little bit about the disposition of those properties. We're also going to talk about, um, taking a pause in April to get more resident input. I just, just for the record, we did do a, uh, uh, city of Clearwater did do a Clearwater visioning session, not too long ago. When I say that I'm thinking a couple of years ago, but I don't know exactly when, where they got apparently lots of input from the public about how that plan stacks up. So I'd like to maybe hear a little bit about that. Um, and we're going to, so we're going to talk a little bit about that aspect as well. Talk to our folks from CBRE about the process that we're going through and some other additional thoughts that they may have on this. So with that, I'll turn it over to Blaine to get us kicked off here. Thank you, Chair. Good morning, Commissioner, staff,
public. Uh, we have a team from CBRE here led by Leanne Korst and I'll let her introduce them.
Thank you, Blaine, Leanne Korst. I lead our, um, Southeast region government practice. And with me here today, last time I was here, Barry said it's just Leanne. So, uh, I brought the rest of the team up today. And, uh, we have Kelly Matheson. Uh, Kelly is a Pinellas County resident. And so she's here in our local Tampa office. Uh, Roman Dacari is next to her. He's also part of our government practice, specializing in economic development and large scale redevelopment projects. And Robert Shaw, who many of you already, uh, most of you already know, he is the owner's representative for our
government campus. Thank you, Leanne. Thank you all for being here. Uh, so I'd like to start the presentation, uh, talking about the goals. Uh, if we could advance that slide. Oh, okay. Okay. Thank you. So, uh, Chair Eggers alluded to this in his introductory remarks, but, um, there are separate projects, but we have the new campus that is really driving this in, in a number of ways. One is that the new campus down in Olmerton at the ICOT site will be the space in which a lot of our employees, um, 1100 to be exact to that will be moving there. And we'll be vacating these spaces in downtown Clearwater. Uh, we have determined, our CBRE has determined in the past that we will avoid, taxpayers will avoid, um, 150 million dollars of maintenance expenses over the next 50 years if we were to stay here. So there's some, there's some fertile ground there for us to, to make that move. With the downtown Clearwater, the sale of the properties, uh, I think from the beginning, it was always hoped that there would be, uh, a significant amount of revenue generated to help offset the cost of that new campus and thereby decrease the burden on the taxpayers to, for the resulting debt service. So in doing so and partnering with CBRE, who has, uh, done this very same process in many different cities, um, we wanted to not be overly prescriptive in soliciting developers to come in here, make sure that it makes sense financially and for them to bring some creative ideas about how to redevelop downtown. Um, and these goals that you have up here aren't necessarily in order of priority. We hope to accomplish all of these, but I start with that one because that's where we started with the new campus and we have talked to, uh, elected officials. We've talked to staff, we've talked to folks in the public and we have heard hopes and concerns about this project. And one thing that those hopes and concerns have in common is that downtown Clearwater be activated, that there'd be activity down there, uh, taking cues from the Clearwater 2045 plan that, uh, Chair Eggers reference and elected officials that there be a mixed use, uh, people living downtown businesses, office space, uh, connecting to existing assets that the city of Clearwater have invested in. Uh, and so in all of that, that there be some activation of downtown. So that is one of the goals of this process in order to activate it, in order to assure there's accountability that the deal be structured such that when the commission is presented with, uh, these visions and you select one to, for us to negotiate with that, what is ultimately negotiated is actually built and not just built, but activated. So, so this is all, this is all, this all comes together in these goals. And then from the beginning, you know, in the hopes that taking these government properties, which aren't, uh, on the tax rolls and putting, uh, private, uh, uses there that there would be some additional tax monies, uh, raised in the near term, of course, mostly in the CRA and the CRA wears off in 2034. So there will be taxes coming back to the city and the county if that is not extended. So those, we start with this because this is what underpins the process and the structure that we've talked to, to this day. And on the right there, you can see that we have, uh, and, and Barry has been very, uh, has directed that we should listen. And we have talked to the city council and the mayor to hear about what their aspirations are for that redevelopment vision. And some of the presentations that we've given you are almost verbatim from what they wanted to see that it'd be activated, that it'd be connected, um, that there would be something for these visitors who come as the mayor said to the world's best beach and have something to do in days three through five. So this is what's undergirded everything up to this point. And this is something we want you to consider, uh, as we hear other folks, uh, hopes and aspirations for the future. This is what we're banking on right now. Can either one of you speak to that
item that I talked about is like 2040 plan that the city, uh, that would be great. Thank you.
Sure. We, uh, we don't have a slide prepared on it, but we have taken a, a fairly deep dive into it, um, to, to, to provide feedback. So, um, and really what we wanted to do is we took the feedback from the mayor and council. And as Blaine said, we mapped their priorities for the activation over into the request for negotiations, but then we also, and, and we looked at the 2445 plan before we did that, but we also just this past week went back and did a comparison. So basically the 2045 plan was adopted in January of 2024 and it has six chapters in it. Um, and the first one is quality of places, mobility, parks, and public places, conservation, and coastal management support services and plan implementation. So for example, under quality of places, and I I'd be happy to, to share the summary with you all, if you'd like, but under quality of places, um, you know, that we, we call for a transformational mixed use redevelopment, there's a strong emphasis on place making connectivity to coachman park, um, and active environments. And we talk about, uh, one of the, one of the items in that category is historic preservation and cultural identity. And we have a good alignment there as we talk about the historic courthouse preservation and adaptive reuse, um, economic vitality and tax base, um, focus on financial feasibility, tax base growth, uh, and mixed use vitality. And then, uh, I can go, I can go on down the list, but basically from those six chapters that I referenced, we have good or if not strong alignment on all but one and one, the one is support services. And, and that's because it focuses on the services like public safety that the city provides back to citizens. So of, so it's not applicable, but the other five, we have really good alignment with. Do you, do you remember seeing any,
any summary of the numbers of folks that came out and participated, or did that come up at all?
And I don't, I don't. And in fact, Blaine and I were just talking about better understanding the process by which the city undertook to, um, to come to the 2045 plan.
Yeah. Yeah. But we, that's one of the things we're going to talk about today is, is pausing and getting some community input, but I just want to make, get a feel for how, how much of that we've had, not that that would affect whether we're going to do that this month, but just that we're doing additional on top of what the city's already done. I'd like to have a feel for that at some point.
We can work with the city to understand what process they undertook. Yeah. Okay. Um, do you
have, you have more? Okay. Go ahead. Everybody. Okay. Oh, did you have something? I'm sorry.
I do, but it's going to be on the next slide. So I'll wait. Okay. Go ahead.
So, um, on this slide, it, it's a reflection of, of what Blaine just shared with the four goals on the previous page. Um, and with, with a public procurement, obviously we want to provide guidance to the respondent on what, how they will be scored, um, which establishes a level playing field, but also relay, uh, what is important to the county. So this evaluation criteria, again, follows the, the, the four goals on the previous page. And it's the framework that will be used by staff to initially score, um, the, the proposals. You will be, the board will be the final decision maker, but it's important that we vet the proposals that we do bring to you to make sure that they're qualified. So this scoring framework will, will do that and allow us to bring you only qualified and vetted developers for you all to consider for that final decision making. Um, and the four categories, uh, really we have more detail under them, more granularity than the previous slide. Um, and it's, there are items like making sure that the financial plan is clear and fleshed out, um, important considerations like traffic mitigation and circulation to make sure that that's considered as part of the redevelopment. Um, it also, uh, you know, we also address sources and uses of debt and equity to make sure the financial plan again is, is solid and it helps us, um, importantly compare the proposals in a like kind manner. The proposals that we receive will be voluminous and we want to be able to look at them
and, and compare apples to apples as much as possible. So, um, thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, and, and I want to appreciate, I appreciate you putting the traffic and mitigation, uh, traffic mitigation and circulation plan in there. Cause I think it's critically important. And what I didn't know, and I found it after we spoke is that FDOT is doing a, uh, route 60 master plan, um, from the roundabout to the Courtney Campbell. Um, just as a caveat, I understand we're not participating on the Belcher section and I hope we will because as downtown develops and gets larger, we have to look at the whole ingress, egress access to downtown and beaches. And so I hope we can have that master plan be comprehensive on the whole route 60. But when it comes to this, um, and I, you know, I see that we, we, we thoughtfully put in traffic mitigation and circulation plan, but since FDOT's got this plan already being worked on, is there any way to weave that in so that we're not operating in silos and doing traffic and mitigation here? Why FDOT and the city are going to be working on route 60? I think it just has to, it has to be blended and melded together somehow. And I know you have that little caveat, but I think that mass, what, what FDOT is doing also needs to be inclusive in how this plays out. So I just wanted to add that caveat. And, and I do think, you know, totally different subject that Belcher area should not be excluded in that plan. I think it should be comprehensive of the entire route 60. So just my little blurb on that part. Thanks, Barry. And thank you for including all that. I'm going to get an answer on that. Okay. Well, we'll have to update Witt because he told me yesterday we were not. So we'll have to get with Witt and make, get clarity. Okay.
I saw some of his comments. Okay. Yeah. What part of it means? So let's find out what part of it means, part of the discussion, part of the fun. I don't know what it means. Did you have a comment?
Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The last time I saw this document, it mentioned a $250 million
number. Was that taken out? It is in the RFN. That's right. We, and so in the second category, their development team qualifications and experience, we are asking for the respondents to the RFN to provide examples of projects that they've delivered that are greater than $250 million dollars to show that they actually have delivered comparable projects. So that's that $250 million
dollar number. Okay. Just as a follow-up, do you know of any projects in Clearwater that would meet
that threshold in the past or currently? I don't, other than potentially the bluffs. I don't remember what the total project value is on the bluffs. I think that may be a little bit under. Okay. But this is 25 acres and the bluffs was obviously much smaller in terms of acreage. So for a 25, we're drawing that number off of our experience on other downtown types of projects. So we would expect that with 25 acres, that's at least the minimum investment that would be made. Thank you.
Sure. Thank you. Any other questions on that slide? Okay. Go ahead.
Sure. I'll conclude this slide just by tying it back to the 2045 plan that we just talked about, and that you can see some of the summary items that I just mentioned in the 2045 plan are reflected here, like the tax-based expansion and the, you know, the activation, the mixed-use development, thoughtful mix of uses, connectivity and leveraging on what is already going on in downtown Clearwater, civic and community benefits, and then the last, obviously, the financial plan. So you can see, while you didn't have those items right in front of you on a slide, what I read in terms of the summary really ties nicely and neatly back to this. So on the transaction structure, there's been a lot of discussion about a ground lease versus fee simple. And so really, you know, for us, it boils down to a ground lease can be done. We have done ground leases. However, we do believe that it will limit the buyer pool, limit the potential lending institutions that would be interested in the project. And both of those things relate directly back to value. So, you know, I have conversed with a number of my CBRE colleagues in the debt and equity groups and capital markets, and really the conclusion consistently is a fee simple transaction will result in greater value to the county because of the competition, the broader buying pool and lending. So, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to talk about just in the bottom left-hand corner because I think it's important, layers of complexity. I say this lovingly as a former government employee. Government moves more slowly than the private sector, right? So, if you're a developer and you have $250 million to put into a project, do you want to go through a government process or do you want to go through a private sector process that's more nimble? So, government projects just take longer. And I think it's important to point that out. And there's an upfront cost to prepare proposals. The developers that respond will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so, you know, then you have bring on market conditions. And Clearwater has a lot of great things going down or going on. I referenced the Tampa Bay Business Journal article the last time I was here. I would, I would refer to it as an emerging market because it has some really great things going on. But a simple transaction structure in a secondary market like Clearwater would be more market friendly. So, our professional recommendation is a fee simple disposition and look forward to any questions and further discussion on that point. And I will, after that, turn it back over.
Okay. We're going to have some questions, maybe. Commissioner Nowicki, please.
Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Firstly, you know, thank you. It's a good, good presentation so far. In terms of fee simple, I mean, is this really fee simple or is it going to be more like fee simple defeasible? I mean, because it's going to be layered with covenants and, I mean, restrictions that the land can revert back to the county if things aren't done. So, it's not really, is it really fee simple in terms of they own it in perpetuity or are there going to be restrictions where if they
don't meet certain criteria, it can revert back to the government? So, good question. And I don't know if Don might want to address some of it. We believe that even with those potential deed restrictions and reversions in a lot of our development agreements, legal agreements, they do have those reversions because our government clients want to know that what they're proposing will be built. We see that the deed restrictions are less of an influence on the buyer pool than a ground lease, for example, because under a ground lease, if you have a mix of various uses, they have different lending requirements. And so, you know, if you're ground leasing a project for retail use only, that's one lender. If you're financing a project for a mixed use development, for example, you may have a lender for the hotel, a separate lender for the multifamily, a separate lender for the retail. And so, that's when it gets complicated. So, we would not view the deed restriction as an impediment to competition, for example. Well, and so, to that point,
what if the developer needs separate lenders to execute a hotel, a condo, retail? So, they're still going to need multiple lenders for those very same purposes that you just described. But I guess, you know, and then what you're also describing, you know, the uses, I mean, we're requiring, my understanding is we're going to require those uses be executed. So, I agree with you that fee simple would be the best recommendation for a highest value, but I don't see this as a true fee simple sale. And so, maybe Don. Good morning, Commissioner. It's Don Kroll from your county
attorney's office. There are lots of permutations among fee simple. So, let me start and, well, you use law school terms on me back there to do feasible and, you know, springing executory interests and things that... I'm a realtor. Well, there you go. But to put it in simplest terms, yes, this is a fee simple transaction. But to your point, and let me say, let me finish that to the first question you asked. This is in perpetuity they would be receiving the fee title to the property. It is subject to the restrictions, as you noted, and it is possible they could lose it should they not comply with those restrictions. So, yes, it's a yes but. Lots of properties have other issues subject to easements or anything else. Having pure fee on anything is pretty uncommon, to be honest. I mean, usually there's some kind of utility easement here or some other restriction there. It's very common that there are multiple other sticks removed from the bundle, as they're described in law school, that fee simple is all the sticks together. Does that make sense?
Yeah, yeah, 100%. I mean, I'm just, you know, saying it's, you know, not a pure, you know, because fee simple, I would say is like utility easements and taxes, and you can do whatever you want, building wise, subject to taxes and zoning, you would need approval for. But we're saying, hey, you're gonna have to build X in a certain timeframe, and have to occupy it at a certain percentage. So, when you say those things, to me, in my profession, that wouldn't be a true pure fee simple outside of zoning and taxes or utility easements. Let me say this. Everything you've said,
as far as the function, is exactly correct. And to your point, does that potentially reduce, as we take pieces away in restriction, the value we might receive in what we're going to call a fee transaction? Yes, all of that is correct. That said, I think the nomenclature for it's not terribly important, other than at a high level. But yeah, and so I agree with what you're saying. Thank you.
I mean, the nomen, you know, it's, it's not that fee simple versus fee simple, the feasible. That's a small detail at a very high level. But what you're saying is that yes, we are going to put these restrictions on. And so, in my mind, in my experience, it's like, well, we are essentially doing a ground lease because they could lose the land, right? It could, you know, they really own it if we're telling them what they have to build, when they have to build it, and how they have to execute it. And so, to say that, and maybe this is, you know, back to CBRE, you know, without having the land acquisition cost on a pro forma, you know, a ground lease would be more favorable because they wouldn't have to put land acquisition of $50 million on there in a pro forma. And so, for a lot of lenders that I talk to in commercial real estate, I mean, that would be more favorable because they wouldn't have that burden, and they would have more cash flow to execute.
You're absolutely right. If it's a ground lease, they don't have that upfront cost. You know, I guess we want to make sure that we do have a well-capitalized firm. So, if they can't spend the $50 or $70 or $80 million up front, are they going to be the kind of well-funded, you know, are they going to have the equity to produce a project like this? So, you're right, it is less upfront cost, but we want a well-capitalized
firm as well. And then just on that, you know, I was going to get to, I guess, this upfront money here in a little bit, $50, $70 or $80 million up front, I don't see anywhere where any developer, when do they get their first return on investment? So, what's the plan if they're assuming they're going to give us $50 million, $70 million, $80 million up front, we're still going to be occupying this real estate for, I assume, four years, five years, six years, you know, anything government is involved with is more complicated, to your point. So, who knows if the campus could be extended out. I mean, are we going to be paying rent to this developer over that period of time that they're giving us the upfront money and, you know, we're still occupying all the real estate?
So, we have overlaid, Robert's done a great job of this, we have overlaid the timeline for the redevelopment of downtown in this process with the occupancy of the new campus. So, is it going to be a perfect timing where you just turn over the keys immediately? Probably not. Both are big, complex projects, right? But we have tried to time them such that we minimize a sale lease back to the greatest extent. So, I don't know that there will be a sale lease back. It might be that we negotiate the timing such that the keys to the buildings here are turned over when occupancy of the new campus occurs. Those are devils in the details, right? And we have to negotiate those items as we go through the process. But on today, I can't tell you what the return is going to be because we don't know what's being proposed. Typically, I would say on a project like this, once construction starts, stabilization occurs between years three, four, and five. So, I hope that answers your question to the
best of my ability anyway. Yeah, it does. But, you know, I agree with what you're saying. The devil's in the details. I'm sorry, Chair, if I'm taking up too much time. I just wouldn't get around. Yeah. And so, I'll just... So, what we're saying is either we're going to have to do a sale and a lease back so the county would have to pay rent to the developer. Potentially. Or it would be discounted and we're not going to get 70 million because they're going to take off whatever fair market rate rent is for 26 acres. And that's going to be discounted in their offer price. It's going to be
one of those two options. To be negotiated as the process unfolds. Yeah. Thank you. Commissioner.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question on deed restrictions for Don. And it has to do with second, third, fourth generation buyers of the property that would have deed restrictions attached to it. What legal grounds do we have to enforce private property rights with deed restrictions attached to them on the second, third, and fourth generations? Commissioner, again, Don Quirrell from
your county attorney's office. Essentially, we wouldn't be doing it in a governmental capacity so much as we would be restricting our own property on a go-forward basis just as a homeowner's association or someone else would be. And developers can do this from time to... Anybody can file a deed restriction on their own property to go forward as a function of the transfer to another party. And they continue... Those obligations continue over time. So, if we sell to party A and we include the deed restrictions to say, all of these things have to happen and continue to happen, and party A sells to party B, all of those still restrictions still apply. So, less than until the county were to say, no, we will release those deed restrictions. And by the way, I shouldn't even... That gets even more complicated because as people continue to buy things associated with those deed restrictions, they take some benefit of them and it gets complicated. We are talking at a very high level here. The way these things are going to be drafted, there will be a lot of issues, caveats, procedures, things to talk about as to how they might be removed, how they might be modified, time frames for compliance, time frames for executing reverters should it ever come to that, all those kinds of things. So, but I think the short answer to your question is, yes, it will continue from party A to party B to party C even if they continue to be sold down the road.
And if party C, D, or F tries to take us to court, we're confident that we have the legal basis to defend ourselves? On a deed restriction? Yes, sir. Absolutely. Okay. So, we're to that point, we're confident that we can claw back for generations, for several generations if need be?
Yes. The deed restrictions can be enforced and reverters in the property are, it's not a terribly uncommon mechanism in the law. Okay. So, and I'm not a lawyer, so that's why I'm asking you,
because you're a lot smarter than I am. That's not true. And you also are a lot more athletic than I am. So, hopefully you did a bike ride this morning. I did. Are, so there are examples of governments doing these clawbacks? Doing, doing the, like clawbacks and enforcing deed restrictions? I, well,
I couldn't tell you one off the top of my head. I'm sure Leanne probably can. Yeah. And I actually
went back and looked at a couple of agreements that we have in place. City of Miami, Pompano Beach, Boca Raton, Hollywood. I just looked at a PSA on a fee simple sale in Parkland, where they have the same kind of clawback provisions. So, yes. And it's because most governments are like you. They want to ensure that if they are selling or leasing government property, that it will be preserved for the purpose that they're approving when the developer presents. So, it's not uncommon at all.
Thank you. And on those points, I get nervous with reverter clauses because when I sell it, I want it, I don't want it back. Right? So, so we have deed restrictions to protect us as the vision moves forward. But also, you know, in a decade from now, if a piece of property hadn't been developed, times change. Things happen. Residency change is going on. And they, they, they felt like we're okay if you do that. So, that process would involve looking for removal of deed restrictions. What's that process like? I mean, does that just come back to the county because we have the deed restrictions and then we lift one, two, three, or all of them? Is that...
Is that... Broadly speaking, I'm going to say yes. So, as we've heard today, we're waiting, we're trying to be as open, and I say we, the team and the discussions that have been going on, focus on trying to give the development community as, as much open space as possible to come in and bring their creativity, their ideas, and those kinds of things. Once we understand what's being proposed, we can craft the deed restrictions to meet the board's ongoing expectations about both what will be built and how it will be activated and time frames for, for those kinds of things to happen. Within that, I would contemplate there being a process that is laid out in the deed restrictions themselves that talk about how these things could be removed. I would expect that, that you would want this to come back to you as a body. So, that's, as I stand here today and I'm, again, there's a whole lot of details to come. That's my, my best guess at this moment. Thank you. And Leanne, back to you,
on the, on the properties that we have right now, just in general, as, as a master developer comes along to, to, to take control of all of the properties to, to move them, are there ones that stand out to you? I mean, I kind of have some ideas of my own, but are there ones that stand out to you that are, I'm not, I'm probably using the wrong word, but loss leaders that, that really stand out. Like, we want those two. Those are the ones we really covet. The rest of them, we just take them because that has to be part of the package. And therefore, you know, they still have the same kind of restrictions that they have to deal with. Those less attractive properties.
I mean, certainly this Court Street assemblage is, is the jewel, right? There's, there's adjacencies, there's density. So, when you get to some of the parcels that are a little further north or a little further east, certainly they wouldn't, they would not have the value. That said, they may serve another purpose during the redevelopment. It might be a lay down yard. It could be a staging area while they're developing this area first. What we've also seen sometimes when a government has property in a downtown is that a developer may want to acquire some of the, what I'm going to call infill parcels. So, maybe some of the parcels between Court Street and what we have on our map as parcel A, they may want to acquire some of those for additional connectivity. So, I hope that answers your
question. It does. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other questions? Okay, go ahead.
Go ahead. Thank you, Leanne. Thanks, Don. So, next couple of slides are really based on the feedback that we heard over the last couple of interactions and meetings with the Commission. So, this first slide, I'm going to go through what we think the process flow is going forward. And the next slide I'll go over is the actual town hall meeting that you've asked for in the format there to test, to get your feedback on that. So, at the top, you know, before the RFN is released, you've directed that we have a town hall interaction in the month of April. We met as recently as this morning with communications staff about how that, what might look. And that would be here, and I'll talk about that in just a minute. Then the RFN gets released. And as we've talked about, that's a 90-day turnaround. And there's been some questions, is that long enough? Is it too long? And this is based on CBRE's experience in other markets. That's a, a consistent standard for them. Then there will be a group of staff assisted by our subject matter experts that will evaluate all the proposals and whittle that down to a short list. And it's really, I can't say if it's going to be three or five, depends, number one, how many we get and how many good responses we get. We want to put the good ones in front of you, the ones that are capable of doing this, and meet those criteria that Leanne went through. So once we receive those, trying to think about public involvement, and remember the creativity, some of that we want coming back. We've led the developers in the RFN with normative statements about what we'd like to see. Then we get to see what they think is both financially feasible and speaks to those goals that we've talked about. We could have an open house. We could have representatives of the developers there to meet with the public and have them interact and ask questions about their response. And that could also, we could take that along with online feedback throughout here to help inform you, because ultimately the commission will serve as the evaluation committee for the finalists. That would entail the shortlisted respondents to come perhaps here and give public presentations about their projects directly to you. So we've got a town hall, an online tool, there's presentations. We'll aggregate all that information and give it back to you as the decision makers. You could have a public hearing in the wake of the open house to hear from folks what they did or didn't like. You know, and I've said this before, invariably, you're going to have a couple of proposals where if you could put them together, it's the perfect one. So you may like some aspects of this one or some aspects of that one. And I'm sure you'd like to hear that from the community. You would select the developer and award the project. And then staff, along with the county attorney's office, would begin the negotiation process. And speaking with Leanne and the experience of CBRE, that's a lengthy amount of time. It's a complex project. And then finally, coming back to you with the final agreements for your approval. That's the general flow of the process as we see it.
It sounds like the construction process might be shorter of our new building. I'm kidding. I'm not sure how that's all going to work out with our bonding efforts, which I'm still looking forward to that bonding 101 class that we're going to talk about. Any questions?
Chair, may I address that real quick? Go ahead. So as Leanne alluded to, we have overlaid these two processes, the new campus and the downtown Clearwater process. The hopes are, if we release it now, if we take 90 days, if we take the months after that to help negotiate a deal, you will have some sense of what the proceeds of this whole effort is, which goes into your decision on bonding. So we've got some cash, a little bit of cash. We'll have the proceeds from this and the rest will pretty much be bonding. That's up to you. But this is all synced up. So you'll know those numbers and you can make an informed decision.
Well, again, on that topic, I think, you know, again, reverters make me nervous, especially if I'm the seller. It's like we're, we're, we're moving them. So deed restrictions are going to be important. And we, that way that, you know, they can deal with that as they get to a particular project, that there's one item on there that kind of messes it up. But when we talk with the city, the city's comfortable with that release to do the project that they're talking about. Those are the kinds of things that I envision happening. But reverters to me could potentially ties up money as far as us assuming it's going to be available to be a down payment. So, I mean, I understand the concept of reverters, but I'd like to see them in the deed restrictions more to protect us and to get the
money and move on kind of thing. Commissioner Nowicki? Thank you, Chair. Just briefly, how, what's the guesstimated timeline for that whole product, like a year? I don't know. Yes, sir. I
would say based on your, go ahead. So, um, we're in April. If we release in May, we would want 90 days for, um, proposals to come in. So that puts us at August. Um, and depending on the number of proposals, it may take, you know, six to eight weeks to evaluate them. You see this team here today, but we'll bring in our, uh, team of, uh, chartered financial analysts and construction team to help evaluate the proposal. So, um, after we're expecting an award in the first quarter of next year, after you all consider, uh, the shortlisted firms, and then it's usually six to nine months to negotiate the legal agreements. Dawn may disagree, but typically that's, uh, typically that's the
process. So I would say 12 to 18 months. When we started down this process, I was like, why are we releasing it this early? And as I go back to all the deals that she was talking about around the country, those timelines aligned with the completion of our facilities out in, uh, for our new campus. And so I asked that same question and, and just typical experiences that it takes that
amount of time. Um, you, you talked about emerging market, and I think that's a good description, uh, versus other markets. It might be harder just on the market. And I always try to think about the outside variables that, that are out there in the world that play on that market driven demand. So it's not, it's not static. So we're releasing today versus six months from now when it could be a different, what, what are key variables that you see out there that you're nervous about? Or can I,
is that fair question? Other than just, you know, those that are uncontrollable, what's going on in the world right now with wars and gas prices, I don't see any variables. And frankly, I'm grateful that our timing is now, not two years ago because of the good work that the city of Clearwater is doing the Gotham project and all the good things that, you know, there's a new hotel going up. So I'm, I'm grateful that we're, that our timing is now versus two years ago, for example. That's why I mentioned
the word emerging market. I think they've done a great job, a great start to what they want to get accomplished. So that's, you know, good point that you just, that you just raised. Um, Commissioner,
that valid. Sorry. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, and the city has done a great job and a couple of our leaders are here, the city manager, the mayor. Uh, I think Mr. Battle from the great city of Jacksonville is here as well. Um, oh, and council member to shade is behind a poll that I can't see. Um, but, um, I've thought of a variable yesterday that I wanted to talk about. And, um, Commissioner Peters, um, has talked about a couple of times trying to monetize county assets and thinking outside the box and, you know, cause you never know what's going to happen. Um, you know, our old friends in Tallahassee, um, you know, like to, um, you know, do things that are unorthodox from time to time. Um, and they're good, good folks. Um, uh, I, I will, and I, I do speak from experience. Um, no, I mean, and they're well-intentioned, uh, but just yesterday, um, a state representative announced an initiative, uh, petition process that he's leading to get rid of all property taxes. Um, that will be, uh, if he's successful, which I, excuse me, there's no reason to believe he's not going to be successful would be on the 2028 ballot. And if it's on the ballot, um, I suspect it will get 60% of the vote. Um, cause nobody wants to pay property taxes, but it would get rid of all property taxes, not just homestead property taxes. Uh, one thing that Commissioner Scheer has talked about is, uh, doing lease, uh, doing this as a lease and he's a lot smarter than I am when it comes to real estate development and that's what he does professionally. Um, is there a, um, a concept to doing two competing RFNs? Is that something that y'all have done previous where you do an RFN for fee simple simultaneous to an RFN for, uh, like a 99 year lease? Um, because I would hate to sell our properties and then in a couple of years realize we're not going to be able to monetize
them. So, um, we have included in the RFN and we've done this other places, something called a pilot, which is a payment in lieu of taxes. And it was actually just written into the legal agreements over in Boca because of this very issue. Um, if the city or the county is counting on tax revenue coming in down the road and it goes away, you know, you want to make sure that you're protected. So the provision in the RFN states, and I'm going to just simply overly simplify it. Basically, if you paid $10 in taxes last year and out of alarm taxes go away, you're going to continue in perpetuity to pay that $10 in taxes. So we have a provision in the RFN that states if, if the property taxes go away, they will continue to pay what they otherwise would have. Okay. And that's in this current
RFN. Yes, sir. Okay. Yeah. I, I just, that I'm a little surprised. Has anybody received a copy of the RFN? Is it, there's an actual RFN out there that we haven't been? It's, it's not been, no,
it's not been released, but we do have it in draft form. We're still making updates even based on feedback that we received from you all here recently. I'd like to see that. I'm surprised we don't have a
look at the preliminary RFN to make the evaluation on how we're moving forward. Just a quick observation.
Well, it's still in draft, if I might. And there's some pretty, pretty big decisions that you're weighing today that we're waiting to inform that in our, you know, based on today's meeting, if there isn't another meeting alluded to, our thoughts were to finalize that and bring it to you.
Well, then if, if it's not finalized and it's in draft, I kind of like, uh, Commissioner Lotvala's idea of including with the RFN, a, a, uh, option for them to present us with a lease proposal.
Or if Commissioner Peters. Um, so just, uh, Commissioner Lotvala, I think your point, what you were just saying though, about the two RFNs, it's not if property taxes go away, you know, we're going to lose a few million dollars from this property. It's if it's would be our ability of collecting hundreds of millions of dollars from all the residents and that we would have a loss of revenue. If we did a ground lease for a hundred years here, we would collect rent for a hundred years, you know, upwards of maybe $500 million we would collect over a hundred years versus selling it one time for 50 million that we would collect. And then that was kind of more of your concern is that we would lose the, the revenue of all the residents that they abolish property taxes and
ways to offset that. Yeah. I mean, uh, if we lose all property taxes, we're going to have to figure out ways to, um, you know, pick up revenue and, uh, offset revenue. And unless we want to put chair Eggers to work at the county car wash, um, we're going to have to, yeah, well, we're going to have to, yeah, well, we're going to have to figure out ways to be creative and, and, and, um, you know, commissioner Peters has brought up, you know, good points about monetizing our assets. Well, currently we're sitting in one of our greatest assets, right? And so if we're faced with uncertainties of not being able to have property taxes, perhaps we need to think about, um, getting in the leasing and landlord business and not the real estate sales business. Well, if I, and so that was kind of my,
my point. Right. Not like the wall. If I might access for this. Yeah. So just to understand y'all's concept, uh, our understanding, if you were to do a ground lease is that we would simply lease the ground to the developer, they would build the improvements. So there would be, uh, you know, some nominal money coming in. And I guess the strength of that's over time, you know, that, um, but I, we did not contemplate that the county would be the, the, the builder of the assets and the lessor of those.
That's where the big money is. If you, if you were in rent, then we'd have to put out the quarter billion dollars to build stuff. And that's where you get rent. Otherwise you're just getting ground lease, you know, money, which would be, you know, a couple of million dollars, not, not hundreds
of millions of dollars. Well, I think five to $7 million over a hundred years would be 500 million
or roughly. So. Excuse me, chair, your microphone chair. We're heard of a, of a joint, two RFNs out on the marketplace at the same time. It just doesn't make any logical sense to me, professional sense or anything, but I may be dead wrong. So, um, if we've got experiences like that out there,
I mean, we, we don't. And, and I think it would be very confusing to the market. I think the market developers would say, you know, what do they want? And I think it would be confusing to the market. We've never issued an, to joint RFNs for the same property, for the same project with different
transaction structures. Um, and I'm, again, I'm not, we're just talking around the table here, so.
Well, a simple option for the developers that are going to be sending us a request for negotiation, an option for them to provide a land lease alternative would be a good alternative for them to throw in. They don't, we, we can pick and choose. That's not two RFNs out at the same time.
That's just a, here's an option. I understand. I'm not sure that me as one of the seven want that because I want cash so that we can down pay on the, the purchase of our new stuff, the, the land and the building and all of that, which is going to be significant. I'm not sure what that number is estimating to be, but it's significant. And I'd like to, that's why I don't want reverters so much because I want the cash and I want to have it unencumbered and pay down as much as we can. Now, the process that Commissioner Latval has brought up about getting more resident input, that's fine. We get that added to what we've already done on the 2045 plan. We have a pretty good sense of, and the, and the, the builders or developers that they'll, they'll have a good sense like, okay, we saw this in 24, the 2045 plan. We got additional kind of comments. We're good moving forward. I mean, I think they, that's what they want to know how, how much certainty they have in the
development process. So anyway, um, Mr. Peters. Well, I, you know, I, I was just going to concur on what you just said. Um, no matter what our friends in Tallahassee do, we have to, and I, and I have said it and I appreciate you repeating it, that we have to get creative and find out other ways to generate revenue. So that's true, but we also cannot incur significant debt with the potential of losing tax revenue. So, so I'm, I'm, I would rather see us get creative on some other ways that we could, you know, I, I don't want to, I don't want more debt on that property that was going at the icon. I really don't, I don't want to put it. We are a really healthy County that doesn't have a lot of debt. We have very little debt. I don't want to go getting into debt. Um, so I'm, I'm more inclined is what Dave said is to get the money and ensure that we aren't in debt. That said, it's still is going to behoove us to find ways in which we can either significantly cut costs or generate more money. And, um, and I don't know if we've done that and I don't know if we've worked into that plan. I mean, um, I know we can't distribute electricity, but can we generate electricity on that building and provide our own electricity and save money on, on powering every one of those buildings? You know, is there any other way that we can think out of the box? Um, you know, and it would take Tallahassee to change that rule about generating power and using our own. It'd be great if we could use our waste of energy electricity and power our own buildings, but we, we're not allowed to by state law, but we could on that property because we own all the buildings and it's all government buildings and we could. Um, we have, and we have a power generation
station here that is, I think is questionable, but you know, whether there was a good long-term investment or not with the cost associated with it. So yeah, I mean, we can evaluate those options.
Yeah. I'm just thinking that we do have to start thinking that way. We have to just start shifting our thinking and go, all right, how are we going to generate money that is not tax dollars? How are we going to generate money that isn't tax dollars? And I agree with that, but I also don't agree with getting into debt. And that's, that's where we got to find that balance.
Uh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I, I agree with trying to just keep this as simple as we possibly can, maximize the value of those properties. We need the cash. I don't want to incur any more debt that we have to. And we have hired some excellent professionals here to give us recommendations and options of guiding us through that process. I think we should listen to that. I think they've given us some really, really good options here and they're going to continue to really give us good options. So I'm putting my faith in that. Don't let that get to your heads. Um, but you,
but you all have done a great job and I really appreciate the guidance you've given us. So, thank you, Commissioner Scott, for your comment. Um, um, I, I think what more do you need from us?
Well, one more slide, but go ahead. Oh, I just want to get, is there a consensus around? Be simple. There is for me. One, two, three, four. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Versus Elise. Versus Elise, Chris.
Yes. He said, he talked about adding it as an option within the, if the developer wants to address it, they can. I, I firstly want to stay. We have to move forward
and I didn't see another way forward or we're going to be deadlocked on what to do. I didn't see
Commissioner Flowers. I didn't. You're good with fee simple. Okay. Then so we'll put it out as the
fee simple. Okay. Yeah. All right. I think that's the direction we're, we're heading now. Thank you.
Last slide y'all. And this is following on the process slide that we had before. So the town hall meeting that, uh, was suggested by Commissioner Latvala and, uh, the, the group really rallied behind, uh, the, the palm room seems like a good place to do that. Uh, this would be open to all stakeholders. Uh, you know, I think you all had indicated a desire for Commissioner Latvala to help chair that meeting. Who said that? Mr. Commissioner. Kidding. I'm, I'm teasing. And it'll be after your bedtime. So, oh, that was a good one. So taking those cues, this is what we've, we've cast, uh, for y'all to consider that, uh, of course, everybody deserves some context and, and a brief presentation from us on while we're, how we got here, what are the goals that are underpinning this? Uh, and we want folks to weigh in on the goals. This is the early part of the process, um, where it's really going to get interesting is when those responses come in the Norman, the normative statements that we're leading the developers with is absolutely important for you to pay attention to. That's what they're going to fashion these responses around. Uh, and they're going to have different, uh, visions of that. It's going to have different permutations. So all that we'd like the, uh, the, the, when the, when the group comes here, the public, we want them to vote. We're going to put the goals up on the walls. Which goals do you think are valid? Which ones do we need to shed? Are there some that we've missed? You will have the benefit of all of that before we release the RFN. Uh, and that's what we've kind of been holding onto it because we're, we're drafting it. A lot of its terms and conditions and things like that. There's a piece of it. That's the normative statements that we've repeated to you on several occasions. Uh, you've seen the evaluation criteria. So we just need to know, are the goals,
is this structured the correct way? And what I hope we do is like, I think, man, you said it well, when we talk about a lot of our criteria that we've put into the selection process to, to date, before we get additional input here tonight, whenever that is past my bedtime, that we, um, that we're okay, um, with, um, the process of, I'm trying to think where I was going with that. Um, thinking about the bedtime thing just threw me off. Um, but, um, the part with Leanne was talking about, uh, oh, letting them know that we were pretty much in sync with that 2045 plan, at least in developing the thought process and talking to the elected officials. So I think we, we just didn't come out of nowhere with this. I think that's really an important point to leave, to lead into the open conversation. So they get some kind of comfort in knowing that it wasn't just, you know, our own, our own idea done in a vacuum. Yes. It's really, it's, it, I think it was really a, that's why I got comfortable with this because we seem to be moving in that kind of that direction to try to be lockstep with what the city of Clearwater had kind of developed and what they had found out from their residents, two, three, whatever that was done. Yes, sir. And, and the, many of the public
that haven't watched these meetings might not know that. So we would definitely share that with them, hopefully some rich context. And then I think the thought was there'd be an exercise to have them weigh in on goals. And then there'd be a microphone and they can three minutes per speaker, you know, as is our tradition to, to verbalize their feedback and what they do or don't like about that. And we collect all of that and give it to you as a decision makers, uh, to help understand any final, uh, tweaks or redirection we need with the RFN process and structure. Any other final thoughts
before we, um, I assume, I assume that, uh, there's expectation that we're all attending,
even though commissioner Latvala is sharing it. Okay. No, I mean, y'all can, we can all sit up here.
It will be an advertised public meeting. So you certainly, would you say commissioner Latvala last
last meeting, we talked about all sitting up here. And Mr. Chair, we, we, we do intend to
coordinate with board records to make sure that there's somebody there for minutes and that all of the sunshine requirements will be met, assuming that more than one of you would be attending.
Yeah, I'm sure we can make that arrangement. Um, if, uh, Chair Eggers wants to chair, he can, I just didn't want to obligate you to be here. What's that? Oh, no, I, I would like to see the vice
chair lead that meeting. That'd be great. Uh, commissioner Nowicki.
And it's just one meeting. I know, I think, um, commissioner Latvala said in his letter, I think like two meetings or so, but we're just windling it down to one. Yeah. Pre disposed ideas for the public to decide on. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. Excuse me, commissioner, your microphone.
That's one after what? Well, after the, at the, after the developers submit their proposals. So you'd have one beforehand, get the public's input. After now, the developers submit their proposals, have another one. At that time, if the board, if, if you felt you needed an additional one, we could always add that. Um, but a second one, you're meeting. A second one after you see the proposal. After the public has seen the proposals. After, and after you get their feedback, it would be then if you.
Was that like a regular commission meeting when we, before we choose the one we choose?
No, we'll probably choose a special date on that. So we're talking about. Or we could do it.
Actually two after we talked about a town hall. Okay. And then a public hearing, like you're talking about chariters.
Okay. So one as a town hall and then one as part of a public hearing.
So that would be a second and a third opportunity to speak about thoughts. Yes. Okay. But not two before we release. No, just one. One before we release, one after we get all of them back, kind of the same kind of format. And then of course, during the public hearing itself, there'll be opportunities for people to.
Right. And, and, and, and with all those three, there'll be an online companion. Uh, we talked to comms about putting information out there so folks can read it as well.
And you're saying one meeting before we release the RFN. Yes. One meeting before the, yeah, exactly.
One after we get them back. So one before we vote on it? Yes. And one night that we vote on, or the day, I'm sure it'll be night, but night that we vote on. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments, questions before we leave again? Thank you all. All right. Thanks for the team. Blaine. Thank you. Um, Don, thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. Let's take a quick peek at North County. Well, North County service center bonding considerations. Um, are we doing lunch?
Yeah, we have lunch. If you want to break, we can come back and then take on. Yeah.
I think maybe we take a break. Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah. We'll come back at, um, thank you, uh, say 1215. Thank you for letting us have a little bite to eat. I know we've got a couple of folks that will be peeling off at certain times, some sooner than later. So let's jump right into the, uh, the North County service center bonding considerations.
Uh, Barry. So, uh, commissioners at the last meeting, you asked us to consider, to look at, uh, what it would take to do, um, to bond the North County service center. Hey guys. Hey. Um, you asked us to look at what it would take to bond the North County service center. So we put some, you know, just general slides together. Um, obviously, as we said before, the, this was included as part of the penny projects. Um, the, but if we looked at it as a 30 year special bond obligation, um, that would be at a 4.97 again, that's an assumed interest rate at $50 million. What it does is it produces a annual payment of roughly $3.3 million. Um, the, the way we would go about doing this. Um, so we have there, that's a part of the pay as you go. Uh, the way we'd go about doing this is to do an inducement resolution. Um, and then, and that would declare our intent to issue the bonds. We could do that at a later date, uh, based upon that. And again, it would be, we would be pledging non ad valorem, uh, tax revenues for the issuance of the bonds. Um, but what, what, to answer your question, it's an annual payment of roughly $3.3 million.
And where does the funds come from?
It, it would, it would come from general revenue. So each year when we develop our budget and we're trying to determine, um, meeting our budgetary obligations for all the different services we provide and sheriff's sheriff and everybody else, uh, then this would have to be carved out of that. And so it would, it would tax us each year, um, as we try to get property tax relief, but we compete for property tax relief and for our operating costs associated with our annual budget.
So what argument are you going to be using when we talk about the government center?
The government center is we've talked about that. That is going to be an annual obligation that we're going to have to come up with. This would be in it on top of that, um, dependent upon the outcome of that. It's $3.3 million again. And so you asked what it would be. This is what it would be. And that's how we would assume that cost.
Okay. So we can, we can do the resolution, um, declaration of intent resolution at some point, just to make sure that we carve out a possibility. When do we need to make the decision that we're going to go and ask for that?
I mean, you have a timeline on that, Chris? Um, so if we declared it in a, if we could, we could, to the commissioner's point, we could do an inducement resolution that would give us the option of issuing bonds at a later date. His question is, when would we actually need to move forward with issuance of bonds if we wanted to do that? Right.
So we're, we're looking at early next calendar year. Uh, right around the same time we have a guaranteed maximum price for the downtown camp. No, this is for, this is for the North County Service Center. Oh, for North County Service Center. So, uh, we could do that at any point. We'd need to bring it in front of you. The, the real consideration is that you can have two months backwards that you can pay for with the bond and three years forwards.
So you could do it anytime within the next three years then. Well, we need to get the, we need to get the, we need to have to have the cash.
We need, we need to have to have this in place beforehand, before we spend. So, okay.
So you could do the inducement and then we could make a decision later if you wanted to actually go forward with the bond. Okay, that's correct.
Again, I think that, again, what I'm trying to, what I was trying to get at on the, this one particularly was the trade-offs because I see it as trade-offs. We're, we're, we're going to be freeing up $50 million that are within our penny for Pinellas spending. And I have heard time and time again, you all looking for penny money, uh, that we are, we are maxed out. We've, you know, we're over, you know, there's more projects than we have money anticipating coming in on the back end. So I, that was a thought as to why we might bond. Um, and the other is the whole argument of it not being born a hundred percent by current residents. Um, so that, that was why I brought, brought it up. I'm, I, and again, I assume that we're talking about this method when it comes to the big bill, the campus, same conversation. What is that? Give me a rough, what are we talking? You're talking about 317,000 square feet, 300.
Yeah. We're going to bring that back to you. It's a little bit over that since we went to the one-on-one and got rid of, uh, you know, some of the things we're going to show you that here in an upcoming presentation, but we're really close to the original bonding numbers on the building and FF and E.
So bonding number will be on, on everything. And we're going to be bringing that to you soon. Everything being the building construction. Correct. The land purchased, no, we can't do the land. That's already been correct. That's too long. That's too long ago.
That's correct. And, and again, we do have money set aside within our capital plan for that. And so that, so we have some money. We would recommend using some of that money and bonding the rest. But again, that's, that's part of that overall consideration that we're going to be bringing to you.
What was the number that was used for that FF and E and per square foot price? Is it somewhere in the $400 a square foot?
I apologize, Commissioner.
That's okay. It's a not, it's an unfair question and on short notice, but I just trying to get some sense of what that, what that looks, looks like.
Yeah.
We've really got three different types of buildings, the judicial building, the parking deck, and the office building. But all in the number that we were tracking before was around 333 million. Now, we've got about 5% extra in validating the space program. And that number is a couple of years old, hasn't been escalated to midpoint of construction. We're in process of that now. So we should have an updated number within the next week or two.
The total of the three, but broken out individually. I'd like to be able to see them individually.
Yeah, and we're, we're going to have a whole presentation on that because we now have a complete program and they're into design. And, you know, as we decided before that we're going to build a parking garage versus doing surface lot and things like that. So we're very close to bringing that to you. Okay.
And, but bonding, you are allowed to bond, not just building construction, but also FF&E? Yes, you are. So, okay. All right. Yeah. I mean, again, we talked about $3.3 million. And, you know, give me an idea what that percentage of our, our revenue of our general fund is. It's small. It's small. It's a small percentage. No, no. I'm just, I'm just trying to put it in context. Yes. Okay. $3.3 million. It seems like a lot of money, but I just like to know the context that we're looking at. What's your general fund?
A billion. Right around a billion. Right around a billion.
A billion. Okay. I'm sorry. Thank you. Any questions? Commissioner Scott.
So, thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, if we paid this now, we paid it with penny money, but if we bonded it, we'd be using general fund to pay it back?
Correct. Not ad valorem, but yes, general fund. Not ad valorem. Not ad valorem, but still general fund. Okay. So, yes, this, this, this was budgeted as a penny. Okay. And if you, but you could switch that and you could pay that off over time as outlined here. Right.
I mean, I, you know, my thought on this is, since we've already got it budgeted, I'd rather not incur any more debt because we know we're going to have to incur a lot of debt with, with this, with this new campus. I mean, if we wanted to, I'm open to having this discussion further, but I would want to know what else we would do with that 50.2 million dollars. I mean, if there's a list of gotta-haves that we could do these really big things here and really improve the community or quality of life, I mean, maybe that's worth the discussion, but without knowing what, what that list could potentially be, I'm, you know, I'd rather just not incur any more debt knowing what's coming down the line.
And again, I, I'm, I understand. I think that trade-off's important to understand. That's all. Yeah. And just for perspective, and that might be something to have too, because we always do this when we want to tell a story, but to compare to other counties, what our current debt is, I always remember it being like at the, like the best in the- Really low. In the, in the state. Yes, yes. So in perspective, and I'm not saying that at all times it makes sense to bond things. I'm just saying there are times that the consideration is there, but I think even if we bonded all of this and you compare to what comparison, it's not like we're being bad users of borrowing. I mean, I, that's not, we can't ever be blamed on that. And this is a definitely a 50, 60, 70 year investment. Yeah. It's not. Yeah. Okay. It is. And it's for, and it's for, and that third, that, that payment is not for the entire time either. The payment is 30 years. Yeah. It's a 30 year. Life is 50 or 60.
We took it out as a 30 year because that's what we're proposing for the new campus. Right. And you could obviously do it at a different amount. Okay.
Any other comments, questions? Nope. Yes.
I'll concur with Commissioner Scott. We've got too many unknowns coming on the property tax issue and incurring debt at a, you know, a $3.3 million a year, every year. We don't know. We don't, we, we have no idea what our revenues are going to look like. And then this is something we determined we need. So I'm not a fan of getting us in debt until, especially until we have an idea on what that property tax change is going to look like. I just, I just don't see that being smart planning and getting in debt when you know your revenues are going to go down.
So, so the sooner the better, because you're going to want to have the inducement before you start spending. So you, you can go two months backwards and three months forward on an inducement resolution. So the sooner, the sooner before you start spending, sir, soon.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, the, the majority of these costs are, it's, it's going to be a bell curve of costs on the North County service center. So, uh, we could spend some of the penny now and, and get the inducement going.
I, that's the, you could spend penny money now, um, and, and get it going and make a decision, but probably by the end of the year, you're going to, you're going to need to have made a decision one way or another.
But the inducements really so that you can recapture those costs that we front. Correct.
Okay. So you can bond for the costs that you've spent within that inducement time period.
So you're end of the year. Um, again, I, I, I understand the whole thing about property tax and where that's going. And, um, that's going to be the least of our worries if they get rid of property taxes and if they get rid of any, any of it, if, even if they do the, um, increase in the exemption, I mean, we're talking about, um, anyway, I don't want to go down that. Um, but I, I just think keeping our options open is a good thing. I'm not suggesting that we, you know, do it, but I think, I think keeping the options are open. So I'd like to, I'd like to see it brought forward. I'm seeing a couple that don't want that. Um, so I just want to see if I've got, go ahead.
Thank you, chair. Yeah. I mean, I, um, agree, I guess with, you know, commissioner Scott's point, I guess I'd like to see like some of the penny projects, right? I mean, and I don't, we haven't had our bonding one-on-one class, so I don't know if we could bond some of those. I don't, I don't know, um, if those are ones we missed, um, because we lost some penny revenue. And so I, you know, maybe I'd like to see some of those projects before we, where the money would go, bless you, uh, where the money would go if we decide to bond this.
Okay. So I just, for clarity, what we're trying to do is, uh, we're moving forward or not with the inducement resolution. That's, that's question one. We don't have to deal with whether we're going to actually do the bonding. Sounds like there's other questions that we'd like to maybe clear up before people, well, I'm not going to put words in everybody's mouth, but before you are making a decision on bonding, but the inducement thing, we can do that sooner rather than later so that we have the option to recapture those dollars. It might, is that right?
Or that's, that's correct. Okay. Yeah. And we can show you, I mean, obviously with the penny, you're right in the middle of the heart of construction. Okay. You know, the, the projects that we were planning four years ago, you're actually delivering on now. Um, you know, the, the pen, you always have more projects than, than you'll have money, you know, in the penny, we are meeting all of our 2017 obligations. So all of those projects, which includes this, are funded within the existing capital, any projects list. Um, the, the things that you, are some of the out years and there's always things that they try to add if you have money. Um, but you know, and that's what you clean up at the end and you'll make a decision there whether you do those this time or move them into the next penny. But I think that's the point though,
they were wanting to see what some of those projects might be. And it also gets more complicated
because it like, for instance, we have certain amount of money set aside, only a certain amount, uh, for Dunedin Causeway. Right. And, and so we're trying to go through that project and whether that's going to occur or not, whether the state's going to take that or not. So there's just, there's a lot of outstanding pieces, but we can certainly give you a better sense
of some of these capital projects if you want. Well, if that's the case, I mean, then don't come back to us saying we're trying to find some, you know, some penny money because we're, this is a, this is an opportunity to free up $50 million, which is about a half a year of penny.
It is. So, um, it is, it puts, it puts pressure and I said, and I'm, we'll be happy to, you know, move that forward. It puts pressure on the operating. So then we're going to have to deal with that each year on the operating. When we come in and say, and you go, we want to reduce property tax rate, then I'm going to have less revenue to be able to do that because I got to account for that in that future bond issuance. Um, and so it's going to put pressure on the operating side. Um, but we could do that. The, the, the, the issue with the penny is that people want to add projects and that's when we say, well, you can't because of pennies, you know, okay.
Well, at the same time, I'd like to get a handle on, because one of the, one of the selling points on doing this, in addition to having an obsolete building was outrageous operating costs for the current set setup that we have now, 500,000 square feet, all of this property, the old buildings, right. Inefficient buildings. And that operating cost is this much. Yep. And the operating costs will come down significantly. Correct. There's a savings there that's going to be realized in that same in that bond, general funding. Yes. Um, increase in, I did, there's a trade off. That's all I want. Yeah. So I would like to see at least keep the option open. And then this commission would say, Nope, we're not going to bond that one. And that's, but if we don't do that soon, then we're losing that, that flexibility. So, but I only have one person so far. So, um, that wants to, I think you are okay with considering it. Yeah. I mean, if we're just
doing an inducement resolution that doesn't obligate us to bonding it, and then we get some more information on these penny projects, then yeah, I'd like to hear. Yeah. I'd like to see that.
And I'd also like to see that operating cost comparison, because that's going to be significant as well. It may not be 3.3 million, maybe a lot more, maybe half. So some of that will be, some of, some of it will save on operating for sure. Um, is there any other app, but there's two people with an appetite to at least keep the resolution too. Yes. You're okay with an inducement resolution. Okay. That's three. Yes. Yeah. I mean, if we want to do the inducement
resolution, I'm fine with that. And then look at, look at projects. I'm not, I'm just going to be clear that it's not my preference to bond this to incur more debt, unless there's a really good reason to do it. Okay. Okay. So if there's a really good reason to do it, if we can come up with a good reason,
then, then fine. I kind of think I'm in the same place. I want to see, I want to see a really good reason before we do it. Um, it, one of them's intergenerational, one of them savings on cost, on operating cost. I mean, I, I'm telling you, it's going to be significant. So when you compare that
savings to, we're going to, yeah, we're going to need that savings for the bond payments. Um, you know, and, and, and those are those, as we get into that, we'll, we'll have a better idea, you know, where we're at now there, you know, similarly for the North County service center, we're paying leases and things right now that'll obviously go away, uh, not for the clerk or court space, but for tax collector and property appraiser and things like that. So, um, you know, but again, I mean, direction's clear. We'll prepare an inducement resolution. Then we can have further discussions about capital during the budget. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Everybody
okay with that? All right. Okay. We got the four. All right. Uh, we'll move on to item number four, which is a, I don't know where, how Kelly got away with 55 slides. I don't know either. Um,
but that's your, that's, that's your, I approved them. Um, that's your, reluctantly. That's her allocation for a year. It's do you promise? You know, but it was, I mean, these are a lot of the questions that you've asked over the last year, um, around stormwater and, and, and it was good. And I've asked her to, you know, kind of go through it quickly, but all of it's kind of building blocks of pertinent information as we kind of, you know, get, get, get some direction and from where we want to go with this. So, um, there were, there were different buckets we could have broke this down into, but it was a good slide deck. And so, um, there you go. Uh, so it, it shouldn't take that
long, but it was all relevant information. So it was interesting. I had, I was at a chamber event this morning and I said, I was just talking about different things that we were talking about the 55 slides. And I said, if you need something to just come, you can join us. Actually, there was a couple questions of interest about the topic. So it's not like the topic's not important to people. It's just 55 slides of stormwater management might be a lot. So you're on Kelly.
Thank you. Uh, Kelly Hammer Levy, public works director. And, um, so our agenda here, uh, this afternoon is to talk a little bit about, um, where Pinellas County has been a little bit of our history, uh, where we are today and where we're headed when it comes to stormwater management. And this is a story, not just shaped by our geography, our development history, and the realities of, of living in the, probably the arguably the most urbanized coastal county in Florida, but it's also a story of, of planning, of looking forward, of collaboration and major investment in our community. So we're going to start with some of those key characteristics of stormwater. I am going to slow down a little bit at the front end because it allows me to speed up at the back end because there's a lot of I's dotted and T's crossed, um, from doing that. Um, a little bit of the regulatory snapshot of, of, of the, of the rules we, we work within and, and some of our, our historical development challenges that have, you know, that's why we are where we are type of a thing. So some very key characteristics of, of stormwater runoff. We're going to talk about, you know, runoff generation and pollutant transport. Those two things go hand in hand. And then the impact of high volumes of, of rapid water, um, channelization of our systems and what that's happened, what that's caused. And then, you know, understanding that, you know, stormwater is not wastewater and they're handled differently and they're processed differently. And so, you know, when you look at the, you know, the image there on the right, you know, it really tells the story when, when you have low density development, not a lot of impervious area, you've got open channel systems, you know, that can expand and contract with rainfall. Um, a lot of water percolates into the ground, you have less impacts. Obviously the more you urbanize, you know, more of our floodplains are constrained, infiltration, that water seeping into the ground is reduced, more of it runs off compared to the, to the natural environment. And that's where we start to see some of the challenges, you know, runoff, you know, from impervious surfaces, um, not, is not only greater in volume when we, when we, uh, make something really hardened. Um, but when we constrain our creek systems, we channelize them, the water moves a lot faster and that leads to really high peak flows during storms, which exacerbates flooding, erosion, and degrades the environment. So this is an example of that creek, um, during hurricane Milton. And in less than a day, it went up 10 feet. And in less than a day, it went from water that was barely moving to over 466 cubic feet per second. It was ripping through there. And that is what was that number again, 466 cubic feet per second. I'm trying to visualize what that is. So it went from 2.5 cubic feet per second, which if you dropped a leaf on that water, you probably would barely even see it moving to just like rapids. 20 times or no, 200 times. Very fast. So that's, that's what happens in urban development. When we, when we, when these systems are channelized, you get those really high peaks, really fast water compared to a more natural system. Um, the flood, the water expands into the floodplain, the water comes up and down much more moderately. And, and you don't see those, those types of impacts. And then I mentioned this because there are over 700 systems in the country that have what we call combined, you know, sanitary sewer and stormwater overflows. I actually used to live not too far from three of them up near Akron. Um, and so we have a lot of folks that move here from other places. And sometimes we have these issues like we see on the, on the right where they start pumping something into our stormwater system. And then we have to show them where it's actually going and say, you know, they are separate, um, only rain down the drain. And it's, it's, it's really important. It's an ongoing conversation that we have with the community.
But our sanitary, our sanitary line on that last picture, it actually does in many cases absorb stormwater into our system, which open, which does burden our, our, our, our plants.
Yes. Equal problem. So looking at that, the types of flooding that we experience here, um, rainfall is probably the most, one of the most common ones. I mean, this can be an afternoon storm. It happens any time of year. We get one of those, what we call like bursts of rainfall. It's really quick, a lot of rain in a very short period of times, but it tends to run off really quickly. Once, once the system's gone, it moves. Um, you know, when that rainfall swells a creek beyond its banks and that creek starts to spread out or that river starts to spread out into its floodplain, that's, that's, you know, when we experience riverine flooding. Groundwater flooding. Um, if you think of the ground like a sponge and we get so much rain over time that that sponge just cannot absorb anymore, the water moves to the surface. And this can be really stubborn, especially in our area. We have really, uh, the shallow groundwater depth there. Uh, there's just not a lot of storage space in our soil. So this can hang around for a long time because it takes a while for that to dry out. And of course, the, the flooding that we are probably most familiar with is, is the, is related to our coastal system. And we have high tides that, that water just backs up into our neighborhoods. We, we call it sunny day flooding. It's not really related to a weather event. It's just a title, title event. Um, we have, of course, a storm surge that, uh, we are, uh, very familiar with. And then even this past winter, um, when some of those fronts were coming through and chopping away at our brand new beach, um, those, you know, couple that with a high tide and, and you can get really localized wave action that, that causes flooding as well. And then during 2024, this was probably one of the, uh, is a great example of what we would call compound flooding. It's when these things occur simultaneously. And, you know, just to give an example, um, and cross by you, I took a look at that area because it's right in the middle of the county. We had a lot of flooding around it. When Debbie hit, um, we were in early August, we were at about 88% of our annual average rainfall by that point. Then comes Helene. And well, you're like, well, they're inside. Well, yes, but Helene did drop three to four inches of rain and the surge from Helene went in both directions. It came into the Cross Bayou Canal from, um, the Bocasiega Bay side and from the Tampa Bay side. So when those, when those water levels come up from surge, the rainwater has nowhere to go. Um, but we also then had, um, Milton who came in with 14 and a half inches of rain in this particular area. You know, so here we are, you know, at the end of our storm season and we've received 150% of our average annual rainfall at 76 inches of rain. Um, it's a lot. And, you know, so when you add these things all together, it's, it's much worse. You know, if, uh, if a 14 and a half inch rainfall had occurred when we were dry and we, and our storage areas were, had capacity, the picture looks different. And this is just a, um, an animation that Noah put together that kind of goes through that. This is that high tide flooding as it backs up into the road. You add rain on top of that. And again, there's, there's really nowhere the water can't leave because the tide is too high. You add wave action on top of that. You add surge on top of that. And the stormwater systems do not function in these, during these scenarios. This is a community where we're very familiar with. And it's an example of that rainfall riverine driven flooding. Um, in the middle there is the digital elevation map. So it just shows you how low that area is. You can see a higher point across Lake Tarpon. It gives you an idea of elevations, but in that particular area, um, you know, it is in the, it is in the flood plain. Some of it is actually in the flood way and it's very low lying. So in this regulatory picture, the big blue circles are a federal, something happened at the federal level, blue, smaller blue, something happened at the state level and the greener are the county things. And, and what I really want to focus on here is, um, you know, some of the red at the very beginning there, you see in that 1950s, we weren't really dealing with stormwater there. We had, you know, some building permits, we had some zoning, but we didn't deal with stormwater back then. And by 1963, 39% of our urban area was developed, um, without stormwater. Um, we go through the, um, you know, late seventies, early eighties. We're starting that process. We're, we're developing master plans. We're really starting to look at this because we're frankly having a lot of drainage problems. Uh, the state doesn't regulate development until 1982 for the first time. And so you see there like around that 1989, 1990 timeframe. Now our urban areas are 81% built out. So you start to understand a lot of the challenges we're having is because our infrastructure is old and it was developed before we knew a lot about stormwater and how to manage it. In that 1990s timeframe, the national pollution discharge elimination system, that's our stormwater permit program came out. Now we're regulated and how we manage that system, what we do, how we address flood control, how we treat that stormwater is now in a permit that, that we, um, that we adhere to. And we report on each year. Um, we, we implement land development code as we move forward into the future. But again, still by that early 2000s, you know, our urban areas are built, are built. How about, um, the large
residential neighborhoods that are, are, were built? I know individual homes, you don't have to have stormwater, but like, when did we start requiring large development of homes to have their own stormwater
on site? The county in 1990. 1990? Yeah. Now the state had some permitting back in 1982. So you'll see some, some of that as well. But, um, but again, we learned, so, you know, that was something that, you know, we, uh, the state learned back in, um, in 2007, they did a statewide stormwater assessment because the, the rules that were put in place in 1982 and then, um, 1985, there was some changes to those rules. There was a, it's, it's based on presumption. It's like you built, you design a site to this level. We, then you, there's a presumptive criteria that you're achieving what you're supposed to be achieving. In 2007, the state published a report. They had studied this presumption across the state panhandle to Miami and everywhere in between and found that the presumption wasn't quite right. And, um, that is what ultimately has led to the statewide stormwater rule that went into effect at the beginning of this year for quality. We are still today reliant upon rainfall curves that were used in the seventies and eighties. And, and maintenance of all of those are, are the responsibility of the property. They take some of it. Yeah. But some of it, if, if that, um, subdivision, for example, uh, was, if those roads were, uh, conveyed to the public, then the pipes and drainage easements and the roads and all of that were conveyed to the county. And so that's, you know, some of the challenges, you know, we had, you know, Lakeshore States, that was a very challenging neighborhood. The roads were very challenging. The stormwater is very challenging. So that's a, that's an inheritance that we're now, you know, we were trying to resolve.
But the pond itself still remains a responsibility of the. It, it's, uh, in the early days, they would
divide up a pond like a pie and each resident would get a slice of that pie. Um, and we would have typically an easement for inflow outflow. So we make sure water can get in and we make sure water can get out. Um, more, you know, newer developments, just say, let's just say 1990s and forward. Um, most of those are HOA owned, um, which have their own set of challenges. And so that picture that, you know, the federal government is the big umbrella. Um, you know, when you talk about that stormwater permit that we're regulated under, that's delegated down to DEP. So that's who really, we report to, but they report to the EPA. Um, the Department of Environmental Protection, they do regulate some development activities, but it tends to be the big stuff that we don't really see too much here. Very, uh, power plants and industrial plants, mosaic, things like that. And we have the water management district who does the more of the development permitting at the local level, um, district level, if you will. But they also have a really great program with regard to watershed management. And I'm going to talk about that later. So I just want to mention it here because they are a key partner and their surface water improvement management program. So they also have a focus on improving the natural environment. And we have to swim water bodies here,
Lake Tarpon and Tampa Bay. And commercial properties are dealt differently, but redevelopment actually provides good opportunity to improve.
Absolutely. The storm, incremental redevelopment is a great benefit. Yeah.
Or stormwater runoff.
Absolutely. And that's where the local stuff comes in, because as you move from high higher hierarchy, you know, the Southwest Florida water management district, they have a set of standards that goes across 16 counties. Um, you know, urban Pinellas County doesn't necessarily look like Hernando doesn't necessarily look like other, you know, communities. So that's where local regulations will come in to focus on specific issues that are going on in that particular community. And this is, this is, you know, a picture of, of, of some of our, our history is our, you know, older development practices where we channelized, where, uh, we straighten streams and then, you know, you've got development right at the edge of it. And obviously I know you have all received calls about situations like this where, um, communities are, are nervous about what's going on in their backyards. This is an area too, where we channelized, where we channelized a stream, um, and then we culvered it. And during Milton, those culverts blew apart, uh, because it could just could not handle the volume of water. Kelly, on that previous slide,
um, it, it makes me think of like communities or little creeks like Mullet Creek, let's just say, is one that comes to mind where, I mean, look at, I'm not saying that's Mullet Creek. I'm just saying it's a condition that, um, um, some, some entities might not be assuming responsibilities so that it becomes the owner's responsibility. How did the creeks become the owner's responsibility? They didn't buy the house with the creek, but maybe they did. When did that become like their property? It just seems
like counterintuitive to me. I will. You know what? I've got that in a little bit. Okay. So I will, I'll just keep you moving this way. I, I know there's a lot of slides and I, okay, but I, but I am going to touch on that private property. Thank you, Commissioner. 40 to go, 40 to go. Um, you know, so again, again, this is, this is examples of, you know, that high rate of flow, those peak, those high peaks related to channelization and, and then some of the impacts we've seen. And this is, this is some of the work that we're going to be doing, um, with that NRCS contract that, that came to you at the last meeting. And then there'll be another agreement that ultimately comes forward, but these are, these are areas we have to fix. Um, and again, that, you know, the community we talked about, you know, in, uh, Tarpon Woods and the focus on the map to the left there, that is the floodplain map. And the light blue is the hundred year. The dark blue is, you know, the floodway and we have homes in that area and the creek's going to go where the creek's going to go under certain situations. And, um, and so those are the things that we inherit and how we help those communities and how we, what we change going forward, um, really has an influence. And then the environmental impacts of that, because that, that rainwater runs off of everything, ends up out into the pipe as, you know, Commissioner Shearer and I were talking about those pipes that just go right out and everything goes with it. Um, there are those bigger environmental impacts too. And we, you know, we live around water and water is a, just a huge asset for this community and it draws a lot of people here. So caring for it is, is really critical. And so where are we at today? Um, we talked about our development history. Um, we've got a high level of urbanization, a lot of impervious cover. Our development practices weren't necessary. The majority of them were not regulated. Um, at the time we've encroached a lot. Um, but we also look at the physical characteristics, our topography, we're, we're really flat. It's hard to get stormwater to flow from point A to point B in a lot of places. We talked about that coastal influence. Our location, a lot of people say, oh, we got, we're, we got water on two sides. We have water on three sides. You know, we are completely surrounded, Gulf Bay, uh, Inclo River to the north, which is very flood prone area. Um, we have water all around us and everywhere in between. Um, our soils, we mentioned that our depth to groundwater is very shallow. Our rainfall patterns, we received between 50 and 70% of our annual rainfall in the hurricane season. And we have numerous jurisdictions that we have to work with and private property. And there's a lot more private property than there is public. So it adds to that challenge. When we are using our stormwater, our surface water utility, we can only use it in the darker blue areas, right? Those are the unincorporated areas. So the cities may or may not have a utility, a dedicated funding source for that stormwater. Um, or they may or may not fully fund their operations and capital. And that's some of the conversations we've had with them is that, no, we don't collect enough to do everything we do. And we do have to supplement it with general fund. Um, and that bigger, one of the bigger challenges is a lot of the stormwater features are on private property. So, you know, so there is an HOA development or there's a commercial development and they have a pond and it's not functioning properly. It impacts the public system. But a lot of our major drainage channels are on private property, right? Where we do not have maintenance rights. And that's just, uh, our historic, how we were platted, how the neighborhoods were created. Those channels run through their neighborhoods and we had, there's no easements for maintenance. There's no dedication to a government entity. And they ought, they do actually belong to the private property owner. Um, so that's just a history of how we developed where these areas were not set aside, um, in, in the public interest. And so we, we have some great partnerships, but we also have some disconnects, you know, um, you know, after the storm, we, we saw this a lot. This is kind of the difference maybe between the city and the unincorporated area. Um, we're spread out all over the place. So a city may have a very clear focus. They have an area of maintenance they needs where we have a small area of unincorporated that we need to get to, but they're, their priorities here. Our priority is somewhere else. And it's like, we'll get to that. But, but we are, you know, we may not necessarily align on where we're working at the moment. There's various maintenance standards. The city from very, very from city to city, funding levels vary from city to city, but we understand our water is shared. Um, it doesn't care about jurisdictional boundaries. It's going to go where it's going to go. And, and we, we need to work together, um, to address those issues. We do have strong collaborations. We've had that permit that regulates our stormwater system in place since 1990, 22, the cities and DOT are on the same permit with us. We call ourselves co-permittees. We meet every quarter and, and discuss a lot of these, these similar topics. St. Pete is their own, um, because they're so large and Bel Air shore does not have a permit because they don't own any stormwater infrastructure. Um, we talked about the vulnerability assessment. We, we did collaborate with 11 cities on that. And we're going to talk about watershed planning here, um, where we have collaborated with nine of the cities to produce some pretty comprehensive work. So I mentioned that partnership with Swift MUD, um, they have developed a great set of guidelines for the development of watershed plans and how the data is collected, how it's modeled and those types of things. And what that does is it creates a consistent set of standards. So we do every watershed plan the same this way there, they can be integrated this way that, um, it's consistent. That way the cities are using the same information we're using. And we start with understanding where the water's going, how it gets there, our storage areas, our water quality. Um, we go into developing a flood protection level of service maps and it's, it's down to the sub-basin level within an area. So the one on the left there is the flood, flooding level of service in the Starkey Basin. Um, and then we, on the other side of that is the level of service with regard to water quality. All of that information feeds into, uh, best management practices. And that may be a capital project, but it may also be, you need to do more maintenance over here, or there may be some additional public education and outreach. You've got, you know, some industries that may be impacting the environment and you need to go talk with them. And we need to maintain these. Um, if they sit on a shelf, they get stale and the data does not work for us. And so this is an example of one of those partnerships and in the Curlew area where we partnered with Dunedin and Clairwater and the water management district. And we have, so this way, again, we're, we're singing from the same sheet of music. We're talking about the same area. We have the same data and we're, we're utilizing this information to make decisions. And this is an example. The, the one on the right is the one I want to talk about. Um, this is what comes out of a planet. It tells us, you know, where should we be focusing our dollars to get the biggest bang for the buck? That is the channel that I mentioned where the culverts burst apart because it couldn't handle the flow. Well, our watershed plan identified that we have a major channel that runs through there. And then we have three culvert crossings that are recommended for upgrading. Um, so, you know, this is, you know, our watershed plan identified that as a weak point. And during Milton, we learned it. So to date, the county has led the development of 19 watershed plans. Um, but that's on the left, on the right, that is the coverage. So our cities, especially like Clearwater and St. Petersburg, they have developed their own. So we have really good coverage across the county. And since we follow the same guidelines and, uh, you know, with the water management district, it helps keep things consistent. And we only have a couple of small gaps there along the coastline in that peach color. The modeling that we get from these projects is used for us to focus our, our maintenance efforts, our capital projects. We use it for the flood forecasting work that we do to notify residents when they're going to be impacted. It's also used for development. And each time a development comes in and changes the drainage, that model is updated. So we keep it relevant. And as I mentioned, it feeds right into our capital program. So we identify our, where we should focus for flood control and our water quality investments. So out of those 19 plans, 383 potential capital projects have been identified at a planning level cost of over a billion dollars. So it's, it's not a, it's not a little lift, but you know, we too have to make sure that these are the right projects in the right location. These are planning level projects, and then you have to go in and make sure that the ROI is there.
That's just a planning level.
That's our, yes, that's out of those plans. Yep. So today we have 24 active projects in the, in the CIP, and this is a snapshot of those, for water quality, flood control, erosion. Those projects total an estimated $277 million. $87 million, we've, we're getting grant funding for, so 32%. And we have an additional $7 million in grant applications that are still out there pending. So the penny for Pinellas is critical here. It's what allows us to leverage and go after these grants. If we didn't have that, that, that funding, you know, we wouldn't be able to bring, bring back that additional money. I'm going to go ahead and highlight how we then take this information and focus on three watersheds. But you'll notice here that the county isn't necessarily always the biggest player, but we are a big contributor. So in starting with Joe's Creek, you can see the, the unincorporated area compared to the total. And then I'm just some, a snapshot of, of the assets that we maintain within that watershed. And you're familiar with the, the Joe's Creek restoration project that's moving ahead, moving towards 60% design now. This is a key example of where we took a meandering creek and we channelized it. And now we're looking at strategic widening, laying those banks back so that we can mitigate erosion and improve flood control, but also make this part of the community, a bigger part of the community. We're going to be upsizing the culverts at 34th Street. This is immediately adjacent to the industrial park. And there's some real benefits here. You know, when you talk about roadway flooding and structure flooding, we'll be, you know, potentially removing up to 14 buildings from the floodplain and reducing flood depths by over half a foot. I mean, that's a really big improvement. Our partners in the city of St. Petersburg have a number of stormwater and environmental projects, but they're also looking at their collection system and their reuse system, which again, as we mentioned, you know, keeping the wastewater and, and the stormwater separate is, is a good thing for a lot of reasons. Our partners in Pinellas Park completed a roadway project that eliminated a heavy sediment load to the creek. And as they also partnered, did a public part, private partnership with Sam's Club to improve a stormwater facility that was benefiting them in the neighborhood. Kenneth City is five projects are going to be going forward to their city council here very soon, focused around flood control and water quality in Joe's Creek. Looking ahead to Cross Bayou, same snapshot, again, the unincorporated area and those assets that we have responsibility for. It's a lot. We are working on a regional stormwater facility that will, one, Cross Bayou is considered to not be meeting water quality standards. So one of our goals is we need to do projects that help reduce those stormwater loads to the, to the bayou and the canal. But also the focus here is on creating a bank of stormwater credits that can help with redevelopment in this area so that they, if they cannot provide the necessary stormwater treatment on site, they can buy credits. We also have Cross Bayou Canal phase one and two. Again, this is a major investment in the channel itself of restoring the channel banks, addressing erosion, sediment removal, and removing obstructions. And this is a partnership project with the city of Largo and Pinellas Park. McKay Creek, we have a long history in this basin. We actually purchased a number of repetitive lost properties years ago and constructed a stormwater facility, a sediment sump that we clean out, and a floodplain restoration that was completed just a few years ago. But we're also working on the operable lake structure project where we're going to be, allow us to remotely draw down Walsingham Reservoir and Taylor Lake ahead of storms. And to avoid a lot of damages in the community. So you can see what, you know, the totals on what those proposed flood damage reductions would be. HMGP grant paid for the design and our construction grant is pending. We also just completed a preliminary engineering report, partially grant funded, to look at a number of improvements. And again, it does have a significant impact of removing about three miles of this area from the floodplain as well as four homes. I think Barry mentioned this one a while ago about the city of Largo. They acquired the Pinecrest golf course just north of Taylor Lake. If you look at the channel there, it kind of runs through the golf course. Again, same thing. We constricted it. We made it very narrow. The worst part is as you get to the north, it makes a 90 degree turn. And I'll tell you, stormwater does not like to move in 90 degree turns. But what they're proposing is a restoration of that that provides for a master stormwater facility for their medical arts district, addresses flood control and water quality, but also will connect to the Pinellas Trail and create another recreational amenity in the area. They've also recently completed some stormwater improvements in the Valencia Drive neighborhood. And next year, we'll be working on a flood mitigation project in Church Creek, which is a small tributary to McKay Creek, kind of towards the Indian Rocks Road area. The city of Seminole just passed their stormwater utility this past year. So they're there in your very first year, but they already have a number of projects identified to move forward with in this area as well. Above and beyond the capital projects, we do a lot of maintenance out there. So this is a look back of the last five years of stormwater maintenance in these three areas between about four and $6.1 million spent maintaining those assets that I showed you. So where are we going? In 2023, we created a infrastructure report card, of which stormwater was a part of that, to compare ourselves, benchmark ourselves against the country as well as the state. And it's based on the American Society of Civil Engineers criteria. At that time, we were about the same as everyone else in that sea area. We're updating this now. We probably will drop a little bit, I'll tell you, just based on the impacts that we've had over the last few years of the storm, and trying to work towards addressing some of those deficiencies that we that we have. We currently have a consultant who's been working with all the cities. Our major drainage channels, those are just low-hanging fruit opportunities to address. We have them in the majority of the area. They create a lot of frustration for everyone. It's from a maintenance perspective. So what we're trying to do is truly understand what is the need to maintain these major drainage channels, so that we can look at how we might collaborate together to address a lot of this. And this project will be wrapping up this month. Again, we will, we are continuing to work really hard to leverage the Penny for Pinellas so that we can do more with what we have. And we've been very lucky to get a lot of federal and state money, but also those local partnerships where we cost share. We are going to be updating our hotspots. So our hotspots are areas where we have enhanced maintenance. So ahead of major storm events, we get out there and make sure things are clear. And we're updating that based on the storms of the last few years. Our asset management plan is also in renewal. We update that every five years. So we're in our, we're in that period right now. And that again helps us identify those critical assets that we need to focus on and program them into the capital. We still have our hurricane-related backlog and the NRCS project I mentioned. We're also working on project ranking for future Penny discussions because we have like 383 projects. We need to whittle those down and make recommendations as to what might be important in a future Penny. And then we are continuing to monitor our outcomes just like we do in transportation. We have these, these dashboards where we are monitoring the infrastructure we're maintaining and what we have left to do. So a lot of slides, a lot of information. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead, Commissioner. Yeah, I had some
questions on the stormwater credit program you have. Yes. Make sure that microphone is right up there so we can hear you. Okay. There, nobody else has to sit that close. I'm quiet. I don't know. Maybe you're a soft talker. Yeah. Your stormwater credit uh system uh plan uh who are you administering the plan for the the credits and how they're created and yep yeah we created the um I'll show you we
already have one um that's over in the Lealman area and uh nobody's used it yet. It will ultimately be um handled through building development review services as far as um as far as if somebody wants to use it and they want to buy credits versus um versus having it all on sites. But yes, we do have
to. Does it have to be in the basin that it was created in? Yes, absolutely. They have to be in the
basin um and we have to do that uh because when we get these facilities approved by the state we are responsible for monitoring how many credits we sell and not over selling. So I'm going to put this
if a private a developer wanted to create their own mitigation would they be allowed to do that build their own pond for the and then sell credits? Is that open? I believe the state is working towards
something like that right now the re I think the only regional facilities have to be government owned.
So you have to build it you have to own it and you have to issue the credits. Yeah so the one we do
have is right here um which is this um this upper this upper area drains towards um Sawgrass Lake so we have the Sawgrass Lake covered and then we're working towards we need to find a good piece of property um in the rest of the watershed so that we can have a regional facility over here. We have it in our plan uh property acquisition has been very challenging. You have a minimum size property you're looking for minimum volume? Well we want to maximize the amount of credits we can get out of it so it's it's not so much about the size of the property because we can do other we can use other tools um to get more out of it kind of like we talked about um with the Sun Star site that we did a lot of those different BMPs out there and they're really small footprint um in Joe's Creek we're actually looking for something around you know the two acre mark um so that we can uh use an alum treatment facility um because we can get a lot more treatment out of uh using an alum treatment facility. Okay Kelly how
how much money how much penny money are we using on um on surface water projects? I mean the current projects in the penny is 277 million. 277 and that's the money that we're using and using to leverage? Correct yeah. Just as I mean that's that's an area that we could use more penny money just just saying. Um um so that was my first question I don't want to I don't want to mess in too much of the you know watershed plans floodplain management and stormwater management. I mean they're all kind of tied together and then our relationship with FEMA is always there we always listen to FEMA. So this has always bugged me but we've gone along with it and that's the what do you call it the flood no not flood plane I guess it's the uh how we differ from FEMA on floodplain management is it uh on the on the water on the gulf side versus the the Tampa Bay side we're in line on Tampa Bay because they're they're they're more stringent than we were and then in the middle we're kind of the same and then on the on the gulf side we are more stringent than FEMA uh on the so that was my that one has always bugged me because we've always said FEMA rules but then I so how does all of this tie in with and maybe I'd like to just revisit that one at some point too but where do we how does all this tie into that
community rating system program yeah yep um it's all very very interconnected because that's how we get points in the CRS system so the watershed planning the maintenance the flood reporting um the land development side of things it all ties into the community rating system and and you get a certain level of points for different activities um you know so that ultimately benefits our our our unincorporated area who right now if you're required to buy flood insurance you're getting up to a 40 percent discount based on the work that we've done in these specific categories um I think I have some of them here correct so if you remember um you know back in uh when we when we adopted the the floodplain maps uh the 2009 maps that were had been in place for a really long time the vulnerability assessment maps were very similar to those 2009 maps and for some reason and um we could not get get answers from FEMA the newer maps that they were putting out made the risk lower um meaning the base flood elevation of a home would be anywhere between one and five feet lower um than in 2009 so if you came in you know and you're required to build a house and that first finished floor elevation was required to be at 10 you know in 2009 the revised maps it may be seven or five for no reason and we did not we did not understand that the University of Florida did not understand that when they did our modeling there said no it's it's not that different from 2009 but it definitely didn't drop
and and but we've never we still don't have an understanding of that because I mean I still get tapped on my shoulder every once in a while from certain community partners that do a lot of work in that regard and they plan around the the old FEMA maps obviously that not not the ones that we adopted so that let's not get into that one but I do want to look at that again I mean I just want to just make sure I have a clear understanding of the differentiation that we are from FEMA on the on the Gulf side so just again I know they all play together but we can go into that we can also use map storms
from uh from two years ago and show you that the map storms actually show that the um 2009 standards were appropriate um by lowering it you would again people would have flooded out even more well I think that's what
I'd like to I'd like to see that have that conversation I mean it didn't have that conversation four years ago because they had when we had that conversation it was before the storms yeah there was a lot of
difference in the data and if you remember when FEMA ultimately brought the maps forward to us the data
data was already a decade old it's not now I mean I'd like to just get another look that's different topic but they are interconnected and in some absolutely are absolutely okay uh questions yeah
commissioner peters so out of the um nine waters partners nine watershed planning partners are those I assume those are cities right correct yes okay and then we have 11 that are partners in the vulnerability
I assume it's the same nine in that 11 or not no actually not um most of the 11 are on the barrier island um the uh there are two cities that are not on the barrier island that were part of the vulnerability assessment that was bel-air and pinellas park um but the rest of them are all barrier island communities um so those are the 11. the the nine that we have partnered with on watershed plans are all inland communities clear water dunedin um largo olsmar pinellas park city of st petersburg
I'm sorry I know I'm missing more because so those are the key ones that we absolutely need for the inland flooding and so we have all the partners together um and are they all in agreement and partnering on I know you said we can't do it at the same time and and that becomes problems but I think when you look at the big ones the conveyances the the joe's creek and the cross bayou I think on the big ones I think we have to find some way to partner in a way it's concurrent you know and and and and I'm not sure how you bring in those private properties and I you know that's something that might be worth while Tristan's in here I'm making him pay attention now um when you have a property that refuses that's on a main watershed like cross bayou and we have one development that won't partner and won't allow us to go in and clean that and yet huge flooding happened and I'm surprised after this Milton that they haven't come to us and asked us to assist them with that um because they had to have experienced amazing flooding um during Milton so um I just I know we're going to meet and talk about this with some other cities but I I just think that somehow we're going to have to get everybody to get along and if we need legislation that will allow us on those private property development things if it's on a main watershed is there any way that we can get some kind of law that gives us access regardless of their um to keep that that that creek that waterway that stormwater access clear to avoid flooding and I don't know what that looks like um I'm not big on asking the legislature to preempt anything but it's frustrating when you can get every city maybe together to get this to work but then you have this one small area that one development won't allow you to get in there to widen or make it better or improve and it just causes the bottleneck on the whole thing we've canceled two capital projects because of that so um and so that prohibits our ability to have good quality floodplain plans and execute plans because of that and so this is something and I don't know what it looks like Tristan I'm not really sure you know how how you do that but when you have one community and evidently if we had to cancel two we got way more than one um that won't allow those creeks to be cleaned out or the culverts made larger or whatever the case may be um it's problematic because it floods other areas of the county and it's not it's not right and so I don't know how we I don't know how we do this but I think um I I really think it's something we need to as long as they love preempting people then maybe this is a great option for them to get excited and somehow I they they aren't typically about preempting the developers or the private property owners but on in this case they're making us collect our storm water and making us have water quality issues but you have a couple properties that won't even allow us to to be within the law and so I think that's something that's going to have to be considered you think
maybe well you're you're disgusting I mean you're looking down here I mean it the hard part is obviously property you know personal property rights yeah I know you know and I'm looking back because I haven't had this conversation about you know that's where you look at a taking um and and you know and that's a long process but it is possible and so to to those you know that we're actually canceling projects that maybe maybe that's something we have to look at I don't know the
answer and to the extent that there's an obligation on the community to maintain those systems enforcement is a possibility it's usually quite difficult um because none of them usually are even aware that they have the obligation to maintain these systems but it's to the extent that there is something that puts the burden on them it's at least a possibility we could look into and you know commissioner I
I think you know because we're we're we're saying where are we going from here that was the last piece of the slide that the study that they're doing now will will help identify some of those and that was a conversation we had with with Bart you know down in Pinellas Park um about what you know how can we do this regionally better um I can tell you a piece that's going to be money you know there's just no question you saw how successful they've been at leveraging other money um public works team you know has just been incredibly successful of using our dollars and leveraging a lot more outside dollars state and federal funds and others um to to complete the projects we've completed um now we have to identify where the interconnect between jurisdictions that there could be you know better efforts and and it comes down to money and a lot of times the jurisdictions don't have that um you know and obviously her program is limited so you know that becomes part of that discussion but hopefully the study will will give us some better idea what that looks like because it's even with all this information it really doesn't tell us where our problems are and what's possible because there's going to be limiting there's going to be a limitation on what you can accomplish simply because these storm water systems were built prior to the regulations in most areas and so you're you're not going to be able to go in in people's backyard and you know create new you know storm water systems it's economically
infeasible so well unless their house is flooded two or three times and they want you to come in and fix it yeah um but but you know their hoa or whatever it is that isn't allowing you in there is is problematic and i don't know i'm not sure how we get around that but it shouldn't be so prohibitive that we have to let other communities flood because of that my thought yeah well when
we get this the the the study back we'll we'll bring that back here um outline what it has and then
have more discussion about this any other questions okay thank you you actually did that very quickly so i appreciate it yeah thank you as uh don kroll is going to come up with some comments on number two and as he does that so i've tried to remember to thank deputy mcsweeney deputy manley and deputy atkinson like four times and i've forgotten so i apologize thank you again for what you all do for
us uh every time so thank you um don go ahead fishners don kroll from your county attorney's office first of all i'm sorry for taking us backwards but i wanted to clarify something because i think it got overstated commissioner lavala in response to your question you asked about continuing through subsequent parties as far as deed restrictions and those kinds of issues i want to be clear there is a limitation on the reverter provision that's only good for 21 years those restrictions however continue to be enforceable in perpetuity even against subsequent owners so i just wanted to make sure that i clarified that so i think it i didn't say it well or may have overstated it before and to commissioner uh eggers point uh at 21 years to the extent we put the reverters in as a mechanism that would go away at that point too now the restrictions stay the same though you could go in and get an injunction a mandatory injunction including threatening threatening uh violations
of those restrictions um thank you mr sherman so that i guess brings up a question so it could be possible then that subsequent buyers in the scenario that we talked about buyers c b e and f could theoretically wait out deed restrictions no they could wait out the reverter well well we're and right out wait out the reverter aspect of it to where we couldn't get the property back and they wouldn't have to would they still have to build what they say they were going to build well first of all
the the intent is to make the development requirements there be much shorter than that 21 years i would expect so first of all the development will have been built by then correct and the things that they had promised to develop will be done that at least that's my expectation obviously there's a lot of details open at this point they don't get away from the deed restrictions either as far as the continuing obligation to continue to operate them that way in the way that the deed restrictions will tailor uh while they may not lose the property after 21 years those subsequent property owners will be subject to the county bringing an injunction in court to say the court order saying you must continue to do this this way subject to the contempt powers of the court should they fail to do that and what
happens if the property owner says we're not going to do that after the 21 that's where contempt powers
come in you go to seek to enforce an injunction by contempt which is can be there's different forms there's civil indirect and civil contempt indirect and direct criminal contempt so depending on how they did that the court would have different authority on how to craft a remedy to make them do it and uh
do the courts have the power the same eminent domain powers that we have it's what not eminent domain
no uh we i'm not sure i understand the court like could they seize the property i that's probably not the remedy that would occur uh more likely than not and what we've seen and we've used this in code enforcement cases in the past where you seek an injunction the court says you must comply and then when they fail to comply we go into the court and we say judge they're not doing what you ordered them to do and then the court can either find them on a per day basis until they do what they're going to do uh in certain circumstances they for instance where there's cleanup of a property they've ordered the county to go in and clean it and lean the property so depending on what the violation is the court is in what's called equity at that point and they can craft remedies that fit the situation that make
sense sort of thank you so don that what you're basically saying is the the reverter clauses have
a shelf life yes sir and they expire the reverter part yes the requirements on the property that was a
major misunderstanding on my part i i'm there's poor communication on my part one of the reasons why i said let's just go ahead with the fee simple option so i don't even know where to go with that now but it would not surprise me at our next meeting to say to everybody i'm no longer in favor of this uh just going solo for the fee simple option i still like my idea of providing the developers an idea or an option to provide us with a land lease because that might be something that's advantageous to them and us considering this thing has a shelf life that i didn't know about just i apologize i'm not just i'm just i'm not placing any blame i just that was a major consideration of mine i i do want to
point out just for the record i believe that when we took a little informal vote it was four to three on the fee simple option so i i remember having five five oh was it five yeah i wasn't sure where
commissioner flowers was she said we weren't voting i don't think she took a stance
oh wait what do you want to do well what i mean again what's the question here that question did we
add in the request i mean we didn't know the infer we got that's why incorrect information but i know but
that's why i said to begin with that's why the deed restrictions are so important yes we come up with we put in as deed restrictions and you govern the use of the property but if there's way around
them i think that's important a way around what there's either deed restrictions and or reverter clauses
important to them the deed restrictions are enforceable in perpetuity yeah it's only taking the land back under a reverter clause and and and you will have the development built within 21 years
otherwise you got a whole different set of issues yeah the difference is in the mechanism of enforcement right so one mechanism has a period of time within which you can enforce it and then after that the
mechanism to enforce it is just different i mean i um i i don't care who we sell to but i don't want to see vacant property and our um and and what used to be our land but and i'm sorry you know when if we sell to party a and they sell to party b that then sells to party c that then sells to party d and party d says i have nothing to do with um the deal that you made with party a and they take us to court over private property rights that we've just spent four hours talking about in other instances and it becomes a private property rights battle are we prepared to be able to defend ourselves or will this land become vacant land for the next 20 years you have the last revert well the reverter clause though
is enforceable for 21 years and so it doesn't matter how many times it changes hands it's it's only that it's only that piece of it the the the deed restrictions that we're going to put on the property in perpetuity and so they're enforceable in perpetuity it's only the reverter clause which again if you have if somebody's going to buy that property and then settle on it for 21 years we have the ability to bring it back so you're you have the four full enforcement ability for what you want which is to actually have the project developed in accordance with what were you you approve and so you
have 21 years to get that done and commissioner to what we expect is to have continuing within the deed restrictions that the occupancy levels are going to have to continue as well so it won't sit
empty i'll be i'll be i'll be thank you chair i'll be brief uh don and aren't like one-on-one you know i mentioned something similar to this where if it's you know bought by a and then goes to b and there's lease occupancy requirements and an entity comes in and does a map date it's master leased to one organization and so they can say hey we've leased all of the property it's at a hundred percent occupancy but the stores and nothing's occupied or ever opened and then it's still dormant yeah you
you raised a great point in that and and we've talked since and i've pointed out that i agreed that you had a good point in that that what we would do is put within those occupancy limits some finer detail about you have to be open x amount of period of time available to the general public all those kinds of things and again they're all all the devil depends is in the details of what they propose to do the the restrictions will be tailored the idea is is whatever the developers tell us they want to do that's what those those restrictions will be tailored to have ongoing performance for right and then
in terms of value i mean a developer is going to have to look at okay well i may have to subsidize a business to come in here to be open x amount of time to meet that requirement i mean so now again our value is most likely going to be lowered again and so i think that you know you could be good for 21 years but then after that i mean again we're you know i'm 33 i hope i live longer than 21 years i hope all of us do um but you know i think you have a real problem after 21 years they say okay we leased it you know if the county threatens to sue okay we fixed it and then goes back to you know dormant or not meeting those requirements and it's just a shuffling game back and forth and a waste of time and money so
but that's all thank you well commissioners you got you got a we're going to have a open house coming up um so we're going to go forward and schedule that you'll have another work session if you choose to revisit that when you have all your commissioners here you can do that um obviously from a staff standpoint you heard our professionals that have built these things all around the united states um the recommendation stands as a fee simple um we if you're going to get something done we you know we we want to get clarity yeah and again i think these master developers that are master developers
that are coming are going to be doing things by choice um i had asked about the the different degrees of attractiveness of each property and you know the major properties the major attraction spots that's going to be what triggers them that's the ones they're going to have to make sure they're in line with what the city kind of wants to do and likes to do they're the that's the one they're going to move on soonest that's the one they're going to try and that's the one where issues will come up sooner as well there may be some outlying properties that aren't quite as attractive but they kind of are bundled together you know that they're going to have to deal with a little bit differently but that's not the that's not the sweetheart deals of the package that's being
it's your it's your downtown properties we've had like over code enforcement building we've had proposals for you know affordable housing developments and things like that you'll likely see those types of things in some of the outlying properties social building some of the parking lots code enforcement building things like that um we've kind of seen seen that as part of this process but you're right it's it's the it's our downtown piece from here all the way over you know past uh
you know for pinellas building and things like that and not for not for today i want to start going back down this path too long but maybe for those subsequent meetings just to find out again whether it's lease property what's keep being brought up a little bit and or um the reverter clause um how that ties up money or doesn't tie up money again we're we're gonna sell this package for 80 million but we have four of the properties that have reverter clauses i'm just maybe all of them do but let's just say that we put reverter clauses on four of them does that tie up our money for that 21 year period or um or if they do if it reverts to us do we not have to pay back a piece of that just the answer to that is is no we
wouldn't pay it back but i think it goes more to the tune of what commissioner nowicki was talking about if reverter is the mechanism that's in there is there a cost to that basically anything you want to see beyond just selling it for the highest price is going to potentially reduce the cost where the fine lines about the mechanisms in place it's going to vary depending on how firm you are and how much requirements are in there so what reverts the ownership of the ownership of the
property with no cost no cost okay so so what's the big deal about having a reverter clause i i'm not a big fan of them i just assumed that when you revert property back that you have an obligation to pay it
back so if you don't then you can't lose the the well the the downside is in the value proposition for the people buying it they may discount it because they may offer they may offer less for that you
know but but again you're they're they're not gonna if you have it in there they're not gonna
they're not gonna violate it right yeah and that's that's that's a choice we make maybe it's 90 million versus 75 million i mean you make a number all right we'll have that discussion further down the road okay all right um we're gonna zoom through the agenda yeah hold on hold on hold on i know you're like i hope you're ready to radio take off um so just real quick there's three or four things fast that i want to address and then we'll go to that because as soon as that's done everybody's going to like shoot yes so um i'm going to hand out a summary on the the young man um tiffany downs uh presented sergeant nicholas flowers and we've talked about that renaming county road one i'm going to hand this out to you guys and just more more formally uh get a a temperature i'm pretty sure i have the temperature as a go on on at the tuesday board meeting and then we're probably going to target may 18th which is our memorial day presentation to have that formally voted on by you guys but i just wanted to hand this out to you and get your the last nod was a unofficial nod this will be an official nod to move forward and um so i don't want to beat that one up anymore um the um the moroni event by the way we did get the the money for that so there's uh there's 10 seats um and i think three three have been spoken for so just let um stacy know if you're interested in going to that um it's june 13th 6 p.m at ruth eckert hall um and um there was some confusion i think and i want to make sure i i was not confused on it but i i did not request and not mention anything about getting a table at the cfy banquet i i'm not somebody said something that maybe they heard us to say that and i i did not bring that up did not say that i think it's three thousand dollars i i'm not proposing that but i just want to make sure that i didn't mishear that around this table the only one i brought up was for the the moroni event which we agreed to okay okay i'm not i'm not i'm not bringing that one up then i just want to make sure um and did i have anything else that that's all i have written down here you had
something real quick thank you chair yeah i just wanted to bring up to the board to see if uh anybody would be opposed to our social media team posting a good friday and an easter post um tomorrow and sunday so i don't know if there's objection to or if we were planning it i don't know but uh you know hopefully i could get general consensus for a good friday and a happy easter post from our social media
team we don't have any legal problems with that and if we're okay to do it we can move on it i think
it's fine it is a religious holiday so i would suggest trending away from religious messages but i think
it's appropriate otherwise you okay everybody okay with that all right uh barry and if i could just
intervene very i do have a memo a folder going around with confidential items in there there are two memos in there so please as it comes to you make sure that you see both of them commissioner
thanks for bringing that to our attention um and i think that's all we had yes anybody else because i really know that we're going to want to run after we're done with barry uh on the uh okay go barry
telecommunicators week uh fair housing month proclamation and partner presentation from habitat for humanity uh on to uh your public hearings you've got a um kind of wide map amendment residential you know low medium to employment uh this is over in the lowman area and it was unanimously recommended item six is uh ordinance to revoke a and repeal an ordinance with jable uh this is at their request their business model has changed um and the exemptions are tied to a specific um address rather than the company as a whole so we're in alignment with them they've requested this and it uh they'll have to pay back an amount that'll be estimated based upon the property appraiser between 18 and 28 000 from their incentive they understand that they are the ones that pointed it out they've been a great partner they've invested in two new facilities which have created over a thousand full-time jobs and again they're working with economic development on a third facility so um consent agenda you've got different reports uh item 13 is an agreement for the annual facility permit so we give raytheon a building permit you know for the year for facility maintenance approval for various items that they do within their facility item 14 is declaring this is the surplus properties to sell our properties item 15 is change order number two this is um for uh it's a work order contract for various um structures concrete maintenance minor repairs item public works item 16 local agency program agreement for the department of transportation uh this is bringing back the ridgemore boulevard project to the county and you can see the breakdown of the project match between us and the state item 17 second amendment uh term extension with recycling services this is our recycling for unincorporated areas item 18 is submission of three florida department of environmental protection financial responsibility forms for class one injection well permits we need to do this um however the and then it says that we'll abandon them if they become inoperable but we have no plans to abandon these three wells this meeting that regulatory requirement county attorney um under under 19 and
actually it'll show up under 21 i've sent around the folder that hopefully you both will see with confidential items there are two in there please take a look at both of them 19 will be in that folder under item number 20 this is a request to file suit in the case it's referenced this would be a foreclosure of a special magistrate lien um related to a code enforcement issue and like i said under 21 county attorney reports there is an additional item that because of time constraints we needed to get on but that item is located in the file folder that's traveling around for you to take a look at
and i will have county administrator's report that's it okay well that was a lot um but shorter than i thought i mean i thought we'd be probably going to three or 3 30 if that battle had to talk so much we
would have been done even sooner now you can get home and take a nap
that's not a bad idea all right anything else for the good of the order all right we're adjourned