call to order the September 10, 2025 meeting of the Ford Pinellas Board. We are waiting on another person to join us so that we have quorum, but we will go ahead and begin and move forward with our non-action items while we wait for the arrival of a couple more folks. If you could all please join me in standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. We'll go around the room for introductions. We can start to my left with Vice Chair Eggers. Dave Eggers, Pinellas County Commission, District 4, North County. Mo Franey, Mayor of City of Dunedin. Brian Scott, Pinellas County Commission, District 2. Karen Love, Mayor of Gullport, Florida. Mike Eisner, Vice Mayor Tarpon Springs. I pushed the wrong button, sorry. Ann Marie Brooks, Mayor of Madeira Beach. I represent the Beach Communities. Brandy Gabbard, City of St. Petersburg, District 2. Chris Scheer, Pinellas County Commission, District 1. Good afternoon, Whit Blanton, Executive Director. And I'm Gina Driscoll, St. Petersburg City Council, and honored to serve as your chair this year. Next we go to citizens to be heard. Tina, do we have any citizens who have indicated they wish to speak today? Yes, Madam Chair, we have David Ballard Geddes Jr. today. All right, thank you. Good afternoon, sir. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you, Madam Chair. David Ballard Geddes Jr. I live on Georgia Avenue in Palm Harbor. The cameras that are monitoring us at every intersection were installed on the premise of the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act bases itself on the 9-11 attacks on the Twin Towers. Using two airplanes, suspiciously, three buildings in New York City collapse perfectly in on themselves as though they were imploded, laced with thermite, pulverizing them in a freefall fashion, causing three buildings to fall perfectly in on their footprints using only two airplanes while George Bush was holding school children hostage in Sarasota on 9-11, possibly. Saddam, Saddam, or Osama bin Laden's poppy fields in Afghanistan today are under the control of the Monsanto GMO corporation and the lithium out of his country has been taken by who? Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, yet our sprinkler systems today may very well be the sleeper cell that George Bush was referring to as a chemical and biological weapon of mass destruction. The narratives that we were told on 9-11 today is appearing more like a false flag operation, tautology, a lie that's told to us over and over again as to who the actual enemy really is in its hold on truth. As further fortification of this so-called Patriot Act in support of what appears to be an internal act of treason followed by an ever-advancing internal invasion, roundabouts have been fortified throughout every township intending to harden the town, serving a duplicit purpose of a future surveillance and interrogation station to this ever-advancing war front before us today. Speedwaves have also been placed in many of the thoroughfares and neighborhoods intending to slow us down and control the residents' ability to travel should we react adversely to this ever-advancing invasion slowly being fortified around us. Our roadways themselves, although appearing to be under construction, remain mostly in disrepair. The melancholy construction efforts are self-evident that such repair efforts of our roads are a way of serving as a prolonged financial bleed intending to bankrupt, thus causing congestion, disestablishment during this internal advancement of this war front, possibly. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any other speakers? No, Madam Chair, we do not. All right. Thank you. We'll go ahead and close the public comment and go on to our recognitions and announcements for that. Will? Or Whit? Will. Sorry. I'll answer to anything. Well, good afternoon, everybody. I wanted to introduce you to our newest member of our staff, Ryan Hutton in the back there. Ryan joins us ultimately via the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He will be on the MPO staff and will be supporting us on the Transportation Improvement Program and assisting in a variety of other corridor studies, long-range transportation plan, safety analysis, and so on. So welcome, Ryan. Thanks. Glad to have you here. By now, you probably have gotten familiar with Dana Santos of our staff. I would like to congratulate Dana for being with Ford Pinellas for three years now. So we are offering her some acknowledgement. And we have a plaque and a pen for you as well. And just wanted to say thank you so much for all the work that you've done. You've really kind of gotten our website and all our social media and ship shape. And you're very responsive and just really happy that you're part of the team. And anything you'd like to say to the board, feel free. I'm going to set this down. Thank you all, everyone, for the recognition. I just want to say I've learned a lot working with Ford Pinellas. I do not have a planner background, as the majority of our staff does. I'm more of a background in public health and anthropology. So that attracted me to Ford Pinellas because I'm aware of how our built environment and how people move around affects their quality of life and well-being. So, you know, that attracted me to their work. And since working here, I see that the staff, the board, and all our stakeholders that we work with, for the most part, all really care about their work. And it's been enjoyable. I've learned a lot. And I greatly appreciate it. Dana, you did an outstanding job. And I'm just grateful that you're part of this team. Just wanted to say congratulations. Thank you. All right. Before we move into our action items, I'd like to turn things over to Vice Chair Eggers with a special request for us. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to, you know, we've got a big day tomorrow. 9-11, obviously, the historic day in our country's history. And I've not been real happy with all of the meetings that are scheduled tomorrow. It's almost like we've just forgotten about it. And I know we haven't. But so I just really wanted to just take a minute of silence and just maybe reflect a little bit on those folks and our volunteers and first responders and everybody else who helped others survive. And those who passed, just a moment of silence would be great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. All right. And now we'll move to our... Madam Chair. Yes. May I have a minute? Sir. Last night, I did a proclamation on 9-11. I did want to share with you, most of you have not been to see what I've seen. I was at 9-11 when it happened. I was driving into work. And I was close enough to see debris falling off the building, but not realizing they were people either jumping or being pushed to their death. I lost my best friend that I didn't find out until seven years after he passed. He was the person who gave his life to move his canter Fitzgerald, his boss down on a wheelchair. He was bouncing him down the stairs, but they both never made it out. And it was just a heartbreaking thing. My sister and brother-in-law, both being veterinarians, and I brought this up yesterday at the meeting, they set up a triage for the animals, the dogs that were looking for the... There's just a carnage that was there. They spent their time healing burns and removing glass from the dogs that were working on the mound. None of the dogs survived. They all got something from the asbestosis that was there. So I just wanted to share and follow up from what you said, Commissioner. It still shakes me to this day. I don't know if I'll ever get over it. It was the most horrific thing. And when I hear people saying that it is done by the country, our country, I get very bent out of shape. I watched the second plane come into the building and I watched the fuselage come out with my own eyes and I watched it vaporize in front of my eyes. So I will defend this country. We should go back to being hanging flags and being united and not being a divided country. And that's all I want to share. And thank you for listening to me. I appreciate that. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. That was so thoughtful. Thank you for sharing that with us. We'll move now to our consent agenda. Do we have any board members who wish to pull any items from the consent agenda to vote on individually? If not, I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. We have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. Next, we'll go to our public hearing items. And first, we'll take up item 6A, which is the annual rule forward TIP amendment and modification presented by the one and only Chelsea Fever. Hi. Hello. Hopefully going forward, Ryan will be the new face of the TIP amendments. But instead of throwing him out in his first month on the job, I thought I'd take over for him. Something went wrong. Oh, okay. All right. So just kind of an overview, the TIP or the Transportation Improvement Program. This document is your short-term planning document. It identifies all of the projects that will receive state, federal, and sometimes local funding in the next five years. In terms of the cycle for the TIP, it is updated on an annual basis, usually in the July timeframe or June to incorporate FDOT's work program. And then in the fall, we do an update to include the work programs of the local governments. This is really to keep all transportation projects in one place. So you all adopted the most recent TIP back in June. And so this is an amendment to that document that was recently adopted. So in your packet, there's a lot of different information about what the action to be taken today is. So I just wanted to kind of talk about what the difference between amendment and a modification are, because both of those are in your packet. So with an amendment, it's an addition or deletion of a project, or a change that impacts the fiscal constraint, or significantly changes the scope of work on a project. That might be new money from a new grant that's coming in, if there is money going out, if a project limits increase substantially, or if they decrease substantially, all of that triggers an amendment. A modification is just more minor in scope. Now how that impacts you all and the actions that you take today, the only real difference on your end between an amendment and a modification is whether we ask you to do a roll call vote. A roll call is required for an amendment. Just a simple yay or nay, up or down, is required for a modification. If it's the pleasure of the board today, we can do all of that in one roll call vote, or we can do them all separately. But I'll leave that up to your discretion. So the amendments that we're working with today, the first one is what's called a roll forward amendment. These are funds that were included in the most recent fiscal year for projects that weren't spent all the way. So we need to roll them into the new TIP to make sure that the projects that are still going on but aren't quite finished yet can access those funds and keep going forward. So that's the first one. The second is an amendment to the PSTA budget tables. Again, because the TIP includes the draft or the the work program from FDOT and all the local governments, each government entity has its own tables. So PSTA is looking to add just under five million dollars in federal transit administration funds for regional ferry investments. This is a grant that was formerly held by the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority and FTA has approved that funding to be transferred to PSTA. So this funding is going to be showing up in the budget tables. A future amendment will have it also showing up in the FDOT tables. So but that's coming later. A second amendment on the PSTA tables is transferring just over three hundred thousand dollars annually from the Curley Road Connector Service to PSTA Route 19. This is what's also known as the Spark Corridor for PSTA, which is 34th Street South linking Eckerd College up to the Grand Central Transfer Station. And so the Curley Road Connector Service does not currently exist. So it's kind of a reshuffling of priorities on PSTA's part. Now there are four different modifications. The first one is adding a hundred and thirty six thousand dollars in federal planning funds. These are additional funds that were made available to the state and then they're distributed to each MPO throughout the state based on population. So by formula we are receiving the hundred and thirty six thousand dollars of those funds. The second one is an addition of just over half a million dollars in surface transportation block grant funds. Those are federal transportation dollars. These are funds that were given to our agency in fiscal 24 but we did not spend them. So because they weren't spent they kind of went away for a year and now they're coming back and that's just a programmatic thing that we work with the state and federal highway on. So now those funds are becoming available for use. We've already budgeted for these and we already have known that they were coming for the last two years. The third is an addition of just over five thousand dollars in funds from the transportation disadvantage program. This very similar to those federal planning funds this is additional funding that was allocated to the program at the state level and then they divided it up to the MPOs based on total population. And then the fourth are just some text changes to correct a statutory reference on page two of the document. So today's action we're seeking improvement and approval of the amendments and the modifications to the tip. Both committees recommended unanimous approval of these amendments and if approved today will then modify the documents transmit them to the state and federal highway and post them online. So I'm happy to take any questions you may have on either the amendments or the modifications. I just have one comment. Vice Chair Eggers. Yeah just one comment and not so much about this but since we're mentioning FDOT I've had some concerns about a couple of projects on Alt 19 as well as on 580 in Dunedin. And I just really wanted to take my hat off to the district secretary and the staff because they have set aside time to have monthly updates on the project on Alt 19 to answer questions and concerns as they come up as well as a particular business in Dunedin that's having had some issues with a median addition and being charged for it. Nonetheless we've kind of working through a few things but I they've they've just bent over backwards to be communicative and to me that's that's that's that says a lot and though we won't always agree and I didn't agree on a couple of these both of these things and a couple pieces small pieces I just really wanted to take my hat to them tip my hat to them as a responsive organization and that's all I've got. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Commissioner? Thank you Madam Chair. The 136 if you can go back it was that evenly distributed the exact same amount to every one of the MPOs? It's based on a formula population. Oh so everybody got a different amount? Correct. So how would we handle that if we were going to a merge? That would be a decision that's made by the Metropolitan Planning Organization Advisory Council. That's the group that comes up with the different calculations. Right now it's based on each MPO's proportionate share of the population. If a merger were to go forward it would be up to that MPOAC to work together to revise the calculations that are done. If it continues to be by population there would be no change. If there's a certain amount that's by MPO and then maybe a certain amount by population there may be less but that's determined collaboratively by all the MPOs. The reason I asked the question of course you know is because as we discussed this moving forward with the merge everything that you're going to bring up or anyone's going to bring up is where I'm going to go to see how it's going to be possibly different moving forward. So thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you. Anyone else? Do we have any citizens who wish to be heard on this item? No Madam Chair we do not. All right. Thank you. In that case I will entertain a motion for approval of the annual roll forward TIP amendment and modification. So moved. All right we have a motion and a second. This one is for this one requires a roll call vote. Tina could you proceed with that? If I may clarify. Yes. The motion was for the roll forward amendment. This is for all the amendments and modifications if you'd like to take them all together. I just want to clarify the language. Oh okay. Okay. Is that agreeable to the motion? So moved forward with your comment. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Great. Can we proceed with the roll call vote please? Commissioner Eggers? Aye. Mayor Freeney? Aye. Commissioner Scott? Yes. Deputy Mayor Shelley? Yes. Council Member Floyd? Aye. Mayor Love? Vice Mayor Eisner? Yes. Commissioner Johnson? Yes. Council Member Gabbard? Yes. Commissioner Shearer? Yes. And Council Member Driscoll? Yes. That carries unanimously. All right. Thank you very much. Next we'll go to our Pinellas Planning Council public hearings and those will be conducted as follows. I'll ask board members to affirm that they've reviewed the staff report and materials provided to them unless you indicate otherwise. Four Pinellas staff are available with a presentation and to answer any questions. The applicants, local governments, I believe they're also available to answer questions today. Okay. Then I will ask for proponents of the proposal to speak, then opponents and finally any other citizens who wish to comment or ask questions on the case. Then it'll be the board's turn to ask questions. We'll close the public hearing, deliberate and take our action. Well we, if you don't need presentations, we won't give presentations. So that's the shortcut. All right. It's only if anybody wants a presentation. Okay. Do we have any members of the board who would like to see the presentation on, um, item 6B1? No? All right. Tina, did we have anyone in the queue to speak on this item? No, Madam Chair. We do not have any opponents, proponents, or citizens that need to be heard on this item. Okay. Thank you. I'll go ahead and, um, and close that and open it up to the board for any questions. Move approval. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second to approve this item. Do we need a roll call vote for this one? All right. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. Next for item 6B2. Again, we have materials that have been presented to us. There is a presentation available if anyone would ask for that. Okay. Tina, do we have any, um, anyone who is, um, requesting to speak on this item? No, Madam Chair. We do not. All right. Thank you. I'll go ahead and close the public hearing then. Open it up to board members for any questions, comments, or a motion for approval. Move approval. Thank you. We have a motion and a second to approve item 6B2. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. Next, we'll go to item 6B3. Again, um, you have received materials in your packet, unless you say otherwise. We do have a presentation available if anyone does request that. Tina, do we have any, um, any persons who wish to speak on this item? No, Madam Chair, we do not. All right. Thank you. We'll go ahead and close the, um, public hearing and open it up to the board for any questions, comments, or a motion for approval. Move approval. We have a motion and a second. To approve item 6B3. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Next, item 6B4. We do have the staff reported materials that have been, uh, received by all board members, unless you say otherwise. There is a presentation available by request from any board member. All right. Tina, do we have any, anyone who wishes to speak on this item? No, Madam Chair, we do not. All right. Thank you. We'll go ahead and close that public hearing then and open it up to the board members for questions, comments, or a motion. Excuse me. A motion for approval. Move approval. Okay. We have a motion and a second to approve item 6B4. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes. Next, we have item 6C, proposed amendments to the countywide plan with a presentation by Linda Fisher. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Happy to be here. Uh, so back in July, we provided an overview of proposed amendments to the countywide rules. Uh, today we are back for a public hearing to ask for your recommendation of approval for those amendments. Uh, since you've seen them once already, I will try to keep it brief, but I'm happy to stop and answer any questions that anyone may have. Um, as a reminder, the countywide plan includes three adopted components, the map, the rules and the strategies, plus an unadopted appendix. Most of the proposed changes are to the rules. Um, there is also one minor amendment each to the strategies and the appendix. And the main reason for these updates is to recognize the forward, uh, the advantage Pinellas housing regulatory toolkit, which you approved in June. It provides guidance and best practices to local governments for creating more affordable housing. And we're proposing to incorporate provisions from the toolkit into the sections of the rules that address housing. And we're also proposing a few updates to the last round of amendments that we made in 2023, based on input we've received from our local government partners, um, as well as just a few house housekeeping updates. Now, as we drafted, uh, this package, we were mindful of Senate bill 180. That is the new law that prohibits our local governments from adopting more restrictive or burdensome land development regulations until October, 2027. Uh, so the purpose of these amendments is really just to clarify the current rules and expand options for meeting some of the current requirements. And we worked closely with our legal counsel to make sure that we stayed within those, those guardrails for the housing portion of the rules. We have some proposed amendments to the existing density and intensity bonus section. Uh, there are several bonuses in the current rules, including for affordable housing, missing middle, senior housing, and mixed use. Um, now the rules enable those bonuses at the countywide level, but it's up to each local government to choose whether and how to use them. So they're not prescriptive. And the amendments proposed to, uh, start referencing the housing regulatory toolkit as a source of guidance for local governments to use these bonuses to clean up and standardize the language and add some supportive definitions. And we're also proposing to expand two of the bonuses. Uh, one of those is the senior housing bonus. Currently, it only applies to housing that is set aside for residents of a certain age, uh, but we're proposing to broaden it to allow an option for incentivizing universal design. And that is housing that's available to the general public, but it's designed for people of all ages and abilities, particularly seniors. The second bonus expansion is the mixed use bonus. It allows a property owner to use the full density and the full intensity of a parcel at the same time in return for providing transit supportive mixed use. The current rules require that mix of uses to be vertical. So, uh, different on different floors within the same building. The proposed amendments would add an option for horizontal mixed use on parcels of five acres or below. So that could be different uses in different buildings as long as those uses are integrated and the site is designed to support walking, biking, and transit. The next group of amendments is to the multimodal accessibility index or max index, which is a tool that was adopted in 2023. We use it when we review countywide plan map amendments and it helps to ensure that as we're increasing densities and intensities that we're keeping up with providing multimodal transportation facilities to serve it. If an amendment is in an underperforming area, the rules provide options for how the applicant can increase the max score. And these today's proposed amendments would add a few more options and also create a formal process for our staff to offer technical assistance. And we're also proposing to amend the countywide plan appendix with some technical updated technical information about the index. Another provision from 2023 is the target employment center category. When we added options for local governments to create mixed use employment areas. Since then, we've been getting a lot of questions from our local government partners for how to adopt and amend this category, which tells us that it's just not written as clearly as it should be. So we're proposing to expand and reorganize this section to make it easier to use, but not to change anything about how the category works. We've also got some small housekeeping amendments, bringing our public notice procedures up to date, clarifying amendments, submittal requirements, and time frames. Again, not creating any new requirements, just updating and clarifying. And we're also proposing to update a few definitions to address gaps or inconsistencies. And we had a lot of discussion about one of those definitions at the July meeting. We had gotten a recent question from a citizen about recreational vehicles, and we realized that we didn't have a definition for it in the rules. So I presented a draft definition in July that was very simple and general, but it sparked a lot of discussion about whether it was too limited or would inadvertently conflict with local government regulations. So this month, I am coming back with a revised definition that just refers to the Florida statute governing recreational vehicles. And just to give you an idea, it is very comprehensive. It describes all the different types of vehicles that can qualify. And since your local regulations need to be consistent with this statute, then this puts us all on the same page and eliminates any potential for conflict. The new definition also defers to local governments as the the ones who will ultimately regulate these uses. And it clarifies that RVs don't include boats, which was the original question that the citizen asked. So I hope this addresses the concerns that we talked about. And finally, I mentioned that there's a proposed amendment to the countywide plan strategies. That's where we house the land use strategy map, which provides locational criteria for adopting activity centers and multimodal corridors. And it also shows where they've already been adopted. Since we last updated this map, we've had new adoptions in the county Largo and Madeira Beach. So this amendment simply adds them to the map and it doesn't change anything regulatory. So that is our amendment package. On September 2, the planners advisory committee unanimously recommended approval. And today we are asking you to consider making your own recommendation of approval. Just like with our monthly map amendments that you just approved, the countywide planning authority is the entity that will ultimately approve these amendments. For text amendments to the plan, they do need to hold two public hearings. And we haven't been able to affirm up those dates yet. But we hope to schedule them in the next couple of months. So that was a very quick overview. If you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them. Thank you. Any questions from the board? Okay. Tina, do we have any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? No, Madam Chair, we do not. All right. Thank you. So we're being asked today to adopt a resolution authorizing transmittal of the proposed documents to the countywide plan to the countywide planning authority. I'll entertain a motion for approval. I move to approve proposed amendments to the countywide plan. All right. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you so much. Before we move on, if I may, just very briefly, Maria White, Assistant County Attorney and Service Lead Counsel for the board. I just want to remind all board members to please avoid side conversations off mic as these off mic side conversations constitute a violation of the Sunshine Law. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We'll go ahead and move to our other presentations and starting with the PSE activities report. Since our normal representative for PSEA could not attend today, I have been asked to give the report report as a board member for PSEA. The Clearwater station construction begins this month following the groundbreaking that was held recently for the new transit center for downtown Clearwater. It's finally under construction. There is a customer service AI pilot. PSEA is well known for its innovation and now they're piloting the use of an AI customer call center system for PSEA's mobility programs. I believe that was something that was suggested by Commissioner Scott. Very interesting. And instead of filling vacant call center positions, PSEA will be able to save money and reduce on hold times for our customers. The state's 2026 legislative priorities were adopted. The asks are to maintain state block grant funding, Clearwater Ferry infrastructure funding, and to maintain transportation disadvantage funding. A couple of informational items. There was an update that staff gave on the connected community bus network system redesign, which will officially be implemented on October 26th. If you could mark your calendars for a kickoff ribbon cutting of the new Spark Rapid Transit service at Eckerd College. That's going to take place on Monday, October 27th at 10 a.m. Some news on the Dunedin Ferry launch. PSEA is working with the city of Dunedin to expand the Clearwater Ferry to the city starting in October. October is going to be a big month. The Dunedin Marina suffered significant damage from last year's hurricane, so a temporary dock is being provided. Finally, PSEA won a statewide award. They brought home the marketing and safety awards from the Florida Public Transportation Association's conference last week. That concludes my report. Any questions? All right. Thank you. We'll go ahead and move on from that to the regional activities report from WITS. And that Florida Public Transit Conference was in St. Pete Beach, so here hosted in our county. On the regional activities report, I'm just going to cover a couple of items. Many of you or several of you attended the kickoff meeting for the regional infrastructure accelerator project that was a federal grant of 1.75 million dollars awarded to the city of Tampa. It is being managed or led by the Tampa Bay Partnership. And even though it was awarded to the city of Tampa, it is a regional initiative to include Pasco, Hillsborough, and Pinellas counties. The regional infrastructure accelerator, the website link is in your agenda packet. There's a lot of good information in there. There's also a handout that we've attached in your packet on what it is. It is under the authority of the Build America program, which is an agency of the United States Department of Transportation. I want to be real clear that the infrastructure accelerator is not new money coming into our region, but it is a method of using innovative finance to advance projects that are already identified as either funded or unfunded, when I say funded, financially feasible over the long-range transportation plan or projects that aren't financially feasible but have been identified in the long-range plan. The intent of the infrastructure accelerator is not to necessarily change our priorities or come up with new projects that haven't already been identified. They will be looking at all of our three county priorities, screening them for eligibility, for consistency with the program, and then advancing theoretically four to six projects for potential action. They could include highway projects, transit projects, transit projects. We've learned that even in states like Oklahoma, they package together a series of projects that address safety and accessibility needs around the state. So it could be that even though the individual projects are small, they're packaged together to advance many at one time. And there are the innovative finance methods range from value capture strategies to bonding and tolling to also private equity bonds and things like that that would entail private sector investment and return or assistance from the private sector, basically to facilitate public-private partnerships. So we're in the very early stages. We had a meeting earlier today where they reviewed the criteria. We will be bringing back to you a memorandum of understanding that they drafted and presented to us this morning. That'll be likely on your October agenda. And the consultants for this initiative will be presenting to the September 26th meeting of our Transportation Management Area Leadership Group. So you'll get a little bit more information on that. And those of you who are at the kickoff meeting, I don't know if anybody wanted to add any additional thoughts or perspectives on this, but certainly would welcome any comments. If not, I'll move on. Yeah, it was an interesting meeting. It, my big takeaway was there's, there's a lot of, I mean, a lot of money out there that you can borrow. The key word there being borrow. There's a lot of money available, but you got to pay it back. Right. You do, but the, the, the terms are really pretty favorable. And in fact, I think I heard that in some cases you don't have to begin repayment until five years after completion of construction. And the, the interest rate is, is incredibly low, but again, it is borrowing. You're right. Interesting. Nonetheless, no free lunch. You just hear all the programs that are out there. Right. Right. But I can see scenarios where you might have a project that has a sense of urgency about it, but maybe you don't have that other, you know, grant funding or, or other funding that's coming in. You can get going now, um, and have that long-term plan that's, that's favorable. I mean, it's a piece of puzzle, you know? I don't think it can be, yeah, it's not, it's not a right fit for any, for every project, but I could see some scenarios where it would make sense to do it. But yeah, it was, uh, there was sort of, um, the running theme as people were talking about, talking after the presentation was no money there, but they want to talk about creative ways of making things happen anyway. I think they're, some of the things that they're looking at are the Tampa streetcar project, which has been planned for many, many years, but hasn't gotten the funding behind it. Um, perhaps if we had thought about doing this 35 or 40 years ago for us 19, we'd have all of us 19 complete by now. So it's things like that, that get things done more quickly than the regular flow of transportation dollars to your region. Anyway, um, encourage you to keep up to date on that. And we will certainly apprise you of any updates. The other item I wanted to mention is the field trip to Orlando, um, to meet with the MPO staff and officials, uh, serving the three county area over there. Just to be clear, the Metroplan Orlando, uh, MPO, um, is, did not merge, um, but it went independent in the late 1990s, um, from its hosting arrangement with the regional planning council. Um, since then they have, um, you know, undertaken a number of initiatives and they've been very successful in getting their regional transportation priorities, such as the, um, the western beltway and the, the loop around Orlando completed the freeway loop, um, the sun rail, uh, commuter rail project, um, and state road for 17. So they've had all these major, uh, highway and transit projects that they've been pretty successful over the years at getting done. Uh, when we go over there on the 27th, um, you have a list of potential attendees, uh, that list continues to be revised. We now have two city of Tampa representatives who will be joining us, um, as of this week. Uh, so I do expect some adjustment in this, but at some point I'll need to lock in the number probably, uh, by the end of this month and the names, uh, and we may need to reduce, um, a few of the staff that'll attend, but, uh, I've not heard any limitations on the number of elected officials we can bring, uh, to this meeting. What I have commitments from Orlando for is that they will have representatives from Seminole County, Osceola County, Orange County, and the city of Orlando there, as well as, um, a member of their, um, um, small cities committee. I can't remember the name of what they call it, so I just call it the small city committee. Uh, but it is all the cities under 50,000 population, and they do elect a person on that committee to vote, uh, with the main board. And I think what we really want to find out, um, from my perspective and, and perhaps some of what I've heard from you all is how are they treating the small cities in the process? Um, how are they managing equity, uh, in terms of distribution of transportation dollars across the three counties? And, um, how have they, um, you know, built that collaboration and trust, um, in the region over time? We have a commitment from their chair, uh, Seminole County commissioner, Bob Delari, who I've worked with since the mid 1990s, um, in the city of Oviedo and other places. Um, he will be there the entire time. And then we have Orange County commissioner, Myra Uribe, who is the chair of the MPO advisory council, and she has committed to being there as well. Um, most of their elected officials will join us around lunchtime, uh, and then stay around for the discussion after that. Um, it's really up to you all how you want to get there. Um, at this point, we are not anticipating, uh, chartering a vehicle. Um, although we can look into that if you would like us to do that. Uh, when the Hillsborough staff talked about it, they all decided they would just prefer to drive on their own. Um, so at your direction, we will investigate those options and see if we can charter a vehicle. If, if that's something you want us to investigate and explore costs on that. And that's all I have. Um, and you can let me know your thoughts. Just for the record, I'll point out it is a sunshine meeting and it has been properly advertised already on our website. Thank you, Tina. And I believe our attorney is interested in joining us. So, um, she will, um, make sure we cover all the, uh, do not talk about A, B, and C. You know, can you tell us who all is, uh, Yeah, you have a list in your packet. Um, what I know, uh, is Mayor Andy Ross of the city of Temple Terrace, Charles Klug of Port of Tampa Bay. These are all voting members of the Hillsborough MPO, uh, Commissioner Harry Cohen, Planning Commissioner Nigel Joseph. He's not an elected official, but he votes on the MPO. Uh, Lynn Gray, Hillsborough County School Board and Assistant Superintendent Kristen Davis. In addition, Council Member Lynn Hertak and Council Member Alan Clendenning, um, from the city of Tampa. Uh, PASCO has, um, sent me today a confirmation list and I don't know that I have it immediately handy. Uh, but Commissioner Starkey and, um, let's see who else, um, Commissioner Jack Mariano and Matt Murphy from Newport Ritchie, right? Mayor John Hoover, city of North Newport Ritchie as well. Their chair is Matt Murphy, right? Uh, they're still working on some details there. And then for our board, um, our chair, Gina Driscoll, Council Member Patty Reed, Commissioner Scott, Council Member Gabbard, Council Member Floyd, Mayor Franey, but I think you have a conflict now and won't be able to join us. Um, and then Deputy Mayor Tom Shelley, and then Commissioner Chris Johnson. And, and if, you know, something comes up and you're not able to attend, that's perfectly fine. We'll, we'll debrief afterwards, but happy to have you all there. Well, um, I am planning to go over the weekend before. Um, so I'll already be over there. So I'm not, don't count me in for as you contemplate any type of charter situation. Okay. Is that generally the will of the group to make your own travel arrangements? Or would you like us to look into some options? We can come back at the October meeting if you prefer. I, I don't think it's necessary. Okay. Yeah. All right. We'll just leave everybody to be road warriors on I-4. Yeah. It's not that bad. I know. Five in the morning should get there in plenty of time. Yeah. Well, you can always travel through the green swamp. It's a little slower though. All right. Did you have any, uh, anything else for the regional? Okay. All right. Next we'll go to item 7c, which is our Federal Highway Administration 2025 certification report. All right. We're very happy to have, uh, Teresa Parker here from the Federal Highway Administration to present our quadrennial certification findings. Uh, and I had to look up quadrennial, but it's something we go through every four years to make sure that we're in compliance with federal laws and policies. Teresa, welcome. Thank you. Okay. Again, good afternoon. Um, I'm very excited today to present to you the summary and findings, um, for the certification review. The federal review team consisted of Curling Thomas, Carlos Gonzalez, Kerry Shepard, Aries Little, and Jason Morgan on January the 30th of 2025. The map here depicts the TMA Tampa certification for the Fort Pinellas, Pasco, and Hillsboro. The findings for Fort Pinellas includes six noteworthy practices, four recommendations, and no corrective actions. I think everybody enjoys hearing that, correct? Okay. The first noteworthy practice was regarding the Metropolitan Planning Organization structure. The federal review team was impressed with the Fort Pinellas MPO's efforts, which resulted in expansion of the board's composition. The MPO completed a re-emportionment plan expanded the membership from 13 members to 19 members. The MPO have become more visible than in the past, with the board reflecting a more diverse representation of the MPO planning area. Additionally, instituting quarterly board workshops has also been beneficial in accomplishing more streamlined and productive monthly board meetings. The second noteworthy practice was regarding the bicycle and pedestrian planning activities. The federal review team's MPO's, excuse me, the federal review team commends the Fort Pinellas MPO's safety education and training initiatives. The MPO coordinated with state, local partners, local partners, and advocacy groups to educate bicyclists about bicycle safety and existing laws and regulations. The MPO conducted bicycle awareness campaigns through public service announcements, blogs, and the city's website. Smart cycling trainings were hosted at local bike shops during which safety information was distributed. The third noteworthy practice was regarding also bicycle and pedestrian planning activities. The federal review team commends the Fort Pinellas MPO for its active transportation plan designed with the intent of providing health outcomes, expand economic opportunities, and improve quality of life by providing safe and comfortable places for residents and visitors to travel without the use of an automobile. The MPO has prioritized more than 68 point million dollars of flexible funding sources through the 2050 for 10 active transportation corridors to implement bicycle and pedestrian improvements. This effort demonstrates the MPO's commitment to health, safety of residents and visitors to Pinellas County and adjoining areas. The fourth noteworthy practice was related to transit. Fort Pinellas integrated land use and transportation through the Sunrunner Rising Development Study. The MPO's efforts concluded with recommendations for 10 station areas to support the Sunrunner, investment, promoting ridership, and assisted cities of St. Petersburg and South Pasadena in providing land use strategies and economic principles. Both cities embraced the study's recommendations by taking actions to amend their land development regulations and comprehensive plans. The fifth noteworthy practice was regarding transit. The federal review team recognizes the Fort Pinellas investments corridor strategy, which prioritizes corridors for enhanced transit and infrastructure to support population and employment growth. The Advantage Alt 19 plan was developed with local and regional partners to evaluate alternative US 19 for connecting people to housings, jobs, job training, and key destinations via safe and reliable transit. The sixth noteworthy practice was regarding safety in the considerations in the planning process. The federal review team was impressed with the MPO's use of before and after studies as a key element of performance measurement and public accountability. Additionally, information captured serves as an outreach tool for the MPO. For example, the Palm Harbor roundabout gained public support after data demonstrated slower speeds, fewer crashes, and improved connectivity. There were four recommendations regarding agreements. The federal review team recommends the Fort Pinellas MPO complete and evaluation of the current coordination process with FDOT to ensure the annual list of obligated projects include transit projects. There was one related to transit regarding the transit asset management TAM plan to make sure it's reflected directly or by reference in the long range transportation plan. In addition, the federal review team recommends current the NPO's processes are documented to ensure transit safety targets are adopted, updated, and reflected directly or by reference in the LRTP and the public transportation agency safety plan. There was one recommendation regarding the unified planning work program. The federal review team recommends all federal fund sources to be clearly identified in the UPWP. Additionally, the federal review team recommends the NPO NPO ensures the NPO ensures FTA formula 5307 and transit discretionary planning awards program and the UPWP as outlined by the appropriate guidance. The last recommendation was regarding the LRTP financial plan fiscal constraint. The federal review team recommends that the NPO consider making available a guide to navigate the LRTP financial plan to make it more more user-friendly, more user-friendly, more user-friendly, more user-friendly, more user-friendly, more user-friendly, more interested parties. Thank you. This concludes the Tampa Bay St. Petersburg TMA 2025 closeout and findings for Ford Pinellas NPO. Thank you. Any questions or comments from board members? Vice Chair Eggers? Well, first of all, Ms. Parker, thank you for being here and for delivering the news and the recommendations that you have. And I just wanted to take a second, regardless of whether, you know, everybody around the room is always unanimously supportive of all the work that's gone on here. I really wanted to thank staff, our professional staff that made all of this really come together and make it happen and then help, you know, guide us through the process like you always do. So thank you to staff. And again, thank you for your presentation. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you. Anyone else? Did you have any final comments on this? No, we just really appreciate the cooperation and partnership with the federal team. It was, y'all are going through it this year. We understand. And, you know, we really are happy that you're here in person and appreciate the efforts. And we depend on you all. So thank you very much. Thank you, Whit. We are moving along and taking one step at a time due to a very reduced staffing. And we can't hire anybody right now. So we're wearing multiple hats. So I am the planner for District 7, the Tampa Bay area, as well as the team lead and some other responsibilities that I'm holding it down. But thank you. And you're based in Orlando, just to be clear. So you didn't come all the way. Oh, you're in Tallahassee now. That's right. You used to be in Orlando. Right. Correct. So thank you for making the trip. Yes. Thank you. And thank you for this report. It's really interesting. And it really says a lot about about Whit and your team. Thanks for all you do. All right. Next, we have our countywide trends and conditions report presented by Rob Feigl. Hi. Hi. Good afternoon. If you were to ask me to summarize this entire report in three words, I would say it's getting better. There's fewer crashes. There's more trails with better access, better intelligent transportation systems, and a lot of intergovernmental collaboration going on to improve safety. Since you're not asking me to do it in three words, I'll go ahead and unpack that a little bit. Make any assumptions. So the countywide trends and conditions report serves as a tool to evaluate progress toward achieving the goals, objectives, and policies, and the Advantage Pinellas Long Range Transportation Plan. It also identifies safety concerns, traffic congestion, transportation and infrastructure, crash data, also taking into consideration things like land use and employment. The report also informs transportation safety studies, the design of transportation projects, and assists law enforcement with activities related to safety, so it doesn't cover too much. I'll give a brief summary of the key highlights and trends. This report's updated annually to provide high-level snapshots of the key trends in Pinellas County. So traffic counts for monitored roads are still higher than prior to the pandemic. The dip that you see on the chart there is 2020, in case you can't see the date, which was also the year when there were significantly more traffic fatalities and serious injuries due to higher speeds. Vehicle miles traveled is another way to look at it. Again, you can see that there's been increases, sadly, since 2020, with, again, the low point being in 2020. And with more than half of our residents living less than 10 miles from the workplace and more than a third of jobs and households within a half mile of a trail, it's easier to safely bike or even walk as an alternative to driving. And many residents, 18 percent this year, and that's up from 15 percent last year, and 12 percent the year before that are working from home. And while that helps with congestion, there's still significantly a good bit of congestion on the roads, but the silver lining of congestion and the resulting slower speeds is safer roads overall. So the orange on this graphic, which I'm sure most of you are familiar with, indicates a percentage of vulnerable road users that would not survive a crash depending on speed. The higher the speed, the more fatal the crashes are. The good news overall in the big picture is that overall the crash trend is that crashes, fatalities, and injuries are all down. And this is in part due to the increase in traffic congestion leading to the slower speeds and resulting in fewer crashes, injuries, and fatalities. Most of the traffic fatalities that do occur involve our vulnerable road users, and as you know, those are our motorcyclists, bicyclists, and pedestrians. So as you see on this chart, the number of crashes is up 1 percent for bicyclists. Fatal crashes for bicyclists are up 5 percent on average. For pedestrians, crashes involving them are down 5 percent on average in general, but crashes involving, fatal crashes involving pedestrians are up 6.6 percent, or down 6.6 percent. So notably, fatal crashes involving impairment are down 8 percent. If you've seen this infographic, and I'm referring to the top row for impairment, for as long as I can recall, that's been three little guys there representing. The way to read that table is saying that impairment has been involved in the past in every one out of three fatal crashes. So notably, this is the first time that's gone down. I've had a little guy there, and he's shown that that's down to 25 percent. So that's down overall. The trend, excuse me, that's down about 8 percent, and that's pretty significant as a trend, and it's a very noticeable change. Aging drivers also, if you recall in our past infographics, that was also a one out of three fatal crashes involved aging drivers, and that's changed as well. So now that's down to 30 percent. So good news on that. Aggressive driving, however, is up 23 percent. So although there's less impaired and distracted driving, we have a lot more aggressive driving, and the consequences are fatal in a lot of cases, unfortunately. So the trends for this report only covers five years up to and including 2024. So how are we doing so far in 2025? So this table covers August up to and including August of 2024 compared to 2025 as of August, and we have double-digit improvements in every category so far this year, which is really great. Now, as the weather starts to improve and more people want to get outside and enjoy the good weather, that can tend to change. So it's not a horrible time right now to start any educational efforts to just have better safety awareness, especially with Halloween around the corner, a lot of folks dressing up in black and going out, and it's just particularly a dangerous time for pedestrians. So from the earliest stages of planning, design, construction, and even after construction, Ford Pinellas and its partners continue to integrate safety into all aspects of the planning process. Notably, Ford Pinellas has had partnerships with local governments submitting applications for Safe Streets and Roads for All grant program, and was successfully awarded funds to support targeted analysis on several corridors throughout the county. More recently, Ford Pinellas was awarded a grant in September 2024 through the Safe Streets for All program to update the Safe Streets Pinellas Action Plan, and that will include reviewing the high-injury network, using new data, analyzing high-conflict intersections, using near-miss technology, and creating a public-facing dashboard with crash statistics. And finally, although Ford Pinellas is more of a monitoring than an implementing agency, we do work with and depend heavily on numerous partner agencies to integrate safety into every project. Ford Pinellas also prioritizes which project it would like FDOT to fund. Safety is taken into consideration when these projects are prioritized, and when FDOT funds projects from our priority list each year into their draft tentative work program. So many of the projects that find their way into our draft tentative work program and ultimately our transportation improvement program are related in some way to safety. And with that, I can take any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor Franey? So this is probably more of a theoretical question. For you guys. So you said one-third of jobs are within a half mile of the trail? Yes. So what would Pinellas County have been like if we didn't create the trail, we just had some type of mass transit option along that corridor, and we hadn't gone in this other direction? So you're talking about the way-back machine? Yeah, I'm talking about the way-back machine. Just curious. 1980s. You know, I think with any kind of transportation investment like that, you see that there's access really does drive things. So the trail has driven accessibility and people wanting to be near the trail. I think it was 20-something years ago that I did a study for this MPO as a consultant that looked at home values within a certain distance of the trail, and they were 2% to 3% higher than home sales anywhere else in Pinellas County because, you know, people are willing to pay a premium to be near that transportation asset. You know, we look at the trail as a recreational facility, but it's also a transportation corridor. I think if you had built a rail line, you'd see some of the similar characteristics. People who like the idea of traveling by train or light rail or whatever would gravitate and pay a premium maybe for being near it, and people who didn't want that wouldn't pay the extra, and they'd go find someplace else to be. So there's kind of a self-selection involved in that. I would say a rail line has maybe greater potential of pulling together more jobs than a trail does, but at the same time, I think they operate somewhat similarly. Highways do the same thing. Where do you see business activity around an interchange, around a bridge crossing? You know, that tends to drive it as well. Well, it is interesting because I think it does kind of say, too, with, like, electric bikes and things, and people are using, you know, the trail, and they want to get there faster, and electric bikes help them get there faster, you know, or at least without killing themselves. So it's interesting how it's kind of evolving. But thank you. Commissioner Scott? Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Rob. So on the bicycle category there, we're not, are we or are we not differentiating e-bikes from just regular pedal bikes? Well, it depends. So I saw a recent email talking about how it really depends on how many cc's or how fast it's able to go, whether or not a police officer will even consider something a bicycle or not. So a lot of things that are masquerading as e-bikes are actually unauthorized motor vehicles. They're being sold to be used on private property but are being turned loose on our roads. That's one issue. And, you know, if they're electric bikes and they're only going a certain, true electric bikes only going a certain speed, they're not really much faster than, you know, than normal bicyclists going on the trail. But that's definitely kind of an emerging gray area, an emerging technology area that we're going to have to play catch up with everything from the forms that are used when there's an accident and the police officers filling it out, which is where our data starts, really, to the point where I get up and present the information. So hopefully we'll be able to get better data on those kind of things going forward. Yeah, I was going to say, Rob, we are working with the sheriff's office and other law enforcement through our transportation safety committee to better capture that data with crashes, and I think there's a desire to do that, willingness to do that. I'm hoping we'll bring it to you in October or November, but we are going to be looking at an e-bike safety study with the University of South Florida, potentially, or maybe using one of our consultants. I don't think we've worked it out yet, but the idea of really studying some of the causes and interventions with e-bike safety. Thank you. Hot topic right now. All right. Vice Chair Eggers. I wanted to say, do we need new legislation in the state? Because right now they treat e-bikes like bicycles in terms of age, helmets, et cetera. Could we ask the state to help us with this issue? I think it's an ongoing issue. We did have legislation last session that gave local governments the ability to limit the age of people who use these devices and also to provide training and enable that. It didn't provide any funding for it, so we could work with our delegation if there's a desire to do that. It's a source of a lot of discussion, and I think one of the challenges we have is asking law enforcement to do more to do that. They're already kind of stepping up and doing some targeted enforcement, really specialized enforcement in certain locations to just raise more awareness. So I'd like to just keep that partnership going and see if we can do that more frequently rather than trying to introduce new legislation at this point. But I'm open to discussion. Let's have a conversation about it. All right. Vice Chair Eggers. Yeah. So I love the trail. I think it's like probably our number one asset, maybe besides the beaches. And just think about what Commissioner Scott would look like if he hadn't had the trail and all the exercise opportunities, the runner, the bike rider, and everything else. But just real quickly, on the distracted drivers, are we talking cell phones mostly, or what's the big? The distracted driving category is more broadly defined than just cell phones. It could also be someone fumbling around for french fries in the passenger seat. It could be a number of things. So if they're generally distracted, the police officer is going to check that box. So it's not necessarily them. It does include, absolutely, the phone, 100%. But it is broader. I would say that's probably a big one, but I don't know. Doing makeup. I mean, not that I ever am distracted myself by cell phones. I get so embarrassed sometimes. Like, I've tried to start doing it at stoplights, and then I don't get the light, and somebody honks nicely behind me to move. Aggressive driver speed, is that what we're talking about there? I'm glad you asked. So aggressive driving, when I first heard it, I just thought it was honking the horn and certain hand gestures. But the actual definition of that is really a long laundry list of things that it's defined as two or more of anything from that laundry list. And you're looking at things like running a red light, speeding, illegally changing lanes. And what all of the things on the laundry list have in common is that you're breaking the law. Okay. So that kind of, so one or two of those items every time. So you should stop doing that. I know. I know. I'm working on it. And then Commissioner Latvala would like to bring up the aging drivers, as he's always after me for being old. So is that, when it says aging, does that mean you're, like, aging from 30 to 40, or does that mean people above 55, or what's the? No one in this room. It's 65 or older. Okay. And. Oh, it's time to go. I like you say nobody in this room. I know I like that you started with that. So that's, that's primarily the. It, it has improved. So as of last year on that, on that one slide that I'd mentioned, the aging drivers, it, it has, it, it was as of last year and had been for a number of years consistently a statement with regard to fatal crashes. One out of every three fatal crashes was involving an aging driver. So that's a really significant improvement. As of last year, that was down 1%, the overall five-year trend. Now that's down 4%. We're looking at the bottom row. So I had to change the infographic off the bottom and make it 30%. So hopefully that trend will continue. But that's definitely improving. Well, not to make light of what the topic is, which is fatal crashes, but I guess young people can learn from old people. Absolutely. I mean, so, I mean, as far as that goes, but it's just, it's just a shame when we lose anybody, obviously, on the roads. And, again, hats off to the sheriff's department for getting out on 19 and slowing the traffic down. If you're not slowing it down, then you probably picked up a ticket somewhere along the way because they really are trying to better that raceway. And now when I go on it in the morning, everybody's going about 45, and the construction's amazingly how that works. But, yeah, they've done a great job to try to slow that down a little bit. I feel bad for them. It's like a game of whack-a-mole because, you know, once they get the impairment and distracted driving down, then up pops the aggressive driving. So maybe they're spread too thin, but they focus on one thing, and then, you know, the other areas tend to increase. But some definitely really good overall positive trends, looking at the big picture, there's fewer crashes, fewer fatalities, and fewer injuries overall. And that's not just a snapshot from last year to this year. That's over the five-year trend. So we're moving in a really good direction. That's good news. Thank you, Rob. I appreciate the report. Just to add a little bit on that aging driver, we are getting older as a county and as a state. So that trend is going down while the trend of the number of older drivers is increasing. Vice Mayor Eisner. Thank you, Madam Chair. There would be a lot less if they didn't pass me on the left every time I'm trying to do the speed limit. That's my first comment. I did want to make a comment about the e-bikes. The limitation, I believe, is 750 watts per bike, and yet now they're making them with 1,000 watts per wheel. So right there, they're actually selling these things over the limitation. I believe the speed limit maximum is 28 miles per hour. But I just don't know how you go to enforce that when people behind the wheel of the car is driving excessive speeds. I don't think we have enough police force to enforce unless we have specific days. We don't have a police force enough to stop people on the trail from flying by. And many of them are flying by with actual gas motors claiming that they're bicycles when they're not. And they're going 40, 45 miles an hour. So there does need to be something done. I just don't even begin to have an answer. Because a lot of these kids that are doing 45 miles an hour are underage kids. They're 8, 10, 12 years old. And the parents are really the ones that are at fault because they're setting their child up to be massively hurt or injured for life. So, you know, I have a kid on my block who's riding in a popped wheelie and confronting every car. And last minute, his kick in life is to last minute to turn away. And one day I'm going to be scraping him up off the ground with a butter knife because somebody's going to miss. And I don't know where you – I think on the School Transportation Safety Council, somebody was speaking about getting kids to do these TikTok-type things from other kids so that possibly they would have an ability to relate. Because hearing from Commissioner Eggers or myself, they wouldn't really want to hear from us. Or you would. I mean, so, you know, it's trying to get people at their own age to be able to, you know, try to teach them. So that's all I want to – thank you. Mayor Freeney. Not to belabor this, but I was just going to add that about two weeks ago the Sheriff's Office did a great presentation to our commission on all the different kind of vehicles, what they can enforce, what they can't enforce. Deputy Skypack was there. It was there, and it was great because I think it goes to the heart of what's worth going after for legislation versus what are – you know, what's the best – you know, what's the best kind of trying to get to some solutions. So anyway, just – your commission might enjoy something similar because they have a set presentation for it. This presentation always generates a lot of discussion. I really appreciate your thoughts and comments. It's – this is not an action item, so it's information, so we'll continue to update it and bring information back to you as need be. Okay. Great. Yeah. There was a lot to look at here. It was fascinating. One thing I wanted to ask about was in the report on pages 14 and 15, where it talks about managing congestion. It's got a list there and a map that's color-coded, and it's nice to see that there are segments throughout the county that are in green, showing that they've either stayed the same or improved by up to 43 percent. But lots of yellow, which is worsened by up to 10 percent, and then the red is pretty bad. The list of the – so it was the top 20 least reliable segments in terms of travel time. And there's a lot of repetition here. I mean, 275, of course, stands out. But there are other roads here where different segments of those roads are reliably unreliable. How do we use that – how do we use this to take a look at those roads where multiple areas of the roadway have that consistent congestion to try to ease that? I can try and answer that. But we have a congestion management process so that we do go in and review those persistently unreliable roadways. And reliability is just travel time expectations. If you know it's going to take you an hour to get to Tampa at a certain time of day, that's actually reliable. But when you have a crash or something like that that makes it instead of an hour, it's an hour and 30 minutes, then it's unreliable. So dealing with recurring and non-recurring congestion crashes is part of our traffic system management operations emphasis. And we are embarking on a regional process, looking at the I-4 corridor, I-275 corridor, U.S. 19, in partnership with our other counties around the area. So that will be one way to do it. The other component is through our transportation project priorities. So we're very happy that the governor's Moving Florida Forward initiative is bringing some capacity improvements to I-275. The Howard Franklin Bridge is adding capacity. And then we've got the West Shore Interchange also under construction. So it's a combination of emergency response to deal with crashes and move the vehicles out of the traffic stream quickly. It's information for motorists, so alerting people where there's a problem. Like yesterday, the Gateway Expressway was shut down all day from I-275, and people were being diverted on all different kinds of roads. So if you get that information in advance through the radio or through your phone, then you can choose an alternative route, as I had to do. So, you know, it's a lot of that is information for motorists in advance. And it's looking at the traffic signal timing as well. So on these persistent corridors, one thing we may hear on the field trip in Orlando is that MPO goes out and does traffic signal retiming every year. The MPO does it, not the county or the cities. And so there's different strategies that we can approach. Interesting. I would just add to that, just empirical observations. Folks, you know, if they know it's usually going to be a certain X amount of time to get to work, you know, during rush hour, they can handle that a lot better than what I would term avoidable congestion. And so that's the garbage truck that's stopping every 20 feet in the one lane, and you can't, you know, you're on your way to work. And it's the guy from New York who's following New York city law that you cannot turn right on a red. And there's a line of 50 cars behind him who are trying to turn right. It's avoidable congestion. So I think there's some opportunities, there's some easy ways to, I think, improve congestion that can help alleviate some of the aggressive driving that results from the frustration that happens from those kind of scenarios, where if we have an opportunity to talk to someone and educate them about something as simple as you can turn right on red, by the way, and, you know, you won't have 50 Pinellas County residents, you know, just imploding inside or running late to work because one guy from, you know, from another state with different rules doesn't know any better. So in that case, you know, as an example, if you're in New York, you're not allowed to make the right turn unless there's a sign specifically saying that you can. Well, maybe we need those kind of signs in some places. We can improve traffic, you know, with something as simple as a sign for those who are out of town. So they see that sign, then they're programmed, okay, yeah, I can turn right on red. But even at our building, there's constant honking, people honking their horns because no one wants to turn right occasionally, and there's a backup behind them. So there's low-hanging fruit to be had in some areas. Again, at the end of the day, there's some congestion. It's not all bad. When we saw that there was basically almost no congestion in 2020, recall that what we saw at that time was a lot of speeding, a lot more serious injuries, a lot more fatal crashes. Statistically, we're only just now getting away from that. This five-year trend still includes 2020. Hopefully it's going to be a little bit better next year, you know, for that five-year average. But we've kind of seen what happens at that one extreme. And so the silver lining of the congestion, again, is it actually does make the roads safer but more frustrating, really. All right. Thank you. Anyone else? All right. Thanks so much. I appreciate that. Next, we have our item 7E, the economic impacts of transit investment analysis. And for this one, we'll be asked to approve the scope of work and the fee. Presentation today is by Nosheen Rahman. Hi. Hi. Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Nosheen Rahman. I am a principal planner here at the agency. And today, as Chair Driscoll mentioned, we have a scope and fee in front of you for approval. So this is an action item. And I am very excited to tell you about this project today because it is in collaboration with PSTA. And as you just heard, our very rave review of all of our best practices, I would like to think that our collaboration with PSTA is certainly one of those in planning for and providing transportation options in Pinellas County. And in line with that, part of that also involves evaluating the economic impacts of those transportation options. So we will be embarking on an economic analysis of transit investment in Pinellas County. And specifically, this analysis will focus on the investments made along the nine key corridors along our investment corridor framework identified in our long-range transportation plan. And we'll measure the economic and transportation benefits of both the current and existing service along these routes, as well as the future service coming from the implementation of the Connected Community Bus Network, which, as you heard earlier today, will be implemented in October. So very soon. To give you just a brief overview of what's in the scope, especially the approach and methodology, we have enlisted one of our general planning consultants, HDR, for this work. And we'll work in tandem as an equal partner with PSTA in the project management. And just to give you some background, this analysis is very much focused on economics. And the HDR team does consist of very experienced economists who lead the work and have conducted similar work in Florida and nationwide conducting return on investment analyses, cost-benefit analyses of various transportation and transit programs. And our process specifically will focus on a return on investment methodology that's very commonly used in similar analyses for evaluating transportation benefits. So through the data available to us, we'll be able to do before and after comparisons of transit investments along the county. And for the changes that are forthcoming through the Connected Community Bus Network, this economic analysis will be more forward-facing as projection since this is new implementation. And I won't go through every single one of these factors, but the methodology includes those factors listed in front of you. But essentially, through this analysis, we will be able to measure the economic impacts of our investments in transit through information like access to jobs, housing, education, and even potential impacts to property values. So this work is very much in line with our goals in delivering transparent and data-driven information in our planning work. And we believe, as an agency, it's always imperative to understand the economic impacts of the transit programs that we oversee or partner with agencies on. So today, the scope and fee is in front of you for approval. I do want to add some nuance to what's in front of you. The project will be split evenly between ourselves and PSTA, so the total cost is not to exceed the $151,100 amount in front of you. But what's in front of you for approval is just exactly half of that as the cost to forward Pinellas at about $75,500. And lastly, the table on this slide shows you the nine investment corridors as well as the associated PSTA routes on these corridors. And I should add that the analysis will also include before and after impacts of the Sunrunner BRT corridor. So with that, I'm happy to take any questions and also want to point out that Nicole Diffa, who is the Director of Planning at PSTA, is also here today if you have any questions for either of us. Thank you. All right. Thank you. And thanks, Nicole, for being here today. Any questions? Commissioner Scott. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just probably more of a comment. And I was talking about this the other day. I was sort of surprised to see this because I would have thought that when we do things at PSTA like the Community Bus Study and then we do study things like Alt-19 Corridor, that those would already have an economic impact component baked into it and that we wouldn't have to do a separate study for that. So just thinking ahead for the future that I think we should include those kinds of things when we do those studies. Because with the Community Bus Study, we have to do every five years anyway, so we could kind of have a rolling, just an ongoing economic impact analysis just included with that. Yeah, I think you made a great comment the other day. And we would like to maybe use this as a baseline. And so that can always be updated every time we undertake those studies. What we've typically done with our corridor studies like Alt-19 and now the U.S. 19 corridor that we're looking at and East Bay, Roosevelt, another one that's underway, is we're looking at the land use implications and land use potential with these investments. And particularly like transit-oriented development, is there an opportunity for this to leverage that sort of private sector investment in those areas? So we touch on it, but we're not really looking at the return on investment from every dollar spent and what that means back. So this is just an added component to that, and I think that's a valid comment. Thank you. Anyone else? All right. Tina, do we have any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? No, Madam Chair, we do not. Okay. Great. Well, in that case, I'll entertain a motion for approval of the scope of work and the fee. So moved. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second to approve this item. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes. Thank you. Next, item 7F, the multimodal impact fee ordinance update. Presenting on this one, we have Nicole Glassa joining us. And good afternoon. Good afternoon. So as many of you know, we have been working to update the countywide multimodal impact fee ordinance in collaboration with the project partners. And so today I'm here to provide you with an update on our progress, summarize the recommendations that came out of phase one of this effort, and then talk about how some recent changes in state law are going to affect how we navigate phase two of the project. So for those of you who maybe aren't as familiar with the countywide multimodal impact fee ordinance, the MIFO, as contained in its current version, was adopted in 2016 and lives within the Pinellas County Land Development Code. However, all 25 local governments use that ordinance to govern the calculation, collection, and expenditure of multimodal impact fees. And even though this was adopted in 2016, we've had transportation impact fees in the county going back to 1986. But there was somewhat of a major revision to some components of the ordinance in the early 2010s in response to changes in state law, and also to provide our local governments with the means to fund multimodal improvements through these impact fees. And that was part of the long-range transportation plan at that time. And so taking a step back, just the overall purpose of the multimodal impact fee ordinance is to provide a countywide system for ensuring that when new development and redevelopment projects come in, they pay a proportionate share of the cost it will take to construct transportation improvements to mitigate the impacts of that development. That will generate additional traffic. So a new development comes in. Let's say it's a greenfield development. There's going to be some additional traffic generated by that new development. What the multimodal impact fee program does is it allows, it assesses the fee to that developer at the time of permitting, and then the local governments can then use those revenues to fund transportation improvements that will add capacity and help to mitigate that increase in traffic that results from any new development or redevelopment. So in January of 2024, we, along with our project partners, which include Pinellas County and the cities of Clearwater Largo and St. Pete, initiated an update to this countywide multimodal impact fee ordinance because it hadn't been reviewed since its 2016 adoption. Each party contributed funding towards the total project, and we kicked off these efforts in the summer of last year. The project was phased into two parts. Phase one just wrapped up. I'll share a summary of the key takeaways of the technical report, which was also included in your agenda packets. And then we'll discuss phase two in the context of some recent changes in state law. So goals for the update, just generally, and many of these came out of our efforts to engage with stakeholders that include our local governments as well as the development community. We heard that there's a need to, one, of course, look at the fee schedule, since even though the ordinance was adopted in 2016, many of our fee rates had held stagnant since 1990, like in the early years of the original Transportation Impact Fee Ordinance. So that was, you know, really one of the primary goals. Also a need to be in compliance with state law and just provide additional guidance for consistent administration of the ordinance. Since sometimes when you have 25 local governments using one ordinance to administer something, you have 25 different interpretations. So we heard the need to really provide some clarity on quite a few pieces of the ordinance. So now I'll summarize the key recommendations to come out of phase one, which again, these were developed from our engagement efforts with stakeholders, as well as a pretty lengthy analysis and look at the current ordinance in comparison to neighboring and peer counties. impact fee programs. So one of the key recommendations was to explore increasing the fee rates pending the outcomes of the technical fee study that would happen in phase two. And this would include a revision to the formula that governs the calculation of the multimodal impact fees and, of course, also be in compliance with the various state statutes that govern impact fee programs. So the other recommendation that we heard was to take another look at the benefit districts. When we initially initiated this project, there was a thought that maybe we would actually be consolidating the districts because we have 13 across the county, including and in addition to that, nine downtown districts within those 13 primary benefit districts. But throughout our engagement efforts, we actually heard some mixed feedback of some municipalities' voice support for just leaving it as is. Others said, you know, maybe we should consolidate. And others said, actually, maybe we want even more localized districts. And a lot of that comes out of the idea that folks want to see a connection between the impact fee revenues and transportation improvements that get funded by those impact fee revenues. Another point on the benefit districts is we have downtown districts that offer a discount. They generally follow the boundaries of our community redevelopment areas across the county, and there is a recommendation to take another look at those and differentiate between the areas that are now thriving, maybe don't need those discounts, and other districts that are blighted, as you know, the statutes say for community redevelopment areas and therefore might still need those discounts to help facilitate redevelopment. We also heard throughout our engagement efforts that our local governments would like us to take a look at an alternative revenue sharing model for the multimodal impact fees. Currently, any revenues that are brought in by a local jurisdiction are split 50-50. So the municipality retains half, and then the other half is remitted to the county. The thought behind that being that the county has jurisdiction over some of our major roadways and thoroughfares, and they're carrying a lot of traffic, have a lot of capacity, so they're impacted by these increases in development activity, and therefore the revenues are shared. But we heard several municipalities express the desire to negotiate the proportion of the fee that they retain versus how much they remit to the county, and that really comes out of a perception that in some jurisdictions there aren't a lot of county roadways. There's mainly local roadways and then maybe a state roadway or an interstate. So this is something that if we include in Phase 2, we would take a strong look at that revenue sharing model and really develop a methodology that's evidence-based, data-driven, and something that all of the municipalities can agree upon. So whatever the results of that are, we know that it's founded in sound data, and the same methodology was applied to all to come up with a potential alternative model. We also heard that there is a need to update the land uses and the fee schedule. So there have been a lot of changes in development trends since 1986, and therefore there's a need to update some of those categories using the most current version of ITE's trip generation manual. We heard a lot about tiering the different residential categories, and then also creating categories for some new commercial uses, such as small businesses like cafes that have limited parking. Right now, you know, they might be classified under general commercial, and we heard from some that there might be a need to reduce their fee rate, whereas others like mega car washes may actually, you know, need a bump in their fee rate. So that will be explored at some point in Phase 2. And then there were also some recent changes in what the state allows us to do in terms of affordable housing discounts and waivers, so we want to bring that into the ordinance, offer deeper waivers, deeper discounts, based on a project's area median income and the duration of the affordability guarantee. And then finally, there are several administrative processes that are in need of updating, namely the opt-out provision that's contained in the ordinance, a clarification of what local governments can spend the impact fee revenues on, what developer contributions could be eligible for credit against their assessed impact fee, as well as, as you can see there, just some other more administrative housekeeping things to ensure the consistent administration of the ordinance countywide. And so with all of that said, there are some of those recommendations that we will not be able to move forward with at this time due to some changes in state law. So I'll give you an overview of what we think a good strategy is to move forward, and then we'd love to hear from you on that. So just to recap, the original scope for phase two included three primary deliverables. One, the technical fee study, which is a statutory requirement when you want to increase your impact fees. And then also, of course, a strikethrough underline of the countywide ordinance, so we could implement the outcomes of the technical fee study, as well as make some of those updates to improve the administration of the ordinance. And finally, a fee calculator workbook and administrative manual that would really support our local governments in the daily and consistent implementation of the revised fee program. However, we will not be able to move forward with some pieces of that at this time. We're thinking we're going to phase it. And that's because one of the key recommendations is to take a look at increasing the fee rates, which, if you want to do that, have to be based on a technical fee study. And the state statutes say that technical fee study must be adopted within 12 months of its initiation. However, there's this other piece of legislature that I'm sure you all have heard of, Senate Bill 180, which is currently prohibiting local governments from proposing or adopting more restrictive or burdensome land development regulations before October 1, 2027. So the multimodal impact fee ordinance is contained within Pinellas County's land development code, and it cannot be moved out of the land development code per guidance from our county attorney's office. So therefore, any proposed increase that might come out of the technical fee study, if it were to be codified, could be argued as more restrictive or burdensome. So therefore, we were advised in coordination with the county attorney's office that we do not initiate the technical fee study at this time, because if we initiated it today, we would have to adopt it 12 months from today, but we would be running afoul of Senate Bill 180 if we were to do that. So what do we think we can move forward with in phase two at this time? First, what's definitely restricted by Senate Bill 180 would be if we require the multimodal impact fee in any situation that's currently exempt from fee payment, an increase to the fee rates, or really any new restrictions or limitations that would impact the developer and could be construed or argued as more restrictive or burdensome. What we think is likely safe to update would be the elements of the ordinance that really impact the administration at the local government level. So not really impacting situations where the developers paying the fee, but more how we conduct the fee program as a county. That would include the revenue sharing model, taking a look at the affordable housing waivers and discounts, as long as it's expanding opportunities for a discount and not reducing opportunities, clarifying the eligible fee expenditures, or any other kind of clarification or revision to the administrative processes and procedures that are not impacting the developer. And then you'll see there, there's some of those recommendations I covered that are in a gray area, and we would work closely with the county attorney's office to determine what we can do now before Senate Bill 180's sunset date and what would have to wait until after. And some of those are the land use categories, the benefit districts, developer credits, as well as a creation of a saleable or tradable credit system. And so just to recap, due to Senate Bill 180, we can't increase impact fee rates at this time before October 1, 2027, barring there aren't more hurricanes that extend the legislation. And so given that the technical fee study would need to be adopted within 12 months, if we're going to increase the fee rates, we can't initiate that part of phase two at this time. However, we believe we can still move forward with the updates on those safe topics that are mostly geared towards improving the efficacy and the administration of the ordinance. And so we've asked our consultant to take a look at all of the tasks and items included in phase two and break it out into a phase 2A and a phase 2B. Phase 2A would include some of those items I just said in that likely safe to update column. And then phase 2B would really be reserved for the technical fee study and all of that analysis that goes along with that. And it would be initiated at a time when it would, you know, we would be allowed to do so based on state law. So if we do, you know, approach it this way, we believe that this is going to allow us to maintain all of the forward momentum we've generated over the past year conducting phase one, getting the interlocal agreement through all of your local processes and still will allow us to remain within the original project budget and be in compliance with all of our state laws. So we are here today seeking support from you all to in coordination with the county attorney's office and our project partners continue with the phase two work, but with the understanding that phase 2A is going to focus on the updates that will improve the efficacy and administration of the multimodal impact fee program. And phase 2B will be undertaken at a time that's permissible by state law. So I'm happy to take any questions that you all have. I know that was a lot of material, so I'll hand it over to you all. Thank you. All right. Thank you. This isn't an action item for today, but the input feedback questions are really beneficial at this point in the game. So Mayor Freeney. Well, I just wonder, like, if not understanding how much it might increase could affect people's discussion on the formula. What do you think about that? That's a great point. So during phase 2A, from what we've heard from the consultant, they would recommend probably not looking too deep at the formula. Even the land use categories could get a little tricky, but what we did hear is that there's plenty of other things to update, as you saw, and even some of the components of the fee schedule, such as the land uses, we could start working on generating consensus amongst the local governments to say, this is the list of land uses we'd like to, sorry, we'd like to, you know, include in a revised fee schedule at some point. These are the land uses that we're going to have to just table until we can initiate that technical fee study. So anything that would take a look at the fee rate formulas or fee schedule would be more based on just generating consensus amongst the local governments. That way, when it's time to initiate it, we already have a solid direction of where we're going. I mean, that sounds good. I think that's kind of what I was thinking. How deep do you go when maybe it just throws it all up in the air once you're able to do the technical study? So thank you. Of course. Thank you. All right. Commissioner Scott. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for that report. So on the fee apportionment, you know, some municipalities have expressed, you know, some concern about how that would work. You know, we have a model in place already with how we apportion Penny for Pinellas funds. So that may be a way, a place to start. I don't know if it's completely, totally applicable to the metrics we're looking at transportation. But, I mean, we have that as a model that we could at least use it somewhere to start. Thank you very much for that, Commissioner Scott. We will certainly look into that. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, right? Deputy Mayor Shelley. Yes. Senator Hooper tells me there'll be a glitch bill for Senate Bill 180. It wasn't meant to have the impact it had. So we might have the opportunity to move quicker. And the state may eliminate CRAs. So we might want to use different technical language that talks about blighted areas or existing. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Vice Chair Eggers? Mike? Yeah. First of all, navigating through that presentation, excellent job. I'm trying to follow your thought process and just, it was really good. I mean, I just thank you for that. And I kind of share Commissioner Freene, or Commissioner, Mayor Freeney's comment as well. You know, I don't see anything wrong with slowing down, you know, doing what we can do, but at the same time, listening to what's being said about what they're concerned about. Because I think, you know, again, and all of that, you know, that we may or may not agree with, I think there's something to listen and maybe to learn from. So I'm good with moving forward with it, but be cautious about the other, the next phase, even regardless about what the state's telling us. I think it's sometimes it's good to pause and slow down on this stuff. This is a, this is significant. It can be significant to a development. Anyway, thank you. Thank you very much. One of the things we did when we set out to initiate this project is to make sure a lot's changed since 1986. I mean, for instance, I worked on this in 1988 and I've got a lot more gray hair now. For instance, we adopted the target employment industrial land study. We've adopted activity center and mixed use categories. We've got the investment corridor framework where we're trying to encourage development that's coming to Pinellas County to go to the right locations where we have the infrastructure and the land uses to support it. And this impact fee does not acknowledge any of that. I mean, it might acknowledge our activity centers, but it doesn't acknowledge the investment corridors or the TILs, target employment lands. So that's another way that we could work with our local governments to build some consensus on where rates should be, impact fees should incentivize development or disincentivize development, probably at that broad level. So just keep that in mind. Council Member Gabbard. Thank you, Chair. And thank you for the presentation. So one of the pieces here on, you know, options that you mentioned was looking at affordable housing waivers and that kind of leads me to the thought process of, okay, so we can't do things that are more restrictive, but where do we have ability to do things that may be less burdensome? And so I'll give you an example. And, you know, it may be just one of many things that we could look at. Individuals whose properties were substantially damaged and they, you know, have to completely rebuild that property, looking at ways that maybe there could be waivers for those individuals to not have to pay those impact fees again. That may be something that we could look at. So just mentioning that it's not a huge amount of money in the grand scheme for somebody who is rebuilding, but when you're in that situation, every penny counts, and so that could be a place that I think especially a vulnerable county like ours would benefit. So I wanted to mention that. Thank you, Commissioner Gabbard. I just want to provide one small point of clarification. So currently, under the current fee program, if you are replacing a structure of the same square footage and same land use type, you wouldn't pay the multimodal impact fee currently. However, you know, we gave a presentation on the impact fee program in the context of the interlocal agreement to several of our beach communities, and of course, we heard a similar sentiment and also folks sharing, well, you know, what if I am increasing the size of my home by however many square feet? So in that instance, absolutely, that's something that we could, you know, look into. It would probably be, you know, a fairly easy update to navigate of at least providing the local governments with the ability to pause, say, the collection of impact fee rates in the wake of, you know, a natural disaster. Right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Of course. Thank you. All right. Anyone else? Commissioner Johnson. I think, generally speaking, our city of Largo, you know, is in favor, and we are fine with the split with the county because there's a lot of county roads going through Largo, as everyone knows, but I know, you know, one of the things that we were concerned about is losing the money we collect, you know, within our city, you know, to maybe go elsewhere. So that is a concern of Largo's in particular, and so that is something that we, you know, want taken into consideration. Would you mind clarifying what you mean by that of the money being taken from your jurisdiction to be spent? Well, just reallocated to other places. If we had a larger, just larger territories, right now, I think it's our city limits is our particular district. So I think, you know, having that, and, you know, bleed into South Clearwater or North Pinellas Park or whatever that might look like, we just would be concerned on how that money would be split up. Understood. Thank you for clarifying. Thanks. Commissioner Scherer. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just, I had a couple questions on how the recommendations, how you came by. Did you, you said you met with the cities. Did you meet with the elected officials or the administration? We met with staff mostly. We met with those who are implementing the ordinance and actually assessing the multimodal impact fee at the development review level around the county. And then there were also several presentations to some, you know, committees and boards that have elected officials sitting on them. And then, of course, throughout the interlocal agreement process, we had a chance to meet with some either elected officials or city administrators to get their perspective. But I will say those meetings were really geared more towards education and providing information as, as you know, you know, this is, it lives within Pinellas County's land development code. And, of course, there's turnover. So there have been some instances where we were kind of there more to just educate on the existing program as opposed to solicit, you know, input on, on future improvements. Okay. I appreciate that. And in these meetings that you had and the discussions, was it, did anybody ever discuss whether or not we actually had to have these fees or we had to have a multimodal impact fees in the county? Because I don't believe the state law requires that we have them. The state law does not require that we have a mobility impact fee, but, of course, it enables us to. Many counties like ourselves do have an impact fee program. I personally wasn't in any meetings where discussions on abolishing the entirety of the program took place. However, I was in a few different meetings where it was discussed by, like, a single municipality of maybe we don't want to be a part of this county-wide fee program. Okay. And currently, there is an opt-out provision in the ordinance. So there is an opt-out? Any municipality can opt-out? So the opt-out provision in the ordinance is if a municipality or group of municipalities comprising 10% or more of the total county population want to pull out, it dissolves the entire program. So you saw on one of my slides that we want to revise that opt-out provision to provide other pathways that, one, wouldn't lead to a total repeal of the impact fee program and, two, would maybe allow, you know, a single municipality, less than 10% of the population to explore the creation of its own program or pause fees, not participate. Currently, that's a gray area in the ordinance of what happens in that instance. So it's technically a voluntary to be part of this overall program. I'd probably feel more comfortable with either the county attorney's office or the individual city attorney making a determination. All right. There is an opt-out. That's what I wanted to know. So if St. Pete opted out, it would dissolve the whole ordinance. If Clearwater opted out, it would dissolve the whole ordinance. The whole ordinance for them, but not for everybody else. No, it would for everybody. Oh. Yeah. You've got to have everybody together is the premise of it. But if a 6,000 population city opted out, you'd be below that 10%. Got it. All right. Commissioner Shear, just to clarify, was your question if just a municipality that's less than 10% of the population just doesn't want to participate in the fee program, like, is that allowed? Was that your question? I apologize if maybe I misunderstood it. I was just, I just was taken aback that not one person, not one municipality said we should, it wasn't recommended that we get rid of the whole program. I just, you know, I just thought that was a little peculiar that somebody didn't say, we don't need this at all. But. That statement was made at a commission meeting. The statement wasn't made by any staff members that I was in a meeting with, but at a commission meeting in one of our beach communities, it was brought up that we don't really want to participate in this in that particular municipality, put a moratorium on the impact, the multimodal impact fees, I believe, for the next four years. Interesting. Thank you. Deputy Mayor Shelley. A quick question. Are we looking at having different multimodal impact fees for greenfields versus brownfield redevelopment like Pasco County has? By brownfields, do you mean brownfields in the actual sense of the term? Oh, just a redevelopment. Yeah, so our current countywide ordinance does actually address greenfield versus redevelopment. So the fee is actually charged only on the net increase in traffic impacts. So if you're going from, of course, a greenfield to a development, you would pay the entire fee that you could calculate based on the fee schedule. However, if you're redeveloping a property, you would take what the impact fee would have been for that development and then subtract it from what the new impact fee would be so you're only paying on the net increase. We can certainly explore that. Great. Anyone else? I hope this feedback is helpful for you as you move forward. It was. Thank you all very much and we look forward to continuing collaborating and coordinating with you as we move into Phase 2A. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next, we're going to go to Item 7G, the revised prioritization process. This is an action item. Welcome back, Chelsea. Thank you. And now no one else is allowed to leave until this item is done. Right. All right. So, as you're all aware, we have an annual call for projects and a lot of times those are for our local government planning grants or the transportation alternatives program. But now and then we open up our multimodal priority list to our local governments to submit some larger projects for funding consideration. This is a list that you review annually and adopt annually. You most recently did in June and then we keep those projects on the list until they are completely done. I will say that we do not currently have this list open for a call for projects. But when we were looking at the prioritization process that we have in place and on the books, it no longer aligns with state and federal guidelines and criteria. So that's why we're taking it to you all today because we're looking for your approval for our staff to go ahead and revise that prioritization process so that we're not kind of out of line with the current state of affairs. So our multimodal priority list is this is a list there's about $12 to $15 million annually in federal funds that FDOT programs according to the priorities that we advance as the Metropolitan Planning Organization. Of that amount, we have set asides for our local government grants of about $3 million each year. We actively program active transportation overpasses and trail projects. We provide $1.5 million annually to PSTA for capital funding and then we also have a set of money set aside to augment FDOT resurfacing projects and all of this is based on adopted policies in the long-range transportation plan. And I thought this would look bigger. I really apologize. It looked bigger on my screen. So the pie chart on the left is the before and how the points were divided up when we're scoring transportation projects, when we do an open call for projects. And what we're proposing is the pie chart on the right. So what we're looking to do is increase the percentage of points that go towards safety factors from 17% up to 20%, so a higher emphasis on safety. We're looking to increase the emphasis on mobility from 11% of the score to 12% of the score. Economics and economic opportunity was formally to about 10% of the total score. We're looking to increase that to 17%. Resiliency, we're looking to increase that from 7% of the scoring up to 9% of the scoring. And then the significance of the regional significance of the project, we're looking to increase that from 13% to 16%. And then project readiness is another one that we're looking to increase. That's going to go from 8% to 14% of the points. So it's really a redistribution of how those points are being allocated to make sure they're more in line with the direction you all have given us as a board and also the direction that we're getting from our state and federal partners. Really, we're just streamlining the categories to align with the current priorities. We're increasing that emphasis on safety and economic opportunity. And then there are different line items within each of those buckets that we've updated the name changes. Some of the policies and programs that we've referenced in the past no longer exist. So we've cleaned all of that up just to make it more streamlined. So the scale, there's another part of this. We also have been getting a lot of requests from our local government partners to assist them with some planning activities. One example of that is on Clearwater Beach in the south portion of the area, of the beach area. We have started working with the city on a mobility analysis around there. We've received requests from other cities and we noticed that we don't really have a process in place by which to evaluate the requests that we're getting. So we're also looking to come up with a prioritization process for that so that we can be a little bit more strategic and tactical in how we respond to those local requests. So the pie chart here is how we're proposing to allocate points for scoring those requests that come in. Again, with a really strong emphasis on safety, mobility, and coordination amongst all of our partners. So today is for kind of review and comment and we are also looking for a recommendation of approval. We'd like to begin using this new criteria in the future. Again, we're not ready to use it right now but we hate to have something on the books that has outdated criteria, things that are pointing to federal and state programs that no longer exist. So with that, I'll put this back up on the screen and I'm happy to take any questions. All right. Thank you. Questions. Council Member Gabbard. Thank you, Chair. And so Chelsea, yes, I think that is the one. So looking at, for instance, you know, the two categories that are now zeroed out, equity and health and environment. Understood on equity and health. Get it? Environment. Yes. Can you explain a little bit prior what would have fallen into that category and then how those things maybe have moved around in other places in the pie chart? Explain that particular one. So the resiliency did pick up some of the old environmental because obviously we live in a flood-prone area where we recognize that. There were some references to the NEPA or the National Environmental Planning. I forget the, thank you. It no longer exists. So we did take out some of those references. Well, I'm sorry. It does still exist, but not in the same form. So we've taken out those references to make sure that we're planning is aligning with that. We had some, there was one point criteria in there that talked about the ability of a project to also basically accommodate for stormwater. The projects already have to accommodate for stormwater. So everything was already getting points for that. So there were some redundancies that we noticed after a few years and then also some of those old references to federal and state law. Okay. The stormwater piece of it, would that have fallen into resiliency or where? Prior it would have fallen under the environment, basically treating stormwater runoff, but all projects are required to treat stormwater runoff anyways. So that's already built in automatically. Okay. Yeah, we tested a few different projects that we've prioritized in the past to see, okay, is every type of project getting every one of these points? Is it even worth it to have this criteria anymore? And because of that, we also recommended removing a few that everyone got regardless. Okay, perfect. Thank you, Chair. Anyone else? Oh, Council Member Floyd. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Just, it's this slide again. You know, I guess overarching, I'm struggling to come with words, overarching like what were the thoughts to get the, you know, the ones that were zeroed out, reallocated, and how did we decide, you know, that safety was going to go up 3%, significance 3%, I guess I'm just looking for a more satisfactory answer than I have in my mind right now. Yeah, it was, it was slightly arbitrary, but not completely because we do look at the direction that we get from this board as to safety is a very high priority for the board. We've been working on the safe streets and roads for all projects, updating safe streets, the safe streets, Pinellas plan. So we knew that increasing safety was very important. And then also for the economic part of it, a lot of the conversations that we've been having over the past year or two have been focused on economic opportunity and economic benefits of transportation investments. So we felt it wise to really enhance the point distribution for that one to align better with the board policies. Okay. So, yeah, what I'm hearing is this is, you're doing your best to interpret direction that has come from us. Correct. And this is what you've shaken out to. Yes. All right, thanks. You're welcome. Tina, do we have any residents who would like to speak on this item? No, Madam Chair, we do not. All right, thank you. Well, then in that case, I will entertain a motion for approval on the revised project prioritization process. So moved. We have a motion and a second to approve this. I'm sorry, Madam Chair, I didn't catch that. The motion was Eisner. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. All right. Did you get that, Tina? Madam Chair, if you spoke to me, I didn't catch it. I'm sorry. Well, I was asking if you had caught the vote. It was not unanimous. We had one no. I didn't, ma'am. I'm sorry. Okay, that's okay. The motion passes with Council Member Floyd voting no. Thank you for clarifying. All right. No problem. Next, we're going to go to our director's report and he too has an action item for us today. Unusual. All right. I'm at the end of the meeting always, so I always say this. I'll be quick. We do have a return of our minute in focus, our data minute, and I just wanted to draw your attention. Our staff, in doing the trends and conditions report, we looked into the bridge crossings. We have four major bridges coming into Pinellas County. We have a lot of bridges, but we have four major ones, the Courtney Campbell, the Howard Franklin, the Gandy, and the Skyway. You've got some data here in your packet that just shows that we've bounced back in terms of traffic trends, traffic volume trends from the pandemic, and we are way back to where we were in 2019 or so. In fact, in some cases ahead of that, the Courtney Campbell Causeway, which has a PD&E study underway, a project development environmental study to look at potentially widening the bridge, and you'll get a presentation on that coming up in the next couple of months, is the most congested and least reliable in terms of travel time of the four bridges. The Howard Franklin Bridge, I-275, carries the most traffic volume, but the bridge has a relatively little congestion on the bridge. Now, there is congestion on either end of the bridge on the mainland, but at least the bridge itself is less congested than some of the others. We have a higher crash rate on the Gandy Bridge than any of the other bridges. It's a bridge that's known for a lot of speeding and racing. Happens a lot on that bridge. And then the Skyway has similar levels of traffic to the Courtney Campbell, but is a lot less congested and is about as reliable as the other bridges. So just a little bit of a factoid for you, but we thought that that was an interesting observation and happy for any feedback or comments on these trends. If not, I'll keep going. The next item is requesting the board authorize us to issue a request for proposals for state government relations support. This would be exclusively for the Pinellas Planning Council side of our agency to avoid any appearances of lobbying on the part of the MPO, which we are prohibited from doing. We also are a conduit for transportation dollars coming into this county and we have a priority list. So we would not engage in any sort of legislative earmark request or member requests for funding. We stay away from that because we do think that that is potentially circumventing our transportation planning process. And Chelsea just went through the priorities for how we do that. So what we're really looking for is preserving the integrity of the Pinellas Planning Council as things move forward both in the legislature and here locally with potentially the merger of our three MPOs in the special act of the Pinellas Planning Council. It references the governing board of the PPC as being the same as the MPO. And if the MPO becomes a tri-county MPO involving Pasco and Hillsborough County I don't think any of you would want to see those elected officials deciding land use cases here in Pinellas County and making recommendations on those. So we will need to open up the special act and I don't know about you but when you open up a piece of legislation for one little thing it invites all kinds of opportunity to change everything. And I think we need to be mindful about that and have somebody who can work here locally with our delegation members and somebody who can work in Tallahassee with state leaders the governor's office and regulatory agencies to ensure that we preserve the integrity of the PPC if that's the will of this board. So I kind of look at it from somewhat of a defensive standpoint as well. Earlier this year we were interviewed by the Office of Program Accountability and Program and Government Accountability the OPGA and that made me a little bit nervous because I thought we were being maybe targeted by the legislature. It turns out that that's a broader review of efficiencies that can be done in Pinellas County on behalf of its municipalities and it was a good interview good discussion but any one of those things could come up and lead to legislation. I also feel like if we had had our own lobbyist tracking Senate Bill 180 for instance in the legislature we could have brought forward maybe because it was right in our wheelhouse some of those unintended consequences of burdensome impacts and maybe we couldn't have changed it but we could have maybe had a little bit more of an education dialogue during session with that. So we've gone 10 years now since I've been here without having a lobbyist. I've always felt like we could piggyback on PSTA they have a lobbyist the county they state and federal and many of our local governments but the reality is is we really just don't have access to those lobbying agencies because they're being paid by the municipality and I'm sure we could piggyback and contract and use that but then are they working for us or are they working for us and the county or working for us and the city and I just you know feel like maybe we need to have somebody we know is working exclusively for us. So at this point we have a scope for you and all we're asking for you is to authorize us to begin that process of procurement. We would bring back to you any short list of recommendations and a selection of course. It's also been suggested by one of our board members who's not here in the meeting that we could piggyback on the county's procurement of a legislative lobbyist and I'm open to exploring that possibility but I would like to maybe suggest that having this parallel path where we put our RFP out and see what kind of responses we get would be a prudent course and then that would open us up for flexibility in the next few months and I think we need to do it now at this meeting rather than defer it because they're going to start meeting in a few weeks and I want to be ready for session when it begins in January if possible. I went through this with the American Planning Association Florida Chapter earlier this year they set a similar limit of no more than $50,000 and they received nine proposals including very large companies like Ballard Partners and others so I don't think the dollar amount here is going to be an impediment to getting good responses I do not think we're going to sniff $50,000 it might be closer to $20,000 or $25,000 but I wanted to let that upper limit you know maybe attract a little more interest and this is really not so much for this year but maybe more for the 2027 session I move to approve the RFP for PPC to higher government relations support all right we have a motion in a second we're going to have some discussion starting with Councilmember Gabbard thank you so what you know the PPC I've shared with you is probably my biggest concern over the merger I agree with you I do have a lot of concern about individuals from other counties voting on those cases for our county unfortunately I think that's one of the beautiful things about our MPO is that it does bring those two together and so I think that will be a loss for us in some ways to not have transportation and land use really working hand in hand but if it's going to be one of the casualties of the merger then I definitely support us moving forward with some assistance that will actually help us be able to preserve that the best that we can so I certainly support the motion the other question that I have because you know I've come back after a few years and when I was here before we had a very robust legislative committee and the very first meeting you said well we don't need that anymore right so we kind of did away with it now Senate Bill 180 I can't guarantee you that having a lobbyist or having a committee would have done anything with Senate Bill 180 City of St. Pete has all of that and we still didn't catch all of the things in that right so I wouldn't beat yourself up about that but at the same time I do think as things are changing so rapidly and there is so much to really take into consideration I would recommend as part of this conversation thinking about maybe bringing the legislative committee back you're going to need a smaller group that kind of works with the lobbying team and then reports to this board so I would recommend that we also look at maybe bringing that back in I think that's a great point thank you for that when you rotated off our board we had trouble getting people to show up at the meeting and it felt it felt like I don't know about that but yeah no I mean Patty Reed showed up at every meeting but sometimes it was Patty Reed you know and so I do think if we had a lobbyist on board it would be important to have a group of three to four that could work maybe more closely with that lobbyist so in a committee format that makes a lot of sense to me okay thank you all right anyone else okay we have a motion and a second we have Tina anyone want to speak on this item no madam chair we do not all right all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion passes thank you I have I skipped over one item just a Monday we had a work session and we had most everybody here in the room we do those quarterly so that these meetings are a little less tedious I don't know if we accomplished that goal today but it was a good discussion the two topics we focused on were the grant program that we offer which used to be a complete streets program and now it's a broader local government grant program good questions good dialogue we provided some data on some of our before and after and the the ML King Street in St. Petersburg we provided some data on on the effectiveness of that project and you've authorized as part of your consent agenda some before studies on some of our current grant awards so we always want to make sure the money we spend is being used effectively and efficiently and we'll keep that up the other item we presented was on an update on the merger and I really thank you all for the the comments the the feedback and we asked you and I'll make sure everybody has a copy of the PowerPoint presentation but really we were just trying to solicit feedback on what are the benefits of merging what are the concerns or questions you have about merging and then to merge just the MPOs without having a greater purpose we do run the risk of disconnecting from our local government partners here in Pinellas County and the folks who are closest to the local funds that are needed to match federal and state dollars so I do think it's important when we think about merging that we think about what are the gaps in the Tampa Bay region that this merger is really trying to solve that aren't there to now today and some of the things you all suggested were regional communication somebody really paying attention to the region and how we move forward and grow together and how is it appropriate for us to grow together the other feedback we got was regional economic development linking our transportation investments to bringing good paying jobs to the region and ensuring that we have the households and housing options available to connect that so Council Member Gabbard to your point about disconnecting land use and transportation we really don't want to do that with this next step but it's going to probably look different at a 50,000 foot level than it does at the Ford Pinellas level and one of the things we talked about was possibly having the Pinellas Planning Council as an advisory formal advisory committee to the regional MPO so at least Pinellas County is represented with that land use transportation advice to the regional MPO and Hillsborough has a mechanism that they could use and PESCO would have to create one but those are things that we've got a blank slate and are open so I'll send that PowerPoint presentation to you if it hasn't gotten to you already and I welcome your thoughts and feedback either individually you can call me or text me or through one of our forums that we're going to have as this effort gets further underway and that's all I've got today thank you and thank you for thank you for that workshop on Monday that was really good I enjoyed it to answer your question I did attempt to send out those PowerPoints last night but most of them bounced back I think I successfully reduced the size of the files and sent them this morning okay yeah just PDF is probably fine I got it the second time around all right good anything else for your director's report I have nothing that was great anyone have any other items for discussion today all right well thank you very much for being here great meeting we are adjourned you you you you you you