Forward Pinellas Board meeting on 11/12/2025 - Nov 12, 2025

afternoon everyone we'll call to order the ford pinellas board meeting for november 12th 2025 if you'll please join me in standing for our pledge of allegiance and now we will go around the room quickly and do self-introductions we'll start to my right this time with uh commissioner alburton chris sheer pinellas county commission brandy gabbard council member city of st petersburg mayor of madeira beach representing the big c vice mayor mike eisner tarpon springs welcome st petersburg city council member deborah fig sanders mayor gulfport karen love um representing south inland communities richie floyd city council member st petersburg mike menino clearwater city council member deputy mayor tom shelley bel-air representing the north inland communities brian scott pinellas county commission district 2 alfredi uh mayor of dunedin almost too out shy of being world series champion home of she said my polish is just coming off but anyway renee flowers pinellas county commission of district 7 dave eggers pinellas county commission gina driscoll st petersburg city council member and um the chair for pinellas and i'm whit planton your executive director all right thank you um next we will invite citizens who wish to be heard tina do we have any citizens who wish to be heard today yes madam chair we have david ballard gettis jr thank you hi good afternoon it's good to see everybody david ballard gettis jr i live on georgia the infrastructure priority scheme that was presented before this board last month is a financial bleed using public tax funds to harden the town in the making of 15 minute cities in support of a private political insurrection and usurpation of government in preparation for actual wartime posturing based on the 14th amendment prioritizing frivolous infrastructure schemes strategically bleeding off and exhausting public tax monies in the aiding and abetting of such intermodal corridor planning process is nothing more than setting a meticulous trap against the unsuspecting civilian population of this county legislatively ignoring or placing on hold the responsibility of larger serious more pressing concerns while focusing on the ballywick as having priority is to strategically ignore the main substance of supplying us with efficient roadways creating a conundrum of our roadways appears to be the main desire of legislation financing local road impediments such as speed waves roundabouts concrete barriers signage and cameras to the cost of almost half a billion dollars which are used to further congest limit impede and stifle our roadways is to sidestep your duty of main concern in supplying us with efficient roadways purposefully ignoring larger projects for decades with the intent of creating blighted and run-down conditions creating perfidy and disrepair of all of our critical infrastructure throughout displays unsovereign nefarious zealot intent within the decision-making process of our public officials such fanciful wiles in the decision making of legislation may find their systematic tactics of power to be placed under martial law as you don't have the freedom to reverse engineer political powers and do as you please and still properly call yourself government thank you thank you tina do we have anyone else today yes madam chair bill joneson the chair of the citizens advisory committee is here to address the board as well thank you good afternoon i think i know most of you for those that i i don't know i used to be on the council in clearwater uh i in addition to being the elected chair of your citizens advisory committee for for pinellas i'm also chair of a group called the courtney campbell scenic highway advisory committee and uh but i'm speaking for myself rather than the uh committee the cac committee uh and but i'd like to just make a couple of comments about the committee uh the first is of course it's an advisory committee that was created as part of the ist act in uh 1992 and i would say that uh we have a great bunch of folks on the committee thank you for those appointments and we do enjoy getting into the issues that are coming before the board understanding them uh we don't necessarily think we make too much advising because we're more just uh understanding we did have done occasionally some recommendations to the board and in your agenda pack there's four items that we wanted to pass on to you i would be able to address one of them relative to the putting the plan in for the courtney campbell uh pd and e but since that's on the agenda and maybe uh addressed later i i think i will uh say thank you at this time all right thank you so much tina do we have any other speakers today no madam chair we do not all right thank you we'll go ahead and close that public comment and we'll go on to our recognitions and announcements for that vice chair eggers has a special recognition that he would like to present today all right good afternoon everybody uh good to be here and um good to see my colleagues uh doing the business of the county uh before i get started happy birthday mike and nice nice to see another birthday come around again and um you know my my dad always said from 50 to 70 it just flies by i'm not suggesting you're in that range uh but boy does it fly by so enjoy every day happy birthday i didn't say that i'm speaking from experience of being in that range so but anyway happy birthday my friend um so um in the spirit of you know you can't thank a veteran enough you know yesterday was that celebration and i say thank a veteran every day it also happens to be that the mpo meets or or panels meets the day after the meeting so i just really wanted to take the opportunity first of all to recognize the veterans are in the room if you're a veteran just stand up for a second let's recognize you please anybody thank you for your service and rodney and rob if you guys will come forward i just have a proclamation to you these are our two vets in the room that work for forward pinellas i appreciate both of your services and what branch navy army navy and army it was just great we i'm sure everybody had an opportunity anyway to get to one of those celebrations yesterday i was in the city of dunedin mo you you guys knocked out of the park it was just a really wonderful event um talking about and had a lot of kids involved in the in the the day and um it was just a really it was a really great day um so i just really wanted to say thank you to all of you if you got a chance to get out to see them um one of the things that the the gentleman yesterday he called himself mr t okay i found it it's thomas t man brown with u.s army but with tampa bay homeless outreach thomas homeless t man brown yeah and so that is you know the reason i really wanted to bring his name up is that he was challenging each of us to think a little bit about what your passion is with respect to helping vets there are a lot of vets out that are struggling he gets out there and works at early hours of the morning he had gone out that very morning about five o'clock in the morning with a bunch of blankets it happened to be that really cold morning handing them out to vets but he goes out on the streets and works with vets and tries to put them in contact with folks that can help out and so he's he challenged us each to come up with that one little area that we might feel really strong about and figure that out and and to to reach out to the veteran community in some way in the coming year whatever that might be um there's a lot of a lot of folks that are doing just fantastic but a lot of folks that are struggling um and need and need our help so um that our county vet department we have our own department here that that helps vets find out find their benefit package their pathway to benefits and i sit on a community of veterans engagement board that works closely with um bay pines um and making sure that you know the vets are getting the services that they need so you can reach out to to my office as well um but these two gentlemen both served um and i just really wanted to just read a proclamation going to give you a copy of one and thank you for your service thank you both very much i appreciate it uh it says whereas for generations million millions of americans have answered the calls to serve the sacred oath to defend and preserve our nation's ideals of liberty and democracy these patriots represent the best of us on veterans day we honor their service and around around the around the entire year of course we're saying thank you their dedication valor and are forever grateful for their sacrifice and our nation has sacred obligation to properly prepare and equip our service members when we send them into harm's way and to care for them and their families when they return home and that was another message yesterday about families and everybody that what they go through and the support they provide before during and after the service pines county government remains committed to ensuring our veterans have access to support and resources for a future of security opportunity and dignity to pines county veteran services division who remain steadfast in their mission to ensure all pines county veterans and their families have access to benefits by the state of florida the united state department of veterans affair and other government services and whereas pines county recognizes and honors county employees and city employees who are veterans we truly thank them for their service dedication and valor and are forever grateful now therefore be proclaimed by the pinellas county board of county commissioners that november 11th and today november 12th and tomorrow as well um be recognized as veterans day in pinellas county thank you gentlemen appreciate it appreciate your services thank you ma'am thank you all right that was very thoughtful of you so thank you for doing that um next we have the consent agenda do we have any board members who wish to pull any items from the consent agenda that you'd like handled individually if not then i'll entertain a motion for approval second who made them i didn't catch them there was too many voices all britain and eisner thank you all right we have a motion in a second all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion passes thank you next is our public hearing items um we'll first take up item 6a the proposed amendments to the transportation improvement program and for that we have a presentation by ryan hutton good afternoon good afternoon everyone um so i'm ryan hutton i'm the transportation planner with for pinellas i help manage our transportation improvement program or tip um so just as a refresher um our tip it's our short-term planning document it outlines all the transportation projects um of pinellas county um kind of use federal state and local funding uh i do have a cycle timeline here i'm actually going to give another presentation after this i'll go into more detail so i'll skip this for now um but just for some clarification there's two types of changes we can make to the tip so there's an amendment and a modification so an amendment is just an addition or deletion of a project or change that impacts the fiscal constraint or changes the scope of a project while modification is more of a minor revision that changes project phase or funding sources but today we have one amendment so this amendment is for f dots intersection improvement project at bayshore boulevard and curlew road so you see a little map here may make this bigger for next time be curious where it is uh the project overall is aiming at improving traffic flow and safety by adding turn lanes upgrading traffic signals and improving sidewalks and bike lanes um among other things uh but f dot is requesting today um for us to add the funding to or to reflect the added funding to cover additional drainage improvements that they're making that were not part of the original design uh so during the final design engineers discovered that the existing drainage pipage along bayshore boulevard didn't have enough clearance for the utilities um by the nearby curlew creek bridge um so to solve that they're upgrading the design to include a concrete box culvert which should have better flow capacity and durability so this amendment shouldn't impact any other projects it just ensures that this one is uh built correctly the first time here is the funding table breakdown should also be in your packets if you're curious about how that funding will look like so today we're just recommending approval of this amendment uh into the tip uh there we have the committee recommendations um and if approved this document will be updated and transmitted to f dot and fhwa partners and posted online and that's it any questions commissioner agos yeah do we do we now it's i see it's fiscal year 26 for construction do we know when that's going to begin i'm sorry if you said that i was um yeah i don't have all the pro if you want all the project information there's the link there i from this is what i have was given by f dot maybe someone from f dot can give more explanation for that what was the amount of the change i didn't catch the email yeah i'm sorry the question is how much was the change yes it was about four million dollars that's a big change is it a was it a design uh was it yes during my understanding is during design the department identified some additional drainage needs that were part of the project so there's additional culvert and utilities that are being relocated as part of and this is who's going to make up the difference over here on that is the project yes this is a project that we've prioritized i'm not sure what your question is we're adding four million dollars who's making up the difference on the the state is the state is going to cover the whole thing yes it's not coming out of local funds okay it's a big change good mayor franey yeah i mean just to be clear city wasn't thrilled about the change because it did add cost to us on our side um but so we don't want it to be redesigned again but it does sound like an improvement um and my question had to do with when they were going to put the advertising out for the bids but i guess we go to that for that right yeah if you want any more detailed the link here should have all the explanation for that my understanding is that the bids will be in april okay well that was mine and just talked to our deputy so if you're something different today yeah you know you know go a little crazy so this won't impact this coming uh peak season for instance getting out to honeymoon island but the construction period will be longer than a year so it may in 2027 have some effect thank you one more question what was this a an error in due diligence on the engineer's part or this is this came sometimes things come up through design that require an amendment to the project as you get further into that design so i suspect it came out of that design process um maybe the department could speak to that um they're managing the project i don't know if brian or are they charging us additional fees for this design change as well they are not they are not charging any additional fees the department is handling the design so they're doing it themselves with their consultant we have secretary hall here with us today hey how's it going good afternoon good afternoon so uh yeah obviously sometimes things come up that are unexpected this was uh having to increase the size of the pipes for the drainage as everybody knows from the past storms we've seen how we can get inundated so we have updated swift mud models that are showing that we need to upsize certain pipes this was a project that fell in that coastal area they need to have larger pipes so that's that's the difference the difference is where the drainage system instead of being a certain size it's now being upsized throughout the entire project yeah things are expensive thank you vice mayor eisner you know what the size of the pipes were and what they're going to be i don't but i can get that to you if you want to know i can get that the reason i bring that up is because we're going through a storm uh storm surge um piping that went from one million to six million on gross right by our uh city hall and i know there have been things that people find but what i like to know is the difference in price from the initial bid to when the the uh final you know prices come in because what i try to do and i'm not accusing anybody of this but people sometimes i've heard this through the grapevine they low bid and then they find things buried that you know it's very hard to justify whether it was or not so yeah there's bad actors everywhere so i know i know that's the case so this has not been bid yet so this was just our estimate so our estimate changed based on the upsize pipes upside strained structures everything so this wasn't a situation where a contractor like low bid and then we did a supplemental and the cost jumped this was just our own internal estimate leading up to the bid uh with the increase in pipe size somebody checked out the differences in prices oh yes sir okay yes sir yeah we have a whole the department has a whole team that's all they do is they study market trends prices and talk to contractors and understand like how much things are so thank you all right thank you commissioner share yes thank you chair who did the original design that's being changed you mean the who was our consultant designer the dot did the design um but we would use the consultant do you know who the consultant was yeah i don't i'm not sure i can find out though if you'd like to know but this is not a design this is not a um design error because if that was the case we actually would go after the designer we call it an eno um and this was not an eno this was purely situation that swift mud changed the model which then led to us having to upsize the pipe so the designer didn't do anything wrong they designed it based on the standard at the time but during their job the standard changed the good news is this isn't affecting any other projects in the workforce everything's staying intact no sir thank you any other questions thank you all right tina do we have any public comment on this item no madam chair we do not fantastic in that in that uh case i will entertain a motion for approval second we have a motion and a second i'll this one is a roll call vote we'll go ahead and proceed commissioner eggers aye commissioner flowers yes mayor freeney aye commissioner scott yes deputy mayor shelley yes council member menino council member floyd mayor ayub mayor love yes council member fig sanders vice mayor eisner yes mayor brooks yes council member gabbard yes commissioner shearer council member albritton aye council member driscoll aye that passes unanimously thank you thank you so much next don't go anywhere um item 6b the fall update of the tip okay um so i'm going to give another little presentation here about our fall update to the tip um so for those who are unaware the fall update is basically an administrative refresh that we do um sort of the capture the latest schedules funding and scope changes from our local partners so that includes the county's uh newest cip capital improvement program transportation projects also some of the local municipalities and their work program projects as well click the wrong button i think there you go so this is our normal tip cycle timeline uh so in january we normally have the f.draft tentative work program um adopt our transportation priorities in the spring and then bring in the county municipal cips each fall um so right now we're in the october november uh timeline right here the mid-cycle update so what's included as i just mentioned uh so we have the county's capital improvement program their transportation projects we also have all the local municipalities uh whatever they give us with their work program transportation projects just give as much of a complete and comprehensive snapshot as possible before we update um so this will this is what it will look like um in if we adopt it in the tip uh so there'll be like a table have all the information there'll be some nice maps to look at it'll give the project description and status um we also have on our website an interactive cip where you can look at these projects it'll give you more details um if you go that link on the website right there so starting off with the county cip we have three new projects 11 projects which were completed from last year 10 projects which have remained the same and 37 projects which have uh changed and whether that's in um funding or scope uh there's different various changes sick so i'm just going to go over some of the major highlights this isn't a comprehensive list just a few i selected um if you want more of the details as i mentioned before please go to our website i'll have that interactive link you can get all the funding details breakdowns um some projects that aren't mentioned here but i'll just run through this pretty quickly so first project i want to highlight is the 62nd avenue north roadway improvements from 34th street north to 49th street north including turn lane improvements drainage bike lanes uh no change from last year uh remains on program we also have the san martin boulevard bridge over rivera bay which is a bridge replacement to address structural needs construction estimate has updated due to inflation and refined engineering with construction schedule remaining unchanged for that we also have the beckett bridge replacements to improve stormwater resiliency and emergency access the design estimate for that has increased slightly from last year with construction remaining on track for 2026 we have east leg road from south of curly road to north of trinity boulevard that's a corridor study for capacity intersection and multimodal improvements the design for that has moved out one year to align with federalization of the projects we also have starkey road improvements from flame vine avenue to olmerton road which reconstruction and widening from four to six lanes with some storm pipe and signalization upgrades that's actually um this is a combination of two projects which have since been combined um previously from bryan dairy to olmerton segment and the construction for that has moved to 2029 a couple more projects we have to highlight we have the mcmullen booth road bridges over tampa road so that's the widening replacement of the northbound and southbound bridges the construction estimate has increased to account for rising bridge costs for that project we have the northbound off-ramp bridge over lake tarpon outfall canal so that's a bridge replacement and ramp capacity upgrade to improve safety and flood resilience costs have adjusted slightly for materials for that project we have 102nd avenue north improvements from 137th street to 113th street which is a full corridor rebuild with bike lanes sidewalks and stormwater enhancements so no changes from last year for that project the 54th avenue north improvements from 49th street to 34th street north designed for that project has moved out one year and construction estimates have increased uh slightly and we also have the dunny eating causeway bridge projects uh which the design for that has shifted from 2025 to 2026 but no major scope changes and just to round it off we have these last projects here i'll go through quickly the nebraska avenue improvements uh that's from the alt us 19 to west lake boulevard adding curb gutter sidewalk and storm drainage upgrades the project estimate has increased due to drainage requirements and design refinements the schedule remains unchanged we have the keystone road and east lake road emergency access improvements so that's the intersection and turn lane enhancements to improve emergency response design costs updated based on agreement with the county and fire districts but no schedule change we have the pinellas trail south gap from omerton road to belair road i was completing a critical gap in that pinellas trail loop no change in the design costs on the construction estimate updated for 2026 we also have the east lake road bridges over booker creek which is a widening replacement of the northbound and southbound bridges to provide a six lane divided cross section design estimate has updated for that and then finally mccay we have the mccay creek green range well trail excuse me which is a four mile shared use trail following mccay mccay creek through ridge crest and taylor parks to taylor lake and the construction estimate has increased slightly based in that but the schedule remains unchanged so again that was just uh some of the projects we chose to highlight if you want the full list i highly recommend checking out that website link checking out the interactive cip for the full project details and breakdown um but today we're just recommending approval of this fall update to the tip uh once approved the county and municipal work programs will be incorporated and posted online a lot online along with our interactive dashboard and supporting tables thank you that's it any um board member questions council member gabbard thank you chair and thank you for the presentation just a quick question on page 12 the second project highlight the san martin uh bridge over uh riviera bay uh just wanted to make sure i have the note right because this is of utmost importance to the residents that i uh represent um so you said that there was a update to the estimate due to inflation but no change to the construction timeline is that correct uh can you repeat the project which one was it um it's the san martin over riviera bay bridge replacement let me check uh the construction estimate updated due to inflation and refined engineering um and scheduled for 2027 construction okay so we still are on track yes we're still on track okay great good news thank you so much thank you chair vice mayor eisner thank you madam chair so you might as well give me the uh one right after that the beckett bridge because that's going to be my headache let's see so the design estimate has increased slightly from last year for that one but the construction remains on track for 2026 you know when in 2026 and do you know what the design change was i don't know exactly again i would if you want the full details i would just recommend going to that i'm going the wrong way here sorry one sec if you go to our website there will be an interactive dashboard um it'll also be in the work tables they'll give you the full detail i don't have the full details for that project just what's written here but it'll be all there for you if you're curious here's my issue um i didn't know that the design can still even be changed we have excessive sidewalks on both sides where they're no use of one side when i asked that question i got back a response of well it's for the future and there is no future to sidewalks there period on the bridge maybe but after the bridge there's none so can that still be altered uh i personally don't know i mean i don't have the project details i'm just i know yeah i can like refer you to maybe the that specific project site and maybe who worked you can follow up directly with county staff this is a county project so let us follow up with county staff and we'll get you that information i just didn't have an idea that this was you know still in the design stage because we're here at 2026 i mean it's okay i got it chelsea do you have any additional information all right thank you any other questions from the board okay um tina do we have any public comment on this item no madam chair we do not all right then we'll move on to um our action seeing that there's no request for further discussion i'll entertain a motion for approval second we have a motion and a second and this one is also a roll call vote we'll go ahead and take that now commissioner eggers aye commissioner flowers mayor freeney aye commissioner scott yes deputy mayor shelley yes council member menino aye council member floyd yes mayor ayub mayor love yes council member fig sanders yes vice mayor eisner yes mayor brooks yes council member gabbard yes commissioner shearer council member albritton aye council member driscoll aye that carries unanimously all right thank you thank you next we'll go into our pinellas planning council public hearings which will be um conducted as follows i'll first ask board members to affirm they have reviewed the staff report and the materials provided to them just confirming that if needed the ford pinellas staff are available with a presentation and to answer any questions the applicant local governments are also available for questions as needed um then i will um 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 at that time the board will ask questions and then i'll close the public hearing and the board will deliberate uh uh deliberate and take action so now that we know the plan we'll go to item 6c1 uh regarding the city of clearwater do any members of the board wish to have a presentation on this item no okay and um tina can you confirm that we do have um a representative from the um city of clearwater to answer any questions yes they are here in the room okay thank you um do we have proponents of the proposal to speak on the item no madam chair we do not have any proponents opponents or other citizens who wish to be heard oh i'm sorry katie cole's here on this one thank you okay katie cole's here who will speak if needed thank you katie yes okay great then um in that case we'll go on to board member questions um vice chair eggers just a couple quick questions um this is the where the emergency room is being built the i just want to make sure i've got the right property um and and while you're going up there i for some reason thought that was the city of dunedin property there on the corner when it was a car dealership did it get switched or something or and katie could you introduce yourself in case we might have some folks who haven't met you yet yes madam chair katie cole with law firm of hill law firm of hillward henderson representing the property owner and hca city of clearwater representatives are here as well but i'll jump in front since your questions are specific to the development this is the hca freestanding emergency room in one of the most unique land use cases we've had in the state of florida in many years mayor freeney can attest this property was contracted from the city of dunedin because it was a small piece that was in dunedin's planning area despite having split service of utilities went to unincorporated pinellas for a brief time while city of clearwater then processed the annexation into the city of car wow so the balance yeah it was very interesting took a long time to figure that one out but um the balance of the property has been always been and is in the city of clearwater this was just this very small corner that was formerly the used car lot it was in who knew there was utilities built across belcher to connect to the city um anyway interesting um so so this is where that facility is we got some money back for some of the investments good for you we did um so this is where that facility is currently being built correct almost finished parking lot this is where the parking lot is but the facility was constructed in the city of clearwater the building and the stormwater um and parking is in formerly the city of dunedin then unincorporated now city of clearwater thank you katie thank you katie you're welcome it's very interesting so i appreciate that it was four years in the making for a very small corner parcel all right good government right and very yeah government with much thanks to city of clearwater and city of dunedin specifically mayor freeney who is the reason this did get done so thank you all right council member menino thank you for that update you just stole kind of what i was going to say but i was going to thank uh mayor freeney uh for good governance is basically what it was an effective communication uh with the city of clearwater and your staff so thank you to you and your staff thank you councilman i i would be i don't want to be exclusive to mayor freeney she was the one that brought this home but city of clearwater from the very beginning worked very hard collectively um with both the development team and dunedin working through this and um it got to the city of dunedin and mayor freeney was uh showed great leadership with respect to good government because dunedin did not have to approve this contraction and and and they did to be able to facilitate this so thank you that's great yes mayor freeney and i don't you don't be i don't want to have all the praise he's done me but i i you know and i say this to our county commissioner colleagues because i just remember the days of looking all the uh county-wide enclave maps and looking at all the poor government fighting over little bits of land to save little bits of revenue sometimes big um so yeah this is a example of how i think it all should always should work right thank you it's nice to say it in front of the county-wide authorities so thank you all for using us that yes happy to answer any other questions all right any other questions from the board all right um then in that case i'll entertain a motion move to approve we have a motion and a second this one doesn't require a roll call correct dina okay thank you we have a motion in a second all those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed the motion passes thank you next item 6c2 and this one is totally about the city of dunedin not just part of it so um just want to confirm everyone has reviewed the staff report and the materials and is there anyone who would like to see the presentation from staff on this one no okay we do have um folks available if there are questions yes madam chair kathy gadamer from the city of dunedin is here all right thank you um tina do we have any proponents opponents or citizens who wish to be heard on this no madam chair we do not okay we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and move to board member questions anyone okay we don't have any board questions on this one so we'll go ahead and move to um entertain a motion for approval move approval of this item second we have a motion and a second on this item all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the motion passes thank you we'll go on to our um presentations and action items for today um and for that one first we have our psta activities report and once again we have council member fig sanders who's also the chair of psta board giving us that report thank you thank you chair good afternoon everyone um so first of all psta board met on wednesday october 29th 2025 psta has provided just over 10.8 million total rides in fiscal year 2025 which is a slight one percent increase over fiscal year 2024 ridership levels each early in october psta extended fair serves very service to the great city of dunedin which had hurricane damage to their marina to overcome in its first month of operation in dunedin it's been a very popular way to get downtown to clear water with many ferry departures being sold out on october 27 2025 psta launched its second premium transit route called the spark on 34 street south between eckert college and grand central station through the growing skyway marina district and we had a great ribbon cutting event with a large number of eckert students participating finally last thursday both the city of saint petersburg and the city of tampa city councils voted on five-year agreements to support the operation of the tampa bay ferry between tampa and saint petersburg the next step towards getting the ferry service restarted will be at psta's next board meeting on december 3rd when the psta board will consider awarding a ferry operating contract to hubbard's marina and that's the conclusion of the psta port report thank you chair thank you does anyone have any questions on that report all right great we'll go on to 7b the regional activities report from wit sure i'll take this one and this month seems like mpo merger month so there's a lot going on on that front it's a number of items and i'll just start with where we were last week or so october 27th we had a field trip to orlando and several of you in this room joined me and i think we had about 20 maybe maybe 25 total participants that traveled over to orlando to spend the day talking with metroplan orlando staff and their elected officials to listen to how they collaborate learn how they participate among seminal osceola and orange county and i'd love to hear from some of the board members in the room who want to just share their observations of that day i don't know if anybody would like to just share some thoughts but i thought it was a really productive day of discussion and good dialogue thank you i i agree um commissioner skyd sure thank you madam chair uh wit thank you very much for for setting that up it was uh it was a good use of time they uh if i understood it right they've had that joint mpo since they started in 1977 so right they um they have figured out how to how to bring the region together three counties and they don't have as many quite as many municipalities as as we have between our three but they've they've figured it out and they've managed to find a way to collaborate together and uh and kind of speak as as one voice so there is a way to do it and and they you know there's i don't know that a a board or governance structure would look exactly the same here because you know our area is a little is a little unique in some respects but when you look at the three counties they have it's kind of similar to what we have here between panels hillsborough and pasco county you know where they have a county that's kind of largely built out and sort of landlocked and then they've got two counties that are that are growing by leaps and bounds so there's a lot of similarities there and the way that they that they handle making sure that everybody has a voice is basically i think the cutoff was if your population was 50 000 then you automatically had a seat on the board and then if you're under that then they had a group of they had a board of smaller municipalities and that group had one appointment to the board and they've got 22 board seats right now which they can go up to 25 so they left some room for for future growth and the way they fund it is it's it's per head 50 cents per per person that each of the of the local governments pay so it's kind of a unique model that they've that they've come up with there and they outlined a couple of key projects that they were able that they were able to to advance because they were speaking with one voice and one for them was was sunrail which is very important for them to get that extension into orange county and then they also have a group of their mpos i think it was 10 mpos um that includes i think volusia brevard and some other counties over there where they were able to advance the i4 bridge over the st john's river by six years and collectively that group doesn't have they don't have any voting authority but they got together and spoke as one voice with 10 counties and they were able to advance a project that while it didn't affect any of the of that three county mpo directly but it affected all of them in one way or another so it you know they've got a good model there and it seems to be working for them since 1977. so i think there's a good roadmap that is available for us to follow and it was uh to me i thought it was a really great good use of time and it was encouraging to see a model that works and you know for all of the concern that we hear of people that say we shouldn't do that because we're going to lose our voice they found a way to do it and there wasn't anybody there that said they didn't have a voice so that's kind of my thoughts on it but i was very i was i was glad i went and it was a good use of time thank you commissioner flowers links is their public transportation system over there um and i know when i've gone over for business or by the uf ifas um training center places um there's bus bus lines that go by a lot of the apartment complexes because a lot of the um youth who are going to college up in that area they stay there was there any conversation about expanding their link services and connecting it with bright line as it comes through or i can address that a little bit we didn't talk a lot about links specifically um they are a voting member of the board so they have that all their operating agencies do have some voting representation probably the biggest thing we talked about though was the change that seminal county uh is implementing they are moving away from fully funding links and they are now moving to a more transit on demand service using the freebie operator that some of our cities have used they will keep some links buses operating in seminal county providing mainly on the main quarters like 1792 and feeding to sunrail but seminal county is a relatively suburban low density area and so fixed route transit in in that county is probably not as viable it is as it is in other parts of the urban area so that's prompted their switch and there they seem happy with it so far but it's kind of a hybrid model where they have some links buses and then they have this freebie uh on demand which is not free um so they are charging the residents for that service that's why i was asking because i know when i've gone over just looking at not seeing as much public transportation yeah it's a little heavier in orange county where you have many more of the tourism workers and you know the articulated buses uh the longer 60-foot buses are very much in operation in in in that area thank you i wouldn't oh yes um i would agree with the earlier comments uh i would add that uh it was good to hear from this the um chairman of the small cities council who made us feel a lot better about their representation and the voice they had um originally they had some friction with orlando wanted more voting members and they got by it by having elected officials from orlando representing the port and tampa and perhaps we want to do that with tampa the port and tampa airport instead of having it represented by executives um i think we all pitched in and and helped to get earlier funding for west chase interchange so i would say that we've actually paid it forward to hillsborough county and tampa but um not everyone there might agree that's all i have thank you yes thank you anyone else um vice mayor eisner so uh commissioner scott um i would love to ask you this this this has been a um mpo that's been established for quite some time now right so you're speaking to all people who are board members correct or people that are in a position to make the decisions what i'm trying to get at is the people that were removed when this was constructed together you didn't get any feedback from them how they felt that it was i don't i don't know that anybody was ever removed because they came together i don't know that they had individual mpos prior to 1977 so they started out as one okay as one joint one joint unit but i did ask the question there was one there was a representative um and this was not uh he was not an elected official but it was a employee from the city of sanford which is included in um that uh municipal board because they don't have a population of of uh greater than 50 000 but they had some subcommittees and i forgot he was on it was a technology subcommittee or something like that and he was showing me the dashboard they were working on about how they were doing um real real time uh road work and like click fix things things like that and and they were and they were getting their various municipalities to kind of work together on on the same platform and i asked the question you know is there is there anybody feel that they they're not being represented or they're underrepresented or friction and he spoke up uh on that and said that their their city feels that they are extremely well represented and the input that they were that they had on this technical committee they felt was was was heard and and and and accepted by the broader board so you know it's it sounded almost a little too good to be true i got to be honest with you i'm like i can't believe that everybody's always hunky-dory sure all all the time i got to believe that there's some friction here points along the way but we have friction points along the way too i don't think there's any perfect solution uh for anything but they seem to have figured it out and the fact that it's been in place for what since 1977 and nobody split off i think that right there tells you something thank you thank you and i agree i i was really impressed by the way that they figured out the makeup of it i took some notes on that and just i was encouraged by the confidence from the smaller cities uh rep representatives and and them not only feeling like they were part of this and and just as important as everybody else but it seems that this offers resources beyond what a small city can do on their own it's a strong voice that maybe you know a city like tampa feels like they're strong enough on their own um some cities can fly solo like that but with smaller cities being able to have the resource of that larger voice um i think is extremely valuable and and we we heard about it from them yeah i mean their leadership was i mean just very confident that that they had a good solution and they had no reason to even think about going in every different different any other direction and their their board is made up they have 17 members that are based on population four members from operating agencies and then one member from the municipal advisory committee and that made that makes up their board of 20 of 22 and their non-voting members was um they had non-voting advisory members of fdot uh kissimmee gateway airport uh citizen advisory committee um and then there are there are 22 municipalities in their um in their municipal advisory committee and then there was one or two that i didn't get a chance to take the notes on because they moved the slide away i'll get the powerpoint presentation and share that with everybody yeah might be helpful for you all that would be great i wanted to point out also that um elected official officials who are not on this board were also invited to attend and i was very happy that mayor rector from clearwater was there and um having that kind of engagement um there is so it's so important because i felt like all right now we've got one more person who gets it so yeah yeah their leadership structure is they is they rotated they just had their their the three counties so they had a county commissioner they just rotated so between chair vice chair and treasurer they just rotated between the three counties they seem to work it out i think you know it's a mature organization as as mentioned been around since 77 they did go independent in 1998 from the regional planning council so they that's why they charge the 50 cents per capita because they need a local source of revenue and i will say that they debate projects and they have some good disagreements on transportation projects but they don't debate governance and they don't debate borders and and and what's interesting to me is orange county has seven seats on that board far more than any of the other two counties and i think commissioner uribe mentioned that they should be receiving something like 67 percent of the federal funds because of population but they only expend about 40 of the funds and she said they were very happy to see the money flow to the other two counties because it benefited the whole region now they're to your point that geographic differences orlando is a job center and a magnet for the region so everybody commutes into orlando or disney world um for jobs it's kind of a two main areas of of commuting patterns and then i4 connects all that so it's a little more i don't want to say it's a simplistic region but it's a it's a simpler model than what we have here um so i'm not sure there's a perfect template but it was just interesting to see how those those boundary and governance debates that we're really wrapped up in didn't really trouble them very much no they really it was not even none of them expressed any concern about that whatsoever and they have not passed their sales tax referendum even though they've tried multiple times seminole county and osceola county both have passed some local funding sources but orange county's been stymied every time they've tried to do that council member gabbard thank you and uh what i just wanted to say uh thank you for putting all of this together i know that it was uh hard work to get everybody at the table but i did find it to be very productive um and very positive and uh i actually a happy surprise a dear friend of mine commissioner sheryl greeb uh is actually the osceola county representative she is the only representative for osceola county due to their size um and so i spoke with her actually in a follow-up after uh the meeting and she shared with me privately that it has been an incredibly positive experience that osceola county feels as though they are very well represented but really to commissioner scott's point the um municipal advisory committee is the key to that and so i think it's going to be really important that was probably the biggest takeaway that i had it's going to be very very important that however that entity is set up if we do end up merging that everyone feels they have a voice and that that voice feels as though it is well represented at the bigger board um because i have been a little skeptical about how that would work out and uh certainly left there feeling much more positive about it so thank you for that opportunity all right i think the toughest part of it was finding a date that everybody could go over there but they were very accommodating great hosts and um worked out well thank you all for taking the time to to make that trip vice chair yeah first of all i wanted to say thank you to those that took the time to go over there i mean i really um i just couldn't make it work but i felt i felt a little guilty so having heard your all uh input makes me feel a little bit better uh for not having been able to go but thank you for taking that time it's really the kind of work we have to be doing now to make sure that that we're doing it right um and so the cost comparisons continue to be out there governance comparisons the styles and for us at this county we're going to have to figure out how we and i guess this is this is a little different than what it sounds like over there but how we want to split up our seats so to speak so that we make sure that some of the concerns about smaller cities are taken care of um in this whole discussion process so um i'm i'm encouraged by what i'm hearing and look forward to uh rolling up our sleeves and doing the hard work because it's a big deal when you look at south county with our south state and what they've done as a united front and you look at what orlando's done as a united front in terms of getting money probably an unfair amount of money based on where we what we should have been getting i mean again i'm not pointing fingers anywhere i'm just saying this this might be a way to do it but anyway continue the discussion and look forward to that thank you well on that note um this friday uh we have our principals workshop it's at um one third i'm sorry 12 30 um at the um collaborative labs over at the epicenter so i encourage you all to be there um i don't know that everybody's rsvp'd but we are hoping to get a good turnout there um i think we have pretty good response rate thus far from the three counties of local elected officials and what you're going to do at the workshop is look at some different options some different governance models some different structures and you'll have an opportunity to weigh in talk with your colleagues there'll be some small group breakout sessions and i know some of you have uh pinellas legislative delegation meeting beforehand we're close by to where you're meeting so hopefully you can get over there afterwards uh and again just encourage everybody to share your thoughts even if currently right now you don't know how you feel about the merger of the mpos you have some serious questions you have some concerns please express those concerns because hearing those will help us try to address them come up with different options uh and make sure those voices are heard and and we are planning for a plan a which is to merge the mpos and a plan b if the will is not there you know what are some things we can do to to be more successful in transportation funding and prioritization the only thing else i'll mention mention is that uh commissioner johnson thanks for joining us joined us for the mpo advisory council meeting uh on october 23rd and they've started a new format for those meetings that i think will be a little bit uh better um it actually we came together as elected officials and staff but after staff and elected officials had separate meetings where they were able to be a little more candid in conversations and talk more about some key issues uh facing mpos across the state it's an important voice uh to articulate those concerns and um you know for a couple of sessions now mpos in particular and the mpo advisory council have been uh you know on the menu for the the legislature to um put in some constraints um and and even eliminate the mpo advisory council and uh chair uribe from orange county i think has taken the bull by the horns to really work with staff we have new staff director um to implement some changes in that organization to really ensure that it is a collaborative body where mpos can share best practices and experiences and learn from each other and i don't know if there's anything you want to add commissioner but i hope you felt it was valuable to participate definitely valuable time and i did enjoy it thank you for um you know pointing me to that i do appreciate it uh we learned a lot in our work session on the department of transportation and how they get their funding and how we have to you know try to get that funding down to up to the region so uh you know and we had dot in there with us talking about that and it was a great conversation we learned a lot obviously we learned we have to we have to lobby a little bit for our regions and do some work and there's you know there's a little work to be done on our side so uh but i it was a great use of my day and i appreciate the invite well so much of transportation is competitive and speaking with one voice is something that gets re-emphasized every time i i get to those meetings um last little thing i'll mention is speaking of speaking with one voice um we are about to initiate a regional uh project prioritization process uh i'm not even going to say the acronym but it's a federal grant that was awarded to the hillsborough tpo um who uh went after the grant uh in partnership with pasco and pinellas and they were awarded uh that grant about a year or so ago it's a it's a million dollar grant um and the request for proposals for consulting support will be out next week i believe and so in a matter of a couple of months we'll have a consultant will be underway and the goal there is to look at how pasco hillsborough and pinellas currently prioritize transportation projects and come up with a relatively common methodology and procedure that can help us advance regionally significant projects as well as use similar procedures for smaller scale projects in each of the counties and um we we had an interesting discussion about that earlier today and i just wanted to put it on your radar screen that that's another example of how we are working together and that'll have a plan a and a plan b component um again if we don't merge um that's that regional prioritization process is still going to be very important for going after those competitive dollars particularly if it affects the interstate or strategic intermodal system like the west rail interchange did a few years ago we need to have a good argument we need to have a consistent shared voice for those projects that's all i have for this report a little longer than normal but thanks for the indulgence but it was great thank you um all right next we'll do item 7c which is our draft tentative work program and for that we have a presentation from brian hunter from fdot hi brian good afternoon everybody so brian hunter with the florida department of transportation today i'm going to give a brief overview of the tentative work program that we've been working on with the npos for the last couple months i know we have some new new faces on the board since the last time we presented this so i'll give a brief uh description of what the tentative work program is how we develop those what are the priorities we use where we get those priorities from and then i'll go into the projects and then i'll be happy to take any questions that you may have so the department works on a five-year budget cycle that's called our five-year work program that includes all phases of a construction project or a roadway project so from planning all the way to construction everything in between it also includes all of our modal projects that we're helping our modal partners with that'd be airport seaport transit rail and then freight projects as well and so right now we're working on our 26 through 30 work program that's what we're in right now and come july 1st 26 will end 27 will be the new first year and so it'll look kind of like this and we need to backfill that new fifth year and so that's what we've been doing the last couple months and so this presentation is mainly going to talk about projects that are in that new fifth year but also some changes that we may have had in the the inner years so we build that fifth year make those changes we need in the inner year we then submit it to the legislature they review it they send it to the governor's office and if he signs it it becomes our adopted work program on july 1st of 2027 so how do we build those projects what is our strategy for that we do have a very specific strategy the first thing we do is we go through and we want to make sure we're preserving our existing system so if there's a a bridge that needs rehab or a road that needs to be rebuilt or we need to improve technology then that goes that's programmed first the second thing is we look at preserving the work program and so that means if we have a project that had a schedule change or a cost change we make those adjustments and then the third thing is we fund the new phases uh or the next phase of a project that's already received funding so if we've done planning and design and we need to fund right-of-way then that's the next priority that we have and all the way through to construction and that's to make sure that we're being good stewards of the taxpayer dollar and we're moving those projects that we've already invested in through to construction and then the fourth priority for us is then adding those new projects and where do we get those new projects from a lot of it's from the mpo so when you guys do your list of priority projects in june time frame that's that comes to us we also get the suncoast transportation planning alliance their regional priority list that you all build together that comes to us and then we have the department's uh priorities as well so we go through those and we pick projects to uh fund so the this presentation is going to only show projects that are newly added to the work program if a new fund or new phase was added it'll be in there as well if there was any sort of advanced or deferral of that of a project so if we moved it in or out a year and then you know major projects of interest if you've been tracking a project and you don't see it on this please don't worry about it it just means that we didn't have a major schedule or cost change it's still moving forward as we had previously presented on but you can go to our work program there's a web page at the bottom but if you just google fdot work program it'll pop up as your first choice and then you can drill down to if you want to look at the district or county or even city you can drill down to that level of detail in there so the first project here is uh planning for these are the funds that go to the mpo to do the great work that they do and one thing you'll notice about this slide if you look above metropolitan that has a little logo the ford pinel's logo and it says ford pinel's priority that means it's something that came directly from your priority list that you guys passed and so we were able to fund that priority for you all these are transit replay or transit uh projects so the first one is bus replacements that is a recurring capital investment that the mpo makes to fund bus replacements or infrastructure improvements related to that and then we have the psta transit corridor program this is adding operational funds to fiscal year 31 this is a um a competitive grant program the transit agencies apply to the department and it really is focused on providing regional connectivity so these three routes you have 100x which goes basically from downtown tampa up to gateway across the uh gandy to britain plaza and then up to tampa downtown tampa and then 300 goes from like the omerton park and ride across omerton to the howard franklin tampa international airport and then downtown tampa and then route 19 starts at like the the largo transfer center shoots up to tarpon springs and that provides that regional connectivity by connecting to some pasco county bus routes that come down us 19 or across 54. so these are great projects we applaud psta for continuing to do these they do really well and so we're happy to participate in helping to fund the operations on those these are operational improvement projects that the department has coming forward this is uh third and fourth street this one came out of the mpo's downtown st pete transportation plan or is it mobility plan um mobility but so this one is constructed is going in fiscal year 31 this will convert third and fourth street from uh one-way pairs to two-way roads and that's basically from fifth to fifth so fifth ave south to fifth ave north or 175 to 375 so that's construction in 31 we also have a roundabout at all us 19 at virginia avenue we are going to do the design in-house so that we can advance it a little quicker than would typically be done but it's a small small project and so we've added right away to fiscal year 30 on that one i was out there last week and i think we've got a little wiggle room there that we can get like an elliptical about or a little peanut shaped one that we may not need right away and so if we don't then we'll move into construction we'll transfer those funds to construction at that time when we determine that on the bicycle and pedestrian uh projects that we have we have the pinellas county sidewalk gaps this is uh sidewalk gaps on the state roadway system so we have a list of all the sidewalk gaps we gave it to the mpo and they got us back the priority list and so we're just knocking those off going down the list as we can and so we are continuing with that this will be the fifth year that we've done that so we're adding both design and construction and then the 60th street project is one of the government grant programs that the mpo has so this will be some bicycle and pedestrian and intersection improvements on 60th street and pinellas or pinellas park is also funding part of this project i think we have 1.1 1.5 million and they have like 1.2 1.1 of local funds on it these are the resurfacing projects there's quite a number of them so we went with a map this time instead so this is northern pinellas county but i do believe in your agenda packet there if i did my job right i emailed a list to chelsea and she got it to everybody hopefully i did that but if not i can get that to everybody but this is north pinellas county and these are the ones that are in southern pinellas county and so these are just straight resurfacing projects with some minor improvements as necessary and then on the resiliency front we have done a lot of looking at lessons learned from the hurricanes that we've had in the recent you know last five years and so we're going to do some resiliency uh improvements out on the howard franklin bridge causeway and so this will be on the pinellas side construction in fiscal year 30 then we have some mast arm replacement projects as well and then we have 699 so gulf boulevard from tom stewart to 153rd this will be like pedestrian improvements at the intersections rebuilding the the signals putting back plates so they're a little easier to see when you have that sun beaten down in the direction of the traffic signal and just a couple miscellaneous projects to wrap us up but we have a previously programmed drainage improvement that we determined is no longer needed and so we're able to accommodate that in a different project and then we also have a rest area improvement project that'll be construction in fiscal year 30. this is the total funding that we have programmed for pinellas county over the next from 27 to 31. it's about 531 million dollars with 185 going to resurfacing and 152 going to transit about 200 overall a little over 200 to our modal partners during that time frame here's the timeline we already had our online public hearing we got all those public comments due i know that yesterday was the date that the npo objections letter was due but don't worry about that if you guys have a letter to submit we will definitely incorporate that it's a it's a soft deadline of november 11th and then we submit this in january to the legislature and then july 1st hopefully we have an adopted work program to work on and before i take any questions just want to remind everybody be safe while you're walking out there it gets dark very early this time of year so if you're out there driving or walking please pay attention to potential of pedestrians being there and if you're a pedestrian wear reflective clothing have light walk on roads that have sidewalks that kind of thing just stay safe while you're out there on our roadways and i'll be happy to take any questions that anybody has thank you brian um and i'll just point out that the letter of comments is in the packet so anybody can read that letter all right any questions yes vice chair thank you appreciate the um the the changes and especially the one on on alt 19 thank you for for looking into that um just while you're here i just wanted to thank you all um for arranging a special meeting monthly for the alt 19 work a lot of questions come in for in my district for that for that area and i really appreciate the secretary for setting that up uh they're all very very good folks and they're very accommodating and when i ask questions they actually make you know don't make me feel stupid for questions that are probably stupid so they make they're really good people i really appreciate that um certainly um also wanted to thank you for the efforts that are being made over on in the ridge more bridge more area the bridge that's being designed there um i continue to get questions about um certainty looking for how they're covered so all i offered them up was that the secretary was willing to move to that area to make sure that it got done on a timely basis um but well that that's okay i that's personal you know um but i appreciate i appreciate the work you guys have done i know our public works folks are looking closely at just making sure that we're set up to provide access uh at all times so um thank you for that um and um appreciate appreciate the presentation today mayor freeney so maybe based on what you just said maybe i won't have another opportunity to for the fdot comment but i just somewhere in here i was going to make a comment about skinner boulevard which has nothing to do with this but um i'll tell you like personally and from every resident in dunedin and people that go through there those roundabouts are great and i know there's finishing touches there but um it's it's good i i mean and you know there was some controversy about roundabouts but i'll tell you what everybody's changed their mind they like them so i just wanted to kind of put that and think and of course that project was five months early so thank you yeah just a quick question follow up on that because i i i tend to agree with you i know i know some folks in the audience don't always agree with roundabouts and i'm just looking at my friend david um but um they they've been i mean they were lined up to fight against the roundabout in palm harbor and we got we took a lot of heat for that but really we get no calls the only person i ever hear from is my friend um uh and um but no seriously it's been a usually that comes from up above but thank you um on on on that one is there any thought to the two lanes that are approaching that intersection from the east having a a merged area before you get there because when you cross through that light and hit that it it is a like an immediate merger and it really becomes a problem sometimes not often but is there any thought that the two lanes could accommodate and make that a right turn only lane because that's an issue as well um i don't know just a thought question yeah let me um get some turning movement counts there and we'll see what can be done it may be an issue where we can just put some advanced signage and we may not have the capacity going through but if we if we do have the capacity to make it uh a right turn only we'll take a look at that so i'll get some turning it is about capacity versus safety yeah it truly is because it's just a real i mean i've seen some already some close calls because everybody thinks they have the they have the yeah the right away there and um and it's really fast maybe you could extend the merge i don't know if you can on i'm not speaking on behalf of the council or commission but you're not but it's a good point i've had the comment and people have said oh it's so fast and all of a sudden you're merged so it comes on them so i'm not speaking on behalf of my commission either but it's definitely let's do it anyway yeah let's do it anyway but it has been a comment and it and it's but it's and it's made in a positive way because people love the improvements so it's just at that particular point it seems to be you're you're there you're merged but then like it's quick like you gotta merge because you're across the light and boom you better merge we can do something i'll put it that way i don't know what it'll be but we can do something yeah well doing something is better than nothing so thank you oh i mean we we love the whole thing i mean it's great and again and all the finishing touches aren't there but it's uh it it just goes to show how successful something like this can be in terms of whatever you want to call it smart street complete street whatever so council member gabbard thank you and uh wit i just wanted to thank you for the call out in the letter in the back on the um interchange and the frontage road and multi-use trail improvements along uh gandy corridor east to fourth um i would just echo um you know wanting us to move forward with that project um obviously i know that there was a lot of conversation about not sure what's going to happen at the dog track that property has now been sold to another developer and there will be some major improvements that are going to come in that area it's going to increase traffic in that area whatever it ends up being and it's already a pretty dangerous stretch of road um so any improvements that we can continue to look at kind of bring that conversation back forward and move that forward we would really appreciate yeah so we do have some improvements programs throughout there like we're going to add a third uh westbound lane but with that property being redeveloped it'll actually allow us to do some signals right now with the exit lane the northbound exit lane we'd have we've been having to work with the or the owner to change the lane assignment and now with the develop new developer we can change some of those lane assignments and really shorten that signal timing up so that more through traffic on gandy yeah which will improve safety out there is you can meet people and they don't get frustrated that they're sitting at one signal you know so i think we have some opportunities to to do that in advance of the much bigger project that we're we're still looking to fund so yeah and i do want to thank you because i know that the city of st pete has worked with you all and we've been able to kind of do some interim corrections to make things a little bit safer but to the point of the bridge we were talking about earlier a lot of people cut through and um when they can't cut through as easily because the bridge is being worked on then that is also going to increase increase traffic through there so just continuing to try to kind of sync up all of those projects yeah yeah we do a lot of coordination with your city staff so thank you thank you vice mayor eisner thank you madam chair so with the change of weather and fall and the change of the license plate colors that are coming down um there is a number of places that we have stopped for pedestrians but if there's no pedestrians the um other license plates seem to feel it's a stop sign and it's possibly is that anything that you'd be looking into to see um people are stopping when the people behind that know that it's not a stop sign don't always stop so we have an issue with that yeah i don't know that i've ever heard that before but i can ask our safety folks to look into if there's any issues on the state road system where we have that that we could you know it's probably more of an education issue than an infrastructure or enforcement um so i think we can let me look into it okay the other the other question i have um just recently i was making a turn off of um at a costco and we have left turn uh no right turn on red and the both lights are lit up but we also have another large no turn on red that's not lit up and it's causing i think confusion because the people are blowing horns they they just think you could turn on red so are they looking into anything like that uh do you know what intersection that's at it's coming out of costco where you're trying to get back on to 19 i don't know the exact street what okay is yeah i mean i mean we have it also at klosterman in alt 19 same thing okay yeah we can take a look at that and last but not least we have um have they looked into all these bicycle accidents that have been coming up these recent recent days as i know in palm harbor they've had in tarpon springs they've had um i know we always are looking to keep it safer and also i sit on uh the school's transportation safety council it's is there anything that you could see that we could do to help that situation so i mean with safety it's all about the three so you have engineering which we we take a look at those especially when we get some sort of complaint maybe it's lighting or providing a crossing for folks so if there are any particular locations please always reach out anybody reach out to the department we prior safety is our number one priority so we'll take a look at and see if we can do anything um as far as like an infrastructure improvement to provide increased safety enforcement is you know one of those things we do work with our local law enforcement agencies to if we know there's a hot spot have them go out there and do enforcement in that area and then education is one of the biggest things that we can do so if you have any sort of we have a team that just does safety outreach and education so they go out they teach people how to put on bicycle helmets properly they talk to people about how to cross roads you know talk to drivers about how to interact with bicyclists as well and so if you ever have any events or anything that you think would be an appropriate place for us to have somebody at we are always looking for those opportunities get there get out there and preach the gospel of safety and get people to even if they just think about it one time that's one more time than they would have so you know please invite us that's for everybody as well if you have any safety issue locations let me know we'll get that addressed and if you have any place that you'd like to us to do some safety education let us know and we'll we'll be there we'll have somebody with bells on literally they'll have bells on for their bikes thank you and brian thank you i know um i know you came up to talk about the tentative um the uh tentative work program but i i know we all appreciate that you're always willing to answer a variety of questions while you're here so thanks for being such a great partner not a problem glad i can anyone else have any questions all right tina do we have any um members of the public who wish to speak on this item no madam chair we do not okay the action today is um would be to approve the letter of comments on the draft tentative work program to ft ot i'll entertain a motion for approval no of approval second we have a motion and a second to approve item 7c all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the motion passes thank you next we'll go to item 7d which is regarding the tma leadership group sc tpa and mpo ac committee appointments with i'll handle this one um so as we've talked earlier we have a couple of advisory committees um and responsibilities for the mpo to participate in the statewide planning process the tma leadership group is the subcommittee of the sun coast transportation planning alliance that was formalized a few years ago the sc tpa represents a seven county area covering the mpos from citrus hernando all the way down to sarasota manatee and east polk county we have a single representative to that body they meet twice a year and they vote on regionally significant transportation priorities and it's actually a requirement in state statutes that if you want to participate in the transportation regional incentive program you have to do so through one of these multi-county mpo vehicles so it serves a pretty significant purpose in bringing dollars to the region and collaborating with our other regional partners the smaller group the tma leadership group represents just pasco hillsborough and pinellas we have three representatives to that body three equal representatives with the other mpos and we meet generally quarterly with the tma leadership group the current representatives on the tma leadership group have been commissioner eggers council member floyd and council member driscoll these sctpa representative has been council member driscoll driscoll because that meeting generally immediately follows the tma leadership group so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have a fourth person make the trip when we already have three representatives there and then finally the mpo advisory council we have one representative on the governing board the primary has been council member patty reed and the alternate has been commissioner chris johnson anybody is welcome to put their name in the hat and i will clarify that a few years ago we modified our bylaws to allow any one of the ford pinellas board members who attends the tma leadership group to vote on the agency's behalf if we didn't have say the three appointments there a funny story that i once asked one of our board members i told her she couldn't vote and i never want to do that again um so um so um this way if if for instance two of them can't be there but a third is some another one of you is there then you can take that seat and vote on our behalf so i don't know how you want to handle it um but i guess we need to open it up for nominations yeah yeah and um before we do that i wanted to give the other members who have been serving on these committees a chance to um to speak if they if they if they want to it looks like vice chair so you are still in i'm still interested in staying on if if the board thank you as am i and council member floyd yeah i mean i'm still interested it's not uh it was an educational experience and you don't get to do it many times so uh over the course of a year and i just got appointed last year so i'd love to be able to continue to learn more thank you anyone else so then we will um yes so we'll start with the um nominations for tma if anyone would like to make a not well of that no go ahead of those three people oh okay i didn't know i didn't hear was there another anybody else i didn't think anybody else no i'm just sort of clumsy about all this right now i'm sorry so we have a motion to appoint commissioner eggers council member driscoll and council member floyd reappoint them as members of the tma and commissioner floyd second that okay so we have with so i have i just want to make sure i get the record straight so i have a motion by commissioner eggers seconded by commissioner flowers to maintain the current membership to the tma leadership group yes thank you okay thank you all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the motion passes thank you next we'll do the sctpa um i have been happy to serve happy to continue to serve on that one um unless one of the other tma members would like to hang out longer after those meetings not me all right then i i would be um i would be happy to be nominated i'm the chair second third thank you i didn't get the first and second sorry motion by commissioner flowers thank you all right we have a motion and a second for sctpa for me to continue serving on that all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the motion passes thank you and finally for the mpoac committee appointment i believe uh council member reed is still interested in serving and commissioner johnson are you still interested in serving as a backup all right so we have a motion and a second for um uh patty reading chris johnson to continue serving on mpoac all those in favor please say aye any opposed the motion passes thank you and thanks to all who are willing to do that little extra and tina just for the record before we move on did you have any members of the public who wanted to speak on any of those items because i forgot to ask they are lined up out the door no nobody wants to talk about okay thanks all right next we will um do an overview of the special act and county-wide planning process by rodney chapman hi uh good afternoon all right um good afternoon rodney chapman planning manager here at ford pinellas um as your write-up indicates this is the first part of a two-part discussion that we want to have with the board about the kind of white planning process and the special act as i debated about how to begin this presentation i thought well i could take you know one approach which would be to quote state statute and um chapter and verse of the special act but i thought um that probably wouldn't be the right thing to do because i must admit uh land use policy and and legalese can be quite boring so what we're going to do today is take a different approach um so to begin i want to talk to you all about uh milestones within the evolution of the panels planning council so for those of you that are of age um do you remember what life was like back in 64 1973 in 1988 for me i wasn't born in 64 so i have no no point of reference there uh i was i was born in 1973 and i was in high school in 1988 so um so um so um if you all can remember back then uh obviously in 64 uh america looked a little different uh what was interesting to me and putting this together is uh some of the things we we talk about in terms of cost of living so back then the average home price was about twenty thousand dollars income uh was much less and gas was about 36 30 cents a gallon uh i am uh old enough to remember when we had a black and white tv uh so um another interesting fact is back then only about half of the households owned a second car in 73 uh again home prices did tick up a bit as well as income as well as gas prices and then in 88 again uh costs continue to rise incomes rise i bought my parents bought my first car in 1992 so i do remember paying about a dollar a gallon uh for gas and i did take a uh computer programming class at bogusaga high school so the computer that i remember working on looked some something like that um the reason why these uh milestones are significant when you think about the county charter the special act and the countywide planning process is that those uh dates line up nicely with some of the milestones and the land use part of what we do here at fort pinellis so back in 1964 the planning council was established uh by an act of the florida legislature and at the time the purpose was to pursue uh federal planning grants uh there was an understanding that uh the county was growing and that there was a need to bring some order and uh consistency to uh development as as land would develop over the intervening years uh so things uh kind of ticked along until 1973 when the legislature again amended uh the law to give additional authority and powers to the ppc uh it resulted in the planning council being able to weigh in on things like zoning decisions subdivision regulations and utility planning uh none of which we do now but at the time there was a an understanding that growth would have to be planned and coordinated given the amount of cities uh that we have it's also important to understand back in 73 that the ability of the planning council to approve or reject local land use decisions uh was incorporated however that changed in 1988 and that change was a result of legal action uh that was filed uh believe in 1985 1986 what that did was result what that did was that it resulted in changes again through the legislature and through the county charter that took away that county-wide planning authority from the planning council and transferred it to the board of county commissioners as uh the county-wide planning authority in 1989 the planning council adopted the first county-wide plan which uh largely reflects what we have today and at that time you also we saw uh municipalities start to adopt their own local conference of plans to be in compliance with state law and there became a consistency process where the county-wide plan and these local conference of plans had to be consistent with one another there's other milestones between 89 and 2012 i'll save that for the work session in january but in 2012 that's when the legislature adopted uh the special act which merged the boards of the npo and the planning council into that single decision-making body uh one fun fact is that there's only one person on the board today who was back uh on the planning council back in 2012 i'm not going to ask you to guess but that person is mayor ayub was back on the planning council yeah yeah he was 12 back then um the other the other thing that's important to think about in terms of county-wide planning is looking back at how the county has evolved when it comes to uh population and employment um what you're looking at here is kind of a working analysis that we're going to refine and bring back to you some other data points in january but it was interesting to us that if you go back and look at what pineal's kind of looked like in 1960 quite a bit different uh about a third of the population that we have now and you can see on the map to the right uh the amount of what uh we would quantify as uh developed versus undeveloped land so the parcels and purple are what was developed or considered developed uh back in uh 1960 and um again looked a lot different uh gateway obviously is pretty vacant some parts of mid-county north county really undeveloped it's also interesting to think about how employment tracks the population figures so you can see even though we smoothed out some of the data you can see how the the trend basically follows population and employment and uh what was also important to note is um if you look back at the number of jobs that pineal's county had back in 20 excuse me in 2000 and compare it to the number of jobs we have in 2024 we've only added 10 000 jobs over that time frame why is that the case the mid-2000s recession as well as the covid 19 pandemic uh the county shed a lot of jobs during those two instances that have resulted in what would be kind of minimal job growth over that time period um we our team has also been able to show through the map series how development has uh changed over the intervening years and not that we're 100 uh built out or no vacant land we do still have some vacant land available but it's um very small and fragmented and it's our uh belief that developing property in pineal's county now is much more challenging much more complex than it was back in uh the 1960s when you had much more developable land and i think the case you all acted on in clearwater earlier today illustrates that point where you had a piece of property which i'd never seen in my 22 years where you had a piece of property in one municipality sort of de-annex go to the county and then come back in to an adjacent municipality to make a development project work so again the need to have that county-wide perspective and support from an agency like ours is critically important the other reason why it's critically important is because uh we have competition um i was able to grab a couple headlines from our partners in hillsborough and pasco counties to illustrate uh here just recently about last spring and last summer uh the amount of uh development that is occurring in our neighboring counties and that they have a coordinated strategy to ensure that their counties are capturing the amount of growth that they feel is uh appropriate for for their county uh for us you know the county-wide plan is our economic redevelopment strategy uh we talk often about the three parts to the the plan the map the rules and the strategies uh the thing that i want you to remember is it is a coordinated and um multi-layered process and the time i've been here we've been able to strengthen our relationships with our local government planners and we work really collaboratively to help deliver outcomes that the community supports what we focus on is doing things that are uh predictable because the development community desires that predictability but we also want to do it in a way that is fair and balanced and balancing the needs of the community versus the needs of um you know other interests within the development decision making process uh but what underpins it all for us is understanding what the market will support and the things that we bring to you all in terms of changes or plans or studies we often if you know if we can have that market component to it to so that we are planning in a way that is going to meet the market's needs over the years the planning council has pushed down a lot of responsibility uh back to the cities and so now the current countywide plan allows the cities to make local changes that don't rise to our level because a decision was made to determine what was of countywide significance so things that are local zoning or site plan issues obviously we don't deal with those but if you are choosing to amend your future land use map in an area that is vulnerable uh in a vulnerable location when it comes to climate hazards or if it's dealing with land that should be reserved for target employment you know high paying jobs those types of things are what we consider of countywide significance and that's when we'll weigh in and the chart to the right is just to explain is just to illustrate to you how uh prior to 2014 there wasn't a administrative or staff level pathway for approval everything went to the to the planning council and the county commission but in 2014 we did introduce a administrative process and you can see in those blue bars how that has reduced the number of cases that go uh through our process and end up in front of the board of county commissioners so there's efficiencies that we continue to try to implement to refine the process and make things work smoothly on a pivot now to talk more about our local assistance process is something that we have uh that i'm very proud of we put a lot of resources and uh effort into in the time i've been in this position i have a great team that supports the work we do and we wanted to give you a snapshot of some of the correspondence that occurs almost on a weekly basis between your staff and and us uh because it's things that you don't see because they don't always rise to the level of board communication or board action in this case this was uh an email that came to us about um helping one of our cities to determine with a developer what uses would be permitted through their conference or plan uh this community was dealing with a lot of different uh ideas and a lot of different regulatory hurdles or interpretations so they what they reached out to us for a meeting to better understand what are the steps required what can what can the developer do with the property what that potential is and what was key in this case is they had no interest in doing residential so residential is oftentimes the easy thing to do and when you have a developer that wants to do something that is not residential then it takes a little bit more thought because those projects are often more complex the second instance is um really more on the implementation side where a community had certain standards that and they were getting some pushback from pinellas county water navigation about some amenities that were in their land development regulations and they were reaching out to us to find a way to incorporate this substantial what they call substantial public amenity uh into their community and then the last one is uh a request that came to us um to help this community uh work with um a private consultant to help the public understand density concepts particularly missing middle uh duplexes triplexes garden apartments you know those types of things and uh they asked us if we consider sponsoring the initiative and then they also were contemplating adding this uh this element to their citizen planning academy so again uh this is a snapshot more into what you don't see in terms of the technical assistance we provide uh to the cities and this is the form that um these requests come in uh almost on a weekly basis and then lastly i'll just uh highlight our impact across the county and this is just a snapshot of the work that our team has been able to do over the last few years uh most of you on the board when we did the target employment industrial land study update back in 2022 uh we um are very proud of that work we had a lot of partners and a lot of good policy recommendations came out of that and we're happy that we were able to take those recommendations that related to the changes to the county-wide plan and actually make those changes so those changes that were recommended back in 2022 are in place now in the county-wide plan nicole galasso did speak to you all about our work that we're conducting on behalf of pinellas county to update the multimodal impact fee ordinance and that has been another uh county-wide cross-jurisdictional effort that honestly has been a little bit more of a heavier lift than we thought it was going to be uh given house bill 479 and some of the other constraints put on us by the legislature but again just an illustration of how we are delivering high quality service to pinellas county uh the next two projects are in pinellas park and largo this is uh working with those two cities to take the recommendations that were related to the cities coming out of the teals update and amend the city's regulations and comprehensive plan to ensure that these two communities are viable and competitive for high wage employment going forward and then lastly a couple new things that we're going to be working on is uh in the cities of old tomorrow and gulfport to help them understand work with their communities to better understand what accessory dwelling units mean for them and could uh could help with some of their housing needs so again just wanted to give you a high level overview of the county-wide planning process to sort of tee up a more in-depth discussion with you all at the january board work session at that time i would i plan to review with you a potential regulatory process change that we want to make to further streamline the process by which the cities follow to amend their future land use map i also want to give you some insights into the planning community around the county so you have understanding of what that landscape looks like and then i also want to talk to you all about a new software tool that we may pursue to help the public understand density and what it means in their neighborhood or community i need just to follow up there's a business card that we put at everybody's desk which has a link on the back where you can scan to take you to the story map that we presented to you a few months ago that highlights the work we do and the responsibilities we have so it's a good handy dandy reference all right thank you council member gabbard thank you and uh rodney thank you for the presentation um on page 13 i was very happy to see the um ongoing work under the hurricane shelter space mitigation impact fee that is something that the city of st petersburg has been asking for a very long time for the county to take up so do you have like any information on a timeline for that uh thank you council member the reason i'm chuckling whenever i put that on a document someone always asks a question about that so we discussed the topic with the planners advisory committee uh at the last meeting and um really put it on our on their radar uh what we plan to do is to follow up with pineapples county emergency management to re-engage them the the reason why that that issue uh was raised is because of development in st pete and we worked with uh your emergency management staff as well as pineapples counties to come up with with an approach but and we were on a path to move something forward but then last hurricane season hit and then everything stopped so we we're going to re-engage uh pineapples county emergency management to see if um if they still support an initiative like that okay very good well i'll continue to uh keep my eyes on it very happy to see it um actually on this report today and then i guess my other comment it's probably not a question it probably just is more of a comment but something that i want us to just keep in mind my other hesitation on the merger has always been what will be a bifurcating of the pineapples county planning council from the transit agency work i've always thought that that was one of the beauties of forward pineapples was that it merges those two together and so you're really looking at land development and transit cohesively i have a great concern about information just like was shared with this body today not necessarily then being part of what members who will be on a merged mpo will be privy to um i look at you know like the jobs information and the growth information i think that is so important that those same members know that information and so i just wanted to call that out and put a pin in that because i think that's something that we're going to have to have a little bit more due diligence to make sure that the members who go to a merged regional mpo have that same information that is necessary to make decisions that's a very good point thank you for bringing that up and you know one of the things i've been really trying to focus on is how do you keep that linkage between land use and transportation as you elevate at the regional level and i think there's a way to do it um there's a couple of different mechanisms for doing that you know one thing we've kicked around which is certainly not off the table and and could be discussed is to make forward pinellas or the pinellas planning council an official formal advisory committee or body to the regional mpo and then hillsborough has a mechanism for that with their planning commission and it would really be interesting to see what kind of mechanism pasco county might look at to create so that's a possibility there may be some other ways to do it as well one thing that we're not doing very well at the regional level is linking regional economic development strategies with transportation investment strategies and we heard that loud and clear in charleston last week that they were doing that so that's another area where land use at the 30 000 foot scale could probably be reimagined at the regional level okay look forward to more conversation thank you anyone else yeah i'm just going to add that uh it seemed like i can't remember the year but there was a point at which the county commission took over the final approval of those countywide plan changes um it still doesn't get go away from the fact that we need that planning effort locally um and i just think it's a super important i remember a few years ago when we were rushing to get a a change in the number of categories um and we made a mistake up in north county uh went from one house per acre to one from one house per two acres to one house per acre in an effort to be and we caught it and changed it back so that we made sure that our community partner tarpon springs to the west and us were more in line if you will and that there was a distinction made if you preferred one density over another and it allowed a community to voice that was really important to be heard and so those little details are not really little but they're important and i appreciated the work that we tried to cap catch a mistake that we had made but more importantly some of the proactive effort that you all do to ensure that the the personality and culture of our county that's in place is maintained so thank you anyone else all right thank you so much that was great next the director's report yeah i'll keep it really brief here just wanted to highlight we talk about congested roads a lot but in here we did do an analysis that shows all the roads that are 50 or less of their capacity and we have quite a few roads uh in the county that do that and these are all the functionally classified roads we did not go into neighborhoods and calculate that for neighborhood streets but while we do have a lot of congestion pinellas county it's interesting enough if you look down at the first avenues plenty of excess capacity on the first avenues for a robust transit system uh plenty of excess capacity on 34 street south for the new spark service that's now operating so um those are just a few examples some may surprise you some may not um the next item i wanted to just highlight for you um is um we do have a draft scope of services that i've sent to the city of clearwater planning department for a strategic plan for the cooper's bayou area that's the area between um gulf to bay mcmullen booth and cooper's point where there's a lot of different initiatives that the city is contemplating there the wastewater treatment plant will soon go away i'm not sure if i know exactly the time frame but we want to anticipate not only that change and and what it might what might replace it but also a desire to deal with the flooding and issues on bay shore boulevard and there's a number of fdot initiatives happening in that area and we want to kind of bring all that together as soon as i get comments back from city staff i'll be glad to share that scope with you it may not need an action because we do not plan to go out for consultants for that work but if there's an optional element that the city chooses to take advantage of that might trigger that so i'll be the first to let you know we have for action our legislative priorities and a short update here i'm not going to read the update for you we're very early in the pre-session bill filing period and we expect many more bills to be filed we are tracking those and uh there is a um a summary of some of those um activities here that you can read at your leisure but i do need action from the board to approve the um one page legislative summary handout that we do every year it's just some minor tweaks from last year second thank you we have a motion and a second to approve the um legislative priorities all those in favor please say aye any opposed and to that point we have an open uh request for proposals for state government uh consulting support uh we received five valid proposals we're in the process of reviewing those and i can't say any more but we will bring that recommendation to you at your january board meeting and it's really really in my view we're not racing to get ahead of this session which starts in january really kind of setting the foundation for uh 2027 legislative session and the lead up to that uh as well um the last item i want to bring to you i think is the e-bike uh update um we had you all uh review and approve um a consultant authorization to get a handle on what's happening with e-bikes and throttle bikes and e-motos all those things that are contributing to the high crash rate that vice mayor eisner uh identified we're still very committed to that but we've learned happily that uh the consultant or the university of south florida that we were going to work with has reached out to the department of transportation and fdot has funded that effort for the whole district seven it's still going to be the same level of effort that we wanted in pinellas county so we're happy to let them take that on and we will be engaged so it's all moving forward it's just moving forward a little bit differently uh than we envisioned um and then the last item uh and you heard from uh bill joneson earlier in the meeting uh we've added a item that's going to be a standing item to your agenda which will be committee communications uh and any actions taken by any of our advisory committees that they take a motion on even though it's not something on your agenda or we're asking you to approve we're going to bring it to your attention because we want to be extra transparent in our conversations with our committees we want to make sure they feel heard and we want to make sure that the issues that they're concerned with reach the board so you can see some of the actions that the board or the committee uh the citizens committee is recommending to you and i'll be happy to answer any questions on these items uh but i think in every one of these cases we're going to be bringing up to you at a future time i think that's it all right any questions on that and tina did i miss any public comment on any yes for the record there wasn't any good on the previous vote yes all right thanks oh yes just one comment i just wanted to thank the board uh it looked like we had 17 or 18 members here today which i think is fantastic and really speaks to all of your all's commitment to being here it's really a big deal to be here and to to give your communities input so i just want to say a special thank you to all of you for for doing that thank you thank you um did you have any other information items that's it for me for this meeting and for this year oh that's right that's right okay uh did any other um did any other board members have any comments for the group vice mayor eisner i just want to do a special thank you to commissioner eggers he uh stepped up when i called on him for a resident in my location who was really in a lot of trouble and uh you stepped up and i take my hat off to you you were just a statesman you got things taken care of and you made some young lady really feel at ease so i just want to thank you publicly thank you oh that's wonderful i think i think you created a great note for us to end on all right so seeing that there's no other um request for a comment this meeting is adjourned thank you