26th meeting of the Ford Pinellas Board. If you all could join me in standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. And now we will go around for introductions. And today we will start over on this side with Council Member Albritton. David Albritton, Clearwater City Council. Brandy Gabbard, Council Member, City of St. Pete. Ann Marie Brooks, Mayor of Madeira Beach, representing the Big C. Deborah Figgs-Sanders, Council Member for the City of St. Petersburg. Karen Love, Mayor of Gallport, Florida, representing South Inland Communities. Ritchie Floyd, City Council Member, St. Petersburg. Mike Menino, Clearwater City Council Member. Kathleen Peters, Pinellas County. Renee Flowers, Pinellas County Commission. Brian Scott, Pinellas County Commission. Gina Driscoll, St. Petersburg City Council. I'm Whit Blanton, your Executive Director. All right, thank you. Tina, do we have any members of the public who would like to speak? Yes, Madam Chair, we have two, and the first is David Ballard Geddes, Jr. Thank you. And just as a reminder, each person will be given three minutes to speak. Good afternoon. Thank you, Madam Chair. David Ballard Geddes, Jr. I live on Georgia Avenue in Palm Harbor. The announcement came last week that we are now in a Stage 3 water emergency. And being that I live in a predispositioned, reclaimed water, ready-to-ready-to-serve zone. Legislation is using water as their Second Amendment weapon of choice, so-called naturalized under the 14th Amendment, constituting a water crisis by design, eating us out of our subsistence, as written in the Declaration of Independence. Soon we will be in a stage for water crisis. And upon such, using the newly installed water meters, the smart meters out at our street curbs, water will be allocated for essential uses only proportionately metering daily water use permit per person per day using the smart meters. Based on Danny Young's House Bill 639 and 2012, our non-essential household water use will be converted. Our toilets and our laundry will be using reclaimed water for non-essential uses. And based on Maloney's water code, again, published in 1972, a semi-annual water inspection charge of such reclaimed water toilet permit fees will be administered against the residents for using the privilege of reclaimed water based on resolution 95-286. And upon further aggregate of the water supply, based on statute 381.0065, a waterless incinerating toilet will be deployed soon thereafter. And further, as the water scarcity increases in population increases along with it, reclaimed water will be implemented into the potable water supply. Direct potable reuse, as mentioned in Senator Albritton, Senate Bill 64, back in 2021, placing reclaimed water directly into the potable water supply based on statute 403.064. The roadways are also being strategically designed and built up with surveillance corridors, equipping roundabouts as delineation points, fortifying the parameters to serve the buildup of the 14th Amendment water jurisdiction. And using the substance of water constitutionally, I feel as though we're being staged and we're getting set up using this government to aid and abed that government. Thank you. Thank you. Next. Next, we have Steve Morrison. Good afternoon. Thank you for allowing me to speak today. My name is Steve Morrison. I'm the president of the Campbell Park Neighborhood Association in beautiful St. Petersburg, Florida. I want to talk today a little bit about MLK South in St. Petersburg. MLK South is a high injury network street. It's on the priority list, but currently unfunded by Ford Pinellas. MLK South is the only major street in the south side to not have Ford Pinellas funding at this time. We're asking Ford Pinellas to help fund complete streets on MLK South for 2027. Why? It's about saving lives and enhancing mobility and access. Despite seeing similar daily traffic volumes, MLK North had 32% fewer total crashes than MLK South. Since the installation of the MLK North buffered bike lane in 2018, there has been a 19% reduction in crashes. That's the 2013 to 2018 period compared to 2019 to 2024. MLK South saw an increase of 15% total crashes in the same period. So if you do the math there, MLK South had 228% more crashes with pedestrians and cyclists resulting in serious injury or death. 16 people were seriously injured or lost their lives on MLK South compared to seven on MLK North during those periods. Why now? Number one, we've completed the south side mobility study. Number two, we have reconnecting communities funding coming for the one-way to two-way conversion for MLK South. Number three, John Barquette recently purchased significant property on MLK South and is moving forward with the revitalization of that part of the corridor through the Looking Glass Initiative and healthy routes. In a recent DRC hearing for an alley vacation adjacent to some of his MLK South property, John spoke of how he was involved in the positive changes on MLK North and it's time to bring the same progress to MLK South. Number four, we have the neighborhoods activated and ready with representatives from Campbell Park, Rosa Park, 13th Street Heights, and Bartlett Park. Number five, our council members have expressed complete street funding as a budget priority for the city. So again, we ask of you, please commit forward Pinellas funding for complete streets on MLK South for 2027. Thank you for your time. Thank you. You know, do we have any other citizens who wish to be heard today? No, Madam Chair, we do not. All right. Thank you. We'll go ahead and close that segment and move on to our consent agenda. Do we have, are there any board members who wish to pull any items from the consent agenda to be handled individually? If not, I'll entertain a motion for approval of the consent agenda. I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. Did you have a second? Thank you. We have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. Next, we'll, we'll take up our public hearing items for today, starting with item 5A, the proposed amendments to the 2050 long range transportation plan. And reviewing that with us today is Chelsea Favreau. All right. Thank you. We're just waiting for a map to be pulled up on the screen for this item, just to show you where the amendment project location is. But the long range transportation plan is adopted every five years. And it's adopted every five years to reflect changes in funding, changes in population or employment growth, just to make sure that the projects we're advancing really reflect the needs of the community at any given time. The last long range plan was adopted back in 2024. And at the time, the reconstruction of the Beckett Bridge up in Tarpon Springs, it's a Pinellas County bridge structure, was not funded for construction. The funding had not yet been identified. Since that time, the county has been successful in securing a federal grant to replace this bridge structure. And so therefore, it necessitates an amendment to the long range plan. The former long range plan showed it as unfunded. Now we need to show it as funded in the proper year. This is new funding coming into the plan. This project does not, it's not taking funding off of any other project. So it does not impact the cost feasibility of the plan. And it will be moving forward within the next five years. So this map right here shows the location. It's just west of Alt 19, if you're not familiar with it. We did receive some questions during our committee meetings about the historic structure, the historic nature of the bridge. And we were told by Pinellas County staff that some of the historic components are going to be kind of repurposed back into the new bridge. And also, there'll be an informational kiosk place to talk to residents and visitors about the historic nature of the bridge. So today, we're seeking approval of this amendment. And I'm happy to take any questions that you may have. Thank you. Any questions on this item? All right, we have a motion and a second to approve this item. Tina, do we have any members of the public who would like to speak on this item? No, Madam Chair, and I didn't catch who made the second. That would be Mr. Shelley. May I take the roll call? Yes, ma'am. Council Member Albritton? Commissioner Shearer? Yes. Council Member Gabbard? Yes. Vice Mayor Reed? Yes. Mayor Brooks? Yes. Council Member Fig Sanders? Yes. Mayor Love? Commissioner Flowers? Mayor Freeney? Aye. Commissioner Peters? Deputy Mayor Shelley? Yes. Council Member Menino? Yes. Council Member Floyd? Yes. Mayor Ayub? Yes. Commissioner Scott? And Council Member Driscoll? Yes. That passes unanimously. Thank you. And did you want to add to... Yeah, I just want to add, sometimes we take roll call votes, sometimes we take just voice votes. And I just wanted to remind everybody, when we amend the long-range transportation plan, or we amend the transportation improvement program, or adopt either of those, they have to be roll call votes by Florida statutes. So the MPO actions on those items are roll call votes. Just if you're curious why that happens. Thank you. Consider us enlightened. Before we move on to the next item, Tina, I think I may have made a mistake on the consent agenda when that was taken up. I'm pretty sure I forgot to ask if there were any members of the public who wish to speak on the consent agenda. There's not. Thank you. There's not. Okay, good. I just wanted to clarify that. All right. Thank you. We will go ahead and move on to our next item. This is for the Pinellas Planning Council public hearings. We have received a staff report and materials in our packet for today. I just want to make sure everyone has seen that and had an opportunity to review it. If needed, four Pinellas staff are available with a presentation and to answer any questions. If anyone wants to dive into this one a little bit more. Also, the applicant local governments should be available for questions as needed. I'm going to ask for proponents, opponents, and any other citizens who wish to be heard to comment or ask questions on the case. Then we'll close the public hearing and deliberate and take action. So our first item is item 6B1. And we do have four Pinellas staff here to review that one. This is for a Pinellas County case number CW 26-04. Is there anyone who would like to see the presentation on this item or ask any questions of staff? No? Okay. Tina, do we have any requests from proponents, opponents, or other citizens to speak on this item? No, Madam Chair, we do not. Okay. Do any board members have any questions at this point? If not, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and entertain a motion for approval of this item. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second to approve item 6B1. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. Next on our agenda are the presentations and action items for today. Starting with the PSTA activities report. Mayor Brooks. Oh, I'm sorry. Vice Mayor Reed. Thank you, Madam Chair. Did you have that report for us? Thank you. The PSTA board met, excuse me, on Wednesday, February 25th and welcomed new incoming board member, Tarpon Springs Commissioner David Banther. PSTA staff offered special recognition for a transit rider who thanks PSTA for saving her and helping her get back on her feet and now has a full-time job at an apartment. The story is one of many highlighted that impact public transport can have on our riders lives. The PSTA board approved several items during the February meeting. These included an agreement with USF Center for Urban Transportation Research to provide research and consulting services, a contract for new rebranded and improved bus stop signs. These signs will start being incrementally deployed at bus stops later this year. PSTA's legal representation for the October or rather April 2025 Clearwater Ferry accident and a contract extension with Commute with Enterprise for the growing and successful vanpool service PSTA took over after the TBARDA ended. The board also received two information-only presentations, one of which was an update on PSTA's five-year Vision 2030 strategic plan, which is organized by the board's agency, Priorities for financial responsibility, operational excellence and community impact. Staff plans to bring the Vision 2030 plan to the April board meeting for final adoption. Secondly, a summary of the recently completed South St. Pete CRA mobility study, which was a planning effort in partnership with the City of St. Pete to evaluate and provide recommendations for mobility improvements in the largest CRA in Pinellas County. The recommendations will go to the City for funding and implementation. And that concludes my report, Madam Chair. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions about the PSTA report? All right. We'll go on to our regional activities report. We'll provide that for us. Yes. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, board members. We had a TMA leadership group meeting on February 13th. That is the transportation management area for the Pasco, Hillsboro and Pinellas County area. It's one urbanized area. And so for the last year, we have a couple of decades, a couple of decades, we've been meeting with our counterparts to discuss issues of regional coordination. At that meeting, we had a presentation by the White House group who was is our consultant, assisting us with the potential merger of the three MPOs. And the key decision points for that meeting were to confirm consensus on the size of the proposed regional board at 25 members. The participation of the participation of the two large regional transportation providers, the Port Tampa Bay and the Tampa International Airport, as voting members in a staff capacity prior to the allocation of seats by population. And then the remaining 23 seats would be allocated by population. And the other decision that was made at that meeting was how we would handle the smaller cities. And there was agreement among the group that we would allow each county to determine how it should handle the potential voting membership of small cities. We had met previously with the Suncoast League of Cities more than once, a couple of times to get their input on what they thought the small cities kind of a look and feel should have at the regional MPO. And what they've conveyed consistently is that they think there should be a structural mechanism for smaller cities to have their voices heard at the regional MPO. And they were concerned about losing that voice if the MPOs moved out of the counties. The committee or the TMA leadership group, in making that decision that it could be handled by each of the counties, rejected the suggestion that there should be a small city advisory committee that would then vote on its representation on the MPO board. So, based on that discussion, I will be meeting with my staff later this week, and I've been speaking with many of you about your thoughts on the matter, and we will be bringing forward to this body at your April meeting a staff recommendation on how we would handle that. The sequence is that the MPOs, all three of us, will vote on a resolution regarding the merger of the MPOs and the allocation of that apportionment plan. And we're doing it on April 8th. I think Pasco is doing it about the same day or the day before, and then Hillsborough is doing it in a special meeting a couple of weeks later. And then, once the MPOs take action, and assuming all the MPOs are in support, it will move to the four principals, which would be the county commissions and the city of Tampa. We expect that to happen sometime in the June-July timeframe. Could happen a little sooner than that, but it'll probably be more like June and July. I do have confidence that we will also be invited to the joint meeting of the Boards of County Commissioners that is being scheduled potentially for April, and we'll give an update on the staff recommendation at that point to the county commissioners. So, we're going to have an interesting discussion in April, and I just wanted you to be aware that the meeting in April will be probably a little longer because there's a number of agenda items, and I suspect that will have some discussion. And I also wanted to point out that this is the apportionment plan that will be part of the interlocal agreement if everything continues to move forward, but there is also a section that we will get to, which is the operating agreement for the MPO and a set of bylaws. And so, the bylaws and the operating agreement can also address certain functions of the board and how we form committees and how we represent everybody in the process. For instance, and I've said this to many of you, when I worked in Gainesville, you had five city commissioners and five county commissioners, and they had as part of their bylaws that nothing could pass without a majority of both boards. So, there are some mechanisms that we could look at that would ensure that we weren't having a tyranny of the majority or some kind of situation like that. I'd be happy to answer any questions. This is moving forward. I do have a full packet of work from the consultant that includes an analysis of our three MPOs operating functions today, our sources of revenue, our staffing structures, models from around the country of different ways of doing some things. And they have drafted a resolution and a PowerPoint presentation, and you'll see that at the April meeting. All right. Any questions? No? Yes, I have a couple questions. I'm a little confused on the timing. Go ahead. Thank you, Chair. Sure. So, first, it's the apportionment that we're going to take to the MPOs and the county commissions and the city of Tampa. After that, when do we take the bylaws and the operating agreements? Well, the bylaws will probably be something that needs to be adopted by the new board. Shouldn't we be doing that? Well, why do we do the apportionment but not the bylaws? We're going to move into phase two if we can get agreement on the apportionment plan, and that phase two of the consultant study will be wrapped up by the end of this year. And that will include the operating agreements, the legal framework as well. So, all that's coming, it's just the consultant's recommendation was not to get into that if we couldn't reach consensus on the structure of the organization. But the bylaws and the operating agreement aren't part of the structure? I think we'll have language as part of that. That's what I'm working on, but I'm not sure we'll have bylaws until the formal MPO is established. But the operating agreement should address that. And the other big issue that we need to resolve is whether the MPO will be an independent organization or whether it will be a hosted organization by a local government, which is the case now for all three. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you. Did you have any other items to report on for regional activities? That was big. All right. That was big. Thank you. All right. We'll move to item 6C, local government grant program recommendations. This is an action item today presented by Kyle Simpson. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Kyle Simpson with Ford Pinellas. So, yeah, I'm here today to talk about our local government grant program. We've been doing this since 2017. And over that time, we've given out almost a million dollars in planning grants and almost $12 million in construction funds to a bunch of different local governments throughout the county. On the planning side, we've been able to increase the amount available over the past few years. So, this cycle, we had $150,000 available. These funds are eligible to our local government or transit providers in the county. And any study relating to transportation is an eligible application. On the construction side, we now have $3 million eligible annually. And these can be used for construction projects. We often see applications where sidewalks or kind of, you know, roadway enhancements are addressed. Technological equipment. So, that can be, like, signal equipment is eligible. And then amenities within the right-of-way. So, that could be benches, bike wraps, new bus stops, things like that. So, this year, we had four applications come in for the planning grants. Treasure Island asked for $150,000 to look at a mobility study within their activity center. And this was in collaboration with a text amendment in the countywide plan map. From Pinellas County, we got an application looking at doing a corridor study along Douglas Avenue. That is driven by requests from the surrounding community to have changes made to that roadway. Kenneth City asked for $150,000 to do a multimodal study looking at connections along some of the larger roads that go next to and through Kenneth City and how residents could connect to different amenities within the community. And then Dunedin asked for $100,000 to $150,000 to look at the Pinellas Trail in downtown and potential alternatives to address some of the concerns that they've heard over the past few years. On the construction side, we received two applications, one from the City of Clearwater. This would add on to a planned project along the Fort Harrison throughout the whole city limit. So, the entire project is just over three miles. It'll be broken up into four segments. And they're redoing all the underground utilities. So, the ask in that application was to, when they're putting everything back, to make it better than it was before with additional crosswalks, more lighting, and then wider sidewalks. The City of St. Petersburg asked for $3 million to upgrade technology at 26 signalized intersections along MLK Street and 18th Avenue South. All right, so when we receive all these, we've developed a process of having members from our Technical Coordinated Committee and our Planners Advisory Committee that did not submit an application in this cycle review that on criteria. And so, they give it a score of one to five, one being least and five being the best, of is there documented public engagement and public support for the project demonstrated in the application? Will it improve safety? Safety is at the core of everything that we do here, so we want to make sure that's hit on. Will it improve the quality of facilities that contribute to the max index? So, that's kind of our land use tie-in. Looking at our investment corridor framework, again, trying to tie in that land use to our transportation investments. Will it serve multiple modes of transportation? And can it complete a gap in the network? So, when we had our subcommittee convene, put their scores together, it came out with the Kennes City and Pinellas County applications both scored the highest, followed by Dunedin and Treasure Island. When it came to the construction side, the City of St. Petersburg application scored a little bit higher than the City of Clearwater application. So, the subcommittee is recommending that the planning grant go to Kennes City. There was a lot of deliberation about potentially offering, like, splitting it between the county for Douglas and Kennes City, but the subcommittee felt that only offering half of what was asked to both communities would result in kind of a half-baked result. So, they wanted to see one thing done well versus two things done okay. And they also considered the fact that Kennes City has never received funding through this program before, and the fact that the subcommittee felt that without these funds, Kennes City probably would not be able to perform the work. So, that was why they're recommending that. And then, following the scoring metric, they're recommending the construction funds go to the City of St. Petersburg. These recommendations were also endorsed by our full Technical Coordinating Committee, Planners Advisory Committee, and the CAC. So, how this works is the subcommittee reviewed it in January. We went back to the full committees in February. I'm here with you today seeking your approval of those recommendations. If approved, the planning funds would become available on July 1st of this year, and the construction application we would put on our priority list near the top. And then, when FDOT is working on their next work program in the fall, they would hopefully fund it. So, those funds are the not instant gratification funds, but it would get in the process. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions, and I know both of the recommended applicants have staff here as well. Thank you. Mayor Freeney? So, is it because we got the two roundabouts that we weren't even close? Seriously, I'm looking at the, when I look at Dunedin, it gets a one, potential to complete a gap in the network. So, I guess I'm just questioning that criteria because, obviously, what we had talked about was, we're the most busy part of the trail trying to create some, you know, solutions to, for safety there. And so, it wouldn't be filling a gap, but it would certainly be starting to understand some things that could be done along the trail to make it safer. So, I'm just curious as to that particular criteria. Yeah. So, the filling the gap, it looks, or historically, it's looked more at, is there a side, like, a physical gap in infrastructure, more so than something that, say, might be at capacity and adding capacity to that piece. On the safety side, we've historically looked at, and the SOAP committee looked at, crash data, because that's the best kind of thing we have to go off of. And I know, you know, we hear it, and I know you hear concerns about the safety on the trail in Dunedin, but it just, in our crash data, it does not come up as, you know, a problem. So, Kyle, other than coming up with accident information, hopefully there's not that many, but what would you suggest we do for the next round to try to get the project off the ground? I mean, Witten and I have talked about this particular project, so I was just curious. Any thoughts you might add? So, I mean, the applications are graded against the applications we received that year. So, it's one year it might, you know, be the top application, another year it might not. So, we always encourage folks to apply again. Yeah, and we know, we had staff, Dunedin staff attended the subcommittee deliberation on this, and they're very well, it was a public meeting, so. So, they did good. Yeah. We just didn't stack up. That's all, that's fine. Okay, no, I just wanted to ask. If I could just remind you that the city did apply for funding for Skinner Boulevard, and they were not accepted the first year, so you reapplied and you were awarded the second year, and that project opened last year. So, sometimes patience is a virtue. Got it. Okay, we'll be patient. I've been bragging this one up, though, around the city, so we'll keep trying. Yeah, and we'll continue to work with you. And I do want to remind everybody on the board that we do things through this formal process because it is very inclusive and it involves everybody and it's a call for projects. It lets people think about it, but, you know, as a result of my meetings with city managers around the county, we've also done some things that we had the capacity to do on both the land use and the transportation side. So, I know we're working with South Pasadena on the redevelopment of that corridor, and then we're working with Clearwater on the beach traffic study that is coming to a conclusion as well. So, there are other avenues for us to work with you. I just want to say I'm not promising anything, but we will continue to work with everybody on these things. Well, one other question, though, regardless of Dunedin, because we wouldn't have gotten second place either. But, so is there enough money in that pot to be only able to do one of four things that people are asking us to do? I mean... I'm not sure I understand the question. Is there enough money allocated to give the grants, I guess, is my question, for planning grants? We have money in our budget to give those planning grants, if that's what you're asking. Right, but you're picking one out of four, but you're just saying that's... Well, we've just made a decision to fund them at a certain level, and we have increased that funding over time. For instance, our construction grants used to be $1 million. In fact, I think that's what we awarded for Skinner. And then the state actually stepped in and covered, as the cost rose, the rising costs. Now we've upped that to $3 million, because, frankly, in this environment, when you federalize a project, $1 million doesn't often cover the cost of federalizing the project. So it's now $3 million. Yeah, so I guess my question is, why wouldn't you have $300,000 and get two projects in for planning grants? I mean, because maybe I'm missing something. We didn't have our pre-meeting this time, so... Right, we can have a conversation about that. In fact, you have, on your next item, the approval of the Unified Planning Work Program, which is our planning budget for the MPO, and Chelsea may have something to say about that. Gotcha. Okay. No, thank you. Appreciate it. Council Member Menino? Appreciate you. Just a couple questions regarding the Clearwater Corridor Study. It's difficult to sometimes have these discussions, because the last thing you want to take away is the importance of safety in other communities. So with all due respect to my St. Pete friends, I'm not trying to throw shade, but I am a little biased. Do we take into any consideration future projects that are currently going, or projects that are in the pipeline as far as redevelopment around the core area? Yeah. So from the... We look at the... Does the max index look at future? Yeah. So we consider the max score, which is the multimodal accessibility index? Yes. Thank you. And so that captures kind of current and anticipated growth in an area. So that current score is a factor in this. Historically, you know, we do like teeing up. We like complementing other projects. Again, I think it's sometimes we receive different applications different years, and so sometimes an application that might have been favorable in one year is where it's at. I know on the construction side, the subcommittee focused a lot on what they perceived as the safety impact of both studies, and they felt that the St. Petersburg application, since it was focused on their high-injury network and spread out, would have a greater impact on overall safety for the funding provided than kind of making what is there already a little better. They thought both applications were strong. They just felt the St. Petersburg one was a little stronger. You gently addressed it, so thank you. I guess that, I mean, it is that corridor is an over-three-mile corridor to one of the most important beaches in not only our state but most popular in our country, and it's only continuing to get busier and busier. Obviously, mobility is a question to that entire area. I just saw this as a good opportunity to partner with the city and make this corridor even brighter and more beautiful than what it already is. One of the ones, the numbers, and I thank Mayor Freeney for bringing it up, just regarding scoring, to put in there that it seems like they just did an event one time and took a survey on it. That's a little harsh, seeing as though we've known this to be a challenging area for years. Where I think it might lack some community input is because it doesn't necessarily go through many residential neighborhoods. It's a business corridor downtown connecting to the beach. I think there's maybe two neighborhood associations we have going through there. The majority of the engagement would be through Amplify, our business community, and some of our other downtown partners. But what is expected when a comment like that is made that it seems like they just did one survey at an event and this was their feedback? So that was just the, we have each subcommittee member go through and independently kind of tally up their scores. And then at the meeting, we discussed those scores. And so that was just a summary of the comments of individually going through. So I can't speak to why exactly said individual made that comment. Pretty harsh feedback. Appreciate you. Thank you. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. I just wanted to ask, I think, Witt a little bit about how we've changed over the years, how much money is into the local government grant program. You mentioned increasing it in the past. And I know we've had some issue in the past of getting local governments to apply for it. And that was one of the ideas behind the increase. And so I can't remember all past years right now, but it seems like this was quite a competitive process. Do we feel like the changes that we've made in the past are making an impact? And are we, you know, any outreach changes as well? It seems like we've gotten more people applying than I can previously remember. I think we've had ups and downs in different years where we've had a lot more applications in one year than another. And I can't really say what that's attributed to. But we started out, I believe, $100,000 for the planning grant and $1 million for the construction. And, you know, that was probably not super well thought out, you know, as a starting point, because it was a pilot program. And we'd never done it before. And the $100,000 comes out of our PL funds, which are federal funds that come to us that we use to pay salaries and do the planning activities. So we want to make sure that we can do all the things we need to do as an MPO. And then this is kind of on top of that. And it's an avenue to get money directly into the hands of the local governments rather than us coming up with ideas they tell us what their ideas are. $150,000 probably has grown maybe in the last, what, four years, Chelsea, two years. And that's really because inflation costs have increased. It's just gotten more expensive. We're open to continuing to look at that number and seeing if we can expand that to fund more projects. I would tell you this, if we have a round of applications where we're seeing 8, 10, 12 applications, then I think we would want to increase that funding. When we envisioned it to start, we were thinking we would probably pick one or two projects each year. And that's kind of where that number started from. But if the demand is up there and, you know, we can look into putting more money into it. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I just wanted some clarity on if you felt like the changes we had made in the past were producing results. But it seems like maybe we don't quite have enough data points yet considering the ebb and flow of how these applications get received. So I'm, but I'm always open to, you know, especially the planning dollars are a lot lower. Or, you know, any changes we can make to get more projects done if people, if cities want to get the projects done, yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? I have. I wanted to ask about the St. Petersburg funding for MLK Street South and 18th Avenue South, especially in light of the fact that we had a speaker during our comments at the beginning of the meeting asking about funding for improving safety along MLK Street South. Can you tell everyone a little bit about what this is for and how it is going to play into that bigger goal of improving safety on that high injury network? Sure. So that application looked at basically improving the existing signal equipment. So if you see at any intersection around the county, there's usually a box on one of the corners, and then there's a computer that runs everything. A lot of our legacy systems can't do current things like video detection of a vehicle. It can analyze near misses between cars, people walking, people biking. You could also use it for corridor timing. So if the speed limit's 35, you could time the traffic lights that they give a green signal for people driving 35. So it's a way to promote safety through kind of speed management in that regards. And I know the city explicitly noted that they were interested in the near miss analytics part of it, as well as implementing leading pedestrian intervals. So that's where if someone's at the crosswalk and presses the button, it'll give them a crosswalk signal before a green light for cars to increase the visibility of that person walking. And they were also interested in the adaptive signal timing. So basically, if you've ever been driving or walking and you're waiting to get a signal and no one else is there, that's probably because the technology isn't there to have it adapt to current demand well. All right. Thank you. Anything else you'd like to add regarding MLK Street South? And since it was brought up earlier, and it is of great interest to me. Yeah, this will be on 18th Avenue South from MLK to 37th Street. And then MLK itself is 6th Avenue South to 26th Avenue South. So it would be all the signalized intersections in that corridor. And the application also includes MLK North from 7th Avenue North to Gandy Boulevard. And the intent was this would complement future kind of physical infrastructure changes. Thank you. And although this is – oh, sorry. I just wanted to follow up on that since I think you were speaking about the person who came and spoke earlier. Yes. So there is a difference if you look at that roadway north of downtown versus south of downtown. And we typically depend on the local government to tell us what should be a priority project. So if the city of St. Petersburg approaches us and asks us to make that a priority for potential federal funding, then we'll certainly entertain that notion in the next cycle of project priorities, which you'll get information about here in the next month. And Chelsea has something to add, too. I do have something. So the city actually already came to us and asked us to prioritize both 18th Avenue South and MLK. 18th Avenue South has funding in fiscal 2029 for preliminary engineering slash design. That was actually deferred from 2027 at the request of the city because they wanted to have a little bit more time to do some public outreach, I understand. So the construction on 18th Avenue South is still unfunded, but it is number four on our priority list, so it's quite high. And then regarding MLK South, that project was also prioritized by us, and it is number 15 on our priority list. So it's also quite high in the list. It is currently unfunded for any phases, but we're hoping with maybe the next work program as FDOT starts at number one and slowly runs out of funds, that one might pick up some funding in the next fiscal cycle. I'm expecting it to go up on the list soon. And next month you'll get a draft priority list to see where all the projects fall. Right, right. So I'm hoping we can take some extra time to look at that one more closely because it is not a safe place to be a pedestrian or a bicyclist. There are plans by the city to work on crosswalks in the shorter term. So I also wanted to bring out the point that even though this is down the road a bit before we can get going, there are other elements that are planned to go in before that. And if you look at all of it together, it forms a good plan. Do we need more? Do we need to plan and fund for more elements to make sure it's safe? Yes. But I think we're off to a good start and anything we can do to expedite the implementation of these ideas, I think that the city of St. Petersburg, I would encourage those discussions on our end to try to help move the ball forward. All right. Thank you so much. Does anyone have any other questions about this item? Council Member Menino. Thank you. Just real quick, does the committee consider the differences between unfunded projects and funded at all? Does that weigh into any future decisions? When reviewing the applications? Correct. So they're usually just looking at what was included in the application packet. So if a project was or was not included, potentially. But they independently do not go out looking for additional information. Thank you. And I don't ask, Madam, because of what the chair just mentioned regarding funded and unfunded. I ask because during our trip and legislative days in Tallahassee, we had some questions regarding funding from the state. And basically what we learned from them was they want shovels ready to stick in the dirt and boots ready to work on the ground for projects before they get involved and fund them as partnerships. And I didn't know if Ford Pinellas had that same mode of thinking or if they were different in the sense of investing in future projects that are unfunded as of today. Right. Yeah. So I think, like, the planning, part of the intent of why it's structured with the planning funds and then construction is we want someone that has an idea but might not know exactly what they want to do to get that community buy-in and figure out what it is they want and then come back to us to get construction funds to build it. So that's kind of why it was structured that way. Gotcha. Okay. It makes sense. Sometimes, I think, because if you have a project that's funded and we skip this cycle of funding it, that project is now moved forward and it might not need that funding in a future year. Where a project that's unfunded, they still have that life cycle of time to still have funds from this circuit, right? Does that make sense? All right. Thank you. Anyone else? All right. Thank you so much. That was very interesting. Thank you. We're looking for... Action. All right. We have a motion and a second for approval. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Madam Chair, for the record, there were no citizens requesting to speak on that item as well. Thanks. I was just about to back up and ask that one. All right. Thank you. We'll go on to item 6D, our draft unified planning work program. And Chelsea's back. I am. Like a boomerang. All right. So, the Unified Planning Work Program, the UPWP. There is a link in your packet to the full document, and it's well over 100 pages long. So, there's also a short summary page in there for your reference as well. The UPWP is both a state and a federal requirement. It just documents how our agency plans to spend our federal transportation planning dollars for the next two years. So, given that, we update or we adopt a new one every two years. The current one expires June 30th. So, this new one will cover July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2028. This is where we're at in the timeline. We brought to you at your work session in January some topics that came from both our staff and also our advisory committees on things to focus on for the next couple of years. And you all gave us great feedback on that. Based on that feedback, we developed a draft that was presented to our committees last month, and we're bringing it to you today. After our meeting today, we intend to transmit the draft to our federal review agencies, and then a final will come back to you in May, and it will go into effect on July 1st. In terms of the dollars that we're talking about, it's roughly just under $5 million in funds. This includes our federal planning funds. This is the PL or planning dollars that Witt talked about earlier. We also have some surface transportation block grant funding that comes to the agency, but they all kind of come in one big pot of funds. And then there's also about $90,000 in TD or transportation disadvantaged funds that are included in this amount. What we're required to do as an agency is we break them into different tasks. And every quarter, everyone on our staff has to go through and tell us what they worked on under each one of these tasks so that we can report back to FDOT and Federal Highway to show them that we're actually working on the things we said we were going to work on. And this is generally how it's broken up. On the right-hand side, it's a little chaotic, but these are all the different tasks that we have as an agency, everything from administration to regional to corridor planning and public outreach. And then the high chart on the left is the general categories that it's broken out with, broken out into. Personnel is by far our largest expense, so that covers our staff salaries. Consultant fees, that's just over the million dollars that you see there. We have about nine consultants plus subconsultants that we kind of have in a Rolodex that we call as needed. They all have some very special skills that we just do not have on staff. So it allows us to be very flexible by hiring consultants as needed instead of just having, you know, all of our, you know, our consultants do all of our work. And some of the other MPOs in the region do rely more heavily on their consultants than we do here at Ford Pinellas. We have just over $50,000 in travel budgeted for the next two years. And then expenses and equipment is another large line item. This includes everything from our laptops and printers to our rent to also our Pinellas trail counters and other accounting equipment that we have as an agency. So when we took all of the feedback that we received from you and our committees, we broke it into the two different years of our UPWP. And up here on the screen, these are examples of the items that we have budgeted for in year one. So starting July 1st, we'd like to increase the collection of multimodal counts. So we have our bike, bike ped counters on the Pinellas trail, but we also identified some of our typical count stations where we would count vehicles. They also have bike trails or some kind of dedicated bike facility next to where we're already counting cars. So what we'd like to do is put some equipment out there so that we can count bicyclists, pedestrians, and vehicles at those locations. We've also been looking to expand our trail counting equipment. We've been replacing some of the older equipment that's been breaking very regularly. So this all is an investment in that. Our Safe Streets Pinellas effort is underway where we're looking to identify a high injury network and also a high risk network. We've been doing a lot of public outreach and engagement with stakeholders to try to find ways to make our streets safer for everyone. We've also budgeted additional funding for our before and after studies. All the projects that we have funded through our local government grants program, we have committed to conducting before and after studies so that we can really try to quantify the impact of our investment as an agency. We've done a number of these before studies so far, including on Skinner Boulevard, 34th Street South, St. Petersburg Drive, and Oldsmar, all across the county. So we budgeted additional funding. Now that these facilities are starting to open, we want to do the after analysis to really see what that impact has been. And this isn't just transportation. We're also looking at land use and property tax impacts as well. We have a congestion management process that we're federally mandated to maintain where we look at some of those root causes of congestion and then try to identify ways to resolve it. A lot of times these root causes are going to be safety related because if there's a crash, it backs traffic up and it causes further delay. So we're going to be taking a fresh look at that. We've been working with PSTA and identifying locations for potential bus pull-off bays. And so we're going to be continuing that work to plan with them and prioritize those. Currently, we're working with the Center for Urban Transportation Research at USF and our partners at FDOT to really analyze e-bike use throughout Pinellas County. So because that's underway right now and will be going on through June 30th, we budgeted some funds to follow on with that to look at them next spring because we want to see if there's any trends going on instead of just getting one snapshot in time. We also plan on doing some additional planning support for the Pinellas Trail and local government connections. We're going to be looking at developing concepts for East Bay Drive. That corridor study is underway. And we're also focusing a lot of time on working with our partners at Hillsborough and Pasco. So since we're all three different MPOs, we have three different ways of prioritizing projects, three very different ways. So we're working right now on seeing if there are some commonalities in between how we prioritize projects and some recommendations for how we can maybe do it a little bit more seamlessly and coordinated going forward. In year two, we talked earlier about the long-range transportation plan. Because it's updated every five years, we were done in 2024, we're due again in 2029. So year two of this two-year budget cycle, we're going to have to start developing our socioeconomic data projections. So we'll be looking at growth and projected growth through 2055. And this is going to be done in full line with our partners at Pasco and Hillsborough MPOs. At that time, we'll also be doing some projections of our financial resources. So the funds that we believe we'll have for transportation projects through that 2055 horizon. We've also budgeted to do a statistically valid survey of the public regarding transportation and land use issues. Because this is something that we've done for the past 10 years on that five-year cycle. And we found a lot of value in it. It helps us really kind of gut check some of the outreach that we do to our communities using less statistically valid methods. This has been really helpful and very beneficial. Again, more increases in the before and after studies. We have budgeted some funds to look at the transportation impacts of tourism. So we can help try to identify how tourism is having an impact on our transportation network. Advanced air mobility is a hot topic that the state is looking at. So we've set aside some funds to be able to do that. We don't quite know what that looks like yet. But the funds are there to help us when we identify how we can best support that. And then also hurricane evacuation planning. The question came up about local government grant support. We have budgeted $150,000 in each of those two years for that. But that doesn't mean that we couldn't budget more. It will all just really come down to what are our day-to-day operating and personnel expenses and then how much is available for consultant work. As of this time, these projects kind of eat up almost all of it at this point. There will be a little bit of extra left over. We will be de-obligating funds. And there will be extra funds left over for year two of our budget. But we really try to leave a bit of a buffer because things come up. There may be a desire from the board for us to look at downtown Dunedin Trail. There may be a desire to look at some other things that we haven't even thought of yet. So there are a few extra funds sitting aside. And we'll come to you next month to talk a few more details about that budget and what that de-obligation will look like. In terms of next steps, like I said after today, we'll be sending this up to our review agencies. You'll be taking final action in May. And then this will take effect July 1st. And with that, I'm happy to take any questions. You're just so thorough. I do have no questions to be asked. One comment, though. Oh, yes. So on the one page, my name's misspelled, my last name. So if you're sending in. I am so sorry. I will fix that. That's okay. I just thought. Thank you. Great. Did you have anything to add to this? Chelsea did a good job. I don't have anything to add. You certainly did. All right. Thank you so. I guess I just want to say, you know, she kind of highlighted that there is a fluidity to this. And as things come up, we want to be able to be responsive. So if your project didn't get funded in the cycle, there is hope. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. All right. Now, our next item, item 6E, will be. Oh, that one. Yes. I'm sorry. Second. Okay. We have a motion and a second to approve item 6D. And, Tina, do we have any citizens who wish to speak on this item? Sorry. I'm dazed and confused over here. I didn't know it was an action item. I thought it was just for board comment. It said no action on this item. It's an action item. We've got to transmit it to the federal government. So that's the action? It's a draft, but it's still an action item. Those flowers and Franey. Okay. And do we have any speakers? David Ballard-Gettis, Jr., would like to speak on this topic. Wonderful. Welcome back, sir. Thank you again, Madam Chair. David Ballard-Gettis, Jr. I live on Georgia Avenue in Palm Harbor. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution mentions a buildup, mentions fortifications, magazines, arsenals. It mentions a parameter not exceeding 10 miles square. I'm all about liberty and freedom. I'm grateful that you all have this in self-governance. But in such buildup of such magazines, fortifications, and such arsenals, in captures of land and water, which is also referenced in Article 1, Section 8, and in such captures, such free-range government of such has the ability to take my liberties, my freedoms, and my properties as contrived under the 14th Amendment, then what we have is kind of a wolf in sheep's clothing situation going on where somebody's using liberties and freedoms to take other people's liberties and freedoms, and that buildup that's taking place in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 is what's being done now. Roadways, like I had mentioned before, corridors, roundabouts, constant surveillance state. Just so you know that some people have got their eye on this situation, and we need to make sure that the civilian population is protected, as well as the liberties and freedoms of you all, as well as government. That's only fair. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else, Tina? No, Madam Chair. And I do have a motion by Commissioner Flowers and a second by Mayor Freeney, but no vote yet. All right. Thank you. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. And now, Rodney Chapman, please lead us in a discussion on realigning the mission and vision of the Pinellas Planning Council. So, again, Rodney Chapman, Division Manager. As you heard from me over the last couple of meetings, we've tried to give you all a primer of how the Planning Council came to exist and the posture it is today. That was more of a look backwards. And what I'm here to talk to you about today is an opportunity to look forward. It's sort of difficult to have this conversation without thinking about the EMPO merger in that conversation because there's been a lot of thoughts and comments and some confusion about what that means for the Planning Council. So, while that does exist out there, we still think there's an opportunity to look at the future of the council, even if the merger doesn't happen, because it's important for us to ensure that the county remains viable and attractive for private sector investment, for high-wage jobs, as well as preserving what makes Pinellas County unique and desirable for both residents and visitors. So, as you've heard from me, probably too much over the years. There's a lot that we do in the realm of plans, programs, and projects. When I first started my career in 2003, the Planning Council was primarily focused on the plans part of what we do. In particular, the county-wide plan, ensuring local governments are consistent with the county-wide plan in terms of the county-wide plan map, the county-wide rules, as well as the council used to have a pretty large role in annexations because at that time, there was a lot of friction between the county and the cities as annexations were occurring. Over the years, the plans part of the county-wide plan administration part of the council has shifted to push down more responsibility to the cities. And since I've been in this role since 2016, we have put a lot more time, energy, and focus into the programs and projects part of what we do. And that's been intentional, primarily because WIT has given us the directive to rethink our effectiveness to be more of a facilitator and less of a regulator. So we've been able to build out a team that has a great mix of both public sector experience and private sector background, which allows for us to be intentional and passionate about using things like improvements in technology and data to equip your staff to do their job better and more effectively. The programs part of it has ebbed and flowed, much like the MPO. We used to have a land-use planning grant that came alongside some of the transportation funding opportunities, and it was mixed success with that. But under the projects, it's really more of what we work closely with your staff in various capacities. I think you've heard me say before we do things like serve as staff planner for some of our beach communities. We work on studies. We talked to Dadeen, for example, yesterday, I think it was, about updating the CRA plan. So the needs are constant in terms of local government support, and actually that's one of the best parts of the job because we do have a pretty tight-knit planning community, and the planners know around the county that they can pick up the phone or send us an email, and we try to help them out with what they need. I'm not going to go into the special act because you all should be very well up to speed with that piece of legislation and what was passed in 2012. I will remind you that when we had our board work session in January, we did present to you all a proposal to further streamline the countywide plan map amendment process. We proposed to create a subthreshold change that would give us as staff a greater ability to approve some map amendments. As we were preparing that package to come back to you, we were asked by county administration to hold off on that because the county commission was having a work session. And so at that work session, the county commission made a determination that they wanted to work this year to eliminate the planning council's review of local map amendments. Now, while we weren't at the meeting, it was our understanding that the purpose behind that was to reduce entitlement time frames as well as have some impact on the NPO merger conversation. So our ask of you is that we would like to establish a subcommittee of this board to help us sort of pop open the hood of the special act to come up with some improvements. And this isn't anything new for the council. In my research for preparing for today's presentation, the planning council special act has been reviewed quite frequently in the past, 1992, 98, 2004, 5, and 6, and 2010 were all opportunities where the special act was reviewed. And I thought it was a pretty effective way to ensure that the mission and vision of the council stayed in lockstep with the current needs of the community. We feel that pretty strongly there's an opportunity to look at the entirety of the council's statutory responsibilities to see where we can better align what we do with local needs. Obviously, if the steps that Witt laid out earlier today move forward in terms of the regional NPO, we could clarify what that means for the planning council. And, again, just generally taking a look at who we are, what we do, and how we can provide better services to our community partners. So, again, as I said before, those are the key sections of the special act. And while we want to engage you all as board members, we also want to have engagement opportunities for the development community. We have pretty strong relationships with those folks. We also will want to bring in insights from a lot of your staff, your professional planning staff, as well as some opinions and insights working with our planners' advisory committee. Our goal would be to have about four subcommittee meetings. We understand your time is valuable, so we make sure that we're very efficient in what we do with you all. What we hope to do is to work with the subcommittee to draft language to update the special act. Again, that focus being on reform, workflows, and decision-making authority. Again, the bottom line is to ensure that we're being as responsive as possible with service delivery to our community partners. And, again, making sure that what we're focusing on is clearly a county-wide priority. So, with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions and ask for some volunteers. Before we go to questions, I just want to clarify a couple of things. Either of you can respond. Let us know what you're looking for from us today and what moves this forward. I'll start, and then you can jump in if that's okay. So, you know that we hired a lobbyist in our prior meetings. So, we want to have something that we can provide to the lobbyists to work with our legislative delegation next summer in advance of next year's legislative session. Because if the NPO merger is moving forward, we want to be concurrent with that and don't want this to hinder that effort or that effort to hinder what we're doing here. So, you know, we see this activity kind of being pretty quick and really concluding by late summer, I would think, at the latest. I think we want to have a balanced representation of people from different political perspectives as well as large local governments, smaller local governments. Certainly think the county should be represented on this. Probably the city of St. Petersburg is our largest organization. And then maybe one of the cities that really depends on that local technical assistance because there's a whole different dynamic associated with that. I think we're open to however many members want to serve, but I don't think we need 11 of you or 12 of you. It might be a little unwieldy. We want to keep it focused. So, I don't know if you had an opinion about how many members we're looking for, but... Tina and I chatted earlier today about that because she's going to be responsible for scheduling the meetings with you all, and she shared with me how difficult it is to get you all together. So, maybe the sweet spot is four or five, but... Will there be any voting on the committee? It will be a sunshine body. Yes. So, there will be... No, I ask whether we should have an even number of folks versus odd if they're going to be voting. Five is probably smart, you know, to go with five, and the recommendations will come back to the full board, of course. Okay. And do you need us to decide all of this today? I do have a draft schedule, so, yeah. All right. Away we go. Who has the first question? I think we've already appointed Patty Reed. She's not here, so that's... No, I'm kidding. Oh, she's been voluntold. Nice. Commissioner Chair. Thank you, Chair. I don't have any questions. I'd like to volunteer. Excellent. Thank you. Well, I was going to voluntold you, so you already did. Okay. Okay, great. Yes, Vice Mayor Reed. Vice Mayor Reed is interested in serving as well. Deputy Merchelle. I would volunteer to serve on it as well, and I'd like to see Commissioner Kathleen Peters on it, because she understands the state perspective that haven't been in the House. Okay. Do you want... Okay. One thing I want to point out is that we still don't have a St. Petersburg representative on this one, and Whit did mention, and I agree, that as the largest city in the county and one that has a lot going on, and I hope that someone from St. Petersburg will be interested in being a part of this. We'll keep it brief. If it's... I'll do it, yeah. Yeah, I'll do it. Thank you. So, just for the record, I have Commissioner Shearer, Vice Mayor Reed, Deputy Mayor Shelley, Commissioner Peters, and Council Member Floyd. Is that correct? Yes, ma'am. That's what I have. All right. So, do you need us to... Do we need to vote to confirm that? I think an action would be appropriate. Okay. Who would like to make a motion on this one? We have four mentioned. Second. Got it. That's good. Worked for me. All right. Tina, do we have anyone who wanted to speak on this item? No, Madam Chair. All right. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Thank you. Does anyone have any final questions about this subcommittee or the subject matter before we move on? It should be very interesting. I can't wait to see what comes of this, and thank you to all who volunteered to serve on that subcommittee. We'll go next to our director's report with which, starting with the legislative update. Yeah. Thank you very much. Just real quick here, legislative update session's supposed to end Friday. There's no budget, so I think they'll come back after Easter potentially to approve a budget. There are still bills that are being put together. We learned today that one of the bills that we don't like has been amended in the Senate with a bill that we do like. And so that usually means both are dead. And, you know, sometimes the bad bill going away is better than the good bill coming. But Senator DeSegli amended his 180 glitch bill that wasn't gaining any traction in the House to House Bill 399 that was gaining a lot of traction in the House that could have potentially changed the way we review and recommend and approve land use cases in Pinellas County and other locations that have super majorities that approve urban service boundary changes, things like that. So that may be the death and L for that bill. We'll see how that goes in the next couple of days. The accessory dwelling unit bill, Senate Bill 48 and House Bill 1389, has passed the Senate but has not been taken up by the House. House Bill 1389 has been passed by the House, but there's some different language, so they have to come together, and we'll see if that happens. That would mandate accessory dwelling units by right in single-family districts everywhere in Florida, so we'll stay tuned on that. The bill addressing electric bikes has passed both chambers, and it is requiring audible notice if you're within 50 feet of a pedestrian on a sidewalk, and it applies only to electric bikes, so apparently regular peddlers don't have to notify pedestrians. And then it doesn't seem to apply to trails, but there's some ambiguity in the legislation, which is always fun, and that will be probably moving to the governor's office. It also creates a task force that will maybe next year develop some recommendations for the next session on e-bikes. There is a transportation bill that is moving forward and has passed, and notably the bill now includes language requiring the Charlotte, Collier, and Lee County MPOs to conduct a merger feasibility report. Charlotte County was never part of that conversation in previous years, and they're none too happy about it, from what I hear. And that is House Bill 543 by McFarland. And there is, I won't go into any more of these, except I do want to mention House Bill 1093 is a transportation economic development bill that includes a statewide framework and funding formula for advanced air mobility. And I mention that because that will preempt local governments from regulating the design, construction, or installation of electric aircraft charging stations, and authorizes FDOT funding of vertiport projects of up to 100% of the project costs, even if they're private, and 80% of the non-federal share when federal funds are available. That's unprecedented, really. And you are going to have a presentation next month from former Councilmember Ed Montaneri, who chaired St. Petersburg's Advanced Air Mobility Task Force, and I served on that task force, and I think it'll be an enlightening presentation. The state is all in on this technology and has designated the SunTracks facility in Polk County as a testing bed. And there are entrepreneurs and equipment developers who are eager and ready to go to unveil these devices for public use as early as 2027 or 2028. That's the legislative update. Property tax reform still pending. Thank you. I wonder if you wanted to talk now or maybe wait until the next meeting to talk about the Basics Act, which has been filed on the federal level, and how that could have a positive impact on MPOs. I can just briefly speak to it. The federal reauthorization is occurring for the surface transportation bill, and it's been underway for probably a better part of a year now. I know several of you have been to presentations by Association of Counties and League of Cities and Association of MPOs as well. And I have a presentation next Friday that I'm going to hear about the update on that. The Basics Act is a bipartisan bill that's been introduced in Congress. It won't be the last. There will probably be other legislation that will be offered coming out of committee, for instance. But this provides much more funding that's formula-funded instead of discretionary. That was a big change with the infrastructure law in 2021. It put a large amount of funds into these discretionary, competitive, different pockets of programs. And that's been, I think it's been frustrating across the country for a lot of state agencies and MPOs. And local governments were able to directly apply for some of those funds. This one would provide more formula-based funds, which is a little more of a certainty of you're getting the dollars. And it would also expedite delivery of projects, particularly for bridge and state of good repair. And that's something we've been asking for, kind of a fix-it-first approach to transportation. What I would like to do is maybe let's see how that develops over the next couple of months. And then you all are going to different conferences. And maybe we can make that part of a future workshop. Nothing's going to happen in the next three months. So it'll probably be, there may be an extension of the Infrastructure Act before, because I've been around long enough to see three and four and five extensions before they got around to approving a new reauthorization. All right. That sounds good. The Basics Act is relatively new. I think it was filed February 9th. And it is HR 7437, if anyone wants to look it up and look into it. And I did provide information in your packets last meeting about it. So shall I go on to the rest of the director's report? Yes. So I just want to highlight one thing, and then I'll talk about another. First, I want to just sing the praises of our staff a little bit, because we've been doing this U.S. 19, Advantage U.S. 19 project in partnership with Pasco County. And it's our staff, Nicole and Kyle. You saw Nicole last month. You saw Kyle this month. They're co-managing the project from a land use and transportation perspective. And they presented to the Pasco County Advisory Committees. So it was kind of cool to have our MPO go to their MPO and speak to their advisory committees. And they did a great job, answered a lot of questions, got a lot of good feedback, strong support from the committees for the planning study. And I think it's Thursday of this week. We are presenting to the Pasco County MPO. And hopefully we'll get the same kind of reaction. This is 100% funded by Ford and Ellis. Pasco MPO is not putting any money into this project. So we do hope that if the project is recommended for approval, that they will step to the plate and fund the implementation of the project in some way, shape or form. And this is looking at redevelopment and looking at express transit service with limited stops, connecting the workers in Pasco County to the employers in Pinellas County, primarily. That's what it's doing. So we'll report back as that progress goes. You'll continue to get an update. At the next meeting, I believe, we're asking you to authorize us moving into the next phase, which will be the transportation operations side of it. And then the other item I have is the State Road 60 Gulf to Bay Corridor Planning Study Update. And I'm here to tell you I'm confused and I don't have an update for you today. So I need to get a little more information and I'll come back to you next month with an update once I sort out the weeds on that one. That's it. All right. Thank you. Can I, Madam Chair, can I just comment on it? Yes, please. Thank you for that update. I think I've said this before. T. Barter had begun to do a lot of work when it came to air transport. Even having one of the companies that actually was doing it up north to come and make a presentation before us. And that was moving through a funded cycle. Buildings had been identified in St. Petersburg where they would lift off from to go down to South Florida, cost estimates, all of that. I think I heard you say at one of our meetings that you had some materials from T. Barter. So I don't know if you've looked through that, but some of that may be there because they were ahead of the game, that particular group. And I can't remember their name. But I'm glad to see that. I'm chicken, so I won't be riding in one that is not manned by a human being. Right. Because I saw that, and I'm like, hmm, too far in the air not to have somebody that can control this. So that's the first thing. The second thing is the Florida Association of Counties, of course, track a number of bills that move through Tallahassee. And I'm just alarmed at, even though they have not passed fully, both the House and the Senate, I'm alarmed at a number of the development bills that have passed that really take away the ability for local government to make decisions on the development of our communities, which I think would have an effect on some of our pre-planning and how we visualize as a region, how we visualize our communities to be. So I'm sure you're watching those as well, but just wanted to share that piece of information. So those are the only two. Well, there are a lot of good intentioned bills that we support broadly, like transit-oriented development, for instance. I support that. But the densities and intensities that were proposed and the preemptions that were proposed were far beyond anything we would recommend. And so it's disappointing to see that. But it's not new. They've been giving away our industrial land to affordable housing developments across the state. And, you know, we need affordable housing, but we also need our industrial land, our high-wage employment land. So we felt like we found a good balance for that, and it just keeps getting chipped away and chipped away. So I won't lament any more about the legislature. We could be here for a while. Thank you for that. And I do want to mention about the advanced air mobility and the work that TBARDA does. You know, we try to build on prior work. You'll hear from former Council Member Montaneri, we did not identify specific buildings. We didn't go that far, but we did identify some things that the city needs to do, some things that they can do to develop the workforce of the future if these technologies do emerge. And the good news is, at least for maybe 10 years, they'll be manned. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Anyone else? Yeah, Chair. Thank you. With the study that you're doing, that you're going to share with Pasco County, what did that cost? Where are we on that? Because I – go ahead. I want to say about $300,000. I remember when we first started talking about this, they were going to help out when it was a good time for them. Are they going to help us out at all? Because I serve on a number of committees and boards, and I hear that a lot. Yeah. I'm not exactly sure why they did, and I think they have a little bit of a challenge in getting funding for these kinds of projects. They need county participation maybe is the deal. They're embedded as part of the county. So they are not as independent as we are, and that may be part of the issue with them. But they are participating at a technical level, and, you know, they are there with us, going to the committees and to their board. So I think it's moral support right now, and we'll expect maybe some financial support as we move into the next phases. I mean, I'd like to see half, or I'd like to see them shoulder some of the implementation responsibilities. They are building a park and ride lot up there, and so this service would connect their park and ride lot to our county. And right now, if you travel in Pasco County to Pinellas by bus, you have to stop at Tarpon Springs and transfer between systems. So there is no interline service that goes between the counties, and that's a problem, because now you're adding wait time, and it just makes it a much longer trip. And there's no express. So that's what we would look to implement is something that we'd get to there almost as fast as driving. Anyone else? All right. Thank you, everyone. Nice short meeting. Oh, did you? Oh, you were. You were. So, yeah. All right. Thanks, everyone. We're adjourned. We're adjourned.