Forward Pinellas Board meeting on 4/8/2026 - Apr 08, 2026

afternoon everyone and welcome to the april 2026 for pinellas board meeting if you'll all please join me to stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united to the republic visible thank you we will do our board self-introductions now but before we start that i would like to welcome a new board member that we have for us representing the city of the great city of pinellas park um vice mayor ricky butler welcome and thank you for your service thank you for stepping up thank you madam chair thanks everybody and um on that we'll go ahead

and start with deputy mayor shelley tom shelley um deputy mayor town of bel air florida ricky

butler vice mayor city of pinellas park county commissioner renee flowers district seven

mo franey mayor of city of dunedin richie floyd city council member st petersburg joe au mayor city

safety harbor karen love mayor of gulfport florida representing south inland communities council member deborah fix sanders city of st petersburg chris johnson vice mayor city of largo

council member brandy gabbard city of st petersburg chris shear pinellas county commission council member

dave albrenton city of clearwater whitplant and executive director and i'm gina driscoll st petersburg city council member and honored to serve as your chair this year um next we'll go to our citizens to be heard today tina do we have any citizens who have indicated that they would like

to speak today yes madam chair we have david ballard gettis jr all right thank you and good afternoon sir

madam chair good afternoon david ballard gettis jr i live on georgia avenue in palm harbor as a child in school it was required that we read a book called old yeller and years later after reading the federalist papers i realized that old yeller the dog was a metaphor as hamilton makes a mockery of us and calls us dogs in federalist paper number 11 the federalist papers is the most eloquently written stand us on our heads piece of bigotry and sedition that i've ever read ann rand's atlas shrugged comes in second with 850 pages worth of garbage and then the last 150 pages were insightfully the best i suspect ann rand's atlas shrugged and the federalist papers have more than one author involved in on them i think a shoemaker by the name of jacob bohm wrote the federalist papers and handed it to that scallywag hamilton who sold it to us a book that mostly describes describes legislation in my mind would be that of the catcher in the rye or maybe george orwell's 1984 aligns more closely with the process of government in 1930 huxley published the brave new world how did huxley have the insightfulness to know the things that he wrote and what about niccolo machiavelli and his political playwright the prince can anyone find a prince in the declaration of independence oh for it is better to be feared than it is to be loved as the declaration of independence in actuality counterfeits itself again as preamble to hamilton's second constitution based on unwarranted water jurisdictions birthed as a pronoun in the 14th amendment has anyone read stephen king's the it or read voltier's candidy how about books like the jungle animal farm fahrenheit 451 soylent green and let's not forget the piracy of maloney's water code i wonder was the dystopia in and of government as refined and and as enshrined in these novels used as an instruction manual to pursue in government or prevent of government thank you

thank you tina do we have any other citizens who wish to be heard today no madam chair we do not all all right thank you very much we'll move on to our recognitions and announcements with a special

recognition for commissioner dave eggers well it's my pleasure to recognize county commissioner dave eggers county commission chair and the last man standing who hired me is the executive director of this organization and i just want to maybe to paraphrase elvis costello a little bit every day you write the book through your words your actions your follow-on and i just have been really impressed with his work over the years because you've you've not only said the words here in the meeting but you go out in the field you walk with people you talk with people you call the secretary of the dot and then you call me and we have a conversation about it and just really builds a lot of trust and credibility and i just want to thank you for that thank you and i said every day you write the book so we're giving you a book that you've written uh through your words actions and deeds over the years so i just want to say thank you so much appreciate it thank you so much that's great appreciate that

that's really nice i i remember when i was first running for office um they one of the local newspapers put a picture of the real author dave eggers not me in there seeing it was me so it's nice to have my name on a book uh after all that but thank you it's just uh obviously this this board uh has meant a lot to me i've been on it since gosh the mid-2000s when i was with the city of dunedin as a commissioner and mayor and then here um and love it um hiring wit that was a real close uh when we had two people candidates at the end uh there was a real close 13 to zero vote to to bring wit in it was it was great that it was unanimous truly independent voting and it was just great to have that leadership established um so this group has just been amazing over the years and to the to the extent that there was enough courage here to expand the board to make better and more complete representation i commend that the board for doing that it's really important that all aspects of this county are represented and so with that i would just say i know you have a lot of deliberation today uh you're going to talk about representation of our eight members on a regional mpo just remember that the entire county matters it's not just the south it's not just the mid-county and it's not just the north county but all areas of this county matter if we're going to truly represent us going forward in that regional effort and as far as that regional effort goes i think we have to be open-minded to it it is important that we not only keep the monies that we have coming from our state and national people but that we distribute them properly but keeping that that representation and and the money coming in like that is going to be super important we can get more we can set that net out there we can be one of the most powerful regions in the country we've done it in many other ways tampa bay water is an example of that regional partnership that works now can we do it less expensively that's the challenge can we go from three organizations to one but one and a half two i don't know we'll have to see but keeping an open mind to doing good governance being lockstep with the state of florida our representatives up there have challenged us to do this so i wish you all the best in that that endeavor and that you know thinking through all of that having said that i want to finish with thanking our partners fdot incredible group um they do amazing work and we have a really good relationship with them david gwen was amazing and a current director or current uh secretary is just as well it's just as good and they have done all kinds of efforts in this county we've had issues with alt 19 they set up a special meeting every month that i can chat with there's like eight people from fdot to talk to about what's going on there and i appreciate that i appreciate every single thing that they do the staff that we have is second to none you guys do an incredible work um whether you're whichever side of the house that you're on mpo side or the other maria our attorney thank you for what you've been to meant to us and wish you the best in your next steps at the county at the county government but the partners are critically important and you all are too and so i want to say thank you for what you do at your cities wherever you're working uh as an elected official but what you do here as well madam chair thank you for some time and thank you for the gift look forward to hearing more about you all and hopefully the chairman next year of the county commission might put me back on here we'll see thank you very much

appreciate it commissioner thank you so much for your years of service and um please know that all that i have learned from you over the years um as a as a city council member and as a member of this board um and also as a member of the board of psta when we were both on it um every every time spent with you is time well spent because i learned and um i just appreciate you so much so thank you all right um and now we will go ahead and move on to our consent agenda are there any items that any board member would like to pull from the consent agenda otherwise i'll entertain a motion for approval approval of the consent agenda all right we have a motion to approve the consent agenda do we have a second we have a second and tina do we have any um any public comment on the consent agenda no madam chair we do not all right thank you in that case we do have a motion in a second all those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed the motion passes now we'll move to our public hearing items starting with item 6a the transportation improvement program modification and unified planning work program amendment this item will be presented by the one and only chelsea favaro hi good afternoon everyone

so i'm here today to present to you um what we call a d obligation and it's basically moving money and in order to do that we have to modify both the transportation improvement program and the unified planning work program which is kind of our two-year budget because our current unified planning work program or upwp is coming to an end it ends on june 30th we have an opportunity every two years where if there's any funding that is extra that we believe we are not going to be able to spend by june 30th this is our opportunity to what we call de-obligate it and we take those funds and we kind of give them back to the florida department of transportation and then on july 1st when our next two-year budget starts they give us that money back right there on july 1st if we have extra funds that we do not de-obligate those funds actually go away and we don't get them back until july 1st of 2027 so this is our opportunity to kind of start the year with a little bit of extra funds that we weren't able to spend in this last two-year cycle so what we're proposing to do is to take 375 000 of our federal planning funds that we have not spent de-obligate those and then we'll come go ahead and add them to year one of the next budget so that requires these two modifications and amendments but they can be done with one single vote so i'm happy to take any questions

thank you and tina are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this item

i really want to insert a joke here but i'll just say no

okay um any questions or uh comments for chelsea um in that case i'll entertain a motion for approval of item 6a move approval second all right we have a motion and a second this will be a roll call vote

deputy mayor shelley aye vice mayor butler aye commissioner flowers mayor freeney council member floyd aye mayor ayub aye mayor love council member fig sanders vice mayor johnson yes council member gabbard yes commissioner shearer yes council member albritton aye and council member driscoll aye

that carries unanimously all right thank you for um so next up is our pinellas planning council hearing public hearings um and um this will be conducted as follows i'll first ask board members to affirm they've reviewed the staff report and materials provided to them if needed for pinellas staff are available with a presentation and to answer any questions the applicant local governments are also available for questions as needed and then lastly i will ask for proponents of the proposal to speak then opponents and finally any other citizens who wish to comment or ask questions on the case at that time the board asks questions and then i'll close the public hearing the board will deliberate and take action the first item we have um is item 6b1 regarding the city of largo and we have a presentation by emma wennig from for pinellas that will be followed by a presentation from staff from city of largo of largo jared austin i think we'll just let the city of largo start this one off okay thank you good afternoon good afternoon it's been a while yes it's great to see you it's all right if i make

an open comment just yes vice senator johnson i just wanted to say how um how much i appreciate the partnership on behalf of the mayor and the city commission and our in our leadership how much i appreciate the partnership we've had with for pinellas for many many years um the the vision uh necessary to kind of see how how um this this plan would um fits into the broader uh advantage uh alternate 19 vision uh has been a big deal and the the fun and the funding help from for pinellas has been huge to make this all happen a reality so we we sincerely appreciate the board and uh your the team here at for pinellas for helping helping us get uh get this vision to put together and uh i'm looking forward

to hearing our presentation so thank you guys awesome thank you commissioner and uh good afternoon for pinellas board uh jared austin planning division manager with the city of largo and i'm joined today by whitney clark planner two also with the city of largo and we have two very large items for you today related to the updates major updates we have related to our community redevelopment districts particularly from a land use perspective so going to talk a little bit about what all we have in store for these areas but however before we dive into the specifics of what all we have planned for the community redevelopment districts or crds as we will commonly refer to them throughout these presentations i just wanted to take a step back and talk a little bit about what we mean by a community redevelopment district this is typically a mixed use designation that we apply to areas that we are looking to incentivize greater development and redevelopment particularly in areas that have historically faced some degree of economic challenge now with that said just because an area has faced some degree of economic challenge does not mean that it does not have a number of uses a number of neighborhoods and so on that we want to continue to preserve and strengthen as we move forward with some of these updates that said we are looking to incentivize higher densities and intensities for commercial multifamily development that strengthen a greater mix of uses related to employment residential and recreation uses within our downtown ideally interconnected with a greater multimodal framework that connects those historic neighborhoods and uses to the prosperity we're looking to incentivize within our downtown core what you see uh before you on the screen is a map of our existing clearwater largo road crd boundary you will see the associated character districts and local future land use map categories that we have for the area i will delve into a little bit more detail on what those specific character districts entail but did just want to give you an overview of what the current crd boundary encompasses just provide a little bit more background on the clearwater largo crd has some history with the city of largo the original plan was adopted back in 1996 however at that time the crd plan was just that a plan it was a high level visioning document for how the commission wanted to see growth and redevelopment take place in that area but it did not actually have any regulatory teeth to enforce a lot of the vision that we were looking to establish within that area however that changed substantially in 2006 when uh the clearwater largo road crd plan was updated and as part of that plan it actually not only established the character districts that were designed to incentivize a lot of the the growth and redevelopment we wanted to see within the district but also had associated development standards for the development that would take place within the crd boundary now in 2020 there was a desire by the city to link some modernization efforts given some of the changing land use patterns that we had seen within the district as well as to link it to a lot of the work that for pinellas was doing at that time as well as given the fact that the development standards for the crds were in their separated plans specifically it made it very difficult to update any development standards regulating growth and redevelopment within this particular area without going through a major cra plan revision which takes a long time as you'll see and throughout this presentation requires number of hearings has to go through bcc board of county commissioners approval and so we did not feel that the development standards and re-evaluating these things in 2020 were appropriate to be in separate plans but needed to be relocated to our land development code more specifically so eventually the plan was adopted by the city commission in 2025 as i mentioned previously these plan updates take a pretty substantial amount of time and in addition to incorporating those development standards into our land development code as part of this update there were a number of different changes we were looking to propose as well first and foremost was a number of new character districts that were looking to appropriately scale development based on a lot of the development interest and changing of land use patterns that we had seen historically throughout the crd district and we wanted to incentivize those all while continuing to preserve existing neighborhoods in character within the crd that have made up a lot of the community fabric that is still very much present and rich in the crd district what you'll see on the slides here are a number of different development typologies that we are looking to encourage those higher density mix of uses that you see there at the bottom those are what we are trying to have be aligned most uh adjacent to the two major corridors that are a part of the crd expansion this includes clearwater largo road as well as alternate us 19. we then intend to have the development scale down to that more medium density like commercial mix of uses this has a particular character district called city home which i'll talk about later that serves as a buffering from that higher density and intensity development down to the more lower density traditional neighborhood scale development which includes everything from single family to a number of the different residential uses we have been trying to encourage through some of our housing for all programs such as townhomes duplexes triplexes and so on in addition to this these updates we also modified and introduced a number of new character districts throughout the community redevelopment district core and i'll talk a little bit more about those on later slides all with the intent to encourage greater redevelopment and new development within this district that better position the city for something else that we are going for as part of this effort which is a tax increment financing district which ideally would generate revenues that we could then use to spend on a number of improvements within the district that better help incentivize that growth we are looking to see so now that i've provided some of the context and background on the clearwater largo road crd i do want to talk now more specifically about the land use changes that we are taking place that took place at a local level that have now come to you all at the county-wide level for your review the amendment area does include roughly 638 properties within the city of largo and the primary intent of this future land use map amendment was to apply specific character districts to the parcels that are being picked up as part of our expansion of the clearwater largo road crd as well as updating some of the character districts that are within the current crd to account for again some of those changing land use patterns so on this map what you'll see that black boundary on that black square boundary is the actual crd expansion everything that is in that teal color are the parcels that currently reside within the existing clearwater largo road crd and so you'll see in that those areas that are getting picked up their existing future land use map categories on our uh local future land use map however this is where we are looking to uh change these land use categories anything that you see in the hatched um colors there is basically any of the parcels that are changing that we would be adopting those new character districts for so basically everything to the right of the csx track that is hatched is going to be adopting new character districts and then anything within the existing crd boundary are essentially going to be modifying some of the existing character districts that they have currently and anything that you see there in the north that's grayed out those are unincorporated panellas county parcels that as annexed into the city would be adopting uh we would we would apply uh character districts to based on what was established within the clearwater largo road crd plan update so i've given a lot of lip service to the character districts so i do want to touch on them um specifically um so you'll see everything from our new flex employment category on the left down to our neighborhood residential uh category there on the right so flex employment is a category that used to be considered um or a character district rather that used to be called professional office as the name entails it was largely designed to encourage office oriented employment however with the recent adoption of our local target employment industrial land use study uh implementation efforts as well as uh some of the industrial limited land uses that we are picking up as a part of this expansion we felt that flex employment was a better character district name for these and we have associated uh intensity or floor area ratio bonuses associated with this category as well as a number of new allowable uses that come directly from the teals work such as research and development commercial flex space and so on we also have two categories for mixed use corridor we have mixed use corridor clearwater largo road which as it suggests these are the highest density and intensity mixed use character districts that we allow for along the clearwater largo road compared to the mixed use corridor alternate 19 which is similarly the highest density and intensity mixed use category that falls and is abutting directly uh alternate 19 and in line with the forward penalis advantage all 19 plan we then have city home which is that mixed use residential and commercial slightly less density there that serves as a buffer to the neighborhood residential category which is that smaller scale residential uh exclusive uh use which is primarily our single family neighborhoods that allow for again uh the duplexes triplexes at townhomes etc as well and then there you can see the base densities that are being proposed as well as base and intensities and what would be allowed with uh the bonuses that we are proposing so given all of that um staff did find that our proposed future land use map amendment and of course a corresponding countywide plan map amendment was consistent with the goals objectives and policies of the city of largo comprehensive plan as well as the for pinellas countywide plan as well as chapter 163 of the florida state statutes governing our comprehensive plan city of largo planning board city commission and the planners advisory committee all unanimously recommended approval of this future land use map amendment and final reading of the clearwater largo road crd plan is slated for review by the board of county commissioners on april 21st 2026 and with that i would be happy to take any questions you have or i actually i guess emma's

going to do her presentation and then we'll touch on questions for crds good afternoon my name is emma wennick for those of you i have not presented for before um so i'm going to circle this back to the countywide

plan map amendment portion in our countywide review for this amendment so the local government request that came to us the city of largo is requesting to amend approximately 540 acres from multiple countywide plan map categories to activity center category so the goal here is to unify the corridor under a single planning framework and to support long-term redevelopment this is currently the clearwater largo road activity center so this is a proposed amendment with expansion so this slide is just showing the general location within pinellas county and then the picture there is also showing that all the parcels that did come in for the amendment are within largo's jurisdiction so this amendment is going to be consolidating multiple existing countywide plan map categories into activity center allowing the corridor to function as one coordinated planning area as a whole so the proposed designation is activity center and the existing activity center does have a community center subcategory already and at the countywide level this category is intended to function as a mixed use focal point and it already allows up to 90 units per acre and a 3.0 far but more importantly it does require this area to be planned as a coordinated multimodal environment rather than as isolated parcels so again today this area is operating under multiple categories creating a fragmented pattern but this amendment primarily redistributes and reorganizes development potential under one framework this amendment would be directly implementing multiple adopted plans and these plans consistently identify this corridor as a priority for transit oriented development increased housing and coordinated redevelopment as well so this action is essentially the land use framework needed to implement these recommendations so a specific plan that we wanted to highlight is the advantage alt 19 plan so this slide is showing how the proposed amendment directly aligns with this planning effort this plan identifies this area as a neighborhood place type and a key focus of this is redevelopment of underutilized commercial sites into mixed use development along with introducing missing middle housing and improving multimodal connectivity so again this proposal is essentially implementing that vision so switching gears a little bit into the character districts proposed by the city this these tables are comparing development potential under the city's existing framework as well as the proposed framework on the bottom there their proposal is basically creating a structured development pattern within the activity center to concentrate the higher intensity development along clearwater largo road and alt 19 and then as jared mentioned maintaining the lower intensity in residential and transitional areas so moving along with development capacity this slide is providing some important context ford pinellas staff did conduct a theoretical build-out capacity analysis and i will show those numbers on the next slide but we basically wanted to put numbers to larger's proposed regulatory changes um also want to note that these numbers are going to represent a ceiling and this will be the absolute maximum allowable not what's necessarily expected to occur so this table is comparing development capacity across three different scenarios the first row is showing the maximum theoretical capacity under the existing county-wide plan map categories which again is reflecting a ceiling and then the second row is depicting the city of largo's existing regulatory framework for the amendment area and you can see that capacity is significantly lower and the third row is depicting the proposed amendment in which the capacity increases to approximately 13 600 units which is an increase of about 7 200 units along with a modest increase in non-residential square footage so i do want to note that at a county-wide level this is still significantly lower than the first row showing what exists today as well as the overall activity center maximum standards which again was 90 units per acre in a 3.0 floor area ratio and again just reiterating that these are representing the maximum potential the city's proposal does include a tiered bonus system to incentivize public benefits such as affordable housing and multimodal design so under the county-wide rules these bonuses are permitted and evaluate evaluated on an area-wide basis this amendment came to us as a tier 3 so it's a tier 3 classification it was triggered tier 3 primarily because it introduced certain uses that certain uses that are not typically aligned with activity center intent specifically the auto-oriented uses that image just shows some that are existing in that area today so under the county-wide rules the inclusion of these uses automatically triggers a tier 3 classification but to support this the city did provide us with a justification narrative basically identifying the need to include these uses and they also identified the corridor as a targeted redevelopment corridor as well as commitments to multimodal improvements and implementation tools and then at the county-wide level we do evaluate this amendment as a whole against our relevant county-wide considerations so this amendment does support redevelopment along an established corridor it is served by major transportation facilities in transit it maintains density and intensity within allowable thresholds on an area-wide basis and incorporates transitions to surrounding neighborhoods through the proposed character district framework so as a whole based on our analysis and the balanced review of our county-wide considerations we recommend approval and planners advisory committee also recommended approval and that is it for me and we are happy to take questions at this time thank you

first um i need to ask tina um do we have any proponents opponents or sit or other citizens who wish to be heard on this item madam chair david ballard gettis jr would like to speak as a proponent thank you

madam chair thank you again david ballard gettis jr georgia avenue and palm harbor i do realize we have some redevelopment needs in all these downtown areas which have been deliberately blighted and run down i have an issue with chapter 163 statute 163.01 is the interlocal cooperation act of 1969 so that particular statutes like 15 pages thick in that statute it allows for third party foreign entities of such to establish a legal structure that supports their interests so for example the infrastructure that they lay down under chapter 159 of the florida statutes they're able to levy into the equity of our homes of our property to pay for their contrived redevelopment i have an issue with that statute 163.01 continues and it includes uh liquidating the county in a sense which is seen as a transfer of political function and power in pinellis county home rule charter section 2.04 q so with all of this updating of such are we allowing an additional ad hoc political power to subject the civilian population in its contrived

redesigning um thank you thank you tina do we have any any other requests to speak no madam chair we do not all right thank you we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and go to board questions and i

believe commissioner flowers you had a question um thank you madam chair um i'm sorry i didn't write down the number of the slide but you had a slide there that um was showing some of the proposed height variations for certain corridors it was looked like a downtown it could have been like a downtown it was an actual photo of buildings yes that's right yeah so um along this corridor um do you know what the current if any height restrictions are um i would do you happen to know the i don't believe

that there's um any height restrictions citywide so for the expansion area that currently have the county water for that currently have the citywide future land use map classifications and not the character specific district specific ones the city of largo does not have any height restrictions for that um in terms of in the actual crds there are certain story limits i want to say the highest that we currently allow without a bonus is six stories stories without a bonus correct

and so um the low dense on the other chart where you had high density which was like several towers you had um on your grid chart a little yellow red blue green you have um residential medium which they didn't have there we don't have here at all but you do have residential low medium which are very small areas within the new proposed boundaries um with sb 180 that basically kind of says that we can't put any moratoriums you know as municipal governments or city governments we can't put any moratoriums in place for anything um and if they meet all other things that we need we we're supposed to grant that developer what they're asking for essentially i know um senator disigli was doing some cleanup language but we still have to follow that so how um would that or would it have any negative implications as it

relates to the new proposed crd district yeah so most of the uh residential if not all if i'm not mistaken of the residential low medium um areas that you're talking about would actually fall be redesignated to that neighborhood residential category um so they are still going to be um the the densities and intensities that are being proposed are still going to be well within the range we would want to see for that smaller scale density obviously to your point about uh senate bill 180 yes we have had to vet all of these new proposed land uses with our legal team to ensure that we are not restricting any uses that were previously allowed or any density and intensity standards that were previously allowed obviously most of the density and intensity standards and development standards that are actually proposed with most of these character districts are largely more flexible than what was proposed in previous land uses so we didn't run into too much hang up with that the issue is really more so is kind of what emma had talked about some of those character districts like the mixed-use corridors we do still have to allow for some more auto-oriented uses your gas stations drive-throughs and such because we are prevented by the state legislature from restricting those and

um along that road um i know i don't like to take it because it turns into two lanes and it gets very narrow in some areas then it opens up you have some pull-offs that will take you back east um are there or will there be any consideration for kind of opening that up because if you're going to do an overlay like this you certainly will have an increase in population which would mean an increase in traffic flow yeah so

as part of our considerations we do have to consider a number of the transportation impacts we do have some projects programmed in our cip ideally to to address some of those challenges that you've mentioned one of the things that we are largely trying to incentivize throughout the corridor through some of the bonuses that we are allowing for both for density and far perspective are designed to enhance more of the multimodal framework that we have in in the downtown just because quite frankly and this is not a city of largo issue this is a pinellas county issue we don't have right-of-way for roadway expansions in many cases but a lot of the cip improvements um i i don't have the specific projects off um off the top of my head but they are largely trying to mitigate some of those traffic flow issues that we we already are seeing so

commissioner flowers i'm happy to report that we are working with the florida department of transportation to advance some intersection uh operational improvements um in this area and there's a short-term project that is programmed and then there is longer-term concept that we're working to build in and this development is going to take time um so we think the long-term concept could come in maybe as some of this future development is happening okay thank you

vice chair scott thank you madam chair uh emma and jared thank you very much for the uh great presentation quick question do we know if any of these properties would be subject to uh live local by chance

uh some of them would be yes um that fall under anything that's considered a mixed use designation um yes would be considered uh apt for a live local project and this wouldn't affect that i mean they would

be subject to it today and they would be going forward with this change right thank you

all right any other questions or comments i got a question yes mirror you had a slide up it was

number 23 i don't have numberings on mine so it was showing the uh density intensity um differences based on different baselines yeah i was wondering why is the bottom row it's showing the difference it's not based on the existing countywide plan map categories it looks like it's based on correct so

um the city of largo's character districts that are existing today are already kind of set a lower ceiling than what is possible under the countywide plan map category so we basically just showed what their difference is because theirs are already lower than what we allow based on the seed rather than the

county anything else okay anyone else have questions all right okay um i have a couple the um flex employment zoning category will replace the professional office is that across the board well yeah so the the

category we had previously designated as professional office it's still going to allow for a lot of the same uses it's just now going to be called flex employment so we basically took what was allowed previously and then expanded the use types just given the some of the teals implementation um land uses that we had adopted as well as the fact that we're we're picking up employment areas that are more industrially focused rather than just office focused so it's office and more yes office and more yes i like

that and that kind of leads to my next question talking about the character districts do you feel pretty confident that the way that these different districts are described and and prescribed does that give a developer a clear understanding of what's expected what's a lot what we're looking for here uh yeah so we

have associated i should have mentioned in my presentation um so in conjunction with this future land use map amendment beyond just the actual map designations we have a very substantive uh update to our comprehensive development code or our land development code that specifically outlines all the different not only the densities and intensities that we outlined here but everything from your setback requirements parking uh all the things that we would want to see from each of the density and intensity bonuses um as well we've also i would say alleviated um to some of the i would say regulatory burden that has hindered good development from happening in the past no longer will you have to enter into a development agreement to get your density and intensity bonus which can add six to nine months to a project and effectively you know take take a really good quality project that would be meaningful for the downtown

kind of out of the picture so yes sounds like the city um got had a lot of discussion about this and it sounds like there was some input from the development and business communities on um on the plan as you went along and that's that's great to hear with these different types of districts i just want to make sure that it doesn't come across as too complicated that it helps us reach our goal and gives a developer a

clear path to contributing to us meeting that goal absolutely we completely agree i know economic development over there would completely agree um i would tell you that the existing clear water larga road plan and west bay drive plan which when you'll touch on here in a moment um are very complicated um they are not fun for staff to have to go through because we have our one land development code and then we have our separate plan with entirely separate standards for those areas uh and it's not fun to navigate so we think that this uh development code change that's paired up with this future land use map amendment um would be would address a lot of what you just touched on and as i was looking at

the backup material if you looked at the pages that have map four and then map five if you look at them side by side um complicated is is certainly one way to describe it i'd probably use harsher terms but going from that to this i think it's clear that um that it creates a smoother path for what what you want there and this covers a total of around 500 540 acres yeah of incorporated largo parcels that's not included unincorporated it's a it's a lot of land and i really see this as being potentially transformational for largo every time i turn around i feel like i'm hearing about something new that's happening in largo um it's it's really um such a point of pride for our entire county and that comes from good management good government um and and a a public that's engaged as well and that really shines through in what you've brought to us here today this um creating something that is less complicated looking at these character districts it really um just checks all of the boxes when it comes to um mixed use along with placemaking along with neighborhood um strengthening a neighborhood and bringing in jobs this is um this is enviable and i just applaud everyone who is involved in working on this i think as you go along as developments come along yes of course looking at the transportation impacts and all of that um comes into play and it's going to be interesting to see how that works i'm glad that there are improvements planned because really making it truly multimodal and making it easy for people to get around as a place becomes more dense is critical so i'm glad to hear that there's work being done in that respect as well um so overall i um i do hope that this passes and so in advance i will say congratulations and thanks for all the work that you did on this and i can't wait to see what starts happening over there next we're very excited all right um did we have any other questions from anyone okay um i will entertain a motion and a second for um approval of the amendment move approval second all right thank you and tina do we need a um i don't think we need a roll call vote for this one all right all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the motion passes thank you and officially congratulations all right largo is not finished with us yet we have another item item 6b2 and um we have this time city of largo staff whitney clark presenting good afternoon so in addition to the

proposed um future land use map amendment to amend the boundaries of the clearwater largo road community redevelopment district we are processing another amendment for our other community redevelopment district centered around west bay drive this map here provides the existing boundaries of the district as you can see it encompasses portions of several major roadways within the county including west bay drive clearwater largo road and alternate 19. it also is home to several community amenities such as largo central park largo medical center and the city's new mixed use facility horizon west bay that will host the city hall facilities upon completion the first iteration of the west bay drive community redevelopment district plan was adopted in 1997 and similar to the clearwater largo road plan it was a lot more general in nature it was updated in 2010 to provide more development standards and again in 2015 to add the medical arts character district which is focused around largo medical the west bay drive plan was updated again in 2025 to further establish downtown largo as a destination by encouraging a mix of uses strengthen pedestrian orientation and implementing more placemaking strategies the update to the plan was prompted kind of by the advantage alt 19 study that was conducted by ford pinellis in coordination with the city of largo and several other local government partners the study identified that the portion of alternate 19 that intersects with the two crds in largo has high redevelopment potential and encourage higher densities and intensities in this area to provide critical mass for future enhanced transit services to implement the findings of the study staff worked with a consultant to amend the plan and the comprehensive development code to reflect these recommendations so part of this was to update and refine the character district visions to kind of modernize it similar to what we did with the clearwater largo road just to make it more compatible with some of the land use patterns that we were seeing as well as to increase the allowable density and intensity ranges and relocate the development standards from the plan into the comprehensive development code we are also proposing the addition of the west bay drive mixed-use corridor alternate 19 character district which kind of aligns with the densities and intensities proposed in this district for the clearwater largo road and here's a breakdown of the character districts that are either existing or proposed within this crd so a lot of these are similar to what we saw in the clearwater largo road however the mixed-use corridor in west bay drive does allow for more density and intensity and we also have the medical arts district here like i had mentioned previously that's applied to largo medical center and that's primarily intended for institutional type uses but does allow for certain commercial and residential uses for workforce housing affordable housing and that kind of thing we also have the city home classification here which again is that medium density that allows certain smaller scale commercial uses such as retail cafes and professional offices and then again we have the lowest density classification the neighborhood residential which is really

intended to be applied to the existing single-family home neighborhoods to

preserve them but also allow for thoughtful growth of different housing types such as duplexes townhomes that kind of thing and here is the existing map um showing the character districts that are currently applied there so a lot of the amendment area as you can see hatch um is focused around the alternate 19 corridor but i did just want to bring attention to one property that is just west of clearwater largo road this site currently has a um split character district classification of mixed-use corridor and city home and since the plan was originally adopted um this site has been um unified and so just to ensure that the development standards are applied consistently in the future staff are initiating this amendment to correct the land use or the character district classification to just mixed-use corridor and here's

the proposed character district map again the light purple shows the mixed-use corridor alternate 19. ultimately staff found that the proposed future land use map amendment was consistent with the goals objectives and policies of the city of largo comprehensive plan as well as the forward pinellas county wide rules in chapter 163 of the florida state statutes the city of largo planning board city commission and the planners advisory committee unanimously recommended approval of these amendments and unlike the clearwater largo road um plan this the west bay drive amendment was approved already unanimously by the board of county commissioners on december 16th 2025 and i will hand over the

presentation to emma thank you okay so now tying this one back to our county-wide plan map amendment the city of largo is requesting to amend the framework governing approximately 316 acres within the existing west bay drive activity center so the county-wide plan map designation will remain activity center with a major center subcategory and the purpose of this amendment is to update the local land use structure and to support redevelopment increase mixed-use potential and improve connectivity within the corridor so these images again are showing the location within pinellas county as well as a outline of all of the parcels within largo's jurisdiction so at the county-wide level the designation will remain activity center so what is changing is not the boundary or the category but how development is structured within the activity center so this slide sets a bit of a baseline the west bay drive activity center is already designated as a major center with a mix of uses and an established corridor pattern existing and from a county-wide perspective it already allows up to 150 units per acre in a 5.0 floor area ratio this is applied on an area-wide basis so this is not really about creating new capacity but it's about how that capacity is organized in the local framework so why does this require a county-wide review so even though the map designation is not changing this is still a tier two amendment and that's because the city is changing how the activity center functions internally specifically how density and intensity are distributed so from our review this amendment makes two primary changes first it does revise local development standards across the activity center increasing allowable density and intensity in targeted areas and then second it does create that new character district along alt 19 which is intended to support higher intensity and mixed-use redevelopment along that corridor so the city clearly has the goal of focusing growth along the west bay drive and alt 19 corridors and again this amendment is not happening in isolation it is directly implementing multiple adopted plans so this is a coordinated policy-driven update that ties land use and housing and transportation together and then we did again want to specifically highlight one of these efforts with the advantage alt 19 plan with this plan this area is identified as a downtown place type and this place type envisions a more urban mixed-use and transit supportive environment that would be centered around west bay drive and alt 19 and this aligns directly with what the city is proposing through the updated framework and so this amendment is actively implementing this overall vision so with this table we wanted to directly show the before and after character district standards with that new character district highlighted in that teal color so you can see the most significant increases occur in the corridor district areas especially the alt 19 new district so while this amendment does not increase our county-wide entitlements it does increase localized development capacity within the activity center so at build out we did an analysis and base residential capacity would increase approximately by 4 600 units and up to over 9 000 additional units with bonuses and then non-residential intensity would increase by nearly 6 million square feet at base and almost 9 million square feet with bonuses so this is reflecting a redistribution and intensification strategy focused along those key corridors and these numbers do again represent a ceiling it's the maximum allowable not what is necessarily expected to occur and then similar to the other plan we saw this is uh they do use a bonus density intensity system to guide redevelopment and bonuses are not automatic they are earned by providing specific public benefits so this would include things like affordable housing structured parking public space and pedestrian oriented designs and at the county-wide level we do evaluate this amendment against our relevant county-wide considerations so this stays within the county-wide activity center standards it aligns with our planning and urban design principles and improves connectivity and walkability from a transportation standpoint it does shift trips to where the system is designed to handle them and overall it does improve how the activity center would function as a whole so in conclusion this amendment would maintain the activity center designation and it stays within the county-wide thresholds and improves how development is structured overall so we would recommend approval and planners advisory committee recommended approval as well

thank you thank you tina do we have any proponents opponents or other citizens who wish to speak on this item no madam chair we do not all right thank you we'll close the public hearing and go to questions questions i know thank you so much for these presentations um in that case if there are no questions then

i will entertain a motion so moved second tina did you get that it was just me and mo just to clarify

was that a motion to approve yes the attorney did so it's commissioner flowers and then mayor i thought you said move approval yeah are we good yes ma'am all right we have a motion in a second all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion passes thank you so much all right with our public hearings being finished for today we'll go on to our presentations and action items um we have the psta activities report on the agenda however um since um vice mayor reed who typically gives that report is i'm not here today unless oh did you have it i do oh great thank you so much we will have um council member fig sanders give the psta activity report thank you and good afternoon everyone thank

you chair uh the psta board met on wednesday march 25th of 2026 where we approved several items during that march meeting to include a contract to update the agency's federally required transit asset management plan a plan that inventories and assesses the state of good repair conditions of all psta assets including buses and facilities it approved the psta's transit development plan major update which is a state dlt required plan which is developed every five years in alignment with for pinellis's long-range transportation plan and other community transit priorities and then also the new psta vision 2030 strategic plan a robust list of projects and goals for agencies in the next for the agency in the next five years that support board objectives for financial responsibility operational excellence and community impact psta will be hosting board workshops in the upcoming months to discuss psta's budget as well as refining the mission and vision for the agencies at the request of the psta members

and that concludes the report madam chair thank you any board members have any questions about the psta report all right we will go ahead and move on to item 7b today we have a presentation on the st petersburg advanced air mobility task force with findings and recommendations and that will be presented by former city council member and task force chair ed montaneri good afternoon sir thank you chair driscoll

it's good to be here in front of uh for pinellis good to see some of my former uh city council colleagues and other elected officials around pinellis county uh today uh it's it's a honor to be here and uh today i'll i'll go over the uh the reasons why the city of st petersburg formed this task force some of the uh areas that we studied and then uh go into the recommendations and answer any questions that you that you have the uh the task force report is part of your backup material and if you reviewed it uh it was written in a manner that uh so that anybody that is uh not an expert in aviation or government business or planning could kind of pick up the report and kind of understand a emergent emerging aviation industry and uh kind of understand why it's important for for the uh city of st petersburg canales county the state of florida the united states and other areas around the world why why everybody is interested in in this subject um we uh so the narrative is pretty straightforward we put all the technical information in the appendices so if you're looking for data on where what a vertiport uh dimensions should be or what takeoff and landing quarters need uh need to look like it's all in the appendices along with a lot of uh links we also included a short narrative uh about uh the aviation history in the city of st petersburg as many of you know uh the airline business started in the city of st petersburg on january 1st 1914 uh the first uh airline pilot was a man named tony janice the first passenger was the former uh mayor of st petersburg uh man named ape ape file and if you look at this picture behind me uh you'll see a what we call an ev tall and the airline business started right here right here and if there's a took off on a 22 minute flight and uh flew to the city of tampa in the st petersburg tampa airboat airboat line was was launched the uh mayor and this uh city council of the city of st petersburg gave us uh formed the task force and gave us uh this mission to uh look into and they gave us nine months to do do our work and there's two big things the kind of two big categories uh that they wanted us to look at one was evaluate the role of advanced air mobility at our local municipal airport albert wooded airport and the other big issue was uh evaluate uh standalone air uh ver reports within the city uh limits the other uh uh points that they want us to study speak for themselves i did want to point out that fourth bullet point to evaluate the uh potential of integrated advanced air mobility into local government transportation plans and other plans within the tampa bay bay region which is one of the reasons i'm i'm here at at the request of your executive chairman whit blanton these are the members of the task force we started with 14 members we had to kind of drop off along the way for for different reasons uh i did want to point out that uh whit blank blanton was a integral part of of our task force uh just because of his expertise not just in transportation but regional transportation what's going on at the state level and uh and and and we needed people like like that we had two experts on the task force that knew a whole lot about advanced air mobility one of them is mr j rogers which is towards the bottom of the list he started a uh a factory in the city of st petersburg building things with 3d printers and he's an expert in advanced air mobility and the the bottom person dr april zang she's a professor at usf st petersburg and an expert in advanced air mobility the rest of us were were people that have an aviation a lot of us had an aviation background but we didn't know that much about advanced air mobility so i was elected chair and i kind of broke our our work into like three categories the first one was education to try to bring uh the task force up to the uh a minimum level of knowledge uh on on this subject then we got into making recommendations to answer what the city asked us to look into and then we uh got into the final report one of the first people that we brought brought in was uh right after our first meeting was uh former senator jeff brandes as many of you know uh senator brandes was has been a leader in autonomous vehicles uh for over 15 years uh he was a uh started as a state representative he was one of the first people to put any legislation before uh uh the state house when it came to autonomous vehicles and he's uh he's an expert uh in in the field the other uh and we brought in a lot of uh subject matter experts uh during the course of our study i want another one and i'm not going to go through the whole list but another one that was uh very important was in august we brought in uh a man named akash tr from uh uh arc invest that is uh kathy woods uh financial company that's uh headquartered in the in the city of saint petersburg and they invest in disruptive technology and uh we brought them in to kind of give us some background on the manufacturers of of these vehicles this uh emerging industry is uh is just getting started but uh you can see up here on the slide there's uh we i asked our staff to put together three of the companies that are kind of leaders in this industry uh the top one is a company called joby they're the leader in the industry right now the second one is beta and the third one is archer and you can see that uh on the slide you see the companies that they're paired up with most of them are paired up with other major airlines in the united states or uh cargo companies a couple of them both jobey and archer are also uh paired up with uh uh uh car manufacturers so that they can get this uh their business off the ground and manufactured uh quickly the vehicles that uh the advanced air mobility industry uses are um smaller vehicles most of them are electric powered uh and uh they plan they're probably going to be certified with a pilot observer on board but they quickly want to be uh autonomous it's a very fast growing industry uh we um we expect them to be uh have a have a market cap of about 140 billion dollars by the year 20 2035 right now these vehicles aren't certified by the faa we think that they're probably going to be certified maybe later this year uh to to carry passengers and we initially we see three uh business cases one is air taxi the other one is cargo and there are some manufacturers out there studying medical transport also all three levels of our government here in the united states is very interested in this uh technology uh president trump and juno of last year put out a extensive executive order uh on this industry and the drone industry it was it was about a 20 page uh executive order with a lot of details timelines deadlines for both the secretary of transportation the secretary of commerce and other federal agencies uh this state of florida is also uh aggressively getting ready for this technology also in the state of florida actually started before the faa got got involved and a lot of the work that we did uh in the city studying this we we got a lot of the information from the guidebook that the fdot published in other publications from uh from from the fdot the other thing i wanted to point out in the middle of the slide uh in in sept uh december of uh last year uh uh i'm sorry 2024 a company called volocopter did a demonstration over at tampa international of of this technology it just so happened that earlier today i had a teams meeting with the uh with one of the leaders of of that company or the the the company that that that uh that uh that uh volocopter went out of business but uh it as it went out of business it merged with another company but uh the the people that are still working in that uh for that business uh uh are interested in doing some some work in pinellas county and the city of st petersburg when it comes to the recommendations we uh we had some broad guidance and then i'll get into the more specific uh uh issues uh the first bullet point uh that's up on the slide is advanced air mobility needs to be safe and reliable uh safety is is foundational to aviation and reliability goes right along with safety if you think about a air transport operation paired up with the airlines you have schedules that you need to meet and uh safety drives everything in transporting people in in cargo we want the city of st petersburg to be a leader in this industry we're a leader back in 1914 we want to be a leader going forward with this with this industry um we uh we want to protect the existing operations going on uh at albert witted airport and uh one of the guest speakers that we brought in uh early in our study was from tampa international airport and i know orlando international is doing a study also but they all kind of said the same thing when it came to protecting the current operations of uh of uh aviation at their facilities but also integrating this new technology uh into their operations the last uh bullet point in in the state is uh was pushing this also fdot a robust public engagement strategy is essential right now advanced air mobility is not on the the radar screens of of a a lot of uh people but it's coming very quickly the chinese uh are are currently transporting people with these these vehicles out in the middle east uh these these vehicles are are flying also uh and uh right now the faa and the faa's counterpart in europe haven't certified these vehicles but we think that's going to happen happen soon when it comes to specific uh recommendations in the short term uh we want uh albert witted airport to identify where we're going to operate these vehicles within the airport we need to put in some electrical infrastructure to uh to recharge these electric vehicles when it comes to electricity you also have a fire uh issue so we we brought in uh st pete fire and rescue our fire department to come in and give us some uh information on electrical charging uh issues and fire safety we want to use the uh existing run runways and make sure that the this is uh accessible to the public within the next four to ten years we want to build uh at least one vertiport at the airport uh possibly uh multiple vertiports and and uh that's going to be based on passenger demand as i said earlier we want everything to be integrated with the existing flight uh uh operations that we have at the airport and we we also recommended that both aeronautical uses are protected and the non-aeronautical uses uh the uh the the grant the st petersburg grand prix is is as is a example of a non-aeronautical use we don't want to disrupt what we currently have uh in in our city the next steps for the city of st petersburg when it comes to albert witted airport is to do a uh alternatives analysis uh study on specifically how do we implement some of these recommendations at at our local airport for standalone uh vertiports um there were some people as i went around and and spoke with people and as we studied this this subject i think some people thought that that we might recommend certain spots within uh the city limits where these vertiports should be but after discussing it at the task force level we thought that the market uh should be uh the driver of where these these go um we the city does need to do some some work when it comes to uh uh creating standards for air uh uh aircraft operations charging stations fire state safety uh public accessibility and then noise uh considerations um this industry is is changing rapidly this task force i i told you uh uh studied this for for nine months uh we met about every three weeks or so and in between those three week periods there would be a lot of news that that happened uh within the the industry so we ended up having our airport manager before every meeting kind of giving us a little update of what's going on within within the uh the industry um the state has uh uh like i said mate uh is making uh advanced air mobility a priority and there are some funding opportunities there and then for within the city limits we need to update our our code uh we don't have any standards written uh written within our city code on vertiports and we also discovered we didn't have standards for heliports within the city we also need to create a process if somebody wanted to build a standalone vertiport within the city we need to bring a bring a process forward for that when it comes to regional planning um the the governor de santis had a uh news conference maybe three months ago and they they uh the governor and fdot talked about creating air quarters uh within the state of florida and as we studied this in the city of saint petersburg we we came up with uh where do we want to to make uh a priority uh and where do we want to go so in the center of this uh map here you can see uh uh albert whitted airport in the center and the top two priorities that that we uh we recommended is making sure that we're linked to tampa international the biggest uh airport in in the region and the other one is sun tracks sun tracks is a testing facility for autonomous vehicles both surface and uh uh advanced air mobility uh aircraft but we just want to make sure that that link to the city of saint petersburg and other airports within the region is is made the last thing i wanted to talk about is uh the future the city of saint petersburg as i talked about was a leader back in 1914 we want to remain a leader today when it comes to this industry uh we we want to make sure we uh capture the education and workforce development part of of this emergent emerging industry we want to be part of the research

and technology advancement we want to partner with industry we want to bring manufacturing to the city of st petersburg and we want to we want to do it all uh i was able able to meet with the super superintendent of public schools we have programs within uh the city limits and i know within pineells county uh starting in at the middle school level uh when it comes to drones and uh other technologies like that we have some other programs at high school levels and and i know saint saint pete college has a program on aviation also so i just want to connect the dots when it comes to the education and workforce development aspect of this but also get into the research and and manufacturing overall this has been a just a an amazing study uh i was very glad that the city took a lead in in this technology uh and uh it was very good to have somebody like whit blanton and uh 11 other dedicated volunteers to to study this uh industry that's going to transform how people are going to train to how they're going to travel and uh i'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have thank you for having me all right

thank you so much and um not just for the presentation but for serving on this task force and guiding it so well

um we'll start with council member gabbard thank you chair and uh thank you for being here thank you for bringing this presentation uh we had seen this as you mentioned at city council and so when we had the conversation at the city uh one of the pieces i brought up with you was the importance of the regional aspect i think that is really going to be key um you know we're talking about regional transit today right and and trying to kind of maybe go back a little bit and and potentially redo what maybe should have happened in the beginning with having a regional effort and i think on this in particular i would like to make sure that that is a focus because i don't want in five five ten years for us to go back and say oh wait we probably should have started more on a regional level so uh commissioner flowers is the chair of the tampa bay regional planning council and so i would just love if possible for this to come because and that was what i mentioned there i think that the regional planning council is the logical next stop for this because we really need to get our partners across the region on board um i think this is going to be a great success and i know that the city of st petersburg is going to invest and work in this arena but i want to make sure that all of our partners are on the same page so um i just really wanted to put a pin in that because i think it is probably the most critical piece of its real success absolutely so thank you for all of your work and i'll look forward to seeing you at the regional planning council good excellent all right

thank you thank you i can just add to that real quick we are very happy to say that on june 17th this will be a topic that we're having with the uh central floor or the central florida mpo alliance and the sun coast transportation planning alliance at the sun tracks facility in polk county and so we've got the department of transportation looking into a possible speaker and i said well maybe ed and i can go there and talk about what we did in st petersburg as well sure oh yeah there are a few

things that make me want to drive to polk county this will be one of them i'll be there uh commissioner flowers he was before me council member all britain okay i'm sorry council member

all britain uh great presentation um you know i've seen this coming for a few years and i know that things when they happen today they happen real quick and uh so i'm glad we're talking about this now because i really do think it's you know with all these manned drones now not the unmanned but the the evital drones i mean it's going to come really quick my only question is and i'm not familiar with it are that is anybody talking about any kind of ai traffic air traffic controlling because there's going to be a lot more small vehicles that are up and around besides just the main airlines that to me it just seems it would be logical to have something tracking everything you know

right right well uh so the faa controls all the airspace over over the united states uh and i know that the faa is studying this issue how they're going to deconflict the traffic as these as as this industry continues to emerge we we didn't get into that uh at at our task force study but it's something that uh uh the faa needs to take a lead leadership role on yeah and like i said in other countries uh china for for instance they're already flying these uh and it's not going to be very long before we start doing this uh also but the faa needs to it needs to needs to needs to grab that and get it done thank you

thank you thank you thank you for the presentation um it is interesting um i don't think we would need to do very much work probably in formatting some of the regulations because when you look at these vehicles and i'm thinking about how helicopters are utilized you're talking helioports for helicopters that land um and and all of the things that come with that so i think that uh utilizing what's there for those except some of these will be unmanned i think um i would be hopeful that that would be a real easy transition over i was in washington dc for some meetings and they had like a rough draft sample of one of these to be unmanned so i prefer mine to have somebody up there driving it you know because i've i've you know some of us have seen those shows where the unmanned cars in nevada got into a traffic jam because the wires got crossed and they they were all moving together so i prefer to have a somebody um flying something i think this is absolutely wonderful and i would love to um see us look at even expanding that footprint to tallahassie this would be fabulous rather than driving four hours i'd love to get up there quicker and even going down to south florida for some of the major conversations with the ports for um things that are going on down there um for ship shipping um concerns so i think this is great and when you look at even some of the drones that the military uses right now they are the size that could transport people they just use them to transport weapon weaponry um so hopefully um it wouldn't be too long in getting through to the 2028 piece that you have up there um absolutely i've um one part of your presentation talked about um i guess like a input or presentation to the community it would be nice to see for those that currently have this in operation what what the cost would look like right i know when i um was on um a previous board it was around a hundred and something dollars one way so that may not be feasible for some but for executives and whatnot and i think the more popular it becomes and the consistency in available scheduling it'll probably you know bring down the cost i think that's something that um i would like to know sure um so maybe when you do that and i will speak with ryan um to to uh work with you all to get you on the calendar because as you were talking i was sitting here thinking about some of the geo structuring that we're doing and planning long-range planning and this will be part of it um even for sustainability um of resiliency sustainability brandy to have them maybe make a presentation at our resiliency conference is coming up so i think so anyway i think this will be fabulous so i'll get with you because that's going to happen fairly quickly and if you could come we'll make we'll make room i'll make room for you i think yeah because that's all of the regional planning councils um from all over and i think that would be a perfect thing to do if you would like to and are available it's just over in palmetto it's not that far i'll make myself available all right make sure i get your info before you pop out thank you

if i could just mention uh the the cost aspect we didn't get too much into the the cost of of these vehicles but when we had uh arc invest come and make a presentation to us they talked a little bit about the cost uh they uh and i know some of the industry manufacturers their goal is to transport a person uh for the same price as an uber black that's their goal but when this first starts out it's going to be very expensive because it's new technology so the first airline flight now it was a contest and who could be the passenger but the the cost for that 22 minute flight from st petersburg to tampa the contest winner was the mayor he spent four hundred dollars in 1914 so give you give you to uh no that was four hundred dollars in 1914 yes yes okay so i you know praise god for

google here's what it says flying passengers in china for public transportation primarily using e-hangs certified e-h216s are to cost roughly around thirty dollars per ticket so that's what they pay over there um so anyway that'll be good um but in pinellas technical college you are correct is doing a wonderful job um in partnering with the schools for middle schoolers as well as high schoolers and then transitioning them over to pinellas technical college st peter clearwater campus for the more expansive drone program which they may be doing this it could be the people doing it all right now mayor

freeney so i do want to say that when psca had their autonomous autonomous vehicle pilot program in dunedin and we had an accident with a person it's when the person when the driver of the autonomous vehicle took it off autonomous and drove it so oh yeah so not always the person does better um so i had two questions one was a traffic control question which already got answered and the other one was just uh the ability for bad actors especially as they become autonomous is that discussed or is

that just uh no that that would be a very big big concern but we did not get into that level of

detail okay thank you thanks chair scott thank you madam chair ed always good to see you i'm seeing montaneri flying services so uh mayor freeney uh partially asked my question and i don't even know that you would have any insight into this answer but do you have any idea what the safety record

is like in the areas of the world where these are flying now uh i have not heard of any accidents yet but i don't think i mean they're they're not extensively used uh commissioner flowers talked about ehang in in in china they're the first uh country that i know of that's actually started flying passengers uh as far as i know i have not heard of any sort of accidents at at this point but uh but uh i i'm whenever you have moving vehicles something's going to happen i mean you could think about the uh the airbus 320 that took in a flock of birds and did a dead stick landing on the hudson river i mean you just never know what what could happen well the faa is going to have

to step up their game because but if they don't before we know it there's gonna be like e-bikes in the sky right buzzing around everywhere and ticking everybody off yeah all right thanks ed i'm posting that on

the pinellas trail oh please don't yeah when you're running one will be right alongside you it'll be me driving it saying

i think there was a oh yes um vice mayor butler thank you chair and thanks ed for the presentation

um has there been discussion at the state level uh on this because the legislature has not been good at much lately but they're really good at telling us what we have to do where so i was just

the the state has been a a clear leader uh in in this technology and that one slide that i had with the timeline that the the start of the timeline was the the state and the state has uh extensive uh has put an extensive amount of work into this and there was a bill that uh i was up in tallahassee in january and there was a a bill that passed through the the legislature on advanced air mobility so

they they are doing quite a bit of work i'm sure wit can i can add a little bit to that uh vice mayor the house bill 1093 passed this year it's waiting for the governor's approval i believe and it would authorize fdot to spend uh up to 100 of the cost of a public vertiport and 80 if there's federal funds involved so that's a pretty high percentage and then uh last year in the session i believe it was 2025 the it was the transportation bill requires mpos like us to incorporate advanced air mobility into our long-range transportation plans so the state's been a long-time leader in this they've clearly indicated this is a policy priority and a funding priority for the state so i think it's good that the city of st petersburg is getting ahead of it and i think it's important that we

look at it from a regional perspective as well so i guess just making sure that if we're going to really think hard about coming up with you know codes and stuff for his respective cities if the state's just going to step in and say hey it needs to be here there or it needs to you know be run

through mpos then there was a preemption bill as well uh that restricted what local governments could incorporate into design considerations for reports i don't think it would preclude you from addressing noise and and those kinds of impacts but having some basic minimum standards and a process for approval probably going to be bounded by some state preemption i would imagine thank you all right

anyone else oh yes thank you thank you for the great presentation i know i've done a ton of research

on this over the years and one of the things i think you know consistently there's a problem with this is the range of these right now correct is there an expectation of that technology uh moving forward enough like i i don't know what i what i saw is like 50 miles 40 minutes airtime maybe something like that that consistent with what you're hearing no you know the uh the presentations that we we had

the electric ones the range is very limited like in in in the 25 mile mile 25 30 mile range some of them had a bit a little bit longer range when you start carrying passengers the regulations i know from a from a reciprocating engine or a turbine engine like aircraft not only do you have to to fly from your origin to your destination but then you have to have fuel reserves on on top of that uh how the faa is going to uh regulate that with an electric vehicle but you know you you see like teslas right now they've got percentage of battery life they may have some sort of regulation that you have to uh have you know a certain percentage of battery life in reserve or any any operations but you know i also think that uh battery uh technology uh is going to improve you know as time time goes on i mean you you kind of think uh whether it's the the first airline uh operation you know it was two two people very short flight uh you think about the wright brothers they they flew like 150 feet uh but uh and they didn't have much fuel on board but as technology improves uh things get a lot better i'm just wanting to avoid my drive

to georgia that i made sure sure i figured out how to do that affordably as possible sure thank you

all right council member i'm sorry um council member floyd thank you um hey nice to see you

uh thought of been thinking about this this is the last time i got a presentation from you on it uh just a couple of things first you mentioned like there was updates so frequently that you were getting them while you were doing the process uh since you finished the process is there anything of note uh occurred or changed um or is it just you know typical happenings of the industry there's some

uh some things happening with within the industry but not anything really really large and i would assume the outcome would still be the same right i do know that uh some of the manufacturers are working closely with the faa to get that certification as quickly as is possible okay but i don't think

the certification has happened and then i've mentioned this once before but i guess i wanted to um it'll be a little more specific like so this to me looks like you know very similar to like a helicopter application um i was just wondering if you could speak to the differences some like i assume over the long term we want this to be cheaper uh than that kind of operation uh and also uh less intrusive is

a guess i guess that i have yes so uh most of the vehicles uh that i put up on the on the slide are vertical takeoff and landing vehicles but they're not all vertical takeoff and landing vehicles some of some of them and uh and they call these evtals electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles they there there are some manufacturers that build ectals electric conventional vertical uh takeoff and landing vehicles and they take take off and land like an airplane but they're electric powered um so uh uh there there's two different uh types uh but uh these i think the autonomous feature is one of the big things that's going to differentiate this from conventional aircraft operations now airplanes have been operating with autopilots for for a long time but uh having a completely autonomous vehicle with no safety observer or pilot on board that's going to that's going to take us into a different area where it's it's interesting to uh study this uh i'm i'm curious of how many people are going to want to get on these vehicles when they're yeah me too yeah that's a good question thanks thank you anyone else

all right thank you for the presentation a couple things i want to just touch on um i really love the idea of the jana center for aviation and innovation and it reminds me of um an article i just saw the other day um i think it was a florida chamber that had a report that showed a shortage of aviation um workers so in like traditional aviation so and you see that in a lot of the trades these days that um we have trouble getting young people to consider these career paths and more emphasis needs to be placed on that at the same time we have this new technology that actually could serve as um an incentive or another way to attract the attention of younger people thinking about different career paths um in both traditional aviation but it's that's so related to um ev toll innovation and what's coming but i think it's it's one of those things where everybody could be lifted by that if there is a big push to get more people interested in aviation careers and by that it's more than just um pilots it's about logistics it's about mechanics it's um you know all kinds of things but i see an opportunity to um promote both and help both at the same time and i think having a center like this i do love the um the work that's being done by some of our um some of our schools now um but to have a center like this that's really laser focused on um aviation and the future of aviation um would be fantastic so i really hope that the city keeps moving forward with that idea also i know i've mentioned to the board before um but we do have some new uh some new folks maybe since then um i subscribed to a newsletter from the vertical flight society they do um um an e-newsletter i think it's just once a month and they've got really good information on ev toll um progress and what's going on with that this um that particular group i noticed that they have a conference coming up in west palm beach next month i imagine you're attending that you've already signed up for it and um and one of these days you'll be able to take an air taxi to get there wouldn't that be nice so um yeah so there's a lot and that one is called the future of vertical flight and so i imagine there is a lot more to come on this and i hope that we will have um more conversations about it and how it can impact our county and how we can impact its growth by being part of it all right well thank you so much

it was great seeing you it's great great great to be here thank you for having me uh just wanted to close with uh so council member floyd and i uh have been to azalea middle school a couple of times

they have a uh what's it called the sun coast sunshine state drone expo but i am worried that they might not continue it soon yeah but they still have the drone work at the school yeah right but

it's amazing seeing these middle school kids flying these drones around they race them around the gym and uh outside and they fix them and they're very interested so to me you you kind of you put an idea out there but you already have kids that are interested and you know so let's capture capture that interest and then uh vice mayor butler talked about the uh fdot in the back of our report we do have a link to the fdot and they have that's a easy way to just see what the state's working on on this uh this subject so thank you so much for for having me yes thank you thank you all right um

we're going to take up the next item and then um we're going to move our break up a little bit and take our short break after the um the next item so i'll introduce our next folks okay some of you may

not remember but in 2022 ford pinellas pinellas county and seven partner communities signed an advantage pinellas housing compact and pledge to take leadership role in addressing our housing crisis together we've created a housing action plan which sets out some goals and strategies and expanding housing diversity choice and affordability in pinellas county we've also worked on a number of county-wide projects to implement the plan such as creating a regulatory reform toolkit launching an educational campaign for citizens and holding a series of housing summits at the same time each of the local partner communities in the compact have been working to address housing challenges within their own terms with their own communities and we've been asked to host a series of presentations from our partners periodically throughout the year and so this is one of those so today i'm really pleased to introduce dr avery sliker and mark vanloo from the city of st petersburg the director and assistant director of the city's housing and community development department and they'll give us a short update on some of their activities take it away

good afternoon and thank you for inviting mark and i we're very happy to be here so like most housing and community departments throughout the region we have a housing for all 10-year comprehensive plan that is to guide our work and it's to get to that affordability housing affordability crisis issue through logical strategic policies how do we get there we need to produce more affordable housing while we continue to preserve the affordable housing that we have and we need to protect our tenants as we're doing all of this so again mark and i ask how do we get there and we asked our team how do we get there and we came up with something very interesting and innovative what if we flipped who we were responsible to most hierarchy for department is your funders rule you you are dictated by the funder and that's what you do and then the policy makers assist that then we have city policy for that and then come our residents well we knew our mission and that was to develop viable community with safe healthy affordable housing how do we meet that goal in order to meet those objectives for the city the team asked us well we need to know what do we value and so together mark and i brought an entire team together for an afternoon and they listed their values which were to prioritize the need of those that they saw every single day leverage their input provide exceptional service to them become a catalyst of change through that led to another question then where do our investments go and why are we really getting a return on our investment and does the data out there match the voices that we're listening to we know affordability the needs that

our homeowners have and our renters have there's displacement people want to stay in the city that they grew up in people want to come back to the cities after college people want to move to the city to join their our extended family and be as one so how do we take all of that that we value knowing now where our investments have to go knowing that we're responsible to the mission and to the goals okay let's actually do it and let's flip it upside down let's be responsive first and foremost to our residents our city our policy and then our funders will ground us so we're going to talk about transforming that theory that we started with three years ago and actually are putting it into practice so i'll start with some single family work but then the bulk of what we're going to talk about is our affordability and multifamily and we're going to talk to you briefly about how we do not do this alone we are not a siloed department so for single family programs we start with rehabilitation most cities have that we've done 833 homes since 2020 how can we continue that great work one thing that we found was we needed more contractors we only had three and so we extended our procurement we open it up it's year round we review it every quarter and with that in three years we now have 30 contractors on board allowing us that capacity to do more most recently our most exciting intervention was where are applications getting stuck in the actual application phase they're coming in incomplete and then it takes us a very long time to get that document work so we hire housing assistants this is not only the front door and the first face that a resident is going to see but that assistant is going to ask do you have all of this that we need if i came to your house today and picked it up could i have it okay let's get you hooked up and set up let's do this application and they hold the hand through the progress in november when those assistants started we only had seven active rehabilitations happening in the city as of yesterday there were 50 innovations working we talk about adu wanting to increase those accessory dwelling units people want to live smaller well since 2020 we accomplished 292 how can we get more so we worked with the planning department and they put together the adu wizard number one question by homeowners am i allowed to build this here you go into the website you type in your address and it pops up everything that you need to know about permitting in the city for an adu how can homeowners afford to build an adu well we have a rehabilitation for affordable rehab citywide you can build an adu and we will provide you with a rebate at the end of that for your construction cost up to a certain amount within the cra we started the adu incentive that was modeled after that program and what we've seen is that from when we started adus in the city in 2020 in 2025 we had a four 54 increase we also have our disaster funding that is separate to the relief funding that's in the area we spent 2.4 million dollars of private funds local funds state funds and federal funds and we didn't just rehab we did sustainability and mitigation anyone that had a tree removal we then offered them the tree planting grant we have to give even more so mark is going to now tell you about our developers and what multi-family does good afternoon everybody thanks

for having us and allowing us to share a little bit about what we're doing in in saint pete uh to fulfill our plan um i kind of co-opted a line from a popular movie and added to it a little bit um what we learned is that one of the most effective ways to fund an affordable or workforce housing project is through tax credit financing or the sale program if you depend on that you're going to be limited to maybe it's a highly competitive program and you may get a few projects a year at best there may be years you don't get any and so we depend on developers we depend on multi-family housing that is mixed income allowing the mixed the market rate and workforce units to help fund the affordable units to make projects pencil so that means we rely on developers and how do we attract more developers and more projects to the community to get more housing built we built a strong program and we have found that that's worked well and the developers have come i get one two sometimes three calls a week from new developers not just in the in in the pinellas county not just in the state of florida but from all over the country who are interested in and who have heard about the strength of our program and want to partner and build in in the city of saint pete we've done that by being very proactive and providing information that developers need so we have sections of our website dedicated to that we provide that information and it tells them what they need to know about developing housing in the city of st petersburg rather than them having to kind of pry it out of us which we've heard from developers is the case in in many parts of the country we are very responsive when they reach out we are there we answer the phones we respond to the emails we have the meetings we help them understand how they can develop housing in our city and and what that looks like and what we can bring to the table we're very adamant about communicating that our goal is to get to yes we also hear from developers that oftentimes they feel like dealing with cities and counties as a kind of an adversarial situation and that it feels to them like uh what most municipalities are trying to do is find every possible way to say no and why this can't be done we always come into it to say look our goal is to get to yes how do we find a good balanced project that works for you and works for the city and provides the needed housing and that is they appreciate that a lot and respond well to that we try to make our processes very simple convenient and transparent um developers often comment to me and my team that they're very surprised at how open we are about how much money the city has to put into affordable housing at that point in time what kind of monies we see coming and what our other incentives and things are that we can provide oftentimes again they feel like they have to kind of pry that out of or there's there's some secretive thing about that we want to be very open and transparent so they know what we have to work with and what we can bring to the table for them and then being open and honest with good news and with bad news again i learned very early in my career that oftentimes folks can handle the ugly truth much better than a pretty lie so we are very upfront and we're very honest if it's not something that's going to happen or not something we can do that they're asking we tell them that because they don't waste time and they don't waste money on a project that that isn't going to work we also realize that you know the kind of go-to to support affordable and workforce housing in any community is providing gap funding but gap funding is limited for all of us and feels like it's it's more limited all the time uh versus uh constantly rising costs for these projects to to be developed so we look at all of the different ways we can provide uh incentives and and things that will make a project pencil out that includes all the things on on the screen right now density bonuses uh smart use of the live local program uh the city's chapter 17.5 of our land development code uh is an alternative pathway uh to the live local act that provides many of the same benefits and even more in exchange for more deeply affordable uh units within the project versus the live local act requirements um ygby or yes in god's backyard we've embraced that we've have a an ordinance in place to allow that to happen and we're out ahead of the uh you know the new uh state regulations around that so we have a very strong pathway for for those types of projects uh providing developer incentives uh all kinds of different incentives that we can bring to the table whether it be reducing parking requirements or other land development regulations that can make their project more feasible using our funding strategically we provide developer tools on our website that developers can use to figure things out um on what can be built where it can be built how it can be built we do a lot of have done a lot of reforms on our land development regulations and on our zoning land use and overlay incentives so all of those tools are necessary in today's world to make projects work and to be able to assist as many projects as possible and get as much housing built as possible to solve the problem and the results of that since 2020 our current 10-year plan started in 2020 and so we have we're just over halfway through that plan we have we have just under 5 000 multi-family units that are in all stages of construction and pre-development those are projects that we have great confidence in even the ones that are in earlier stages of pre-development these are projects we're pretty certain are going to get across the finish line there are actually quite a few more projects that are in very very early stages and we just aren't convinced yet that those are going to get all the way through of those units described in that 4928 units 76 of those units are affordable workforce units the rest would be market rate units in mixed income projects and we are on track to far exceed our housing for all 10-year goal which ends in 2029 of creating or preserving at least 3200 affordable and workforce housing units so we're well ahead of that curve we're going to exceed that goal and it's all due to the things that we have put in place and the program we've built in the city of saint pete that has developers all over the country talking about and wanting to know how can we get in on that how can we build housing down there uh so with that uh well with what's next uh for us subsidy continues to get tighter and we're looking at new ways to make projects feasible um and so that could include things like making sure that our money goes as far as possible the funds that we do have we're investigating a revolving loan fund for example where we uh instead of putting gap funding into a project that would ultimately be forgiven and we're never going to see again um there are ways to provide funds to a developer in the form of a no or low interest loan that we can get back in a year or two and then that that money goes back to work and can continue to help build more and more projects that's one example of how we're making our funds go further um we're looking at ways uh considering ways to increase the available funds for affordable housing subsidy working to keep our housing funds flexible so that we can respond to changing market conditions sometimes our funds are locked into a particular use or a particular program we try to make sure that when we have that situation we do have the ability to reallocate those funds to new uses and new places that make more sense given the rapidly changing conditions that we see in the market today and we're striving to be a better partner in the creation of the preservation of affordable and workforce housing the creation and preservation so we're looking at uh and considering more projects that would purchase existing housing and renovate that housing and and perhaps expand on that housing in addition to just creating new so there's uh those are some of the newest tools that we're we're looking at as we face an even tougher environment than we have in years past how we can make our dollars stretch further how we can be a better partner and get more housing built primarily affordable workforce housing so with that i'm going to turn it back over to avery to to wrap us up here we don't do this work alone obviously most

of the time when you think about the housing department you think of course you work with building of course you work with planning of course you work with permitting but we have to work with other departments also our housing departments unique because we also have social service programs and so that added a new complexity to our mission because we now have the most vulnerable populations that we need to address and so we partner with our number one partner in the city our codes department our codes department can do things we can't do when funders tell us we can't so they are the extra voice and so tenant protections if i'm receiving a call for fair housing and it's a complaint that's an eviction i can immediately pick up the phone and transfer this individual to our codes department that will start working with them in their eviction diversion program if i have a tenant that has a question about if they have a fair housing question and really it's not a fair housing question it's just a renter question and a great one i can refer them over to the codes department where we have the renter's guide that has everything from a to z of what you need to know about renting in our city they do things we can't do over in codes because they have innovative programming and funding also so through their community support specialist they can take on programs that we can't do in renovation and they have ten thousand up to ten thousand dollars per resident to do so so they can do hazardous trees again referring back to plant the trees afterwards driveway repair accessory buildings that we cannot touch we're not allowed to by state laws they can go in and help with that they have the neighborhood team that can go out and do the light touches the painting and of a trim of a home removing of overgrowth things like that so we partner but most importantly we partner with their emergency response emergency response doesn't happen just during disaster neighborhood need things neighbors need things and codes are out there every single day so what we do is we partner with them in their door-to-door outreach we provide vital information that neighbors need and they report back to us the unmet needs that they are seeing in the community that again help inform us because what makes us able to do what we're doing is that we listen to those those voices first they want us to be clear with them they want us to be simple and they want us to be transparent and they want us to be as rapid as we can with our response and so we try thank you

thank you so much um and avery and mark i really appreciate everything that you do it's it makes me very proud to see you presenting um the work that you all do that the other departments do and that city council helps um to accomplish as well so um but i know that you two are very passionate about what you do and um it's great to have a chance for everyone to see um what great superstars we have working on housing for our city um we'll go ahead to questions and start with council member gabbert

thank you and i just want to echo your comments uh you your team everyone at the city you make us so proud uh thank you so much for bringing the good word out um from the city and sharing it with everyone else i always brag on our city because we are leaders in the state on affordable housing and this presentation doesn't even begin to touch the surface of what you all do every day so thank you um wanted just to real quick one stat that i feel like you missed and this is something that i touch on a lot uh when we talk in our housing land use and transportation committee of which uh uh council member floyd is the chair and we get a great report in our backup thanks to council member floyd allowing it um that shows us all of the different amis and really breaks it down and shows the work that you're doing um so i just went and pulled our most recent one and i know it's always changing but on the one that we're looking at for tomorrow uh i have that 55 percent of these units that you mentioned are actually 80 percent ami and under and so i always want us to touch on that and make sure that we are sharing that because the work that our city team does really does affect the most vulnerable the people who need it the most and so i did not want that to get missed these stats are great but i think that that is one that we should always uh brag about and make sure that people we tell the story so thank you for everything that you do thank you chair anyone else all right well thank you so much

and um again we really appreciate you being here it means a lot all right we'll go ahead and take a 10 minute recess at this time if you all could please i said 10 minutes but if you can be as brief as possible the sooner we get back into a quorum the sooner we can move the meeting along so for now

this board meeting is in recess back to order the ford pinellas board meeting and move on to our next item on the agenda for today which is item 70 uh discussion on the regional merger and regional mpo merger apportionment and the resolution and for that way did you want to go ahead and kick things off for us

i want to kick things off a little bit and then i'm going to turn it over to chelsea to walk us through this she's been our project manager point person this has been a project management team with hillsborough and pasco but before i turn it over to chelsea and and say much more i do want to recognize our partners in the room we have dr wong from the hillsborough tpo in the back we have tania gorman from the pasco mpo also here and they are more than happy to answer any questions that you might have i want to make a point that we've been working in partnership with those other mpos to get to this point sarah caper of the hillsborough tpo our former employee here at ford pinellas is the project manager because i do believe it's important to have a single point person and chelsea's been part of that team as well today is is an important action for ford pinellas it's a strategic action because we've we've accomplished a lot over the last couple of years but it's not a final binding action i want to be super clear about that it is really a testing of the waters testing your comfort level and there's still a lot more work to be done this is to conclude phase one of the consultant work that we've been working on for a while and would move us into phase two where we'll add more detail more clarity and while we may take action today on a specific apportionment plan for the regional mpo board as we get additional information i am certain that we can come back and look at this again in the fuller context and i want to paint a picture that this action is the first of several actions taken by the three mpos in the next few weeks and then we will be transmitting our action to the partners who are the three boards of county commissioners and the city of tampa and then they're going to be doing similar thing we are today which is a interim testing of the waters action to see if there's consensus around the apportionment plan and then before anything gets sent to the governor for approval which is a requirement there'll be a second round of votes with that full picture in mind of the operating agreement the bylaws details all the things that we have on on tap the legal framework for for freight for phase two i also want to say one one thing about coordination versus collaboration we are required by federal law to coordinate our transportation plans that's part of what mpos have been about since the beginning and i think we coordinate very well today but what does coordination mean to you coordination to me means that i've sat down with you and i've told you what i'm doing and you've sat down you've told me what you're doing and i understand what you're doing and you understand what i'm doing but we're doing our own things and i want to draw a real distinction between coordination and collaboration and collaboration true collaboration takes trust and it takes strong partnerships and what it means is is that we are both doing things together that benefits each other fairly and respectfully and i think we're working towards collaboration and certainly we've been collaborating to get to this point with our partners but this is fundamentally about creating a framework that enables encourages and really keeps our feet to the fire to collaborate so with that um chelsea i'll let you walk us through the process and the recommendations i also have a spreadsheet of

all the population in the entire region so if anyone has questions about that we can we can work it up pretty quickly so really just starting with how we get here the merging of the mpos and the tampa bay area has been a topic of discussion ever since the 90s since before pretty much any of us started here with ford pinellas but in 2023 there was state legislation that required a study a formal study of the possibility of merging the three mpos together and in response to that we worked with our partners at hillsborough and pasco and we developed a memorandum memorandum of understanding that really committed us to taking a more formal evaluation of a merger for the region so we really just built what we're doing now is we're building on those earlier efforts to get to the proposed implementation framework and an organized organizational strategy that will be considered by the local officials and ultimately by the governor's office and the reason that we're bringing this to you now and not when everything's totally finalized is there is a lot of work that still needs to be done and we're very cautious about breaking this up so that we could bring everyone along with us make sure that you're able to review and comment all of the products as we go and that we don't get too far ahead of ourselves spending lots of time and energy and money into something that may not be exactly where you all want us to take it so in terms of the project needed motivation and which wit really touched on this already the goal is to have a single local decision making policy board that will prioritize federal transportation projects we like to say you know we have a unified voice here in the tampa bay region and we've done really great things by all coming together and speaking as one that includes the prioritization of the west shore interchange in hillsborough county but also the sun runner in st petersburg and interchange projects in hillsborough county there have been a lot of really big projects that have come together because we all supported them as a region collectively this would be a forum for coordination across county lines you know we all talk about residents don't necessarily know when they cross from one county and to another they just know that they have to get somewhere to go to work and they need transportation to get there um so this would also serve as a one-stop shop for public input and participation if you have an issue on your commute you don't need to look up okay do i have to call hillsborough do i have to call pasco or is this on the pinellas side there's one-stop shop for public engagement so a lot of the considerations that you see up here on the screen are things that we're working through now one is balancing region-wide decision making with local input at ford pinellas we do a lot of work with our local government partners and we provide a lot of support and resources to those local government partners so we want to make sure that as we're talking about a regional organization how do we keep that local support how does this organization represent the population and interests fairly you know we say pinellas is so diverse we have 25 different local governments well that's just pinellas when you add in hillsborough and pasco there's a lot of different interests a lot of different people who have a lot of different priorities and so this organization is going to have to reflect all of them in a fair way there are a lot of legal and regulatory requirements um the state and federal laws that hold up each us each as individual mpos would then apply to a single merged one and we have to navigate that when we're looking at expanding our geographic and also our population base we want to consider how we maximize those opportunities for the local input again not losing that local voice and that we provide the range of services needed that are going to advance the goals that we have as collectively as a region and also a merged mpo could be needs to be set up so that it can adapt to change and new opportunities so when we started this work in early 2025 with our consultant we started with a survey of all the mpo employees really looking at the culture we wanted to get staff's initial reaction to the potential merger what their perceptions were for benefits and concerns and also some of those key leadership priorities that would make a merger successful we then worked on summarizing the mpo operations of each entity the way that we do things in pinellas is very different in some ways from how it's done in pasco and hillsborough so we really wanted to start from a point of understanding where we align and where we're different so that we can really focus on okay how does this work when we're merging going forward back in november each of you and all of our other local governments elected officials were invited to a workshop at the epicenter where we talked about some of the key concerns and challenges and also opportunities for moving forward with a merger and all that finalized in the mpo comparative organizational review that is actually in your packet today and that really highlights a lot of the the key differences and similarities across the three organizations didn't know this one built up so for the draft apportionment plan how we got to this where we're at right now it started with that mou back in october of 2023 with the goal being to certify a regional mpo by july of 27 that was the goal we set back then in 2024 we talked a lot with the tma leadership group on some key components of the apportionment plan and the consensus was at the time that the modal partners tampa international airport and port tampa bay would each have a single seat carved off the top because just given the the regional significance of those two entities the transit operators while currently in hillsborough and pinellas the transit operators have a dedicated seat on the board it was determined that for a merged board it probably made more sense to have them as non-voting advisors so that was decided as well along with fdot and then the preferred board size was 25 seats which is the maximum allowed by state law back in february we had a meeting with the sun coast league of cities and we really wanted their feedback on how small cities should be reflected on the board we presented them with the three options that you see up here on your screen and while there was a preference for one option over the other two it was very very close the key message that we got out of the sun coast league of cities was if you want the small cities to be represented they have to have a voting seat an advisory committee was not good enough the small cities wanted to make sure that their voices were heard and there should be some kind of dedicated seats for them on the and on any merged board and then in february uh also just two months ago the tma leadership group recommended that what was presented as option three was advanced and option three was that each of the that's uppercase county but this is lowercase county each lowercase county would decide how their seats would be would be allocated the seats are apportioned based on population at the regional level and then the sub allocation within the geographic county would be determined by each geographic county and that each of those jurisdictions would determine how small cities should be reflected so where we're at today is that box on the left our objective today is to recommend a draft apportionment plan we want to talk to you about how those seats for pinellas county will be allocated or should be allocated we also want to identify any deal breakers from you there's a draft resolution in your packet that will go to the boards of county commissioners and the city of tampa and we've made sure that we added some language in there based on what we've heard so far some of that language includes that for some of the major mpo products like the long-range transportation plan or the lists of the priority lists that it'll require a super a majority vote of the board but also a majority of each of the little lowercase counties that are reflected on that board so if hillsborough has 11 seats in order for anything to pass they would have to have at least six of the hillsborough members would have to vote in the affirmative same with pinellas and same with pasco for those major products and then what we're going to do also is invite the principals to vote on the resolutions of support now and uh later in spring early summer uh the principals which are those four that we mentioned are going to uh take up the matter of the resolution of support that includes the recommended apportionment plan and affirm the interlocal interlocal agreement suggestions that have been recommended by each of the mpo boards in late summer and fall we're going to be refining and updating all of the documents like the draft interlocal agreement we'll move into the service offer offerings of the merged agency and we'll start reviewing the draft bylaws and a funding plan and then in fall we plan to have the final deliverables and bring those to you all and the other mpo boards for their review and comment while we're discussing this today pasco and hillsborough will be taking up this matter at their next meeting in early may so just a regional snapshot these numbers are rounded um hillsborough has about 1.5 million people pasco has about 600 000 and pinellas has about a million these numbers are based on the 2020 census as required by law and you may say well we know that changes have happened in the last six years that is correct uh just like ford pinellas every 10 years every mpo has to reapportion itself based on this uh the census numbers so the most recent was in 2020 so that's why we're using those as the baseline now we get down into the draft apportionment plan for pinellas as recommended by the tma leadership group we have a total of 25 seats with two of those coming off the top for the tampa international airport and port tampa bay and today we're going to be talking about how those seats and pinellas of which there are eight should be allocated the staff recommendation is as shown on the screen two seats for the boards of county commissioners two for the same city of st petersburg one each for clearwater largo and pinellas park and then one for a small city that would be rotating this reflects the um the population breakdown here in pinellas county because there was a requirement that you apportion based on population so our staff has followed uh that that law and gone ahead and applied them in this way that remains that leaves 11 seats for hillsborough county remaining and four seats for pasco county fdot and the transit agencies would be non-voting advisors but there would be four seats for them and hillsborough and pasco again will decide how to apportion their own seats at their next board meeting as well so again these are our objectives to recommend the apportionment for our eight seats identify any deal breakers and then invite the principals to vote on the resolution of support so i'm going to leave this here up on the screen this is again the staff proposal for the allocation of those eight seats and i'd like to open it up to any questions or comments and again if there are any deal breakers or additional language you'd like to see moving forward into the interlocal agreement we're going to jot those down and make sure that we share them with our regional partners as we move forward chair i have questions and comments okay we'll start with

you okay great uh chelsea uh can you go back to a sheet number nine please now up in the right hand corner it says recommended by tma and that's for the entire footprint of the entire uh apportionment right yes the 25 as far as i know we've never voted to approve that um apportionment county well you know over the tri-county area for the apportionment but what today we're being asked to approve the pinellas section which is a tantamount to approving the entire tma this is what this is the 25 seats

this is how they're allocated before the counties yeah we're asking for both the 25 seat total and then that how we want to allocate the right so we're asking for both not just one we're asking for both so

we're making a recommendation on two things here now um from that sheet which i i gave you all one this morning on the back of that you'll see i did the math okay i did a little math on here that i thought would bring to your attention it's the tma apportionment plan uh the the most striking glaring problem i have with this plan is population hillsborough county has 48.4 of the population of this of the tri-county area and we're giving them 52 of the votes pasco county has 19 of the population and we're giving them 16 of the votes totally unfair it's unfair to us it's unfair to pasco county now um i wanted to i wanted to say so i want you to understand is 52 and they should only have 48 so we're starting out hillsborough county is going to be driving and in charge of this mpo they're going to be in charge of this mpo because they have the majority vote we could need even with pasco county voting in lockstep with us we can't out overrule hillsborough county they will be in charge now also the airport now two of those votes are the airport and the port authority and you are being told that the airport and the port authority are neutral third parties that is not going to be the way it is the airport and the port authority every member of that board or those two boards lives in hillsborough county there's not a single member on the airport for tampa or port authority who lives in pinellas or pasco county not one also don't forget those boards include a county commissioner from hillsborough county so the very idea that their neutral third party is wrong now the 52 is not required by law 48 is and the bylaws we have not even drafted our bylaws yet the bylaws are going to run this organization well if we merge and then we agree to this apportionment hillsborough county will send us the bylaws and say this is what we want you know i hope you understand what we sent you so we can't accept that now a lot of people like to use tampa bay water as an example of a collaboration across the counties and it is a good one tampa bay water there are three board seats for each county that's it now we can have more but we should not it's a third a third a third that's the way this should function we should not be going out to start this in behind the eight ball the loser okay and then you've also been told that apportionment is required to be based on population and this is the way it's got to be but obviously that's not true because we're proposing for hillsborough to have more than they should on on population and for pasca to have less so you know i've been studying this and studying this and i've put together a lot of joint ventures and a lot of partnerships and you do not agree to the ownership and you do not agree to the merger until you have the operating agreements together which we don't have any i've never seen a draft so how i feel about this deal is if you want hillsborough county to decide how we're going to operate this merged mpo you should vote for this if you want uh hillsborough county to determine which of our road projects in pinellas county go on a five-year plan that we send to the the federal government and the state government for funding you should vote for this if you want hillsborough county uh to determine which bridges connect our state parks and our beaches to our mainland if that's what you want hillsborough to decide that you should vote in favor of this if you want to know if you want hillsborough to decide ai's coming right i i know and we need to do ai signalization in our intersections if you want hillsborough to decide which ones warrant that money you should vote in favor of this and if you if you want hillsborough county uh to decide what roads we need to spend money on traffic studies and which ones need to be re-signalized that you should vote for this i myself i do not support that idea i do not support the premise that past uh hillsborough county should have a majority of these votes and uh i uh believe that we should reject the tma approve uh apportionment plan that you're looking at right there if we reject it then we can go back say they've rejected it we got to come up with a fair more fair plan and i am not the only one that feels this way this is a letter that i got today from the saint petersburg chamber of commerce and they want us to reject this apportionment plan just like i do for just the same reasons and i've i've included this letter for you all as well so anyway i like the idea of i like the idea of working with the other counties i i don't i'm not even opposed to the merger but we must reject this apportionment plan and start over with the tma and say get it right this time sorry about that get it right this time come back to us with something that's fair something we can live with so anyway i would like to make a motion that we reject this plan and that we after we reject the plan we ask what to go back and get us a reapportionment and i would like to make that motion if it doesn't get seconded i've done my job and

i've given you all the warnings i can i'll second it thank you thank you so much i do want to ask if that motion can be made i know the city council we have to vote in the affirmative so i just want to make sure that we're good with this are you asking whether it's a roll call vote no i'm asking

if this motion can be made because it's not a motion in the affirmative um is i mean has discussion do you guys want to continue to discuss before that is not up to me i i'm just asking because

with saint petersburg city council meetings if someone makes a motion it has to be made in the affirmative so you can't make a motion to deny something you can't make a motion to be against

something it has to be in the affirmative i see what you mean um but i think that that's permitted here okay i just wanted to make sure yeah that's okay i got it yeah thank you thanks for clarifying your

i'm sorry i didn't catch the second was it all britain yeah okay thank you i believe that's based

on your city's charter so the county doesn't have that requirement just right okay thank you so much

this is very important i just wanted to make sure we're doing it right and so you know when you're used to playing uh uh with one hand and then you've got to come into this meeting and play at the other hand you want to make sure we're doing it right so um i i see that you have your handout commissioner flowers we did have mayor freeney um who signaled to speak before

so we're going to go to her next yeah i mean that's okay you can come back to me because mine is more into our own apportionment and and how we've kind of allocated our own um i i was ready to ask the question about the saint petersburg chamber letter today as well so i'll be curious to see kind of staff's

response i think and did we want to discuss response now or did you want to wait well i mean

i can put all my cards on the table but if we're going to kind of do this i mean i think that maybe we need to vet out the bigger picture i don't want to get into the little picture when we're on the big picture and and it's a question in my mind and again i'm i'm newer to the council so and newer to the issues so i i i'm curious to see what the answer is because on the face of it it does seem like that makes a lot of logic what commissioner shore is saying if you don't mind i'd like to take more

comment and maybe let out a few more people speak okay deputy marshalli um we're if we take the port

and the airport out of this or make them non-voting members then we could have two other seats available

the tampa bay water is not required to be apportioned by population but that would move

hillsborough county back to 48 instead of having a 52 majority just something to consider thank you

and commissioner flowers thank you madam chair i um attended um one of the meetings um at the tma over i believe it was your first meeting getting a chance to serve so i heard all of the dialogue and discussion when it came to apportioning and uh commissioner share i'm glad you're sitting down because i actually agree with you this time i agree with you this time and and every point that he has

clarified i agree with but i will also include that when we had t barter um and we were sessioned out we could never get anything through because hillsborough county every single time voted against us every not not one time not twice i'm talking every single time um and so all of the wonderful ideas the funding everything that we had that was laid out and things ready to go we had it was there we had the funding we had the people we had the um uh potential uh contractors we could never get anything through because hillsborough every single time and i will tell you that um uh pascal county showed up to the meetings um hardy showed up to the meetings sarasota manatee so it you know everybody was there on the table we all saw the bigger picture hillsborough county every it was frustrating it was i'm not saying everybody from hillsborough county is but i'm just saying it was frustrating and even when i as chair placed the call to hillsborough county to say hey y'all got to do something because this is getting absolutely ridiculous i feel like i'm getting up in the morning coming here and i'm really wasting my time because i already know what's going to happen nothing happened on that end um so i i'm glad you're sitting down i do agree with you this time um and uh thank you uh uh for making the recommendation on dropping the two i know the conversation over the tma before was all of the uh components that the airport and the port would bring holistically when you looked at the entire plan i believe anyone can bring ideas and we can include as far as ideas and partnerships we can include whoever we want that doesn't mean that they have to sit on this board yeah be a voting member and um i love her to death but i'll give you an example one of the commissioners who um is a county commissioner she also serves on the port authority so how are you going to just just oppose that so i agree i have to agree with commissioner share on this one and i think we need to look really carefully i'm not saying that um you know for pinellas we want to overtake everything but i do think we should be leveling out that playing field we are a growing community i know what the numbers just said we seems like we're losing people but i'm telling you every time i get on the interstate it seems like we're gaining people because i can't get anywhere in 15 minutes anymore so i don't know what they're counting but um i so i'll wrap it up but i i agree with your premise um and mr shelley i agree with your um solution proposed solution to the

number okay council member floyd thank you um first just one thing to uh the solution of the two seats is it does seem like mathematically one seat moved would make it uh almost identical uh to the 48 percent in the uh getting very close to that 16 as well or 19 for pasco one seat moved so i just wanted to make that comment um but uh i think i understand where this is coming from um there's a couple of things though that lead me not to be as worried but to still understand so first like um i'm under the impression someone can correct me if i'm wrong like the funding still has to be allocated uh proportionally to each county so uh it's not like we're going to miss out on anything um in that respect and we'll still be the ones who are most educated on what decisions need to be made within our counties and can advocate for that um and then uh i guess i have a couple of questions though um and i don't know really who to direct them to but you know i was there while we landed on this and it was a lot of discussions and a lot of the principles getting a lot of say and so i'm kind of wondering you know what does it even look like to go back and say we want a slight tweak to this uh does that start things over substantially like does that make uh people from hillsborough uncomfortable uh that's that's one thing and then i'll leave it there for now if anybody wants to speak to that i mean wit you probably

know best well i think chelsea probably agrees with me i think when you change something it it could have a lot of unintended consequences i don't know um you know how critical it is to hillsborough county support that you know this be allocated this way but i think it's fairly important from what i've heard um we do have the um airport and port schedule to join us at the next tma leadership group meeting on april 17th um so that may be an opportunity for you all to get a little more information directly from them how they look at it um the only thing i'll say in addition at this point and then i hope i can have a chance later on is there's a big assumption here that there's unified voting in hillsborough county and johnny is here and he can probably speak to that if you want him to but it is very rare that the city of tampa and the hillsborough county agree on anything

yeah uh with that is exactly the point what i forgot to say and why it doesn't stress me out because

i've watched them go at it in meetings i've been doing it for 11 years and and you know it's i think you all need to kind of keep in mind that we're coming together not as special interests we're coming together to represent tampa bay and you know when you come here i don't think you're coming here to represent individual communities so much as you are what's good for pinellas county and that's how mpos are meant to work so the reason that we chose to go with the airport and port off the top is first of all those are not elected officials they will be staff ceos or designees and hillsborough already has staff representatives who vote on their mpo today we do not have that and those staff officials do think regionally nobody is ever saying they are a uninterested third party if that's the right term they're not like fdot which has to be um uh that way um but they are regional interests and they serve the region more so than the tampa hillsborough expressway authority which only operates in hillsborough county so that's why they weren't put at that same level um and there are there's probably data that the airport director can show about how many passengers use that airport from pinellas county and they can also talk about all the gas shipments that come into port tampa bay that serve fuel stations in pinellas county so that was really the rationale behind it not to give 52 percent to hillsborough county and also we have talked about legislative changes that would be needed to accompany this regional mpo and if we don't merge on our own we have very little leverage to ask the state legislature for anything but if we do merge and we advance something like this we can certainly ask the legislature to revisit the legislation that governs those two entities and expand that board to include proportionate representation from our two counties and we've talked about that and i think that's something a lot of people feel comfortable with doing no guarantee but feels like they owe us something if we voluntarily come together to merge to make people feel comfortable and that's just one item we've listed a few others that we think the legislature could help us on and chelsea did answer that we are required to by federal law to allocate transportation dollars by population so there will be in a five-year work program an equity provision so that pasco pinellas and hillsborough all achieve their fair share of funding that may vary from year to year but it does equal out over time and i think fdot would be happy to

speak to speak to that if you have questions thank you i think my suspicion here i can't speak to what happened at tvarta i don't know uh but i take a lot of uh i give you a lot of credit because that sounds

awful um but yeah i can't speak to that but what what i can speak to is like my time on regional boards

thus far and what i've seen when it comes to transportation planning is a breakdown not among geographic lines but among uh i guess best way to describe is like land use types and and densities and and priorities for uh municipalities that have um an urban core versus those that don't and those that are rural those have been the divides that i've seen and not a geographic one and like we i think that's a lot about what goes on in hillsborough county uh when they talk about the divide that they have had there over the years and so i am not as worried about this apportionment because i think when it comes time to vote on things like bylaws and uh and structures that we're going to use to allocate funds that that's going to break down a lot along those same lines as well and uh it won't necessarily be um you know just based off of what county you're in because if you're voting if you're the city of tampa and you're voting to prioritize transportation types that help the city of tampa then you're probably interested in the same transportation types that we need here in pinellas county with our level of density uh versus you know hillsborough county commissioner that doesn't represent the city of tampa and so uh that's why i haven't i don't have like a lot of heartburn over this but i i'll end on just saying that i totally understand where you're coming from especially with past experiences um but uh that's not the way that i think that we will have uh different uh i guess strife in the future if we were to

uh put uh move this forward so i'll leave it there for now thank you thank you councilmember

gabbard thank you um so first of all commissioner thank you for uh bringing all of this forward today i do appreciate all your homework on this and um i mean certainly i think the apportionment plan i've had some heartburn with but i think uh council member floyd you kind of wrapped up a lot of my thoughts about the ways that i think eventually this will work itself out um mostly because uh commissioner scott and i had the pleasure of uh attending the collab lab and i somehow um even though i don't represent a body that is going to be ultimately voting on this at the the commission level um somehow got lumped into that group and i got to see firsthand that it very much is not a hillsborough versus pinellas and pasco it is very much an urban type community and i think the way you described it as a like a land use more um you know being different um more philosophical differences in the way that hillsborough operates in tampa than it is a tampa hillsborough versus pinellas side um i think we would find a lot of collaboration between tampa and pinellas county just based upon those conversations so um i think where i was having some of that heartburn before that collab lab i think some of it kind of went away a little bit now when i look at this math that you have so generously provided to us i i did the same as council member floyd again i think we're thinking along the same lines today it's like one vote or one um you know position different and it completely aligns with what the population is so if if hillsborough became 12 and they wanted to give two of those one to the port and one to the airport then it leaves one and if that went to pasco now they have basically 20 percent and now you have a perfect apportionment and so i don't want to throw a complete wrench in everything over what i see as really one vote being moved from one county to another because i do believe in the concept of regionalism i do understand the power of that and i don't want to throw kind of you know the baby out with the bath water but at the same time like i think there needs to be more conversation about just some slight tweaking that would make it very much in aligned with the population now i have a question about and maybe it was discussed in here and i was kind of trying to go through all of this and make sure i didn't miss it but so this is based upon census and we're basing this up on the 2020 census what happens during the next census the board is now one yes is there reapportionment that happens with every census if there is a dramatic change can you go over that again because i just want to

understand going into the future what that might look like so every 10 years every mpo is required to take a look at the latest census data and determine if they want to reapportion and how that's when our board expanded to 19 from 13 a couple years ago so it's probably going to be about 20 33 ish by the time the data is available but then we go through the same exact exercise and you look at who has how many seats where's the population changed and do you need to reallocate but it'll never be more than 25

because that is the maximum that's allowed currently allowed by state law unless state law changes right and that's what i'm also thinking is how does that ultimately end up maybe affecting us i don't know that's a lot to think about as well and i think that probably even more so makes me feel like we really need to make sure we get it right now starting off um so not quite sure where i'm going to vote on your motion quite yet i want to hear from more people but uh i do see value and what you're bringing to the table i just think there's a very simple tweak but i know that to your point with a simple tweak kind of changes a lot of the different moving parts um and then i just wanted to clarify one other thing that you said on the airport and the port you said and i thought i saw it in here but again i couldn't find it while we were all discussing is that specifically the ceos or you said ceos or staff right uh generally

it's um it would be a staff position um so it's typically the airport ceo or the port tampa bay and sometimes they have their legal counsel charge charles klug who represents them and he goes to those meetings and votes you represent both of them no just just the port okay yeah okay so michael

stevens and charles klug okay um i mean that makes me feel a little better knowing it's not a elected official and i do believe and i i actually had this debate a little while ago with someone that i do see the airport and the poor as a regional asset um but i do have concerns about the fact that there is not representation on that board because even if it is the ceo that votes they still answer to their

board um so but those organizations also just tend to be operational organizations yeah rather than policy organizations so they're voting in the interest of the airport operations true and or the port operations

okay well i think there's still a lot of unanswered questions and so yeah look forward to continued

conversation thank you chair council member albritton okay so um since i did second this i just i wanted to explain really my thought process um i was i am really for a regional mpo i mean because i've actually been to washington and seen they don't know who we are but they know where tampa bay is and i've always supported doing a regional mpo the this part of it i knew we were going to have a little trouble with because same thing that we've we've all espoused here seeing how tampa and hillsborough have had their misunderstandings or their different understandings uh it was always uh i guess we were always just a little hesitant with uh pinellas that you know we wouldn't be heard but i still think that we've there's a lot of water under the bridge since we first started talking about this and we i don't want to do anything that will hamper moving this forward uh i'd like to see if you say that we can work out a lot of these little things as we go i think that could that could happen i thought uh chris what you said was kind of got me thinking of maybe not about the whole thing but i i agree with you i say it can't be one-sided on this but i don't want to stop this thing moving forward i think we need to keep keep it moving um you know even in the letter here that the uh saint pete chamber of commerce wrote they said uh even if the uh if tampa international airport in the tampa bay um if they could update their governance to say that they are regional which that's my only concern and the two what it does when you put them as voting members on the hillsborough side they're not really the hillsborough side there they are regional but it just seemed to overweight the the hillsborough but if you take those away it seems like with you know uh the apportionment based on population that's very fair and and uh i'd like to see this move forward so i think i'm going to take i'm glad we all had this conversation we needed to have it but i want to see this move keep moving forward and i think we can i really do think we can take care of some of these concerns uh to make it happen so i'm going to pull my second on that and um see where see where it goes now so we have a motion and the

second has now been withdrawn hold on i got a bunch of hands up all of us

i warned y'all it's gonna be a long meeting i just want to make sure that tina is um up on

what's going on so you're good my head my head hurts but i heard a motion from commissioner shearer and his commotion was to reject the tma apportionment plan which was previously second by council member albritton however now council member albritton has withdrawn his second so you currently have a single motion on the floor to reject the tma apportionment plan oh okay thank you so now we have

a new before we go to another speaker i do want to just mention that because of the timing of things with pasco and hillsborough not voting until may and the tma leadership group meeting being on april 17th we could take this discussion back to the tma leadership group meeting who previously voted on the apportionment plan as you see and see if they want to consider entertaining something different and then we could come back and revisit it our may meeting so um you know that may be a non-vote may be better than a rejection and it may keep the process moving as council member albritton suggested and i just

want to put that out there for consideration i think it depends on how strongly this some desire to make the statement because a no vote and what do i go in with in this meeting represent you know as part of that group if there's a statement then you know we have we have voted on this and this is what where we're at but here's the middle part i don't know that um i wonder if we need to reject the entire thing outright or if we can put something forward that we do support if this this then this are changed so we attach conditions to it and send that forward you know usually i speak less but i'm just going to say really quick that i agree and i appreciate that council member albritton is passionate about moving this forward i am too i see the opportunities that are there for our entire region that will benefit us if we if we move forward with this i really see a lot of merit in the idea that one county having 52 percent of the votes is risky i don't care who gets along with who today and who doesn't yeah because tomorrow can be a different story guess what november is coming and also we're making a decision for something that once it does get into place we're about to come up on the census again so whatever goes in right now it's going to change like as soon as everybody's seats get warmed up so i i'm not saying that it doesn't matter it really does we're setting the framework we're not setting it in stone for a hundred years we just need what what it's going to take to get this thing going on the right path this is our opportunity to make a statement that pinellas is not some like jan brady sitting off to the side and wondering what's you know what's up with marcia i like zan i do too um we have we have a very strong contribution to our region i love the idea of being able to divide it and into thirds and i wish that i wish that we could do that i don't see that making it through so i'm trying to figure out where that spot is that everybody can live with because it doesn't sound like there are options that will make everybody happy in all three counties i do like the idea of coming off the or making a recommendation or setting a condition that one seat gets moved from hillsborough to pasco because that does create some balance that does not currently exist based on what's proposed and then hillsborough can decide um if they're still willing to give up two of those seats to or one of those seats to the port or whatever so i just wanted to like share initial thoughts just based on what everyone has been saying um and really express a lot of a lot of appreciation for the thoughtfulness that's going into this um whether it's homework you did beforehand or what you're thinking right at this moment as we're having the discussion so thank you for that i'm going to try call on a couple of people who have not weighed in yet and then we'll go and do second rounds and we'll go to um council member fig sanders and then um vice mayor butler i don't think you've weighed in

yet so we'll go to you next microphone please thank you commissioner for actually putting this together because initially when i saw this i looked at the hillsborough county votes and thank you commissioner flowers for reminding me about the horror of t barter no no matter what we try to do and and i know that we're saying that right now i'm not worried about it but it was really easy to disband t barter and get rid of our regional hopes because of how it weighed when it came time to voting so when i hear about it's 25 it's the max you can it's easier to go up than it is to decrease the number so when i looked at the numbers um with this and i do agree with the tpa and the port they're at 13 even if you take pinellas and pasco and put them together we're still at 12 we're still the minority when it comes to moving things forward so i'm still like i said the trauma of t barter came back when i heard t barter um only because it was a very strong organization initially but as things to regret uh progressed and as you say the land use um uses changed we found ourselves on the short end of the stick of that um when it came to t barter so i i hear you know when we talk about you know it being philosophical but but votes philosophy doesn't cast the votes and that's what makes the difference when we look at the numbers that we're having now i would rather for us to go with commissioner well not really commission shares reject the whole

thing go in with something go in with something um that i think everybody could come to an agreeance with and that was going to be my question and you answered it could we table this until we can present something different to tma and then bring it back and you i think you did answer that previously before me having that because that was one of my questions um i was concerned only that uh with pasco

originally scheduled to meet tomorrow and vote us changing it here would really potentially be difficult for them but now that that votes a couple of weeks out hillsborough is a couple of weeks out i think we do have some time and it may give us an opportunity to sort of huddle and figure things out

from what i'm hearing though red pasco what we do today wouldn't impact pasco negatively or favorably because if tampa decides to give up one of their votes it's going to pass code so they're still

going to come out ahead regardless well i think what we want to do is take us a common resolution and a common apportionment plan overall to all three so if we were to say it's 25 and this is how the 25 go down i wouldn't want us to be approving different ones does that make sense that way it makes sense but yeah but but my recommendation is um i would love to see it closer between hillsborough and

pinellas county i really would um like to see that so i know that there's a motion on the floor i don't know if commissioner shearer is willing to make an amendment to his motion to say not to reject it but to actually change what the consensus seems to have been from our colleagues here today thank you chair

thank you madam chair first i think i've been bamboozled by my colleague patty reed she

uh how does this end up being my first meeting right um i'm gonna get her on that one uh payback's

tough um really good stuff all around i think i appreciate commissioner shearer bringing it up i it is important but it's i'm also one of those people that does want to move forward and and we if we were always looking back at the past um you know and things that may have happened um we're never going to get there uh but i think i do have a lot of heartburn with the with the airport and the port authority um they are resources they are regional resources but there are also a lot of other regional resources that can still contribute to the process but not have a vote uh and i think that's i think that's the easiest path um if we were to propose something to go back i just hate to reject something without a solution uh to the point of everyone else so um i would be i would definitely be in favor of of kind of tabling it pushing it on to them and say hey this is this is what our concern is

um but i mean i think good points all around all right thank you um we're going to pause our discussion and um get some some valuable input from johnny if you could good afternoon panellas

board members johnny wong i'm the executive director of hillsborough tpo and i would like to set the expectations i have been listening to the conversation and taking notes i'm very sympathetic to the concerns that you have um i i very well understand them i would like to convey that while i don't have a crystal ball i don't think that revisiting this issue will be well received by members of my board and the bocc in tampa city council just based on how this process has occurred the voting the number of voting members at 25 in the port and the airport coming off the top as regional assets were two of the very first decisions that were made and i i think that some of my folks represented on my board would view this as a major setback possibly to the point where it's not worth pursuing anymore um now i can't stamp that and say that's exactly what will happen but i i think for my folks in hillsborough that this will represent a serious setback um speaking to the value of the port and the airport maybe it's worth noting i'm going to offer this up in the hopes that it contributes to your conversation on the respective boards of port tampa bay and hillsborough county aviation authority while it is true that all of the voting members on the boards of directors have to reside in hillsborough county there on both boards there is one county commissioner and the mayor of tampa and so of the representatives that would be serving on the merged mpo board the mayor of tampa will not be representing tampa city it will be members of the city council and so the the director representing the city won't align across those three boards the second thing is would it be possible and i'm bringing this up in the hopes of us finding a solution today would it be possible to recommend that the port in the airport's representation hailing from hillsborough bocc is not a voting member on the merge board would that help thank you i'll um vice chair scott i would think if they

were but they weren't voting members if they were advisory members like um you know like the transit agency and fdot were i think that would yeah i mean i think they're regional assets and they're massive economic drivers so i think they need to see the table i think the question is are they a voting member or not i think that's in my mind that's what i'm hearing okay so johnny what you're saying

is that's uh i appreciate that that's not exactly what i'm asking for so what i'm what i'm suggesting is that the bocc member and there are seven that is assigned to serve on the port in the airport board of directors if that assignee was not uh was not serving on the merged mpo board so of the seven five could be serving on the merged mpo board the other two then could be assigned with the task of serving on the port in the airport board that way there wouldn't be an overlapping of of uh of uh

incentives does that make sense i don't yeah i know what you're saying but i don't know that

really solves our issue though okay okay um thank you for putting that forward for consideration um would you like to remain available for questions yeah i'll be hanging out until okay

johnny lives just down the street here in st petersburg so if you want if you want to johnny if

you want to hang for just a second did anyone specifically have um a a question for johnny before

we go on yes council member gabbard your offer is even more confusing to me now because you oh sorry the offer is even more confusing based upon you just said that the person that would be filling the seat would be ceo or staff but you're talking about the elected who is sitting there my assumption

correct and and thank you for that comment my assumption my reading of the comments that have been made concerning the uh hillsborough-centric representation from the port in the airport right you you have expressed that you feel they will be taking directives from the elected officials serving on the port and airport board and then passing those through to the merged mpo while you are right we have decided or we will propose that only staff can fill those two seats on the merged mpo board what the direction that the ceos take is from their board of directors right and so what i was proposing is that we could offer that the county commissioners serving on their boards of directors are not the same hillsborough county commissioners that will also be serving on the

merged mpo board okay i appreciate yeah i appreciate the clarification i don't know for me personally that that that takes care of the concern i understand so but thank you trying to help

problem solve here i i appreciate it thank you all right we're gonna do uh council member floyd next and

then commissioner flowers thank you i'll just quickly for you um could you speak to uh you know what debates are like on your board and you know what you think of the idea of uh unity and transportation

planning across your county a little bit uh councilman i definitely agree with your assessment that a lot of the tensions and debates that occur on my board are a function of the communities that are served and that falls along the spectrum of uh very rural to heavily urban um their transportation needs and perspectives are shaped by that land use and um you know that's that's not a secret historically hillsborough county unincorporated representatives have never really seen eye to eye with the representatives of the city of tampa on my board um now specifically with respect to the port and the airports role on our board um i can't say that they have aligned um with with either uh you know the port and the airport as wit mentioned they have operational needs their incentive is to move folks into and out of tpa as quickly as possible and to move cargo around the region their incentives are likely aligned with yours in the sense that you want to move your folks to the airport quickly and get them back home quickly and safely and so this notion of the hillsborough-centric voting block trust me i understand it we knew from the very beginning that this was going to come up but in my 10 years experience working with this board i have not seen an alliance emerge across hillsborough county

and the city of tampa they're very different thank you for that yeah i personally am struggling to imagine how with different incentives they would align like what would be the uniting thing other than like you know just a name of the county that they're all in they have very different competing incentives when it comes to transportation planning so i i appreciate that with respect that applies

to panellas and pasco as well oh absolutely yeah yeah commissioner flowers then freeney then vice

chair scott thank you madam chair um i will say that it makes me a little sad and this is no dig at you but it makes me a little sad for the comment to be um that the mere fact that we're having our meeting today we're trying to absorb and make a good decision that if we desire to ask for a consideration of something that that wouldn't be taken well so what that says for me right now is if you're telling me that right now and i thought we were in a negotiation phase i really did so if you're telling me right now that you don't think your board would take it well and quite frankly they would cease to want to move forward that gives me even greater concern and pause for us becoming an mpo and the fact that those of us that whoever it is that represents on this board if we have a difference of opinion that it would be considered i'm not saying that's how you intended it i'm just simply saying that's how i absorbed it um and i'm trying to be open-minded listen i've i've shared i want to see this move forward i've gone toe-to-toe with commissioner share about you know 25 member board and and his feeling that that was too big and all of that so i want to see this move forward i'm just simply saying that i thought we were in in a zone where we could still communicate because this was discussed at the tma so anyone who serves on that representing different commissions or whatever they're taking it back to their group this came back to us to have the discussion today i don't want to be made to feel like if i don't vote the way that this thing is then he was kind of gonna take his candy and go home i'm about to say take your candy and go home really um so anyway i'm sorry and that was kind of hard i know but i'm just saying all right

that's how i feel thank you commissioner flowers and yeah candy um mayor franey uh you can go to

commissioner scott first only because i we're talking the big picture i want to make sure i'm getting on the table the little picture um or put a pin in it and we'll talk about it another time and maybe that's the best thing because we can decide on our own representation later um but again i want to make sure like we've thought through that representation by that population because the small cities which is 20 of the cities looped into one seat on our apportionment and that's 200 000 plus people and i don't think it's fairly uh you know laid out and i think that north county cities are not fully represented in the way that they should when you look at the city of dunedin with you know curlew alt 19 state route uh state route 580 um la dc honeymoon island most visited park in the state um i just think that there there needs to be a little more equity with how this and it looks like you guys talked about it because of the the way there's zeros on the north cities and the south cities and that needs more discussion but i'll if we put a pin in that we can go back to the bigger certainly my view on this big discussion is if we truly are in a friendly negotiation we ought to be able to have what i think of as our first full discussion about this because i went to the collaborative labs but that wasn't what it was at all and so our first full discussion on this and send back our comments without it being taken personal and being a shut the door go home thing type thing so that's my comments

all right thank you vice chair scott thank you madam chair so back in february i was up in dc attending the naco meeting and attended the transportation committee meeting which was an all-day meeting and we had several presentations from usdot and what my takeaway from that was is that transportation funding is only going to get more competitive in the future it's not going to get easier it's going to get tougher so the ability to speak with 3.1 million people versus 1 million people in pinellas county and you know 1200 square miles versus 285 square miles is going to make a really really big difference in the future okay and then was it last friday i was at a business round table where congressman donalds was there who's running for governor and during his talk he talked a lot about regionalism in the state of florida and how important that was for our future economic development so we're on we're on the right we're on the right path here okay so i think i very very supportive of of a regional concept in a regional mpo in addition to that if you just think about you know a daily user of transportation if i'm going to drive from my house to the airport tampa international airport i'm going to drive through probably six different municipalities in two counties i'm going to drive on local roads i'm going to drive on county roads i'm going to drive on state roads i'm going to drive on the interstate system if any one of those portions of it if any lane mile anywhere is is not up to standard that person doesn't care who owns it that's our regional transportation system and i firmly believe that our regional transportation system is going to work better if we're speaking with one voice going forward so i i this is very very important i think we need to do it so you know i was at the the the meeting when we talked about um this apportionment plan and and uh i was with uh council member gabbard at the uh at that that meeting and and through that i i got more i got more comfortable with this apportionment plan i'm not going to say that i got comfortable enough with it i'm not gonna say that i absolutely loved it okay because i realized that tampa and hillsborough county and the airport and the port they're not always on the same page a matter of fact quite frequently they're at opposite opposite ends of the spectrum okay but i've never been completely totally comfortable with it so i i absolutely understand the the sentiment around around the table here and with enough of us feeling that way i think for me it's enough to kind of okay let's pause and let's ree reevaluate this um but i am concerned with if if hillsborough is going to say well if they don't take it then you know this is it take her to leave it kind of thing well then well then we're right to just say then let's move on and not wasting more time here so i hope that's not really truly what what the folks in hillsborough and tampa are thinking i hope i hope that's not not accurate so i would say that we agree in spirit here is kind of what i'm hearing with moving forward with regional npo but we're just asking that we look and and and and find a way that we can tweak that a portion that's my take i feel like i

need to just address real quick okay one quick comment so the reason that we amended the interlocal agreement to add that two major work products the long range plan and the transportation improvement program have to have a majority of the representatives of each county is because of this concern and in fact we put that language in specifically because commissioner sheriff brought these concerns to me before i don't know if you all understand the importance of those two documents we amended the tip today we couldn't amend the tip without that kumbaya among all three that means three out of four pasco have to support that it means five out of the eight of of our board have to support that it doesn't the 52 percent goes out the window with that provision that's in the interlocal agreement that's what everybody's going to vote on i think that's that's incredibly significant a project does not get funded without it being in the long range plan and we frequently bring you amendments to the long range plan because the scope or the cost of the project has changed the problem with t barda is that it was not an mpo it didn't have any of those rules didn't have any of those requirements didn't have any population breakdown it had a bunch of gubernatorial appointees and it had one or two very vocal hillsborough representatives who are convinced this was a creation of a pinellas legislator to force it down our throats i'm trying to avoid a scenario where a year from now we're sitting here dealing with a hillsborough or a pinellas or a pasco legislator forcing a merger down our throats with a scenario we didn't work on that would be incredibly frustrating to johnny to me to tinia i think and we've heard you don't want us doing that directly from the lieutenant governor's office they'll do it don't think they won't so i don't think johnny intended his comments as an ultimatum you can't make any changes but it's been so hard to get hillsborough and tampa to a point where we're reasonably comfortable we've got something we can work with i think that's more where you're coming from yeah thank you for that

opening to clarify the concerns from the commissioners i i definitely heard that no i don't suspect that hillsborough county or the city of tampa or my npl will withdraw from the process however you know i must communicate that there is a sense of serious urgency to begin concluding this process because we the risk is allowing state intervention and with october right around the corner the point where legislators will begin drafting their legislative priorities and maybe putting pen to paper on bills we want to head this off as soon as possible and so while it would represent a step back you know it's up to staff to work within the schedule if you all have serious concerns that can't be resolved we'll take them to our boards and see if we can come to a compromise but i i am expressing some frustration no do i think it'll be a deal breaker no but you know again we are we are very mindful of the sense of urgency that has been communicated to us by the legislators who are

looking to looking to make something happen all right thank you i'm gonna i'm gonna yes

so for that microphone please mike for that the urgency of it and thank you for saying that so with when i'm when i'm hearing which is why i asked the question earlier do we still have time to have additional conversation is is are we required right now based on what you just said for you to walk away with the decision saying we approve this right now because when you when you originally spoke about this you said that we still had time there was no i think we do okay i think a vote that's

negative would could be that way but if we table the vote okay we allowed us time to meet with the um regional representatives from the airport and the port on april 17th and then we came back and put it on our may agenda we'll be right in we'll be we'll be third but we'll be right around the same time that they vote and i don't think that affects the timetable at all okay so i know that there's a

motion on the floor and i said it earlier um i didn't know if commissioner sure would be willing to rescind that that motion to actually table this um moving forward but i think that's what i'm hearing and thank you for clarifying that um understanding because i really took it that that same way either i'm gonna take my ball and go home kind of mentality i i took that as well so thank you um with for that so moving forward um it's up to i know like i said we have a motion on the floor now so i'm going to turn it

back over to the chair thank you chair could i make a few comments um yes i have to agree with mayor feeney that um north county would need representation we can get to that later very much in favor of uh regional npo it's the only way we'll get more access to federal dollars when i was president of sun coast league of cities we worked hard with ridge county league of cities and tri county and we're able to accomplish a lot regionally and i guess i'd ask commissioner shearer if you'd be willing to amend your motion to population based with the port and airport being non-voting members that way we have a positive apportionment today or would you rather table it and come back to it well what i would say

to that is if we're going to do that we we vote if we if we i i would prefer to vote and if if the the rejection we do reject it then we come up with an alternative that we can send to them and we can vote on that like hey we'll we'll do this there'll be non-voting members that would be good with me i don't know how i would even word uh that into one motion so that would be that but uh just real quick i just we live in pinellas county and we think we see growth when we see buildings going up downtown that's not growth when you when you go out to eastern hillsborough county and pasco county 54 52 uh moccasin road wallow road all that stuff that's growth that's 500 000 houses coming in the next five years the you have to have money to to service those homes you need new roads you need new state roads you need no interchanges on the interstate you need new roads to get people to publish you need new roads everywhere they're they're politicians for pinellas county the elected officials that are going to be serving on this mpo this joint mpo are going to have an incredible amount of money a credible amount of pressure on them to deliver money for roads that will expand the eastern expansion of those cow fields that used to be and they are going to use this merged mpo every way they can to feed that growth it's money it's a lot we don't know what growth looks like you drive out there and i just i just feel like if we if we just say to them well maybe we'll do 52 percent but we'd really rather just tell them we're not doing 52 percent they're not going to get the whole ball of wax tell them that now and if they're so stubborn that they don't get everything they don't get total control i don't want to be a partner with them anyway because that's what we're going to get every time there's a vote they're going to think you may have another that's all we're going to be able to say so um i would prefer to have a vote and then if it gets rejected send back a proposal that says hey we'll do this that's that's kind of what i would prefer i i know that everybody wants to keep it alive i want to keep it alive i i really do want to have a a a tampa bay water type uh partnership but that is a third a third a third and this is not even close yeah this is the first time i've had

the nerve to speak um i do appreciate commissioner shear bringing this forward when i look at these numbers um i think that it's a mistake for three counties to give one county 52 of the vote um the fact that there's no way that even if two other counties agreed on something that they could um overtake a 52 vote concerns me very much on the other hand my entire life all i ever did was negotiate contracts and i think for us to uh and taking into consideration the time pressure that some might be feeling i think for us to just um have a vote and potentially say no um would be a big mistake because we don't know if we'll have a quorum at the next meeting and we have it now so i think it would be much wiser for us to make a counteroffer and i think a very reasonable counteroffer would be that we would suggest that one vote be removed from hillsborough reduced 13 to 12 and to add that to pasco i can't imagine that uh pasco would reject that um and i i think that that would be the most likely compromise and for every time that i've had to negotiate contracts when i heard anybody say no matter which side of the coin they're on take it or leave it or i'm walking away it doesn't happen you figure out how to work it out but if we're a bit even the bit uncomfortable with where we're at right now i think it would be foolish for us today to not make a counter proposal on something that would make the majority of people feel comfortable if we don't if they come back to us and say no that's not acceptable then then we have another step to take but i think we should take a step today thank you i for one really appreciate hearing

hearing your thoughts um did you want to say more i was just going to add that maybe one option and i don't know how they'll react to it would be to just say could the port and the airport have a rotating seat

um you know that way they're still both represented the not the seat that's not in the rotation could be a non-voting advisor you know i don't know if they'll go for that but it's one way to to do that

it's something all right i'm gonna i'm gonna take my turn and i i want to make sure that our friends here from from hillsborough and pasco are hearing what many on this board are saying what we're talking about doing what some board members are are urgently asking for is not more for us we're not even asking for more for pinellas those those who support this move are at i believe they're asking for what's fair and that's the side i want to be on asking for those who have more than half to give one to that which does not have enough and i can't help but look at this as i wrote down the alternative on chris's worksheet and i don't i don't see i can't see anything else now so i'm trying to figure out what to do with these top two because i came around to being supportive of the airport and the port having a seat but that's why we keep coming to meetings right because sometimes our views evolve we learn we gain insight from listening to each other and we can find an even better path forward and that's what we're asking today is what does better look like but i wanted to start by just making it crystal clear what's happening here and i hope that is appreciated that is the kind of that is the kind of regional mpo that i would want to be on is one that is looking out for everybody else and wants what's fair we want some assurance that when there is a pinellas project in front of a regional mpo we want the assurance that others that are at the table who have influence on what happens in pinellas will be looking for what's fair wit has explained how the voting on these most important projects work and although sometimes that can sound a little complicated and it would be great if there were scenarios or examples given of how that would work you know um i i like that that's set up that way i'm wondering if we can have that and a little bit of movement towards fairness on this chart i thought we were coming in today to figure out how many seats dunedin gets and how many you know like all of that and now it's like become so much more existential really um the t barda cautionary tale is another thing that's sticking with me right now and i don't know if there is anyone who has um something that they can share that would make some some board members feel more comfortable with this kind of a set up when the experience on t barda was something that we're trying to avoid now and probably when t barda was set up nobody thought it was going to be unfair nobody thought one county would bully the others or make it impossible to get things done anywhere else i'm sure that's not what anybody thought was going to happen when t barda got set up thanks a lot buddy i i wrote the statute for t barda um

what'd you that's that's yeah that's a good thing i i didn't know yeah well i i will i made the i made

the point that it wasn't the mpo and and that's a big difference t barda had no power to implement anything everything they had to do if they wanted funding they had to go to the mpos to get it prioritized so hillsborough county was looking at their total funding disaster for heart and they were like we are not going to prioritize anything for regional if we can't even fund heart that was where most of the sentiment was coming from commissioner and yeah well they they didn't want they didn't want all the they didn't want the expansion of the interstate it came all around the same time of tampa bay express so it was wrapped up in a bad interstate project that that they were mobilized against over in in hillsborough county and ultimately anything t barda needed to advance would have had to gone to the mpos to support and without hillsborough county being willing to support it because they were dominated at the time by the city of tampa it was a non-starter and that was just the reality that with the mpo and with that requirement that we have support in all three counties of the representatives for those major work products it takes all that away and you don't get any funding if you don't approve your tip and you don't approve your long-range plan so nobody gets any money and that's a huge difference between this and t barda they are completely different animals but i'm totally sympathetic to your experience because it was frustrating to me as somebody who had grand visions of this being a great

organization for tampa bay well i can tell you i've softened a little sitting here and and i could support the tabling and going back with the giving pascal county uh an additional seat pascal's at the mic right now hey how you doing all right so i i could support that so i've softened a little you know i've i've had some ice cream over here and um yeah and so i could i could do that yes ma hey how you doing all right tania gorman pascal mpo executive director and i just wanted to

thank you for letting us come here today and have the conversation with you all and so i just wanted to say i hear your consternations as my board pascal board mpo board had consternations when we began this as well we were the smallest of the three counties and we were like well we're not going to have a seat at the table it took us a couple of months to kind of massage through the conversations that we all have been having with our respective boards and you know we came to the conclusion uh the mpo board actually came to the conclusion that we wanted to be a team player in this merger we wanted to make sure that all needs were met and we knew that our counterparts we all have different ranges of growth we all are seeing different economic schemas happening throughout the region but we knew that we wanted to work together with the region even though we were the smaller counterpart so the four seats we looked at it all we said okay we'll have three of our county commission in the unincorporated area and one rotating seat with the cities while we thank you for the gesture of wanting to give us the seats we have made peace with those seats that we do have not saying that we wouldn't take a seat but the extra seat but we we have worked through those consternations and we see almost like the light at the end of the tunnel with this we know that we have the build out all along our corridors we have 1952 54 but we also are working on rangeland sun lake some north south corridors to get get evacuation routes for our county but we also know that we are a bedroom community and our citizens travel right south to pinellas and to hillsborough to work so it we all are rotating around this region and you know we know that we are coming to the table to make this a region that's going to move forward together and like what said we do not want to be in a place where legislature comes down and tells us well we're going to drive the car the car since you guys stop the bus right we're gonna we're gonna we want to be here we don't want to be forced into a scenario where that we don't have that say so um and to your t barter conversation i remember being a young planner um about planner two and listening to the conversations and going why aren't we advancing but i think t barter was a different mechanism it was a different time um we were also going through covid at that time i think trying to get the brt up and running down 75 uh the mpo is different in that manner where we have to come together to actually support and take action on our guiding documents and for our region currently we work together regionally we are doing we do a regional transportation plan we do a a joint list of priority projects we're working on that now and we do have a benefits cost analysis to look at our regional projects so but if we put that all together into emerged mpo we will be able to have more momentum and be looked at at this region like a boston or seattle versus now individually it's like arkansas or a smaller city in arkansas or a smaller city in tennessee so i think we are on the right track i think it's just illuminating how we can gain more wins together in solidarity versus um separately you got jack mariano to agree you did a great job yes and he definitely he definitely came to an agreeance and yes he did speak about tampa bay water which i love their model but the mpo we have a lot of processes legislatively federally and statewide that we must adhere to one of them is the apportionment plan so when that came to that conversation with commissioner mariano and having that he was like okay i see that i would love it to be like tampa bay water but i understand we have different constraints under the mpo so i think here today um again we have come before you for this apportionment plan and i think this plan could work if we all pull it together and we say okay we can see this moving forward i don't think this detracts from anyone being a part of the board especially if we're talking about we're going to have subcommittees we're going to have other ways of citizens cities communicating to the board from the ground up the purpose of mpo and its inception was for the citizens to communicate to the federal government that is not getting lost in translation here that will still be here and i know wit out of all of us has 27 cities that he must make sure is bringing forth their information their consternation their concerns and their challenges and their wins so we know this so and especially even for hillsborough and pasco we have cities as well but we all know that we want a mechanism that's going to work for all of us so i think if we move forward today with what we currently have for the table and we continue to refine our processes i think we will get somewhere uh to a better place and remember every one of us in here we all have our thoughts about the mpo merging i mean i had my own thoughts i'll be honest but i after i looked through it and i was like you know what this is going to take each and every one of our counties to a better place with our transportation planning it's even going to take i mean be more attractive to businesses to employers to people that want to move here and be a part of this region but even when my family comes from new york they're like this traffic is horrendous and they're from the city so i want this to be a better region for all of us circulating moving us about we have a lot of great transportation mechanisms on the table we saw the vertiports earlier we want to get regional rapid transit we want we want rail so we have to continue to work on it but i'll i would leave i'll end with this don't don't let uh one part of this process stop or we can move forward together

thank you so much oh you can wait right chair scott thank you madam chair um so just trying to

figure out a way to to move this forward um i'm kind of concerned about having a vote that sends a negative message you know a no vote so my preference would be that we don't take a vote today but and i think we can kind of do this by consensus to just say in spirit okay and probably just by not a heads in spirit we agree and there's a general consensus i think around an apportionment of 12 8 and 5 and just kind of send that message and and then we can talk about that at our next meeting and that there's the meeting coming up on the 17th for that i mean that's just i just don't want to send a no and said and send a message like this is a hard no because it's not i think you know just listen to everybody talk i think there's a general consensus that yeah we want to move forward with this and but we just want to to use our chair's language we don't want anything additional for ourselves we

want to make sure it's fair for everybody so it's kind of my thought vice vice mayor johnson thank you

first thanks for verbalizing something i was thinking about a lot as you know as possible possible solution is to you know have uh the airport and the port share a seat rotating because frankly in the future we are fighting for pasco's seat but you know in a few in after the next census it'll be a panela seat that will be gone probably not not a not not pasco's right it's going to be a panela seat that'll probably be gone based on current growth trajectories which is i'm still not concerned about that as long as the the we have the vote where you have to have the majority of each county approve it what would be helpful for me is to understand what kinds of votes would not need that majority of each county to approve like what kinds of votes could go through if if and when hillsborough has like 51 of the votes or 54 of the votes in the future would that just an example would be like we're

going to table this but on your agenda is approval of the us 19 quarter phase one plan that would be a simple straight up and down vote you know that's not an equity issue that's a quarter in a specific that could be in hillsborough it could be in pasco this one happens to be in both pasco and pinellas another one would be the adoption of your local priorities we thought about making that one of those you know super majority everybody's got to agree but you can't advance something on your priority list if it's not already in your long-range plan and then in order to get it funded you have to amend it into your transportation improvement program so it's not really at the same level as those other two votes voting for chair and vice chair selecting your executive committee those are the kind of votes i will tell you the sarasota manatee mpo is a two county mpo and they have a bylaw policy that their chair and vice chair rotate to each county so i don't see any issue with incorporating something like that into our bylaws so that we always have a chair from one of the three counties and a vice chair teed up and maybe somebody on the executive committee from everyone those are things i think we can work out in phase two we just got to get to phase two and i am afraid that a no vote here at phase one we'll never get to phase two we'll never see the operating agreements we'll never see the draft bylaws we'll never see that full context so that's just my concern with that yeah

and i i want to say like i i think that we should do this i absolutely support i concur with commissioner scott to say that i would not want to send a negative message today because i don't think that's going to get anything done get it move move this process along i do think having this discussion on on maybe a rotating seat um but again you know we're not talking about st p clearwater airport you know as they have a seat you know we could have we could certainly throw that out there to money the water if we wanted to but i get it like we this and i also want to respect all the time everyone spent on this already like frankly we've this already been discussed and decided by the people we sent um to have that discussion now they're bringing back what was decided there for us to vote on and i don't want to armchair quarterback it because i don't know how how hard that was to make happen or not uh but i and i appreciate pasco county saying hey you're you're you're trying to fight for my our seat and we're not worried about it like we just want this to happen because it's more powerful for them uh to get it done than not and so to me that speaks volumes on their concerns because again of anyone who could get you know uh railroaded or you know uh have have their voices not be heard loud enough it's it's pasco right now so um i think we should you know move forward i do think we i think we should table i agree with the tabling idea and come back next month with a you know see what's said

can i make a few procedural comments really quick maria white assistant county attorney i'm in the back corner um i've been waiting for the discussion to kind of um start to wrap up before i chimed in but there are two specific items that are scheduled for action today on the agenda i just wanted to clarify one is that the ford pinellas board and its role as the mpo um will approve a recommendation the apportionment plan which was presented that's one action item the second one is that the ford pinellas board and its role as the mpo will approve a recommendation to the pinellas county bcc to support that plan which i think that second item will become moot should we continue the first item or otherwise um vote to disapprove reject however you want to word that so there is a motion that's currently on the floor um commissioner shearer you can amend that motion you can rescind it um that's up to you but there are those two specific action items um that are scheduled for today so i uh i don't

i i started this and i'm glad that we all got talking about it because it's very important to me now i hear that we don't want to send a hard no i can be good with that i can be a good team player i'd like to see if hillsborough can too so i would be willing to table this as long as we uh do not vote on the other action items that we just leave those alone until our next meeting and we send a message to hillsborough that we're not happy with this apportionment plan we do not want them to have more than 50 i don't want them to ever have more than 50 i don't want anybody to ever have more 50 and if they're open to discussing readjusting this apportionment plan and they we're meeting next week right the tma on friday right so i will bring this up to them and let them know that if you're willing to negotiate on this apportionment plan then we will keep moving but if they say no it's our way the highway that we know what kind of partners we got and we can come right back here and we can reject this how does that sound everybody's good with that plan all right well then i will move to table my motion do i need to move to table my motion or just table my motion you can simply state that you're rescinding i'm rescinding my motion perfect and then i would like to make a motion that we uh how do you say

uh to continue to continue to continue the action items who made the second sorry uh that would be

vice chair scott i'm trying really hard to keep up with you all today uh so once yeah once we start moving we're moving commissioner shearer rescinded his motion and to clarify are you vice chair scott

seconded would you like to continue uh these two items to the next next month's agenda okay thank you

there was that motion and vice chair scott seconded that one that's what i meant so you're good i

need all those in favor and we also need a vote if you're not going to attend to your next item that

was scheduled for action today as well yeah i think we're gonna i would recommend that we not act on

the remaining two items right let's let's just call this vote so we have a motion to continue the merger discussion to may uh motion by commissioner shearer a second by commissioner scott all those in favor

i no no no you tina i think i think you were just clarifying and then i guess so that yeah that's fine but i don't know if they all those in favor part is your part okay sorry i i i you're i've got rules people you know that's what happens when you have a chair who went to catholic school it's like we've got rules um i i actually just wanted i want to make sure that we're um everyone's satisfied with the discussion if there's any more input council member got oh there was this so all right so we have um a motion and a second to continue this item at the next board meeting all those in favor please say aye aye aye aye any opposed the motion passes thank you everyone what a great discussion and it may not officially look like we moved forward but i think we did make progress today so thanks to everyone for the input and we're you're not done with this yet are you oh we are i okay there is extra material in i know when i've lost the room if you want to read more um information items can i

clarify something i'm sorry i i want to make sure that i thought my direction from the county attorney was that the other action item about us right but i think a vote has to be taken to table it to the next month because it was an action item is that true or no it's all in the same item it's all 70

all right we have a motion to table item 7d and a second by who was the second you got it yes all those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed the motion passes unanimously thank you um thank you thank you everyone our board meeting is adjourned