We'll call to order the June 8, 2026 meeting of the Ford Pinellas Board. Will everyone please join me in standing for the Pledge of Allegiance? Thank you. And now we'll go ahead around the room to do self-introductions by board members. And today we'll start with Commissioner Scherer. Would you like to begin? Pinellas County Commissioner Chris Scherer, District 1. Thank you. Council Member Brandy Gabbard, City of St. Petersburg. Ann Marie Brooks, Mayor of Madeira Beach. Deborah Fixander, St. Petersburg, City Council. Karen Love, Mayor of Gulfport, representing South Inland Communities. Ritchie Floyd, Council Member, City of St. Petersburg. Council Member Mike Menino, City of Clearwater. Tom Shelley, Deputy Mayor of Belair and representing the North Inland Communities. Kathleen Peters, Pinellas County. Mo Franey, Mayor of City of Dunedin. Commissioner Renee Flowers, Pinellas County. Ricky Butler, Vice Mayor of City of Pinellas Park. Brian Scott, Pinellas County Commission. Gina Driscoll, St. Petersburg City Council. And I'm Whit Blanton, your Executive Director. All right. Thank you. Now we'll go to citizens to be heard. Tina, do we have any citizens who have signed up to speak on any items that are not already on the agenda? Yes, Madam Chair. We have David Ballard Geddes, Jr. Thank you. Hi. Good afternoon. It's good to see everybody again. After having experienced an unequivocally inefficient form of subsisting government, it's time to deliberate a new constitution for the United States of America. The first sentence of Federalist Paper No. 1, again, abridges into a second constitution absent liberty. The preamble of our current constitution reiterates this fact, contrasting the United States of America as being posterior to that of the United States. Seen as captures of both land and water in Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, seen as this constitution as being under this constitution in Article 6. This constitution, a watershed constitution, has been constitutionally fortnighted for over 250 years under Article I, Section 8, Clause 17, intending to birth itself as unwarranted water jurisdictions under the 14th Amendment fortified as districts not to exceed 10 miles square assuming water as its powers of the earth as declared as self-evident using water as its Second Amendment weapon of choice, which, in light of this fact, the Declaration of Independence counterfeits itself as a preamble to Hamilton's second constitution based on water, that the Declaration of Independence in particular is a counterfeiting, backstabbing document. There is nothing divine, there is nothing sacred or honorable about the Declaration of Independence. We hold these facts of reality that these foundations are deaf to the voice of justice and consequentity. The fact that this foundational hold is declared as a candid world, that legislation is declared as pretentious, as declared that this government and all its so-called manliness is declared to eat us out of our subsistence, to burn down our towns, to ravage our coasts, to complete perfidy and works of death, fatiguing us into compliance in a long train of usurpations as declared, deaf to the voice of justice and consequentity while claiming to be divine and provident as declared. If Frederick Douglass were alive today, I feel he would likely denounce the 4th of July and the auspice of such star-spangled buildup of its ramparts. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Tina, do we have any others who wish to speak today? No, Madam Chair, we do not. All right, thank you. We'll go on to our recognitions and announcements. And today we have not one but three staff service awards to present. My favorite things to do. So I'm really happy to have, if I can have our folks come up, and Tina's going to help me with this one today. But first, I'll start in tenure. From the newest to the latest, let's see. All right, so you all know Emma. Emma is one of our planners on the Pinellas Planning Council, who is responsible for reviewing the land use cases and providing recommendations on those. And I just wanted to say congratulations and thank you. You have to get a picture. Oh, we didn't get it? All right, we've got to do it again. Thank you, Emma. And then I would like to also recognize Rebecca. Rebecca loves being in front of the public, but we really appreciate everything that you do. Rebecca is one of our accountants, and she keeps us in line with federal regulations because she's responsible for the NPO work. And now that I've thoroughly embarrassed her, I just want to say thank you so much. All right. I'm going to touch you. And I'm going to turn this one over to Tina because there's a staff relationship here, but I also wanted to say thank you so much, Maria, for everything you do. I asked to get this special honor today because I have the privilege of supervising one, only one, employee in the office, and that is Maria Kelly, and she's often behind the scenes doing a million things. And also I really wanted to recognize her today. Not only is she the only person that I supervise, she's probably the only staff member in the office who literally interacts with every single person in our office. She helps me manage all the kids, and they know that I finally call them the kids. And Maria might be one of the older employees in our agency, possibly the oldest, but runs circles around me and all the kids and wit. And she literally is the face of the agency. Whenever someone calls, it's Maria who answers the call. Whenever someone shows up, it's Maria that greets them. And I'd also like to point out that during all the years of COVID, Maria was the only person who never stayed out of the office. She showed up every single day, even during COVID, and ran our office so that the rest of us could stay home and still function. And I personally have no idea what I would do without having Maria. She is literally my right arm. If I think it, she makes it happen, sometimes before I think it. So she's been with us 10 years, and I just really wanted the privilege of being the one to give her this award and thank her for all of her years of dedicated service. She was planning on leaving me, if you can imagine, in January to retire, but she's agreed to stay with me for one more year. So congratulations, Maria. But I appreciate everyone. Thank you. And thank you to all three of you who are celebrating your years of service. You really do represent what's so great about Fort Pinellas, and you represent the best of what is Pinellas County. So thank you very much. We'll go on to our consent agenda. Do we have any board members who would like to pull any items from the consent agenda? Otherwise, I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval of the consent agenda as presented. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. Thank you. Next is our public hearing items. We have a few today. And the first one, we will go with the MPA's adoption of the public participation plan. Thank you very much. Valerie Brookins with Fort Pinellas. Today, I just want to briefly go over the public participation plan and some of the items that we've changed and updated. So I'll briefly touch on what it is, why we need it, what the components, and the things changing in it. So our public participation plan is essentially our guidebook for outreach. It serves as tools and strategies that we may use throughout any of our planning processes. And just noting that our bigger plans, such as the long-range transportation plan and other plans, they have their own public participation within them. But our general guidelines and things we pull from are all included in this plan. So why do we need it? First, it is a requirement as an MPO, but also we just want to make sure that we're hearing our citizens' voices, that we're giving everyone an opportunity to provide input on our projects and plans before they are adopted. So within it, we have overview of who we are as an agency. We highlight you as our board, our committees, the tools and strategies that we pull from, the requirements of the plan, and our core plans and processes, how we evaluate success, and then our appendices in it. So there are a lot of the components, such as timing, timelines for our larger plans that have their own requirements. So that is one component of it, what committees they must go to, the process, how many days for public outreach, such as this plan. You guys opened the 45-day public comment period in April. So that is a requirement, and all those are identified in this plan. So essentially one of the biggest things we did was last adopted in 2022, but we really wanted to simplify it. We heard that was a lot of the comments we heard, just making our plans easy-to-read language and our outreach when we're delivering information. So we started with the plan. We really simplified it. There was a lot of redundancy in different sections, so tried to reorganize it in a way that made sense and pull out those redundancies. And then also we updated some of the tools and strategies. A few came out that were more relevant during COVID period. So if they were irrelevant now, we took those out. But we also heard from our community that still social media is a big component, that people want to be notified and to follow us and find information that way. So that's one thing we highlighted. Also, focus groups was still a way that people wanted to be reached. So we also made sure that was included, and then we aligned it with state and federal regulations. A lot of it was just terminology, a few minor things that we removed from it. So we did take it to our advisory committees. All three committees did vote for approval and recommend approval to this board. So I am happy to take any questions you may have. Thank you. Do any board members have any questions on this? All right. Tina, do we have any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? No, Madam Chair, we do not. All right. Thank you. Madam Chair, if I could just add, I wanted to just call attention to the Citizens Advisory Committee. They met and heard this a few weeks ago and recommended approval, but they had a really thoughtful set of comments about how we provide follow-up to comments that we receive from the public. And they suggested that we do a little bit more to document our follow-up on those comments and then provide those follow-up comments if they're relevant to you as board members and to the Citizens Advisory Committee. So I thought their suggestions were great. I think Valerie's done a good job with this document, but it always helps to get the actual people who are the public and representing us to give us feedback on that. So I did want to give a shout-out to the CAC on that. All right. Thank you. So if we don't have any other requests for discussion, I'll entertain a motion for approval. So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. Okay. And all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. So next is the adoption of the FY27-31 Transportation Improvement Program. And we have Ryan Hutton presenting on that one. Good afternoon, everyone. So, yeah, I'm Ryan Hutton. I'm here to talk about our annual adoption of our Transportation Improvement Program, or the TIP. So just to give us some refresher on what the TIP actually is, so it's basically our short-term transportation planning document. It outlines the next five years, how it serves a couple of different functions, but basically it's part of our implementation planning. So it helps translate our long-term transportation goals into the short-term actionable projects over the next five years. It also serves for showing how our funding is allocated, so how our federal funds are being used for these projects. It includes our project prioritization, so all the lists and infrastructure improvements that we prioritize. It's also federally required, so any transportation project that is using federal funds or wants to be eligible for federal funds has to be inside this document. So every year we update our TIP cycle. Some of you may have remembered back in the fall, I came here and presented on our fall update, where we went over some of the county work program projects. In January, FDOT releases their draft tentative work program, so all the projects for their five-year work program. It's finalized in April, and then finally, around this time, usually May and June, we incorporated those materials, among them FDOT's work program, into our finalized TIP, so that we have that interagency coordination. So what's included in our TIP document? So we have some of our priority lists, so that includes our multimodal priority lists and also our transportation alternatives priority lists. Also, the SCTPA regional priority lists and also Tampa Bay transportation management area priority lists, and Chelsea will, coming after me, will be speaking more about some of these, what's on these lists. We also include our work programs, so that includes our transportation disadvantage work program, PSTA, and FDOT's five-year work program, as I just mentioned, which is probably the largest of the three. Our TIP, during our update, we also include some supplementary materials for your reference. So once our TIP's adopted, it's actually in the TIP now, but we'll have maps of all the projects in FDOT's work program. It'll show up similar to this. I'll give you the project number, where the location is, some reference materials, what the status of that specific project is, et cetera. And it'll also be uploaded to our interactive TIP online. So if you go to our website, there will be a link to our interactive TIP. It's basically the same thing as I just showed you, but you can click on it. It'll pop up with all the interesting information that you're curious about and shows all the different projects, labels them by type. Skip that. Okay, so I'm just going to go over some of the highlights from FDOT's work program. This isn't an exhaustive list of all the projects that are in the program, but I just want to sort of go over some of the bigger ones. And, again, if you need the reference, it'll be online in our interactive TIP, and also in the physical TIP, there'll be the budget tables for a more in-depth breakdown. We're starting off with some bicycle and pedestrian projects. So we have some of the Pinellas Trail Loop projects still going on, including the Phase 3 on Omerton Road to Haynes Bayshore. We have the trail loop on San Martin Boulevard to Macoma Drive, which is destined for construction in 2028. We have some multi-use paths and non-motorized trail connections on Joe's Creek Trail and also 688. We have some four multi-use path trail connections to the Pinellas Trail. That's on the bottom left where it's pointing to those four different dots there. That's destined for construction in 2027. We also have some other projects, 62nd Avenue North. I think maybe Chelsea will mention that more. That'll include bike lanes and sidewalk improvements. Some other sidewalk and ADA-compliant street gate updates on 46th Street North. I'll go to some other roadway and bridge projects. So here are some other highlights we have. So we have some pavement reconstruction from 686, some corridor lane widening on 688 over by Indian Rocks Road, some other resurfacing projects on Alt-19, and also resurfacing on 580, and all the construction dates here for you guys laid out in case you're curious. Then we also have some other roadway and bridge projects, including, of course, the Howard Franklin Bridge replacement and added lanes, which is under construction. We have another bridge replacement over the Smacks Bayou on Overlook Drive Northeast, which is destined for construction in the next couple of years. Another bridge replacement on 7th Street North over the Gateway Canal. And then some other bike lane and roadway improvements on 22nd Street North and also 28th Street South. And so that was just sort of a quick overview. Obviously, if you want more in-depth project details, again, it'll be in our interactive tip. We'll have all the breakdown, where the projects are. We'll also have these budget tables in our tip. These are the more, like, detailed ones that show all the funding by phase and by year, in case you're curious. And so we presented this to the three committees. They all recommended approval. So today we're also recommending the board approve this new updated tip. And if adopted, this official tip will be transferred to the federal government for approval. And that's all the information I have. So if anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to take them at this time. All right. Thank you. Of course. Any questions from board members? All right. Tina, do we have any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? No, Madam Chair, we do not. Okay. Madam Chair, I'd just like to say that we're very happy that the Florida Department of Transportation is such a good partner, because they have really looked at our priorities and followed our priorities. And, you know, to the extent that the funding is available, have funded those priorities. The governor's budget or the state budget that was just approved adds another $11 billion to the FDOT work program. So we look to continue that partnership with the state. And you all do get a preview of the draft tentative work program in the fall, typically. And so what this tip reflects is the approval of the state budget and the finalization of that work program from draft tentative to now final. And it'll go into effect on July 1st. All right. Thank you. I move approval of the transportation improvement program. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Any other discussion? All right. This one is a roll call vote. Tina, go ahead. Commissioner Scott. Vice Mayor Butler. Yes. Commissioner Flowers. Mayor Freeney. Commissioner Peters. Yes. Deputy Mayor Shelley. Yes. Council Member Menino. Aye. Mayor Ayub. Council Member Floyd. Mayor Love. Council Member Figgs-Sanders. Mayor Brooks. Yes. Council Member Gabbard. Yes. Commissioner Shearer. And Council Member Driscoll. Yes. That passes unanimously. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next item is the adoption of our transportation priorities. Hi, Chelsea. Good morning. Afternoon, everyone. So Ryan just finished up the work program. So now that that's put to bed and the TIP is adopted, we get to start working towards next year's TIP. So when FDOT goes to build the work program, they start with our priorities. And they start at number one, and they kind of keep going until they run out of money. They'll skip a few projects if they're not quite ready for prime time. But that's generally how we work together as a partner. So the biggest step that we can take is to give them that list of projects. And this is our time to do it. So every year, right after we adopt the TIP, we finalize the list of priorities to send to FDOT to build the next work program off of. Projects do remain on the list until they are 100% complete. That's why the priority lists in front of you have a top section and a bottom section. The top section is unnumbered because those are already funded in some way underway. And then I tried to highlight any changes that have been made to the list from last year. We're going to do – it was supposed to only be two priority lists, but there are four different ones in your packet today. So we'll take them one at a time, and I'll leave approval all together at the discretion of the board. So I really want to focus on the proposed new priority projects. Last month, I went over some of the changes from last year. But I really want to hone in on just kind of what those new priorities are that we're going to be seeking funding for. The first one is numbered number five. These are signal upgrades citywide in St. Petersburg. This comes as the result of our local government grant applications. This was the project that was recommended for funding. And the reason it gets to jump the list and go all the way up to number five is because we want to try to make sure that our local government capital grants get funded in the new fifth year. So we always put those really close to the top so that FDOT makes sure that they can fund that, and then they skip down to the rest. Now, the rest of the projects, these have come from a variety of locations, and we add that to the bottom of the list in priority order. We have a pretty detailed technical scoring criteria that we use for our projects. And so the order going forward is based on how they kind of hashed out with that scoring. So the first one, it's number 31 on the list. This is the construction of a traffic signal at Alt 19 and 16th Avenue Southwest in Largo. This project came out of the Safe Streets and Roads for All project that we did with five of our local government partners citywide. This is one of our first ones to move forward, the other one being in the city of Gulfport and St. Petersburg, 49th Street South. That has received a federal grant, so now we're advancing one of the ones from the Largo study. Number 32 is Gulf Boulevard at 146th Avenue in the city of Madeira Beach. This came as a request from the local government and also the Florida Department of Transportation for the installation of a mid-block crossing. Number 33 is East Lake Road. Pinellas County requested that we add this to the list to seek additional funding for the project development and environment study along that corridor. This will include intersection improvements, safety upgrades, and may even include potential widening. And number 34 is a lot of little projects mixed in one. We talked about this one last month. This comes out of the State Road 580 corridor study, and these several different locations, they all just really need some signing and striping upgrades. That was the recommendation out of the study. They're really, really tiny all alone, but if we put them together, it comes out to be at half a million dollars. So we're packaging them together as one project. 35 is the State Road 60 PD&E study. This is a request from FDOT. The study is actually underway, and so we are adding it to our priority list for planning consistency purposes. And then the last one, 36, this is the construction of a roundabout at Alt 19 in Virginia. If you're familiar with this area, you may know that a traffic signal was recently installed there. That is a temporary treatment. Ultimately, we are seeking construction of a roundabout and removal of that signal. And there's one project for removal. Again, mentioned this last month, but it's 62nd Avenue from 49th to 34th Streets. This project is still moving forward. It is on schedule, but federalizing the project and accepting federal funds made the project costs go way up. So the county has asked us to not give them the million dollars and to decrease the cost of the project in doing so. So we're removing it from the list. For the transportation, oh, I'll stop with that. That was the multimodal priority list. If anyone has any questions, I'm happy to take them before we move on. Good question, Chelsea. Yes, sir. On the 62nd Avenue, what's the time frame on that one? I am not totally sure off the top of my head, but I will look that up and get back to you. You're welcome. Hey, Chelsea. Thank you. Really quick, the presentation just prior to yours had a note about buy claims and such on 62nd Avenue? Yes. Just, is that different projects? That's the same project. Okay. And that's the one that's still moving ahead. Right. It's technically still in the work program, but we've been asked to remove it from the priority list. Okay. I hadn't seen the other iteration before, so thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Go on. All right. I'll go on to the transportation alternatives list. There are really no substantial changes. Those projects have kind of been advancing at a normal pace, and we just have no changes at this time, nor are we proposing to add any new projects, because we still have a few on there that haven't been funded yet, and there's really no sense in overloading the priority list if the existing priorities aren't moving yet. And then we shift to our regional priorities. The Suncoast Transportation Alliance, Planning Alliance, the SCTPA, this is the formal mechanism by which we coordinate throughout the region. It includes the MPOs that represent Hernando, Citrus, Pinellas, Manatee, Sarasota, Hillsborough, and Polk counties. So we all come together a couple times a year and mutually advocate for transportation priorities. Oh, that was the only slide I had. Sorry about that. So the SCTPA was supposed to meet last week and was unable to do so. So in the absence of the SCTPA meeting, each of the individual MPOs is taking up their priority list. So those have been provided to you in the packet. The first is the regional trip list, which is the Transportation Regional Incentive Program. This is a state revenue source, primarily from dock stamp revenues. And this funding is limited to regionally significant corridors and a 50% local match is required. Now, the projects that could receive trip funding must increase the capacity of the transportation system. That could be a road widening. It could be operational improvements. Pinellas County has been very successful at leveraging these funds to build out their intelligent transportation system, programs, program. Currently, the only Pinellas priority project that is on the list is 126th Avenue North. So the other projects are kind of scattered throughout the region. This isn't a very large pot of funding, so it only goes so far. But we're really happy to see 126th Avenue on the list on behalf of Pinellas. The other SCTPA priority list is for multi-use trails. Now, this one's a little different because there is no dedicated revenue source for this list. However, we've seen a lot of benefits from collective advocacy by having the projects on this list. So in Pinellas, our top two priorities are the Pinellas Trail Loop and the Joes Creek Greenway Trail. So all of the counties, again, are working together to individually ratify this list. And then when the SCTPA meets again in the fall, they're going to formally do so. But in the meantime, this will allow us to provide these lists to FDOT so that they can start building up the work program for next year. So today, we're seeking action for approval of these four different lists. And then we'll transmit them to FDOT for the next work program cycle. And I'm happy to take any other questions. Thank you. Questions? No? Okay. Good. Do we have any members of the public who wish to speak, Tina? No, Madam Chair, we do not. All right. Thank you. Then in that case, I will entertain a motion. Second. Can I clarify the maker of the motion, please? Are you asking to approve all of the lists as one vote? Or are you going individually? It's fine to do it all at once. I would just maybe ask you to rephrase the motion because you called out the multimodal priority list, which is just one of the four. So if you could just ask, maybe modify it. Priorities lists. Second. Thank you for that clarification. No, I got it. Oh, okay. I'm good. Thank you. Okay, we have a motion and a second, and this, too, is a roll call vote. No, this is. Commissioner Scott. I'm just going by with that. Go ahead with the roll call vote that need to be. Tina. Okay. Commissioner Scott. Vice Mayor Butler. Yes. Commissioner Flowers. Yes. Mayor Freeney. Aye. Commissioner Peters. Yes. Deputy Mayor Shelley. Yes. Council Member Menino. Aye. Mayor Ayub. Council Member Floyd. Mayor Love. Council Member Fig Sanders. Mayor Brooks. Council Member Gabbard. Yes. Commissioner Shearer. Yes. And Council Member Driscoll. Yes. That passes unanimously. Thank you. Next, we'll go to the public hearings for the Pinellas Planning Council. And for that, we will conduct them as follows. I'll first ask board members to affirm that they have reviewed the staff report and the 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. 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 will ask questions, then I'll close the public hearing, and the board will deliberate and take action. The first item that we have for today is case number CW26-07 for the City of Clearwater. I just want to affirm with everyone that you have had access and been able to review the staff report and the materials that are provided to you. Please speak up if that is not the case. Otherwise, we will move forward. And again, four Pinellas staff are available with a presentation and to answer any questions if any board member wishes to see that. Okay. Do we have the applicant, local governments here, available for questions today? Thank you. Then we'll go on to a request for any proponents who wish to speak. Tina, do we have anyone? Madam Chair, we do not have any proponents, opponents, or other citizens wishing to speak on this case. Okay. We'll go ahead and close that out. Go to the board for the opportunity to ask any questions. All right. We'll close the public hearing. And the board can now deliberate and or take action. And that means we could have a motion. Second. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Tina, did you get that? Okay. Do we need a roll call vote for this one? No. All right. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. Thank you. The next item that we have is also for the City of Clearwater, case number CW26-08. The City has requested a continuance of this item to July, and therefore I will entertain a motion for the Pinellas Board to allow for a continuance of this item to July. Second. Okay. Okay. Yes, I did. I got a motion and a second. Motion by Council Member Floyd, second by Deputy Mayor Shelley. Okay. Do we need to invite public comment for this one? All right. There's nobody here left here. Okay. We let them all know, so they left. All right. Thank you. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. Thank you. And just to clarify for everybody, this item has been continued to allow for more opportunity to meet with the public and have more conversation. I think the City staff indicated they might have a public meeting or workshop to address any questions or concerns from the neighborhood. Council Member Menino, did you want to add to that? Yeah, I had my light on. I appreciate you for touching on that. Just to give the board some clarity and also pay a little bit of respect to some of the citizens that took time out of their day to show up and join us today. 79 members of the community did sign a petition for us to continue this item. The questions that they had wasn't one of blocking it or stopping it. It was more of wanting more information, more understanding, and having a more robust opportunity for public engagement. Our staff is 100% supportive of that. We do have scheduled opportunities with the Citizens Advisory Committee to move through and make sure that our North Greenwood CRA and the surrounding community is comfortable with this. So I appreciate staff's understanding and time and the board for continuing this. Thank you. Thank you. I know what an important issue this is, and I appreciate that that is the reasoning behind the continuance. So thank you. All right, the next case is regarding the town of Reddington Shores, case number CW26-09. We do have staff available for presentation. I do want to affirm with board members that you've had the opportunity and have reviewed the staff report and the materials provided in the case. If not, please speak up. And next, is there any board member who would like to see the presentation on this case? No? Okay. We do have a representative, I believe, from the town of Reddington Shores, Mr. Dixon. Hi. Available to answer any questions that we might have. Tina, do we have any proponents, opponents, or citizens who wish to be heard on this item? No, Madam Chair, we do not. Thank you. We'll go ahead and close the public hearing. And does the board have any questions, or would anyone care to make a motion? Move approval. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second to approve this item. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. All right, thank you. Next, we have case CW 26-10 for the City of Pinellas Park. This one is a little different. There has been a request that the board consider indefinitely postponing this item, and that is the information that I have been given. And so, well, I just know with things like this, I just want to state that, like, just my part of the deal here is, yeah. So, on this particular case, I will entertain a motion to postpone this item indefinitely. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second to postpone indefinitely item CW 26-10 for the City of Pinellas Park. No question. Any other? Yes. So, is there a reason we're doing it indefinitely versus to some, or we just don't know? I can address that, and maybe Deputy Mayor wants to step in, or Vice Mayor. This has been caught up in the state's review of the City's Comprehensive Plan, and not this provision, but other provisions of the Comprehensive Plan have been found to be overly burdensome and part of the Senate Bill 180, so been declared null and void. So, the city will need to work that out with the state, and when they are able to work that out with the state, we'll come back with this effort. Anything else, Vice Mayor, you'd like to add? So, it's catching a lot of local governments. SB 180, City of Tampa, is dealing with it right now, I'll tell you what. So, it can come back, we just don't have a definitive date by which it will do that. All right, any other questions? All right, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. Thank you. All right, that closes out our public hearing items for today. We will move on to our PSTA activities report, and I believe Council Member Fick Sanders, the Honorable Chair of the PSTA Board, is going to present that report for us. Yes, good afternoon, everyone. The PSTA Board met on Wednesday, May 27, 2026. We began the board meeting with the special recognition of a young author from St. Petersburg, Devon Miller. Mr. Miller wrote an award-winning children's book called A Bus Can't Drive Empty. The board approved several items during that May meeting to include an annual joint planning agreement with Ford Pinellas to fund transportation planning activities at PSTA, which was on the consent agenda for today for Pinellas forward approval, an eight-year fair compliance software contract that would help reduce fraudulent use of Flamingo cards, a two-year mobility-on-demand contract with providers such as Uber and Lyft under PSTA's access program. M.O.D. provides an on-demand door-to-door rides for people with disabilities unable to use the fixed-route bus service, and the FTA-required program of projects list, which outlines how PSTA will be utilizing the annual federal apportionment of capital investments such as bus purchases, bus bay construction, and other projects. PSTA hosted the second of two board workshops on the fiscal year 27 budget on Friday, June 5th, and the next PSTA board meeting will be on Wednesday, June 24th, 2026, and that completes the report, Madam Chair. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions about the PSTA report? All right. Terrific. We'll go on to our regional activities report with Witt. All right. Thank you. So I just want to give you all a little bit of a summary of the meeting we had on Friday at the Tri-County Board of County Commissioners meeting over in Tampa. I was asked to present an update on the merger, and there was a very good discussion, robust conversation about that. And I brought my colleagues, Johnny Wong and Tania Gorman, who've come here to this board meeting up with me, but I gave the presentation and answered questions from the board. A lot of interest in the regional MPO merger, and I thought it was a good conversation. I don't know that there was real clear consensus, but there were some different opinions and perspectives, and they were very candid in that. We continue to be focused on the apportionment plan for the board. And so we did provide, it's in your packet, a set of bylaws, an interlocal agreement that are in draft form. There wasn't a lot of discussion about those, but I do want to point out some provisions that are in there, and then I'll get to where the discussion really focused. So in the bylaws, I did highlight for the county commissioners that there is a provision for an executive committee that could look like Tampa Bay water that currently in the bylaws indicates there'd be a chair, a vice chair, and a treasurer secretary position. And I've suggested that we add one seat from each county delegation that would make six members of the executive committee. So you could have two, two, and two. There is in the bylaws a clear rotation in the leadership so that they would come from one, from each county. And then that would give each of the three counties an opportunity to have a chair. And if we added the at-large seats, then again, you have six. And there was some discussion about whether that executive committee could develop and vet policy ideas and then bring those back as a recommendation to the full board. There was some concern about, you know, having too much power vested in the executive committee. But again, there wasn't a whole lot of discussion about that. Currently, this executive committee for Ford Pinellas really has one job, which is to review me. And that'll be on your agenda here shortly, later in the meeting. But that could be expanded. And the example I gave is the Seattle region, which has six counties and many, many cities in their MPO. And their governing board is over 100 members. And they meet once a year. And the executive committee does most of the heavy lifting in terms of policy throughout the year. I think they meet monthly. So that's not necessarily the only model, but that's an example of how that executive committee could function. I also highlighted the voting provisions. And you all at your April 8th meeting entertained a resolution that we didn't vote on that had some guardrails for majority approval of the TIP and that long-range plan, which you just approved the TIP. That would have to be done by a majority of each respective county delegation. That is not currently in the bylaws, but I highlighted it as something that we could add to the bylaws. There is a concern that it could conflict with Florida statutes, which requires a simple majority by roll call vote of the TIP and the long-range transportation plan. I'm not an attorney, but I look at having a majority in each of the three counties as being a simple majority as well. So that's a question. And if it's not consistent with Florida statutes, that could be one of the things that we ask the legislature about. And that would effectively eliminate any concerns that one county could dominate the allocation of transportation dollars or the identification of transportation projects. The draft document says all other actions would be decided that way. And I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that provision because that could really bog down the actions of an MPO if everything else you did was subject to that same majority provision. I did highlight for the BCC that the bylaws could certainly have that provision and wouldn't conflict with state statutes. Again, not a whole lot of discussion about that. And then we had questions about how the MPO was funded and hosted. And the interlocal agreement does include language with 50 cents per capita as local source of funds. And that 50 cents per capita would come either from all voting members on the MPO board or from the four required to designate the MPO. That's a decision that could be made. Again, we didn't have much discussion on that, but that was highlighted in the agenda. So we'll get to those issues later. That's all to be studied as part of phase two. And I did lay out a timeline for bringing that back. And it looks like we'll be in the fall, September, October, when we would bring back a full package. And we'll do it first to the MPOs, and then we'll go to the county commissions and the city of Tampa. And just a reminder that a merger requires approval of the three boards of county commissioners and the city of Tampa. Now, where most of the discussion was, was on a potential alternative path to structuring the board, not by population, but by some other undefined manner to create an equal number of representatives. And I think Commissioner Scherer suggested seven, seven, and seven from the three counties. Um, there was some discussion about that, um, and one commissioner referenced one MPO in Florida has already gone that route. And I want to highlight that for you. Uh, that is Miami-Dade County has done that. Uh, Miami-Dade County is a unique county. They're not fully consolidated, but they have a two-tier government process where the county level, Miami-Dade County handles region-wide services such as public transportation, emergency management, seaport, airport operations, and county-wide zoning, even in the cities. Um, so that's a little bit different. And then they have 34 independent municipalities, um, below that. Um, and so Miami is kind of a unique case. Um, and, um, they also, um, are, you know, people refer to them as the state of Miami. So it's a little kind of different. Um, one thing that about their board though, is all 13 members of the county commission serve on the MPO and then all the cities over 50,000 have one seat. So Miami with 500,000 population has one vote. Uh, Hialeah with 235,000 has one vote. And there are five gubernatorial appointees to that board representing the school district. Um, um, let's see, I have it here, school district and local government selected. Um, and, um, I can't remember the others, but there's, there's five gubernatorial appointees. Um, there was, like I said, not a lot of consensus, but, uh, there were some commissioners who favored this approach, identified that they've met with state legislators and they've got support for advancing something that might make the board look more like a Tampa Bay water structure. Uh, and then there was some pushback on that, um, with some members saying they didn't want to go against what MPOs have already voted on, uh, and, uh, concerns about navigating the legislative process. So, um, it was good to hear all those perspectives. And I think the staff learned a lot, uh, from that conversation. I do want to just put a little caution out there about going the alternate route, uh, because that opens you up, um, to, um, mechanisms that, um, aren't based on something you can quantify. And when we start off a new MPO based on population, which is what we've recommended, you can look at the numbers and you can see how the votes go. Uh, otherwise it, it could be, um, um, something that's different. And MPOs were created to be nonpartisan, uh, to be technically based, um, and to provide, um, an avenue for local governments collectively to make decisions on transportation priorities. And I just worry, uh, that if you involve the governor and the legislature in creating that board, you may be going in a different direction. So that, that'd be my counsel. Uh, but those are things that we are going to work on. And, uh, tomorrow I'm meeting with my colleagues and we'll debrief, uh, from Friday's meeting and we'll try it out a path forward. And I, you know, we have members who are here. I don't know if they want to say anything about the meeting, but again, I thought it was a helpful and productive discussion and I appreciate it having the opportunity to be in front of the County commissioners. All right. Thank you. Um, question. No, I'll just, uh, just kind of echo what Wood said. I thought it was a really, really good, robust discussion kind of all the way around the table. So, uh, glad we did it and, um, more to come. All right. Thank you. Council Member Menino. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, what, can you just give a little clarity? Was your counsel that you just gave, was that directed more, um, at the board designations and being gubernatorial or are you doing that regarding the proportionality of it? Well, um, a couple of, a couple of things. I think first it's a, it's a cooperative process that we have with the state of Florida to develop priorities and then they follow our priorities and put them in the work program. So if you have a bunch of gubernatorial appointees on your MPO, I think it potentially could stack, um, the, the impetus of the MPO in favor of the state. Uh, so that is one concern. Um, the other concern is that when you base it on population, then you give everybody an avenue to having decision making process. And the city of Tampa is almost 500,000 population. The city of St. Pete is almost 300,000 population. So I would like to see if we're going to do an equal member, an equal representation of Pasco Hillsborough and Pinellas. What does that look like from a city perspective? Are they a relatively equal part of that seven? And I don't know. So again, I just have some concerns, but because it's not like the state of Florida has given us a method, a methodological option a, which is population and another methodological option B, which would be like per capita spending on transportation or something like that to have a seat on the board. It's a, it's undefined. And so given that I worry that you might be setting up this new organization, um, in a way that already alienates some of our potential members who don't feel like they would get a fair shake out of that. Just my concerns. And I haven't talked about those with my partners. So you're hearing it for me. That's what I wanted to hear. Your clarity. Thank you for that. Council member Gabbard. Sorry about that. I guess, uh, I just kind of want to make sure that I understand where this is coming from. Um, because I'll just kind of go back to the gubernatorial appointees. First of all, I don't get a vote. I'm not, you know, city of St. Petersburg won't vote on this, but I would just issue a lot of caution, um, in that regard. I think that your point about, you know, that could potentially become very partisan. I have concerns about that. I also have a lot of concerns, you know, we, as local governments, local and county governments coming together to form this, I think that it's important that we maintain that autonomy in our body. And once you start to put in gubernatorial appointees, now you're starting to give a lot of power to the state, potentially to the governor's office, potentially. We had a lot of conversation around apportionment and even talking about the port and the airport, we were concerned that there was going to be this weighted voting, right? By having these two in addition to Hillsborough. And I thought we did some really great work a couple of meetings ago to make that more fair. To see and hear this, it feels like we're just completely off in left field now. And we're really losing that fairness, if you will, for lack of a better way of saying it, across the three counties. And sitting on the Regional Planning Council, I chaired it. Commissioner Flowers is currently chairing it. Mayor Freeney just chaired it. That board has a lot of gubernatorial appointees. And I will tell you, it is very hard to even get those appointments filled a lot of times. It has been for a very long time. And we have issues with quorum because of that. So that's a whole other reason. Even if you don't want to talk about the partisanship, even if you don't want to talk about the Tallahassee overreach, just the functionality of making sure that gubernatorial appointees are filled and that they actually show up and participate and are appointed by people who are educated and knowledgeable in transit for the three counties, I think that you're opening a whole can of worms there. And once we give that up to the state, we can't get it back. I want to be real clear that nobody at the meeting suggested gubernatorial appointees. That's how Miami. I'm just going by the Miami-Dade example. Okay. And one commissioner did say another MPO has done it. So it's a cautionary tale just to be mindful of, not necessarily that anybody's advocating that. I want to be clear about that. Well, that's my position on that. If that continues to become part of that conversation, specifically with making it look like what Miami-Dades look like, I have no interest in that. I think that we have come a very long way over a very long period of time. And for us to now be on the threshold of what could really turn the Tampa Bay region into an area that is competitive for federal dollars, I'm really very cautious and concerned about why we aren't just moving forward, trying to find a way to make these bylaws as fair as possible again. I don't love the word fair, but, I mean, that's kind of, I think, where we are. And just trying to find a way to make sure at the end of the day, the most important thing is that our residents are well represented and have a good level of representation. And I just don't want to see anything water that down. So thank you, Madam Chair. Anyone else? Oh, Commissioner Scherer. Yeah, thank you, Chair. I hadn't prepared to talk about this today because I thought we covered it very well at the Tri-County meeting. I was glad we had that discussion. One of the things I wanted to talk to you all about, since I have time now, is that I think it was a mistake for us to even vote on apportionment because we didn't have the bylaws draft and we didn't have interlocal agreements in front of us, but we did. Now, a lot of people told me, you know, a lot of people suggested to me that we're always, don't worry about the apportionment, what matters is the bylaws, because the bylaws are going to contain all these supermajority requirements. It's not going to be a problem. Well, if you can look at your drafts, you can see it is a problem. So I think it was a mistake to do that. The other thing I want you to know is, like what's said, nobody suggested gubernatorial appointments. Nobody. You know, I always have believed that Pasco, Hillsborough, and Pinellas should decide who represents them, no matter what the apportionment is. We shouldn't be deciding who represents Hillsborough. And then the last thing is that the reason I still have a problem with the apportionment is, Hillsborough did a great thing when they said, hey, we'll take one of our votes, we'll give it to Pasco, and everything will be great. But the truth is, the state law is going to require, after the 2030 census, that we reapportion the new MPO. And we'll be right back to Hillsborough County having 52% of the vote. So, and if we don't have the bylaws that protect us, we're not protected. So I think the next time, I'm so glad to hear that we're going to vote on all three items next time, not just separately. So anyway, that's kind of what the discussion we had, and I was glad we did. It was a real, but if you don't have, I didn't see it. It's not, I tried to look it up and view it. You can't see it. Yeah, I haven't seen that. So anyway, it was a good discussion. I'm sorry some, you don't think the apportionment should be discussed again, but I still go back to that. It's going to change. It's going to be reapportioned in the future. And to clarify, we are still going to need all three counties and the city of Tampa to vote on the apportionment plan along with the bylaws. But I'd like to have the MPOs make a recommendation to them first before we do that. And that'll be in the fall. Commissioner Flowers. Thank you, Madam Chair. At the Tri-County meeting, one of the reasons why the conversation became a little bit more robust than what I thought it would be was because of Hillsborough County giving us some sage advice as it relates to the city of Tampa. And the conversation, or maybe lack thereof, and the very strong suggestion that we give them an opportunity to communicate, I'm trying to be as polite as possible. And I have seen some of their meetings and have had to deal with the city of Tampa not being present at one of my committees that I chaired that went under because we could never get a quorum, essentially. And so we did select to do that. Overwhelmingly, though, there were some individuals in the room who still shared some caution, but the majority of the persons in the room were saying we need to just get this thing going and get it moving because we don't want someone else to tell us how to manage ourselves. One of the things I said was, you know, we have been pushing back at the state preempting us, but then there was a request to go ahead and allow the state to make the decision for us. I said that's a complete mistake, utter mistake. So it was a lot of conversation. Bylaws are being worked on, if I'm not mistaken. And the other thing I shared was when they merged CareerSource, Pinellas, and Hillsborough, both of us had our own separate bylaws. When they merged us, we had to act like we were a brand-new entity, and we had a draft of bylaws. But then once the main board formed, they had an opportunity to add, to put some more meat on the bones, if you will, to those bylaws. But we gave them the structure. And whether we do it or not, they get a chance to add meat to the bones or whatever once they formulize, once that group formulize. So I just want us to work towards closing this loop. And not saying for expediency, because we've been working on this a long time, but I want us to go ahead and close the loop and start focusing on the projects. Because I had to go to Orlando last week, and where it should take me an hour and 45 minutes, I'm not going to tell y'all how fast I was going. But anyway, my ways said I was going to get there. I left home at 2.30. My ways said I would get there at 6.21. I got there a lot faster. I'm not going to, yeah, because I'm going to plead the fifth. But I got there, but not as quick as I wanted to. So when I saw that, I said, we got to do something. Something's got to happen. So I just wanted to share that, that there was concern in the room. It was a very robust conversation in a good way, just about, we need to get moving on this. But we've got to have Tampa. Tampa has to come on board. So we thought bringing them to the table and allowing them to have communication and us communicating with them would be a good step forward. So what you're saying, based on your career source merger experience, is that it can all work out. And that was Pinellas and Hillsboro. And the way that the legislation read, it automatically gave Hillsboro more representation than Pinellas because of population. So we didn't even have a choice in that matter. But thus far, and I admitted it, I said, you know, I had apprehension, but I have to admit that the board had, the combined board has been doing some really good work. Even recognizing when we got, when we received a financial allotment, it was Hillsboro that said, you guys are getting messed over in the dollar amount for services. And so, you know, I started working with the executive director to see what we could do internally on our bylaws as the consortium to change that so that our residents and Pinellas would be able to take advantage of some of the dollars that Hillsboro wouldn't use. So it's that kind of collaboration and cooperation that I'm very glad we were able to work out, that I was apprehensive about in the beginning. Yeah, we were in the papal. But it's working out so far. Yeah, that's encouraging. Thank you for sharing that. Vice Chair Scott. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, does state law require us to reapportion, or is that an option after the census? It requires we undertake the exercise of looking at the population. It doesn't require that we change. Hillsboro TPO didn't change the makeup of their board with the 2020 census. Neither did Pasco. We chose to change it and expand this board, but not because population drove it. But I think it was Commissioner Egger's suggestion that we wanted a bigger – since we were moving toward a merger, he wanted more people in the room. I was not here. Yeah. I can speak poorly of him? No. He wanted more people in the room, and so that was why we ended up with a 19-member board. Does state law define a supermajority, so far as you know? I'm not aware of state law defining a supermajority. All I do know is that for the TIP and the LRTP, it says a simple majority by roll call vote. So, I think we need to get a specific legal opinion on whether a majority vote – a simple majority vote includes counting that three ways, by Pasco, Pinellas, and Hillsboro separately. And if not, then that would be a legislative change I would make. But to your point, Commissioner Scherer, I think that should be in the bylaws, and I put it in the resolution for a reason. I didn't – I wasn't able to get my colleagues to agree at the last minute to stick it in the bylaws, but I think that's a conversation we're going to have tomorrow. But when it comes to the bylaws, as far as if we wanted to have – we could put in there a supermajority required to change the makeup of the board in terms of apportionment. So, that could be in the bylaws as a way to kind of lock in. You could. Right. You could. You could have the bylaws address apportionment. Again, you just have to look at those population figures and go through the exercise. And then, ultimately – and this is another question I got – is the governor just a rubber stamp of the recommended designation of the MPO, or could the governor reject it and tell you to do it a different way? Right. It's a consultation with the governor. So, ultimately, it's going to be a partnership between you all as county commissions in the city of Tampa and the governor on whether this MPO merger goes forward and how it looks. And federal law also recognizes the MPO is not us staff. The MPO is the board. And so, when we talk about the MPO, we talk about the board. So, that's – it's certainly an important conversation. And I'm sorry, we did – at the meeting, we didn't just say representative from city of Tampa. We also said representative from the city of St. Petersburg. Did you – yeah, we also said representative from – because then Commissioner Gwynne said that she – we should extend the invitation to the chair. Oh, right. Yeah. So, we have requested for a representative from the city of St. Petersburg. The invitation will go to the chair, and if the chair chooses not to attend or can't attend, then they assign whatever council members – so, it's the city of Tampa and the city of St. Petersburg and Clearwater. It was the three. That's what came out of the meeting. I've had my second cup of coffee. Oh, yes. Anyway, I wanted you to just have the materials I gave for that meeting. So, you have them. We will bring them back for further discussion later on. Chair? Well, it just occurred to me. Our county attorney is here, the attorney for us board. Can we give her direction at this meeting? This reapportionment after the census, it's a big question for me. I would really like to know definitively what our legal staff thinks. I'm not an attorney. You're not an attorney. I read it a different way than you're reading it. I believe that we will, but if we don't, I'd like to know because it helps me process the – We can bring that back for you at the next meeting. Yeah, I'd like that. I would like a definite opinion. Do we have to reapportion after 2030 or not? I mean, if the population didn't change, obviously, there wouldn't be a reapportionment. But if the population mix does, is it required? Because I thought it was. Yeah. We have to make a reapportionment determination, but that determination could be to not change, even if population might dictate that. Well, that's what I want to know. Well, I read it completely different, and I would love to be wrong about that because it makes me nervous. Yep. Well, we don't want that. So we will give them a chance to look at everything and put that on the agenda for the next meeting. We'll put it on – we'll actually bring it up tomorrow morning in our discussion, too. And, Madam Chair, just one more thing. Yes. We just had a presentation at the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council from the Florida Chamber in regards to the 2030 census. And I will be happy to forward you the link from the presentation, but it talks even about the – it provides the analysis of the undercount from the 2020 election of over 800,000 people and then the dollar value that went along with that undercount for – and it broke it down to Pinellas County. I think it was $365 million. It says that we lost in federal revenue because of the undercount. So I'd like to send you that link as well, and that may kind of show the pattern that the chamber is looking at when it comes to growth in our region. We just had that presentation before we came to this meeting. It was a very good presentation. All right. Can we get that link sent to all the board members, please? Sure. Let me email them right now and tell them to do it. If you – Commissioner, if you get it to me, I'll make sure we get it out to the board members. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Certainly, certainly. That way we're all sunshiny and appropriate. Yeah, but it was really good. The presenter – you may want to invite her here. I don't know, but she was really good. The slide presentation information was really good. But the data is recent. There were all of the counties listed out that they are anticipating growth for. None of the three counties that we're talking about were in that. So just a little precursor to what they're expecting in 2030. Yeah. I think all the more reason to work together. Anyone else? Okay. This is great. Did you have anything else, sir? Well, then let's move on to something. If there's anything more exciting than a regional merger of MPOs, it's the executive director's annual performance evaluation. So we have that information in our backup material. This is an action item. We have had our executive committee meetings, both before and after the evaluations went out, reviewed the results, or reviewed the process, the results, and the recommendation that we wanted to make. So just on that note, I'll entertain any questions from the board regarding the executive committee's actions. We have other executive committee members here. If either of you wanted to say a few words as well, I was happy with where we landed, and I welcome any chance to answer questions or have a discussion. Good job. Thank you. Vice Chair Scott? Yeah, I just echo what our chairwoman said here. We sat down, we reviewed the process, reviewed the results, and had a suggestion or two. But, you know, happy with where we landed, and the recommendation is to accept the report and that WIT's raise be tied to whatever the general for the county employees is, which is what our county administrator does as well. Yeah. Mayor Franey? I'll just ditto that. But we all think WIT's doing a good job. Obviously, everybody had input to this. And, again, I mean, staying true to what we've done before, which is whatever the rest of the county employees get. But overall, it was a very good evaluation and a great discussion, actually, at the executive committee meeting about, you know, just kind of seeking out if there are some areas for improvement, kind of trying to understand those a little bit better from what direction they came from. But everybody felt like WIT's doing a good job. Just to elaborate a little bit on some of the commentary, one discussion item was working on improving our onboarding process for new board members. And, you know, it's a lot. And it might still be a lot after two years. But doing a little bit more of a general orientation. One of the things we put in the bylaws of the regional MPO was to require that within a year of appointment that everybody attend a training of the MPO Advisory Council. So I would encourage you all to do that. It was offered here in Tampa last month. That's a great way to be oriented. But we'll also look at some things that I can do or we can do as a staff level. And then the other item that I scored relatively low on is private sector relationships. And there's probably a lot that we're doing that aren't necessarily visible. But there are some suggestions on how to work with Pinellas County Economic Development and other organizations, EDCs, downtown partnerships, chambers. And so we'll look into that as well. But I really appreciated the feedback. Madam Chair, if I can add in. Oh, yes. As an executive committee meeting. Thank you, Whit, for bringing that up because I was the one with the recommendation about the onboarding. And the reason why I definitely wanted to voice my commendable compliments for Whit is because my score seems somewhat low, but I hadn't been on for Pinellas long before I had to do the evaluation. So it wasn't feasible for me to do above average and excellent because I hadn't had that experience. And so that's where the recommendation of the onboarding process, understanding a little bit more about it other than coming to board meetings because you don't get all of the information just by attending the meeting. So, again, I agree with Mayor Freeney. It was a really good conversation. And there was a lot that we did recommend. And so I'm hoping from those recommendations that the executive committee at least will be able to get what measures will be taken to implement some of those recommendations that were provided. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Commissioner Peters. Yeah, and I concur on what Council Member Vic Sanders said because I hadn't been here long enough to give any kind of real evaluation. So, but I implied that in my report. So, but Mayor Freeney mentioned your salary based on what the county is going to do. So, just FYI, there is consideration of the county freezing all salaries. So, if you are implying that you assumed that there might be a pay increase, that's not an accurate assumption because there may be this year pay freezes as a result of what happened next year. So, just I don't want you to assume and make an implement, you know, imply that he's going to get what the county is going to get. That may not be anything. So, just want to make that clear. I think the motion was to be consistent with the unified personnel system. So, if that's zero, that's zero. Anyone else? Okay. Okay, and Tina, do we have any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? No, Madam Chair, we do not. Okay. Then the request today, well, the action item today would be for the board to vote to approve the recommendation of the executive committee concerning the executive director's salary adjustment. Second. Second. All right, thank you. Any other discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. And thank you, Whit, for the extraordinary job that you do and for being so open to constructive and helpful ideas on how to get even better at what you do. All right, next we will have our director's report. I just have a couple of items for you today. I'd like to draw your attention to our minute and focus looking at industry trends in Pinellas County. And this is something we put together and this is something we put together, Nicole, of our staff as a result of the conversation at the last meeting where there were some questions about our manufacturing base. And just wanted to point out that our manufacturing base is still robust among the three counties in the Tampa Bay area. We have more manufacturing jobs in Hillsborough County. I always love telling that fact when I go around the state because most people think it's tourism, tourism, tourism. But we have a very strong manufacturing base. It has declined a little bit over the decades since 2005, but it is still a market leader in the region. And there's some information. I got a couple of questions from some of you all. I just wanted to highlight. So one question I got was where does marine sciences fall into this? They're classified under professional and business services cluster. That may sound odd, but that's where it is, professional services. And then emerging industry. It's noted that construction is an emerging industry, and we've been building homes and constructing things in this county for decades, right? But what that means is that it's related to the location quotient. So we don't have as many jobs in construction as other counties, but it is growing. So that's what it means by emerging in that category. But I thought it's good information. It's not intended to be a lot of talking on these points, but you have the information. And if you have any questions, I'm sure Nicole would be happy to answer any better than I can. Any questions? And then if I can go on without any other questions, the next item is the Build America 2050 Act. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released this bill a few weeks ago, I think on May 17th. And it is the first official congressional action for reauthorization. We don't have a Senate companion bill yet, and this has not been heard on the full House floor. But it mirrors a lot of the provisions in the Basics Act that some of you have heard about and spoken about in previous meetings. The Basics Act was filed by other members of Congress, but it didn't pass through a committee. And what this and the Basics Act both do that we like is it reinforces and solidifies the role of MPOs in the federal transportation program and actually gives MPOs some direct obligation for funding. In some cases, it also streamlines the process considerably, something that we've heard a lot about, and puts significantly more dollars towards bridges and other provisions. So it is somewhat of a status quo bill, but it also has more funding allocated to formula-based funding than discretionary grant program funding, which is a good thing. So I'll keep you updated on any future developments of the Build America 250 Act. There's general consensus that Congress won't pass a full reauthorization by September 30th when it expires. So I think we are anticipating there will be a continuing resolution of the current law. And if we get a House bill, we'll do a comparison of the two for you and show you what happens there. But I'm open to any questions, if you have any, about this one. All right, questions on this one. All right. We're getting off easy. Yeah, we are. Everybody wants to get out of here, I think. Anything you want to point out about the informational items or upcoming events? No, nothing else really to point out. We do have the MPO Advisory Council quarterly meetings coming up on July 30th, and Mayor Freeney is going to accompany me to the governing board meeting for that one. So look forward to that. Good. All right, then. In that case, does anyone have any other? Yes, Commissioner Flowers. Not sure if you all are interested, but an earthquake just hit off the coast of Cuba, registered a 6.1, and it was felt here in Florida down in South Florida. Really? Is there something? Yeah. Are we going to get a tsunami? Yeah, I just hope it will tell to me about it. Key West is a wrap. Key West would be a wrap. I don't know how much more they can take. I'm telling you. All right. Well, there's nothing else for the good of the order. Thanks, everyone. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned. We are adjourned.