Forward Pinellas Board meeting on 9/9/2026 - Sep 14, 2026

Well, good afternoon, everybody. If we could all take our seats. Good afternoon and welcome to the September 26, 2026, Fort Pinellas board meeting. If you could all please stand and join me in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, next we'll start with some introductions. Richie, why don't we start with you? Let's see if this works. City Councilmember Richie Floyd in St. Petersburg. Good afternoon, City of Clearwater. Councilmember Mike Menino. Tom Shelley, Deputy Mayor, Town of Bel-Air. Kathleen Peters, Pinellas County Commission. Mo Franey, Mayor, City of Dunedin. Renee Flowers, Pinellas County Commission. Ricky Butler, Vice Mayor, City of Pinellas Park. Brian Scott, Pinellas County Commission. Whit Planton, Executive Director. Chris Shear, Pinellas County Commission. Tom Reed, Vice Mayor, South Pasadena, representing PSTA. Anne-Marie Brooks, Mayor of Badera Beach, representing the beach communities. Councilmember Debra Figg Sanders, the City of St. Petersburg. Mayor Karen Love, Gulfport, Florida. Joe Ayoub, Mayor, City of Safety Harbor, representing Safety Harbor and Oldsmore. Okay, welcome everybody. Thank you all for being here. Okay, next we're going to move on to citizens to be heard. I do want to just make everybody aware that item 8B is going to be an update from our data center working group. Just wanted to make everybody aware that we're not voting on anything today. We're just getting an update on the working group. So if you would like to speak to that item, you can do it under citizens to be heard. But in respect of everybody's time, you don't need to wait around until the end of the meeting just to hear that. You can watch it virtually and get an update. You're welcome to stay if you want to, but just wanted you to know that we're not taking any votes on that item today. So, Tina, do we have any citizens to be heard? Yes. First, we have David Ballard Geddes, Jr. Okay. Good afternoon, David. Hi, good afternoon. David Ballard Geddes, Jr. I live on Georgia Avenue in Palm Harbor. Phase 1 of the insurrection, disguised as traffic calming devices and redevelopment zones, began with the installation of speed waves in our neighborhoods. That was soon followed by Phase 2 with the traffic calming used with roundabouts, which have yet to be equipped with toll-by-plate cameras, charging those who drive around such checkpoint, quantifying us, which we used to travel through the town freely. Alternate 19 has islands installed in the median, which further back up traffic, and an additional red light at Virginia Avenue gridlocks the police vehicles from efficiently performing timely necessities, stifling response times for ambulances and fire trucks. U.S. 19 is a true testament as to why we don't trust legislation with our roadways. The Patriot Act, based on the questionable circumstances of 9-11, establishes candid cameras everywhere, creating a constant state of surveillance, which has evolved today into including flock cameras and the emerging of a drone market, and the emerging of a drone market that, based on Ed Montini's statements a few months ago, drones are being used currently in Israel in conducting war in the Middle East, very effective in warfare. Drones are an assassin's election of choice, right? Be very careful with that drone stuff. Today, I live in what's called a reclaimed water ready-to-serve zone. The reclaimed water variance application, again, clearly states that I, the applicant, the homeowner, that I literally owe my health, my safety, and my religion to. And based on Florida Statute 15303, Section 5, this contrived variance is an eminent domaining of both my personal and my real property, taking my liberty, my property, and my life as deduced in the 14th Amendment. When in the course of human events, a long train of usurpations, eating us out of our subsistence, pretended legislation, to burn down the town, to ravage the coasts, both deaf to the voice of justice and consiguinity, is that what the declaration stands for? I read these things. Thank you. Thank you, David. Tina, do we have anybody else? Yes, Lauren Monis. Okay. You'll have three minutes. Good afternoon. Hi. I'm Lauren Monis. I live in St. Pete Beach. I'm also the president of the Florida Coalition for Safe Technology. We're a grassroots organization made up of Floridians across the state who advocate for responsible and safe technology. And there is nothing safe or responsible about data centers. We are in a speculative bubble when it comes to building these centers. Billions are being invested in the build-out of these things, but no one has any plans for if and when the bubble busts. And who is left to clean up the underused facilities, the permanent land use changes, the permanent land use damage, and the extraordinary power infrastructure they need. It has been six years since the rollout of small cell 5G towers, the ones that are in our neighborhoods in front of homes, and the ones that look like light posts mounted on utility poles. Six years later, most of these towers are sitting to rot and rust with cables hanging out of them and antenna caps missing. I see them every day just looking like a total eyesore. Who's maintaining these towers? No one. So Telecom and Duke Energy already made their money on these towers. And this is my point with data centers. The local community will suffer when the bubble bursts. But the tech billionaires already made their money. So who's going to clean up the mess if even the mess can be cleaned up? And just like 5G towers, data centers, along with Flock and Axon cameras, make up the geofencing surveillance grid. Geofencing surveillance grid that will eventually lead to the control of the population on a mass scale. Is that what they mean when they say we are in a race with China? Is it to see who can control their population more? There's no place for data centers of any size in Pinellas County. And I am urging this planning board to make a county-wide policy that will affect incorporated cities such as mine, as well as unincorporated areas of Pinellas, to ban data centers outright. Currently, there are 37 cities and counties in Florida who have either banned them completely or who have made a moratorium. But I want to be clear that a moratorium is kind of a euphemism for let's appease people for now and then we'll probably put it into place or approve them later. So we're really asking and urging for a complete ban because other cities have done it, other counties have done it. I think Pinellas County can do that too. And by the way, no AI was used to make this speech. Good to know. Tina, do we have anybody else? We have Ron Vignol. Okay. Good afternoon. Yeah. Hi, everyone. My name is Ronald Vignol from Passo Grill. And today I want to talk to you about data centers. I don't like them. And I want to talk to you about freedoms. But I'll give you where I'm coming from up with all this. I am a former Canadian. I came to the U.S. 11 years ago for freedom. I came here for the capitalism and the freedom of this country. And now it starts to look like China. And Canada is like a Chinese country now. It's part of China. It's really sad how Canada went down. And I'd love to see this country flourish longer and not have the same issues than Canada had. And our freedom is at risk. The data centers, it's making noise, right, on the mic? I'm going to stop holding it. The data centers are not here to help any one of us. There's no room in Pinellas County for them. They are not going to help our livelihood, make us feel safe. So I urge you to put a ban on Pinellas County, unincorporated and cooperated. So this way there's nothing that can happen to this region. I'm also like an investor. I invested millions of dollars into Pinellas County. I have a lot of properties. And I'm looking for an exit strategy right now. If this becomes like Canada or China, I'm going to be out of here. Because it seems like every few months there's new regulation, new red tape, new taxes, new things that is anti-capitalism. And there's still some countries on this planet that don't have property tax, no income tax. And they make it simple for business people or investors to be. So this is where I'm going to be looking to go. Like Toca Caicos, Cayman Island. So it would be great, you know, that I could stay here. But we need to get our shit together. Sorry about the terms. We really need to. And you guys have a lot of responsibilities for the futures of this beautiful Pinellas County. So I urge you to consider banning the data centers and put some regulation. Because I can tell you, Byron Dowdle, if he gets in, he loves those things. He's getting a lot of money from those promoters. And he's going to put them everywhere. It will be too late by then to ban them. Because he'll make some rules that makes it impossible to ban them at this point. So this is where we are. I hope you hear me and you feel my pain. And thank you for your time. Thank you. We are a G-rated board, though. Yes, we are. He cursed. Stacey Shemkes. Okay. Come on up, Stacey. Did she leave? Allison Freeman. Oh, is that Stacey here? Oh, come on. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Stacey Shemkes. And I'm here today speaking to all of you first and foremost as a mother. I was born and raised in Pinellas County. I was born in Dunedin Hospital. I went to the Pinellas County schools. I now have children of my own. And I know that this meeting today is not mainly about data centers. But as you can see, the public, while it may not be fully here, they will be here in the future. All right. Oh, sorry. I grew up in the unique beauty of our coastlines, the tight-knit feel of our communities, and the pride of calling this beautiful peninsula my home. Sorry, guys. I'm nervous. But today, when I look at the future of my children in the state they are supposed to inherit, I am deeply, profoundly concerned. We are facing a massive push for new data centers, facilities that demand an unimaginable amount of resources right alongside reckless mass land development. Sorry, guys. I'm super nervous. All right. This is about the strain that's placed on our home. Our power grid has already pushed to its absolute limits during our blazing Florida summers and increasingly severe storm seasons. Adding data centers to this mix adds a massive constant energy drain that threatens the stability of the power we rely on to keep our families safe. Then look at our water. Data centers require millions of gallons of water every single day just to keep their computers cool. In a state where our freshwater aquifers are already stressed out and vulnerable to saltwater intrusion, we cannot afford to gamble with the very water my children drink. Mass land development is erasing the natural Florida we love. It destroys our wetlands, worsens our flooding, and replaces our green spaces with concrete. To the leaders in this room, you have a job to do. You are supposed to protect the people who live here, not just the corporations trying to build here. You are supposed to protect the state of Florida from complete destruction and overdevelopment. I ask you to look at all the children of Pinellas County and everybody of the world. Please do what you are supposed to do. Guard our resources, secure our grid, and protect our home before there is nothing left of the real Florida for the next generation to inherit. And thank you all so much. Appreciate you being here. Thank you. Allison Freeman. Good afternoon. Hello. Thank you. I'm Allison. I'm a St. Pete resident. I'm also nervous, so just bear with me. I'm here to voice my support for a full ban on data centers. There's a lot of reasons why, but I know my time is limited, so I'm just going to highlight a few of them. For starters, data centers are endangering our water supply. The servers run extremely hot. They use massive amounts of water to cool them. United States, excuse me, United Nations researchers actually released a report in January of this year stating that the world has moved beyond a water crisis. We are now in a state of global water bankruptcy. Medium-sized data centers use about 300,000 gallons of water per day, or the equivalent of what 1,000 homes use. And larger hyperscale facilities use a million to five million gallons per day, which is roughly the same amount of water as 10,000 to 30,000 Florida households. Unfortunately, those numbers are not exaggerated either. They come from developers' water permit applications. Just as an example, an Atlanta data center demanded 9 million gallons per day, equivalent to about 30,000 households. There was a couple in Georgia living about 1,000 feet from a data center that reported their dishwasher, ice maker, washing machine, and toilet stopped working. Another county in Georgia reported the taps in their homes ran dry. Data centers also raise energy demand and electricity bills for all of us. We're already paying too much for electricity, and these data center build-outs force everyday people to subsidize corporate energy costs, which only further drives our bills up. The amount of water and energy consumption alone by these data centers is unsustainable. Data centers are also creating more pollution. The air pollution from their diesel generators has shown to exacerbate childhood asthma cases and cognitive decline in the elderly. There's also soil degradation and light and noise pollution to take into consideration. Communities have actually compared the constant buzzing of data centers and their cooling systems to lawnmowers running 24 hours a day, which even closed windows can't shut out. I don't know about you guys, but I get annoyed when I hear one for an hour, so I can't imagine one hearing running at all times and not being able to do anything about it. So as you can imagine, this does significantly harm quality of life. They threaten our jobs and the economy, not to mention the prospect of a society-wide job apocalypse. As some of you may have already seen, the CEO of Anthropic, which is the company that created Claude AI, announced last month that AI could wipe out roughly 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs. That displacement could cause unemployment to spike to 10% to 20% when it's currently sitting just above 4%. Additionally, a senior researcher at Anthropic just resigned yesterday and said these companies are building a model that could kill us all by 2030. That's just over three years from now. The people that are building AI earnestly believe it could end humanity by the end of the decade. If that isn't enough to support a full-out ban, I don't know what is. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Dixie Sparks. Good afternoon. I'm an advocate for wildlife here in Florida, and I have been in Florida for 50 years. I have seen the change, the development. The developers are destroying wetlands. Wildlife is becoming extinct. This is just more, more to destroy our wetlands, our water supply. Data centers affect wildlife through habitat destruction. Heavy water consumption, persistent noise, pollution, and increased energy demands. Habitat loss and fragmentation. Land clearing, building large facilities, destroys forests, wetlands, grasslands, removing native species, their homes. Barrier creation, new roads, power lines, substations, split continuous natural landscapes, blocking migration paths. Water use and aquatic stress. High cooling demands. Servers generate massive amounts of heat and require millions of gallons of water daily for cooling systems. Depleted habitats drawing water from the local rivers, lakes, and aquifers lowers water levels. Stressing fish and mammals. Thermal and chemical pollution. Releasing warm wastewater or concentrated chemical runoff can alter aquatic ecosystems and harm freshwater species. Industrial noise. Cooling fans, generators, and chillers create constant low-frequency hum, often 40 to 80 decibels, that disrupts animal communication, foraging, and breeding. Nighttime lighting. Exterior security lights can disorient nocturnal animals, migrating birds, and insects. Indirect climate and energy impacts. Power generation, supplying the massive electricity needs of these facilities, often relies on fossil fuel or thermoelectric plants, which accelerate climate change and stress regional water resources. And also, the data centers are surveillance. They're for surveillance of the people. And if you look into China and what's going on in other countries, this is going to take away your freedom. This is not about helping you with information. This is about surveillance. And if you read about the 2030 Agenda, 15-Minute Cities, this is what it's about. And I encourage everyone to look into this. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Michelle Ott. Good afternoon. My name is Michelle Ott. I am a resident of Pinellas County. And between my sister and I and my husband, we own six businesses. And we have a client base of about 15,000 people. And I'm here to tell you we have our hand on the pulse of what those people want. And we have those conversations every day. And what we hear is that they don't want data centers. We don't have petitions or signatures or, you know, what I don't have their signatures here today. But I do know that we have conversations with them every day. And everybody, regardless of their political affiliations, they all want the same thing. We want clean water. We want safe natural habitats to visit. We want clean air. We want healthy food. We don't want chemicals around. And data centers really don't contribute to any of the things that the people really want. So I am here in advocacy of banning data centers. And thank you for hearing me. Thank you. Sarah Ott. So I have a question. Did you drag your sister or did your sister drag you? I dragged her. Okay. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Sarah. I'm a resident of Pinellas County. I am asking that you please do an outright ban of data centers in Pinellas County. As you know, data centers create massive amounts of noise pollution, are energy hogs, and use more water than Pinellas County can afford to give. Pinellas already does not have its own water supply for drinking water. We simply don't have extra for the machines. Additionally, there is no benefit that a data center would provide for the people of Pinellas County. Multiple other cities and counties have shown that they do not provide jobs other than construction, other than a minimal amount past the construction phase. They decrease property values and are a massive drain on the resources and infrastructure. So again, I hope that you enact an outright ban in Pinellas County. Thank you. Thank you. There are no more citizens to be heard. Okay. Thank you. Well, then we will move on to item number four, recognitions and announcements. All right. I'll make these brief, but these are one of the most fun things about the job. So here I'm acknowledging Caitlin Nyman of our staff for her three-year anniversary. Caitlin handles a lot of our data and analysis on the MPO side of the organization. When you see the crash reports and the fatality reports, unfortunately, Caitlin is responsible for summarizing those and mapping those and ensuring that they get a thorough review and analysis, traffic counts, all kinds of other stuff. So Caitlin, I just want to say thank you for your service. Three years with Pinellas County and congratulations. And now I think we're going to get a photo op. All right. And I want to let everybody know that Caitlin just graduated from USF and she's also an expectant mother. So do you want to say anything to the board? Sure. I have been an eventful year. Thank you so much. I obviously have worked here for about three years. I was an intern with USF the year before that. And I love my job. I like what I do. I like the difference it makes in Pinellas County. And I appreciate all of your contributions and the time you take on this board to get to know a staff and what we do. Thank you. All right. Next, I'm going to embarrass Nicole Galasso of our staff. And Nicole, you can wave if you want, but she has really done some fantastic work. And she was acknowledged at the ESRI Conference 2026 Special Achievement in GIS Award, Geographic Information Systems. And she has been putting that work on display all over Pinellas County, whether it's in the North Greenwood area of Clearwater, Indian Rocks Beach, Treasure Island. I think now we're starting to do some work and has really just elevated the technical capacity and capability of the organization. And I'm going to bring this over to you at some point, but she's got a nice award. Come on up here. And I said I was going to embarrass you. So she's a principal planner on the planning council side, but takes transportation analysis into this. You're going to have to wipe this off my hands now, too. But anyway. And there were thousands of people at this conference. And she got a picture with Jack Dangermond, who's the founder of ESRI, and presented at the conference as well. So thank you so much. Yes, thank you, Matt. All right. Okay. Last but not least, I'm going to bring up, least funny, ha-ha, Samantha Little, who is our intern. And like Caitlin before her, you know, we like having interns that hopefully grow and stay with the organization. But if not, we want to expose them to the unique work we do here and give them the skills and the tools and the experience so that they can thrive wherever they end up. So, Samantha, you've got a few words to say, but I just want to welcome you to Ford Pinellas and to the board. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for having me. So, I am in the urban regional planning program at USF, and I'm halfway through the program. Previously, primarily, my experience is in municipal planning. But here at Ford Pinellas, I look forward to expanding on that experience in transportation planning. Thank you. 5-H is going to be continued until our October meeting. Is that correct? That's right. Okay. 5-H, yeah. Okay. Does any other board member wish to pull any items from the consent agenda? Okay. Move approval of the consent agenda with the exception of item H. Second. Okay. That was a motion by Commissioner Flowers. Second. Who was the second? Free. Moe. Moe. Okay. Tina, do we have any members of the public that want to speak on this? No, we do not. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Motion passes. Thank you very much. Okay. Next, we're going to go on to public hearing items. So, the first item is going to be 6A. Do we have any, which is the tip amendment presentation by Ryan Hutton to Mr. Ryan. Come on up here. Good afternoon, everyone. Okay. Do we have the presentation for this? Thank you. How's it going, everyone? Okay. There we go. So, my name is Ryan. For those who don't know, I manage the Transportation Improvement Program for Ford Penelis, otherwise known as the TIP. And if you don't know, I always give this slide as a refresher. The TIP is our short-term planning document. It outlines the transportation projects in the county over the next five years. This is what our typical TIP cycle looks like. What you should basically focus on right here is we adopt a new TIP every spring. But in between adoption cycles, there are ways we can modify or edit our TIP. Those two mechanisms are an amendment or a modification. I won't go into the full details, but you can basically think about modification as a smaller edit or modification or revision of the document. And amendments, you're adding or deleting a project or changing it fiscally. So, with that being said, we have one amendment today, and that is our roll forward amendment. So, this is a pretty standard amendment. We do this every year for projects that were in last year's work program. These are ongoing projects, but they just did not receive authorization in time before the closeout of the previous fiscal year. So, FDOT will roll forward those funds into the next fiscal year's work program. So, what this amendment is doing is basically reflecting those roll forwarded funds. So, we can keep funding for those projects. And that's pretty much it. We just want to make sure we maintain that consistency between our TIP and FDOT's work program. Make sure those funds can be roll forwarded so the money can be used for those projects. And I'm just recommending approval of that amendment to our TIP. Okay. If you have any questions. Thank you. Questions? Commissioner Flowers, you have a question? Oh, no, sir. Oh, your mic might as well. Oh, I'm sorry. Any other questions? Move approval. Motion from Commissioner Flowers, second from Commissioner Shearer. Any questions, discussion? No? Okay. We are, Tina, do you have any members of the public that want to speak on this? No, we do not. Okay. Okay. So, this is going to be a roll call vote? Yes. Vice Mayor Butler? Aye. Commissioner Flowers? Mayor Freeney? Aye. Deputy Mayor Shelley? Aye. Council Member Menino? Aye. Council Member Floyd? Yes. Mayor Ayub? Mayor Love? Yes. Council Member Figgs Sanders? Yes. Mayor Brooks? Yes. Vice Mayor Reed? Yes. Commissioner Shearer? Yes. And Commissioner Scott? Yes. That passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody. Thanks, Ryan. Okay. Now we're going to move on to the PPC public hearings, which will be conducted as follows. I will ask the board members to affirm they have reviewed the staff report and materials provided to them. If needed, forward, 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, and then I will close the public hearing, and the board will deliberate and take action. So the first case we have is item 6B1, CW26-12 for Pinellas County. So first, I want to ask all members to affirm they have reviewed the staff report and materials provided in the case. Yes. Okay. Thank you. And would anybody like a presentation? No? Okay. Do we have, what is the mood of, will of the board on this item then? Okay. Do we have any public comment? Tina? No, we do not have any proponents, opponents, or other citizens wishing to be heard on this item. Okay. All right. Do we have a motion? Motion from Commissioner Scheer. Second, was that Mo? Flowers. Commissioner Flowers. Okay. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Passes unanimously. Okay. Now we're going to move on to item 6B2, City, uh, KCW26-13, City of Dunedin. Uh, so first I would like to ask all board members to affirm they have reviewed the staff report and materials provided in the case? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Would anybody like a presentation? Hearing none. Okay. Uh, Tina, do we have any proponents, opponents, or citizens to be heard? No, sir. We do not. Okay. Well, do we have a motion? Uh, motion by Commissioner Scheer. Second by Commissioner- Mayor Brooks. Mayor Brooks. Okay. All right. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Okay. Next item, I believe 6C is we need to continue that to a date certain. Is that correct? That's correct. We will, uh, ask you to approve continuing this till our October meeting. Okay. And we'll iron out whatever remaining items we have with legal on this one. All right. Just for the record, the date of the next meeting is October 14th, 2026. So that would be the date certain that we will continue to. Okay. October 14th, 2026. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Do we have a motion to continue? So moved. Second. Okay. That was, uh, okay. That was, uh, I have your flowers and Mayor Butler and Mayor Freeney. Okay. There we go. All right. Good. Thank you. You're a better listener than I am. Okay. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Motion passed unanimously. Thank you. Okay. Now we're going to move on to presentation and action items. Item 7A, PSTA activities report. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Due to the August forward Pinellas recess, this update, this update will be a summary of the last two PSTA board meetings in July and August. In July, the board met on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2026 at 9 a.m. at PSTA headquarters. The board meeting began with a presentation on a $50,000 grant funding PSTA was awarded from the Uber Transit Innovation Fund. PSTA was one of 35 agencies in the county to receive funds, I'm sorry, country that received funds that will allow PSTA to continue cross-county service between Pinellas and Hillsboro for life-sustaining medical trips. More details that come soon. The board approved several items during the July meeting. These included two separate funding agreements with the city of St. Pete Beach and the city of St. Petersburg regarding trolley services and TD bus passes, respectively. Final claim settlements regarding the April 2025 Clearwater Ferry incident. And approved the proposed maximum millage rate of .7250 to be transmitted to the property appraiser and to advertise a public hearing for the board meeting in August on possible elimination of the Safety Harbor Snapper and Route 90 PSTA's two lowest ridership routes. The board authorized additional routes and services including Route 167, the city of St. Petersburg 16 and 58, Snapper, Clearwater, and Grouper Airport Express, as well as fare changes to be added to the public hearing. In August, the PSTA board met on Wednesday, August 26th at 9 a.m. at PSTA headquarters. And at the board meeting, the board held a second public hearing on the routes and services proposed in July. PSTA received over 65 emailed public comments and over 35 speakers attended to provide public comment in person over the two public hearings. Following staff presentation, public comment, and board discussion, the board approved the following fare changes and route removals. A ferry fuel escalator when fuel prices exceed $4 a gallon. A fee of 11 cents for all credit card payments on board a PSTA bus. TD monthly bus pass fare increase from $11 to $13, pending approval from the LCB on 9-22-26, increase to the Grouper Express fare, and elimination of the Snapper Safety Harbor Service, plus a pause in eliminating Route 90, pending staff outreach to beach hotels for potential support. Following the public hearing, the board approved several items during the August meeting. These included a contract with Commuter Advertising, providing PSTA with additional opportunities to generate revenue with ads on board PSTA buses, several contracts to address PSTA's technology infrastructure, including Wi-Fi access points, internet services, and phone services, and PSTA's state advocacy services with RSA Consultant. The board also heard one information item regarding the potential impacts to PSTA from Amendment 3, and PSTA will be holding a public hearing on the proposed fiscal year 27 budget tonight, Wednesday, September 9, 2026, at 6 p.m. at PSTA headquarters. And the next PSTA board meeting and final public hearing on the fiscal year 27 budget will be on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 6 p.m. And that concludes my report, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Tom. Okay. Next, we'll move on to item 7B, regional activities report. Nothing to report. No, I'm not kidding. I just wanted to alert the board, anybody who wasn't here, and the public that we had a workshop this morning about the potential merger of our three MPOs serving Pasco, Hillsborough, and Pinellas County. And I want to thank the board members in attendance who had a very good, robust, and productive conversation. We were taking good notes. The potential merger would really go into effect if everything works out no earlier than July 1st of 2028, and it would create a regional organization that potentially could better bring transportation solutions to the Tampa Bay region by being more competitive for federal and state funding and working collegiately across the Bay Area. The comments and discussion will all be grouped and organized and referred to the Tampa Bay Transportation Management Area Leadership Group, which meets on October 2nd. We will look for consensus on specific changes in the interlocal agreement, bylaws, and other documents related to that potential merger, and then refer that back logically to the three MPOs, but it also could be referred directly to the principals, which are the three boards of county commissioners and the city of Tampa, for approval. And ultimately, if they vote in favor of the merger, it would then need to be referred to the governor for approval. All that will take some time, and I just wanted to let everybody know that the comments were helpful, thoughtful, and we look forward to finding the best way to address them as we can. Anybody have any questions about that item or would like any further elaboration that we didn't cover this morning? All right. Seeing none, just one other point is the Tampa Bay Partnership got together a few weeks ago and organized an event around something called Tampa Bay Rising, a new initiative to address workforce, transportation, and housing needs in the Bay Area. It was very well attended. It looks like this is a partnership with several different groups, major employers and the Habitat for Humanity and also the Florida Housing Coalition. And part of the initiative is to work with all of our respective organizations, local governments, nonprofits, and the business community to bring back definable, implementable solutions to these challenges. And it matches the Tampa Bay report card that the partnership has been producing for at least 11 years now that benchmarks our progress on a number of metrics with comparable regions around the country, and they're looking to move the needle. So that was the purpose of this event. I filled out a survey, offered my assistance and support. I think Council Member Menino was there, may have been others, and look forward to hearing what's next from them. So you have the presentation in your packet, and I just really wanted to bring it to your attention today. Thank you, Whit. All right. Now we're going to move on to item 7C, which is an action item, which is going to be the East Bay Drive Roosevelt Boulevard Multimodal Corridor Study Recommendations. And I think Nushan will be giving us that presentation. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Nushin Rahman, principal planner here at the agency. When we last met in July, I did provide a more extensive presentation as an informational item to you all to give you time to digest the very extensive study that we did along this corridor. And today I'm here to give you kind of a streamlined recap. And as mentioned, this is an action item where we are looking for your acceptance and approval of this corridor study. So taking a step back, we began this study in partnership a year and a half ago with FDOT and why we look at this corridor and other corridors in the county as part of our corridor studies is because of their status on our investment corridor framework, which are corridors in Pinellas County, which we have strategically identified based on their potential to link housing, jobs, and job training opportunities, and where also our transit service is the most extensive in the county. As far as East Bay Drive and Roosevelt Boulevard goes, it does serve as both a local and regional connector going primarily through the city of Largo and also involves multiple entities who have been planning for the future of this corridor, both on the transportation and the land use side. So the goal of this study was really to bring together a cohesive vision for the corridor and provide safer options for all road users. As mentioned, we conducted this in partnership with FDOT and other key stakeholders were the city of Largo, PSTA, and Pinellas County. And we looked at how to improve safety, mobility, and access along the seven-mile stretch, which goes from 20th Street, which is just west of HCA Largo, Florida Hospital, if you are familiar, right up until PIE at Lightwave Drive. And you can see on the last three bullet points here that the roadway jurisdiction is split across three entities, between the county, the city, and FDOT, further providing that need for bringing together that cohesive vision along this stretch. We looked at this project in three phases, looking at the corridor context, the existing land use and safety and traffic counts, looked at a mobility evaluation, kind of conducting what we called scenario modeling, looking out to the future of what the corridor could potentially look like with jobs, housing, and population. And phase two also included extensive community outreach. And ultimately, phase three led to the corridor action plan and recommendations, which are linked in your agenda. But to really provide an overview into all the context that went into considering these recommendations, land use was at the top of the list, with the city of Largo being the primary municipality that this corridor passes through, and the city having its very extensive land use vision, which it has been diligently updating from the West Bay Drive Community Redevelopment District to the Tri-City Activity Center, which is that node around US-19. And then notably, the Target Employment Center along the eastern segment of Roosevelt Boulevard, where key employers like TD Cenex, which is actually one of three remaining Fortune 500 companies in Pinellas County, is housed. So these are really areas that we want to focus on providing better transportation options. But as I mentioned, the roadway jurisdiction is split across three entities, FDOT having the largest portion of the segment that we looked at. And there are several resurfacings that are on the docket or program for the future or have just neared completion. So this was additional context for us to consider in terms of the improvements that are coming underway just within the next couple of years. In terms of Pinellas County's jurisdiction, they do oversee the roadway from Clearwater Largo Road to the western end on 20th Street. And they also have resurfacing, rescheduled, expanding the sidewalk and providing better access management for businesses along this segment. Also under Pinellas County's purview, and important, I think, for us to understand are the signals along this corridor, which greatly affects the operations. And Pinellas County Public Works does manage an extensive intelligent transportation system or IT system and has been diligently retiming the signals along this entire corridor. And for the signals that haven't been retimed yet, they are on the list to be done. But that also was a consideration for us when looking at the recommendations that would ultimately come out of this. As far as transit changes, you may be aware that PSTA recently or last year went through a major network upgrade, and part of this included doubling the frequency on East Bay Drive, which is served by Route 52 from 30 minutes to 15 minutes. And that kind of frequency is really hard to see, not just in Florida, but even in the southeast region of the United States. And you can see that that has paid off with the increase in boardings per weekday. And I should also mention that as part of the recommendations, which you may remember from July, it includes recommendations of potential bus pullout locations, and PSTA is currently in the process of applying for a FTA, or Federal Transit Administration Grant, to receive funding for amenities like bus pullout bays that could potentially contribute to the recommendations or implementation of recommendations for this project. As mentioned, Phase 2 included extensive community outreach, and we heard from people from all different areas along the corridor and all different generations. I mentioned that we went to Largo High School, and I made the mistake of taking bike bells to 16-year-olds. I could hear a ringing for hours after. And Phase 2 also included, as I mentioned, the scenario modeling results, where we looked at the future population, the future traffic volumes along the corridor. And the long story short of this is that it kind of showed us which nodes or which intersections we may want to focus our improvements on, looking separately at jobs and at housing. And they pretty much line up with where Largo has been very intentionally increasing their development potential based on their ability to handle it in these areas. So coming to Phase 3, we looked at an extensive list of recommendations, more than 800, because we essentially looked at everywhere along the corridor where even crossings were not ADA compliant. And the big question was, how do we sort this into implementable recommendations? And the mechanism we used was the scoring criteria and then ultimately putting the recommendations into the different strategies listed in the blue table here. And some of the key areas that were identified as priorities based on both the technical analysis, but also the feedback that we received from the city of Largo were these three areas. And I want to draw your attention to Bay Vista Drive listed on the last one. While it may not be a major intersection, it is where the office park, Bay Vista Office Park, where the Fortune 500 company is housed, is located. And our recommended improvements, there were a whole slew of them, but the two I'll highlight just for a reminder are potential locations for enhanced transit facilities like bus bays. This is on East Bay Drive at 2nd Street, and you can see where the bus stop, existing bus stop is circled or rather outlined in the yellow square. And then another example are mid-block crossing locations, especially because in some areas, the crossing distances until the next crosswalk is about a mile, which is quite difficult in a place like Florida. Other recommended improvements, probably more on the mid to long term, are intersection improvements. For example, the top left-hand picture is the existing intersection at Belcher Road. You can see that it's quite a wide intersection. If you're a pedestrian or bicyclist, you do have long crossings. And the image on the right shows you a potential type of improvement that could be made for this. And going back to Bay Vista Drive, that was identified as a priority, not only because of the technical analysis, but also because of the push from the business community. So the Bay Vista Property Owners Association wrote a letter to FDOT requesting evaluation of a signal at this corridor or at this intersection. We are currently in the process of evaluating further alternatives at this intersection, recognizing the importance of this property in this area. And some additional context is that we at Ford Pinellas will actually be working with the City of Largo on a redevelopment plan for Bay Vista Office Park. It is quite an aging office park built back in the 80s and is very important for us in maintaining our target employment base in the county. So there will be more to come on that. But in conclusion, what we've been doing is providing these informational presentations eventually for adoption. The last presentation I gave was to our technical coordinating committee who recommended approval to you all, as well as presenting this to the City of Largo's commission. And our next steps are to continue coordination, especially when it comes to the implementation of an intersection treatment at Bay Vista Drive, and then continuing to coordinate the implementation of this plan with other coinciding plans like Advantage US-19, and then additionally continuing to review near-miss analyses and crash data along these corridors as we advance recommendations. But the requested action today for you all is acceptance and approval of the study and its findings. And I'm happy to take any questions or comments from you all before that. Questions? Yes, one question, Chair. Yesterday, I received a request from PSTA to sign a letter of support for bus bay funding of $2 million. Was that for this corridor? Or is that... It was not for this corridor. They were applying for FTA's bus and bus facilities grant, I believe in the amount of $2 million, to implement amenities countywide, which could potentially include recommendations from this corridor if they are feasible. So is this going to be an additional one we can apply for, or is it all the same program? I'm confused. It's all under... If I'm understanding your question correctly, it's all under the same program. If we won the funding, if PSTA won the funding, they could then evaluate which locations to apply it to. Thank you. Mm-hmm. We also have another, excuse me, mechanism of getting funding in place, and that's through our priority list. So our intent is, after you all have approval of this, is to look at a package of these projects as Nusheen outlined and advance that through our priority list, and that could include bus pays. And that would be federal funding apart from the grant funding from FTA. Great. Mayor Moe? Yeah. No, it all sounds really good. My question is, in terms of the long-term vision of the corridor, are there any aspects of it that would actually be held back by the passing of Amendment 3? I guess when I asked that, I asked, you know, there's obviously, you know, the PSTA route that goes from 30 minutes to 15 minutes, which is going to be impacted, potentially, by Amendment 3. Traffic signal management by Pinellas County, is that under you guys' general fund? That, as I mentioned, is managed by Pinellas County Public Works. I'm unclear as to how Amendment 3 would specifically impact the signal operations. You spoke about PSTA potentially having to make changes as a result, but considering how many different entities are involved in the corridor, I think it would depend. But what I can say is, as far as the resurfacings goes that are already scheduled, I don't believe those would be impacted by the passing of Amendment 3. Sheen, I'll just add a little bit that the county has a dedicated penny gas tax, penny of the gas tax that goes towards the traffic management system. So that wouldn't be... So that's not general fund? That's not general fund. Because I know the gas tax is funding a lot of stuff. Yeah. But the county has also put general fund money into transportation in the past, so their ability to do that could be hindered, potentially. The other consideration is matching grants. Some of these projects that we advance will need local match, and local match comes from a lot of sources. It could come from gas tax. It could also come from general fund. Okay. Now, I just wanted to ask, because, you know, I'll just say it now. There's a lot of county commissioners in the room. You know, the city worries about all the roll-down, right? Traffic management. The sheriff's going to increase his fees. You know, there's a lot of roll-down effect of what you guys do that could come and haunt us as well. So just wanted to ask the question in terms of future visioning. Thank you. So on the signal of retiming, the county's invested $20 million in an ATMS system, advanced traffic management system. This light retiming is part of that program. So none of this will be affected by a minute. That's already done. To what Commissioner Flowers was saying, is we do have, because the gas tax was not keeping up, our transportation trust fund was getting drained down. So we have three levels of service millage rates specifically dedicated. The first one is to stabilize the trust fund, and the second two are to pave local road. So, yeah, so we are putting general fund dollars into the transportation trust fund to handle that kind of stuff. So if Amendment 3 passes, that part of it will be affected going forward, most likely. Okay. I just want to make sure you guys are worrying about us. Okay. Okay. Thank you. All right. I do have one question for you, Nishan. So you showed a potential bus bay pullout at East Bay and a second there. Is one contemplated on the other side of the street? That's on the north side of the street. Is one contemplated on the south side as well? Yes. Both were looked at, and both are on the list. But as far as their feasibility goes, that depends on the right-of-way that's available. Right, right. Yeah, because on the south side, that goes into Largo Central Park there. Correct. Yeah. Okay. All right. Any other questions, comments? Tina, do we have any public comment? No, sir. We do not. Okay. Do we have a motion? So moved. Second. Okay. Motion by Rickey, second by Mayor Moe. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Thank you very much. Okay. Now, 7-D Countywide Trends and Conditions Report. Come on up, Rob. Hi, Rob. I'm going to go over the Countywide Trends and Conditions Report. If you could bring it. Thank you. So this Countywide Trends and Conditions Report informs the goals, objectives, and policies in the Advantage Pinellas Long-Range Transportation Plan. It also addresses safety concerns, congestion, infrastructure, crash data, as well as land use and employment. The report helps to inform transportation safety studies, the design of transportation projects, and assists law enforcement with activities related to safety. I'll give a summary of key highlights, trends of the report. It's basically a high-level snapshot. This report's done once a year to sort of give you a high-level picture of what's going on at the countywide level. Ford Pinellas does a number of other reports throughout the year that are more specific and also has more data that's more tailored to each of the municipalities that you represent. So we always have that information available throughout the year. Just ask any of us, and we can get that information to you. So one of the trends that we keep track of is vehicle miles traveled, or VMT. That's steadily increased since the pandemic and is even higher than it was back in 2019. Traffic counts are another thing that we monitor, and for monitor roads are still higher than the pre-pandemic level, and that points to there still being significantly more congestion than there was prior to and during the pandemic. So as usual, we like to emphasize that one way of reducing congestion is by using other means of transportation, and more than half of our residents living less than 10 miles from the workplace and more than a third of jobs and households within a half mile over trail. This is a positive trend with this increasing over time, indicating that more people have access to multimodal options, including walking and biking. Currently, about 20% of residents now work from home. It's another way to reduce congestion. That's up from 18% the previous year. And part of the impact of this shift to working from home has been seeing more trips spread throughout the county as opposed to just being concentrated more during the rush hours in the morning and the evenings. So you've probably seen this slide before. It bears repeating. All congestion is not necessarily bad. The orange on this graphic indicates a percentage of vulnerable road users that would not survive a crash depending on speed. So the gist of it is that the higher the speed, the more fatal the crashes are in general. And in the wake of the pandemic, for example, there was basically no congestion, and this led to higher speeds and more severe crashes. So the silver lining of the congestion is that reduced speeds are actually safer for vulnerable road users, even though no one's necessarily in favor or advocating congestion. So how is that working out? So this is looking at the five-year trend from 2021 to 2025. So the crashes have not gone up. They've remained level. The number of people who have lost their lives in crashes on average is 113. The trend is that that's down 4% over the five-year trend, and injuries are down 3%. Vehicle and motorcycle crashes are notably down, and crashes involving bicycles are up. We show on page 26 of the report that the Pinellas Trail count numbers are up post-pandemic, with 2025 being the highest count since 2017. Notably, crashes involving the loss of life, involving impairment are down by 4%. Distracted driver crashes down 11% on average, and those involving aggressive drivers are up 6%. And with regard to aging drivers, 27% of Pinellas counties is 65 or older compared to 23% for the rest of the state of the Florida, and 17%. So we do have a disproportionate number of aging drivers. So this report only covers, as I said before, up to and including 2025, but we do keep tabs best we can on how things are looking year-to-date. So the next slide is up to and including July 2026. So this is not the five-year trend. This one's just looking at the comparison, where we were approximately a year ago compared to as of last month. And so across the board, we do have a reduced number of crashes involving the loss of life. And we do have in the, actually, we did just before this PowerPoint was, just after this PowerPoint was completed, we did get the most recent data, crash data for August. And so the update for that is that we're still down for all categories except for motorcycles, which are still slightly up. So from the earliest stages in planning as well, design, construction, and even after construction, Ford Pinellas and its partners continue to integrate safety into all aspects of the planning process. Ford Pinellas was awarded a $400,000 grant through the Safe Streets for All program to update the Safe Streets Pinellas Action Plan. This commenced in late 2025, and the funds were made available and anticipated to be completed for 2027. This will help to update our high-injury network, high-risk network, and also near-miss technology updates. And finally, although Ford Pinellas is more of a monitoring agency than an implementing agency, we do work with and depend heavily on numerous other partner agencies to integrate safety into every project. Ford Pinellas also prioritizes which projects would like the FDOT to fund, and safety is taken into consideration whenever those projects are prioritized, and those eventually find their way into the FDOT's draft tentative work program. So with that, we can take any questions. Thank you. Any questions for Rob? No? Okay. Thank you, Rob. Thank you. All right. Now we're going to move on to Item 7E, our Special Act Review Committee. This is also an action item, and I think Rodney's going to be handling that. Come on up, Rodney. Good afternoon. Rodney Chapman, Division Manager. What I have before you today is the conclusion of the work of the Special Act Review Committee. You may recall that the board authorized the establishment of this committee back in March, and since then the committee has worked with me primarily to figure out a few key questions relative to changes to the Special Act to reduce approval time frames, as well as come to a consensus on what to do about the Planning Council's membership if the MPOs merge. So, again, that was generally the charge of the committee is to look at changes to the rules that can be more quickly implemented that would save up to two months for certain types of amendments to the county-wide plan map. They also wanted us to take a more broader look at changes to the Special Act to reform how we look at map changes so that the county-wide review only looking at those map amendments that are more significant in nature. And then lastly, as I mentioned before, a lot of discussion and ideas were kicked around relative to that membership structure of the Planning Council if the MPOs merge. You may not remember, but we had six volunteers. You all were great, and I really appreciate the opportunity to talk in somewhat granular detail about land use policy and sort of board composition because we don't always get the time to have those types of discussions. So, it was Commissioner Scherck, Commissioner Peters, Vice Mayor Butler, Vice Mayor Reed, Council Member Floyd, and Deputy Mayor Shelley. So, again, thank you for the five months you all shared with us. So, what did we cover? We had a strategy for the information we shared and the engagement we had with the committee. First up, for that first meeting in April, we did some level setting. We shared a lot of information about the functions of the Planning Council going all the way back to 1964. I also gave an overview of what are the constraints that exist now legislatively. And then there was acknowledgment that the transportation and land use planning linkage that we have right now is very valuable to the county. And so, we looked at different options for maintaining that linkage. In May, we did something a little different. We didn't want the committee to just hear from us. So, we reached out to the planning directors from around the county as well as the development community to share with the committee their perspectives on the county-wide planning process. So, we had planning directors from City of St. Petersburg, City of Clearwater, and City of Safety Harbor, as well as a very experienced local land use attorney to talk with the group about what was valuable in the county-wide planning process. But also, they were candid in some areas where they thought we could do better. And so, it was good that the committee heard that perspective from outside voices. We also had the committee weigh in on some options to streamline the county-wide planning process. We discussed three options along the spectrum of sort of tweaking all the way to kind of an overhaul of the county-wide planning process. The planning directors in the development community felt like sort of the tweaking or slight modifications to the process had a lot of value, given the fact that we are a dense urban county and we do learn a lot from each other. The development community felt like it was a benefit for us having a county-wide planning process, primarily because every developer is reading from the same sheet of music, if you will, meaning a developer doesn't have to learn new regulations and rules necessarily if they're doing projects in St. Pete versus in Safety Harbor. So, that predictability and uniformity was highlighted as a strength. In June, we got more detailed in terms of options to reform the county-wide plan, as well as what that membership for the planning council could look like and had a lot of good discussion around those options. We came back in July and talked more in detail about those changes to the rules of Special Act and a timeline for pulling all this together. We thought we were done, but the committee wanted to meet again, so we met in August to finalize those consensus recommendations, and I'll just touch on those here briefly. But please keep in mind, this is the last time you're going to see these changes. What we are working on is a series of changes to the county-wide rules, which will come through this process next month. We're also working on a strike through an underline to change a special act, and so we want to review those changes with you as well next month as well. So, at a high level, the committee endorsed, again, those short-term streamlining changes to the county-wide plan map amendment process, essentially creating what we're going to call a sub-threshold process where staff is empowered to approve certain map amendments, and I think you've seen some of the contours of that in the past. It's generally been that five-acre limitation, and then as long as it doesn't have a negative finding on any of the other county-wide considerations, then staff isn't able to make those changes. The benefit of that is that we're saving two months in the approval process. But more from a long-term perspective, we'll be bringing forward changes to the special act that will sort of introduce greater flexibility, if you will, to the special act, because in reading the special act right now, it's very prescriptive, it's very rigid, and somewhat inflexible. So, we're going to propose changes to the special act to introduce a greater degree of flexibility. So, the membership. So, this was a bit of a tricky topic. Again, the committee looked at different configurations of the planning council membership if the MPOs merge. So, the goals that they set forth are to look at an inclusive and representative structure so that the interests of the cities were balanced with those of the county. Given the fact that we have so many cities in our county, there was a need to maintain some degree of rotating seats. And again, maintaining that connection to the regional MPO was also a priority. So, what we presented to the committee were generally options that were based around a population-based methodology versus one that was more geography-based. And the committee settled on this configuration that you see here, where there would be 13 members, there would be three rotating seats, and each term would be two years in length. You'll see the permanent members, again, one representative from each of these communities, Pinellas Park, St. Petersburg, Clearwater Largo, Pinellas Park, excuse me, yeah, Pinellas Park, Dunedin, Tarbon Springs, Seminole, Oldsmar, Safety Harbor, and then rotating seats, including our three largest beach communities, rotating seat for our smaller beach communities, and then a third rotating seat for our inland communities. What we also shared with the committee was a breakdown of population for each of the communities to further inform their recommendation. You can see here we've ordered those by population, and then we were also able to share with the committee the number of times that community engaged in amending the countywide plan map. So the permanent seats are where you see, as outlined here, then the three larger beach communities would share a seat, the inland communities would then share a seat, and then the smaller beach communities would also share one seat. So as I mentioned before, we're still working on the strike-through and underlying changes to the Special Act, but one of the things that I wanted to share with you is to give you a feel for the flavor and nature of the changes that you will see in those changes to that act. And this gives an example of some of the text we're working on that essentially maintains the existing board composition until such time that there is a consolidation or merger of the three MPOs in the region. In other words, it'll be some language like this that preserves the fact that if the MPOs don't merge, then the board configuration remains as is. Also, the committee talked about meeting frequency because a special act is very prescriptive of how many times or how often the board meets. And so given the fact that we will most likely be processing many less county-wide plan map amendments, there is a recognition that we probably don't need to meet as much. So what we're working on is some acknowledgement of meeting at least quarterly, but again, that quarterly meeting frequency does give us the ability to meet more often if necessary. So again, the consensus recommendations were, as you see here, to eliminate two months of the mapping process by amending the rules to, again, expand that tier one or staff level approval. The committee, I'll note, was supportive of including a pathway so that if we had an amendment that has significant public interest, that we still would have the ability to direct it through the public hearing process. In other words, if it meets those sub-threshold criteria, but there's a lot of public concern or interest in it, then we'd still direct that map amendment through the public hearing process. Again, they felt that the committee supports those changes to the special act. They would introduce more flexibility, including things like meeting frequency and approval authority around certain map changes. And then, as I outlined before, that 13-member council structure in those three rotating seats was that part of the recommendation when it comes to the council structure. So last thing I'll leave with you all is we have put together a working timeline for amending the special act because, again, this is going to have to run up through the legislature and be signed by the governor. So this is generally the 12 steps that it's going to take to complete that process. That first step is developing that bill concept. So we're going to work hard to make sure we have something in place before that first meeting of the Pinellas legislative delegation. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Any questions for Rodney? Just a reminder, this is an action item. We're looking for support of the consensus recommendation so that we can finish the language revisions with that direction. Thank you, Chair. Rodney, I want to say thank you for all your hard work on this because it was a lot, and it was a lot of meetings and a lot of exchanges of really good ideas with the people served on the committee. So thank you for being here for those extra meetings. And I would like to – is it a second? I heard a motion. Was there a motion? I think we had a motion. Commissioner Peters made a motion. I'll second a motion for approval. Okay. Because I like what we do. Okay. All right. Great. Tina, do we have any members of the public that wish to speak on this? Yes. David Ballard, Dennis, Jr. Okay. Come on up, David. Hi. Thank you again. I appreciate that. I have some concerns regarding the methodology of representation as it's based on population versus geography. I frequently call into question Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution where it references fortifications built up areas 10 miles square in their geography. Now, is this geography based on land mass? Is it based on the water jurisdictioning that's taking place under the 14th Amendment? The population density, as referenced in Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, mentions one person as being privileged and immune and 30,000 that are supposed to be taxed directly. I'm a little concerned with direct taxation as it applies to the due process of this birthing of a water jurisdiction formulated as a 10-mile square fortification as constituted. And I'm a little concerned as to who this land use attorney that was mentioned, but yet a name was not given as to who that land use attorney is in regards to this action item as based on population versus geography and representation. So, but thank you for letting me address my concerns again. Thank you, David. All right. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. I want to thank members of the committee as well and Rodney. That was really, really good work. So thanks, everybody, for getting that done. All right. So now we're going to move on to, let's see, director's report, item 8A. E-bikes and beyond. All right. E-bikes and beyond. There we go. I won't take too long here. In your packet, I just wanted to highlight that you have a white paper and a presentation that were provided to the Board of County Commissioners on August 20th for a work session on the subject of e-bikes and e-mobility. Kyle Simpson of our staff over here took the lead on that and really appreciate his work. He worked very closely with Tristan Summer of the county, and we established a working group that included a number of cities and county staff, law enforcement, and others who weighed in on the development of the white paper. And the reception at the county commission meeting was good. We had, I think, a robust conversation. As you all know, you've all been in office long enough to hear some of the complaints about e-bikes. The real gray area in legislation is not so much the classified e-bikes that are enshrined in Florida law. It's the e-motos, the ones that can get up to, you know, 40, 50, 60 miles an hour that are not really street legal, and they are causing some concern whether they're being ridden on the trail or on the sidewalks or even in the streets. And that was really a focus, although there was some concern expressed about even the Class 3 e-bikes that are pedal assist but are capable of getting up to 28 miles an hour, which is still pretty fast going down the sidewalk. Or on the trail if you've got an unsuspecting, you know, pedestrian in front of them. So what the presentation did is outlined where local governments have authority, and the legislature did leave some room for local governments to add some regulations. They can require e-bike operators to possess a government-issued ID. They can allow local governments to adopt potentially minimum age requirements to operate an e-bike, restrict the use of e-bikes on specific facilities and or the sand, the beaches, as some of our beach communities have already done, and adopting a maximum speed limit of 15 miles an hour on sidewalks and set speed limits on trails. St. Petersburg has already done that for some of its facilities. The, as I mentioned, the beach communities have enacted a ban. You may have heard about legislation that was passed last session and vetoed by the governor, and the concerns over the veto was that some of the requirements in the bill of slowing down to 10 miles an hour around a pedestrian and other provisions would require cameras and other devices to enforce that. I do expect a bill to come back. So I will be meeting with the county administrator in a couple of weeks to talk about the commission's interest and will likely bring something back to the commission for consideration. But I just wanted you all to have the white paper, the background, and the presentation so you had the full information. And if anybody wants to add anything to the topic, it's still a work in progress. Our hope is that whatever the county chooses to endorse or adopt or enact would be a model or a template that the rest of the jurisdictions around the county could similarly adopt because it's going to be really difficult for an e-bike user to navigate our 25 jurisdictions and stay compliant if it's not consistent. I put forth a policy statement to be, it will be voted on through the Florida Association of Counties that would essentially be a statewide, not just a individual county. We'll see how that goes, but I did put that forward and broke the language in Davin and Jeff helped me clean it up. Thank you for that. Any other questions, feedback? All right, I'll just keep rolling if that's okay. I know y'all have been here a long time today. The next item is the Countywide Data Centers Policy Working Group. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Again, this is going to be very brief, just a heads up. That we have formed an advisory group, working group of planners around the county and they had their first meeting a week or so ago. In your packet, there is a link to the website we've established that includes a white paper that Emma Winnick of our staff primarily drafted and we are kind of working with that working group on what are the respective roles of the countywide plan relative to data center and local government responsibility and where do we want to leave things up to local governments and where do we want to say this is of countywide significance and let Ford Pinellas establish policy. There's very clear opposition to data centers, probably of all types, but certainly the hyperscale data centers. And we want to be mindful that we're following a process that gets the buy-in of all the local governments in whatever we recommend. And so we look to have a couple more meetings of that working group and develop a set of recommendations for your consideration in about a month. And we are moving in a direction of looking potentially at consumption-based restrictions and other ways to ensure that we're forward-thinking about these, but we're also mindful of the public concern and the impacts that these potentially could have. And I'll leave it there because the working group still has a few more meetings to finish out. But welcome your feedback and questions. Richie, you had a question? Yes, thank you. Just real quick, I saw the discussion that the county had recently about this, and it led me to want some clarity. So it seemed like, you know, anyone from the county can correct me if I'm wrong, there's some concerns around Senate Bill 180 in this conversation. But we also already feel like our planning restrictions don't allow for this to happen in the county. You know, I guess if anyone could speak to that for a second, yeah. Right. Well, the county attorney has weighed in that because they're not defined, that they are prohibited. And that's their position on that. And that makes sense to me. It's also not defined in the Ford-Pinellis countywide plan, countywide rules. However, as we saw with the case of Pinellis Park and in other jurisdictions, Treasure Island is an example as well. A lot of local governments have adopted some wiggle room language that currently today could be interpreted that all other uses not outlined may be enabled under certain conditions. And so that, you know, gives us some pause to say, okay, if it's not mentioned, is it really restricted? And vacation rentals is a good example of that. We didn't have regulations prohibiting vacation rentals. We're really speaking to them, and yet they weren't prohibited. So we want to make sure that, again, we're being mindful and thoughtful about that. And what the county does would be applicable to an incorporated county. So we've got these other jurisdictions, and we just want to make sure, just like in the days of not-in-my-backyard or extraterritorial impacts, that whatever one local government does doesn't affect all of Pinellis County. Okay. That makes sense. And to, I guess, I don't know who can answer this, but, you know, other communities have enacted, I guess, legislation for moratoriums or bans on these things. But I don't know what tack they've taken if we feel like Senate Bill 180 is limiting to us. If they, you know, I don't know how they manage that situation either. I can't speak to that personally. But there is a concern that unnecessarily burdensome or restrictive would violate Senate Bill 180. But, you know, there's different interpretations, I suppose. Okay. All right. I'll look forward to future updates, and I'll spend some time looking into that myself as well. Thank you. I can probably speak to that a little bit, too, is that so a moratorium is only good for a year anyways. But Senate Bill 180, because Pinellas County was affected by Helene, there's that, I figure that window, is it 18 months or 24 months, whatever it is? 18. September, okay, is that we're still in that cone where we can't create any more burdensome or restrictive land use policies. So we're definitely still in that 180 cone that we can't do anything. And the concern that I've kind of heard from the general public is even though, because it's not defined in our land code, our county attorney says that if it's not defined, it's not allowed, is that, you know, some really good land development attorney could come and figure out a way to get something through. So I think there's, you know, kind of a general desire to find something that's a little bit more permanent than that. And that's kind of what we're trying to figure out. So Kathleen, do you have anything? So, and our attorney came up with a different term. And I don't remember if it was a resolution or it was something else, not an ordinance, that would define. Yeah. So we're going to do something that will define it without an ordinance. And then when that SB-80 goes by, then we'll do the ordinance. But it's our intention to pass something as a resolution. I think it's a resolution she said. Yeah, it was, yeah. So that we're going to do a resolution saying that we do not support these at all and unincorporated. We can't say that countywide. But being a coastal hazard community, it just doesn't even make sense to put a hyper data center anywhere in there. It just doesn't even make sense. And our grid, the electric grid that we have, isn't even up to capacity to host a hyper data center. And so, you know, I would like to see this just swiftly. And I know you guys are doing everything, and I see the caution that you're using. I read the whole white paper. But just because we're a high coastal hazard area, it just doesn't even make sense that we would allow a hyper data center anywhere in the county. So I look forward to seeing this, and I really do hope we do something on the countywide planning map that would prohibit a hyper data center anywhere in the county. And that's my opinion. You all may have a different opinion, but between the flooding we saw, not only with Helene, but then with Milton, all in the center of the county, in areas that weren't even flood zones, we had flooding. And it just doesn't even make sense that we would have to invest in the electric grid. The investment alone that would have to go in the electric grid to put that burden on our citizens is silly in a high coastal hazard area. It just doesn't make sense. So that's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it, because I've been wanting to see this. I think I brought this up in March or April, and it just, I don't know if it's a bureaucracy that takes so long to make something like this happen, but I really think it just should happen more quickly. So thank you. Thanks. Anybody else? Okay. All right. I've got one other item I'll just quickly do, and I think we're close to being done. Item 8B is I just wanted you all to be aware that we have a new financial resolution template for local governments that receive funding through the five-year FDOT work program. And what the department wants to do is ensure that local governments are aware that there's a commitment to deliver those projects in the five-year work program when they are scheduled. And there is an ability to ask the department for the ability to defer that project if it's not ready or if there are some other design issues that come up that raise the cost, and therefore you need another year to get the money together. But that's going to be something that the department would determine in consultation with the local government. And it's really to formalize your acknowledgment that you're committing to deliver the project in the five-year work program. And we applaud this because we've had some issues in getting projects that we've prioritized, that they've been responsive, put into the work program, and then we hear, wait, you know, we need to defer these five projects or six projects. Or it's a year from construction, and now we're debating whether the project should go forward as we've prioritized it. And, you know, that presents problems because in FY27, where the project is funded, there may be money. In FY28, there may not be money available for that. And then you're looking to maybe have sort of a cascade effect of other transportation projects. So I bring it to your attention because I or my staff are going to be reaching out to individual city managers or administrators and asking you to formally approve this form because we'll need it for every project that's in the work program. So we'll come calling. All right. We'll wait. All right. Okay. Now we're on to item nine, informational items, which are in your packet. Do we want to have any presentations or discussion about any of that? No? Okay. All right, then. Well, if there's nothing else for the good of the order, then we are adjourned. And I thank everybody for their participation today, and we will see you all on October 14th.