I think I hated to start the meeting because it looked like we were having a good time just catching up a little bit. All right, we're going to go ahead and get started. And if Dylan, if you could lead us in the pledge, that would be great. Just a couple of things. Councilman Copley-Gerdes is going to be joining us via Zoom. So I need a motion and a second to allow him to do that. Motion. Motion by Dylan Hubbard. Second. Second by Bruce Rector. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? You're in with us for a couple hours. Nice to have you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. And I'm just going to just say, you know, it's great to be back. Mayor Rector and I were both over in Ireland for, oh, I don't know, five or six days. It was just incredible. From a business development standpoint, the Global Tampa Bay Group went from the region. And so Pasco and Hillsborough were very involved. Businesses were there at the table from our perspective. Got to meet a couple ministers. The, what am I trying to say? The U.S. ambassador was, he came through when we were just standing there. It was almost like it was scripted, you know, as we were standing, waiting to talk to some folks. But it was just a really great trip. And tourism was in everything. Everything that we did, whether it was the bus ride from the airport, the bus driver, amazing. And then we zip around. We had all kinds of different folks that every time, it was like it starts to play. And they start talking about Ireland and how great it is. And so it was a really good time and took a little bit of a tour of the countryside. It was beautiful. And again, tourism everywhere. The fintech industry, the medical industry there is just booming. And all the big players are there, low tax rates. And so as much as we, they love to come here and bring businesses here and tour here, they like us going there. It's kind of the drop-off point to Europe, but to the Euro group. So, Mayor, if you have any other comments on it, you're welcome to. No, it's a beautiful country, obviously, and everyone knows that. But I shared with the group that what makes Ireland such a desirable destination for Americans is it's a very easy place for Americans to visit. It's not just the language, and there's a little special consideration they give you. You know, when you're leaving, you go through customs on the Ireland side. So when you arrive in the United States, you don't have to go through customs here. But more importantly, what sets them apart is how everyone you meet, taxi drivers, hotel staff, wherever you go, people go out of their way to make you feel at home, welcome there in their country. And my thought was, you know, how do we get rated our Pinellas County beaches so highly every year in TripAdvisor? Well, that's visitor reviews. And it's very similar for a visit to Pinellas County and our beaches. It's a testament to our hospitality industry, to our community, how welcoming we are to tourists and how comfortable we make them. And we've made Clearwater, Pinellas County, and Tampa Bay an easy place for folks to visit. And that's what certainly sets Ireland apart is that welcoming attitude by everyone. They are so happy to see you. And I think it's true for Pinellas County as well. That's what has really driven our success. Yes, we have beautiful beaches. Yes, we have white sand. But it's really the welcoming attitude that our hospitality industry and our people have for tourists here that makes the difference. Well said, Mayor. Thank you. Okay. Well, let's go ahead and jump in. Approval of the minutes. Do I have a motion for that? Motion to approve the minutes. Motion by Clyde. Second. Second by Dillon. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Do we have some public comments? No public comments. Okay. We'll go ahead and jump right into the presentation. And we have our folks from Tampa Airport here. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And we are joined this morning with, I keep wanting to say new, but he's no longer new any longer. The CEO of Tampa International Airport and a great partner of not only Visit St. Pete Clearwater, but Pinellas County, Mr. Michael Stevens. And he's going to give you an update on the great things that they have going on over at TPA. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the council, and to everyone in attendance. Brian, thank you for that warm introduction. My name is Michael Stevens, and I have the honor and the privilege of being the CEO of America's favorite airport, your airport, Tampa International. That is the primary job, but my secondary job is the primary caretaker of a 60-foot flamingo that stands in the terminal who allegedly doesn't like Crocs and pajamas, but that's an entire separate matter. But on a very serious note, I'm delighted to be here with you all this beautiful morning and talking about the very important topic of tourism and how that's impacting the airport. And I have to thank each and every member of this council for all of the efforts that you do. It is indeed a collaborative effort that brings all of the traffic into TPA to visit everything that's happening over here in Pinellas County. And I mentioned to Chairman Eggers this morning on our way in, this is my fourth time over here in four weeks giving a presentation, and that matters. While we have always been a regional asset, showing up on this side of the bridge, building relationships, letting you know how important the work that you all do over here is to what we are able to do and deliver to this community absolutely is job number one for me and the entire team. So as many times as it takes to come over here and continue to build onto these relationships and tell the story of what's happening at your airport so then you can go out and help us amplify that message as a part of what we want to do. And in fact, about 27% of our local traffic comes out of Pinellas County. That's a huge number. About a third of our traffic comes out of Pinellas County. And so making sure that it reflects at the airport what you want to see, not only in terms of what you want to experience from how the airport works for you and the businesses that are over here and the visitors that come over to this side of the bridge and to this region, but also where do you want to go? Our job is simple. It is really about connecting this region to each other and to the world. So today I want to spend a little bit of time giving you an update on where we are with that effort, what our vision is to be the number one transportation organization in the country when it comes to connecting people by air. So I want to give you an update on some of the things that we have going on. But before we jump into that, let's talk about where we are in some of the places that we're going. Our nonstop destinations are increasing at a dramatic rate. As you can see with all of the blue dots, we have pretty much blanketed the United States in terms of our coverage, meaning that from Tampa International, you can get direct to almost any major place that you want to go. Certainly on the East Coast, as you can see, we have tremendous coverage there as well as on the West Coast. Now, in the years past, that wasn't necessarily the case. We didn't necessarily have traffic to places like Portland or Seattle or multiple carriers that were going out West. We heard what this community was demanding from not only our tourism community, but our business community. Everyone was saying, hey, these are the places that we want to get to. And your air service team has been absolutely focused on making sure we deliver that. The gold dots are a new service that we've had in the last 12 months, service that we're going to be launching pretty soon here to some really exciting places. So part of that traffic growth is happening because Breeze Airlines is expanding. Breeze has been on an incredible growth spurt at Tampa International. In fact, Tampa International was one of the first places that Breeze launched from. My predecessor, Joe Lopano, was on the very first flight to Charleston, South Carolina when Breeze launched. So as you see, they're launching additional service. NASA's first jet service to NASA out of Tampa International coming up pretty soon in June to Punta Cana, San Jose, Costa Rica, which we're very excited about, and then some other locations that are rounding out the map there coming as late as December. So we're super excited about that service. And many of you have just come back from across the pond. I know Mayor Rector and Commissioner Eggers just came back from Dublin. Well, we are also expanding the offerings by British Airways. And as many of you know, British Airways has flown out of Tampa International for a few decades now, but it's always been to London Gatwick, which is about an hour out of the city center. So now London Heathrow is going to be the new direct location for British Airways, and it's going to be on a brand new Dreamliner aircraft offering the first first-class product coming out of Tampa International ever. So it is going to be outstanding. It's going to be a top level of service, and it's going to be even more convenient. Now, I want you to think about that for a moment when you just think that Sir Richard Branson was here not too long ago with Virgin Airways launching direct to Tampa from Heathrow. That tells you the volume of demand. That tells you the amount of energy that's happening in Tampa Bay and over here in Pinellas County that British Airways says, hey, let's take a part of that action too and fly folks directly from Heathrow right into Tampa International. So we're excited to have two carriers serving Heathrow at this point and are looking to expand the map. So some of our service targets that we're looking to shoot for. You see Amsterdam is back. We had Amsterdam before COVID. When COVID came, it went away, and now it's back. Bogota daily. And that is also considering the fact that we fly Copa Airlines to Panama City daily, right? So there was no cannibalization in that route. Again, that's representative of the demand, a lot of the efforts that you all have moved forward. Dublin. The team just came back from Dublin. We had a team on the ground speaking with Aer Lingus about creating direct connectivity to Dublin. Lima, Manchester, and Sao Paulo are a few other places that we are aggressively looking to get direct connectivity to. And this is going to stimulate not only business, but it's continuing to stimulate all of the tourism that we're seeing happening over here within our region. Now, the vision to support all of this growth is what I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about, and that's what many of you have been seeing or perhaps hearing about, which is Airside D. And Airside D is going to be our newest international terminal and our first terminal over the last 20 years, our most recent terminal since Airside C was built about 20 years ago. Now, for those of you who travel out of Airside C, which is primarily southwest, that terminal is about 300,000 square feet, big terminal. This is going to be double the size. It's going to have two international lounges. It'll have a Delta Lounge, and it'll have a common-use international lounge. It's going to have state-of-the-art biometrics, so you'll be able to walk through with your family, face scan, and clear customs. It won't be as much of that queuing line as we've been used to. So we're trying to really reduce the friction points, particularly of people coming into the country, new shops throughout the entire campus. So that is exciting that we're going to be able to redevelop our commercial program, which is going to still give people a sense of Tampa Bay. We want you to come to this region not thinking that you're in just some cookie-cutter region, but we want to give you what Tampa Bay looks like, what all the shops over on this side of the bay look like. So that's what we're going to be focused on. And why are we doing this? Because in the next 10 years, we all see that this region is growing. We will be serving almost 10 million more passengers that are coming through your airport. So going from about 26 million passengers that we have now to about 35 million passengers. That's a tremendous amount of growth, and we have to be ready to support that growth. But if they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, I think video is worth far more. So I want to show you what this is going to look like. Now, some of you have seen it, but bear with me. I never get tired of seeing this, so I'm going to show it again. Here we go. So this is coming into our region, looking at all the beauty, all the natural fauna, and all of the wildlife that we have. We wanted to capture that sense of wonder when you come and fly into Tampa. We want to show not only just our beautiful beaches, retail shops, all the excitement that's happening. Then you get to your airport, Tampa International Network. Space right there is where the magic is happening right now. That is the footprint for Aeroside Deep, and a lot of that work has already started. A lot of the foundational work is in place right now. Literally just went vertical with steel this week, including elevator. So it's moving ahead of schedule and ahead of pace. It is going to be a tremendous facility full of technology, full of light. It's going to show off this region. So when you come in, there are going to be ceiling to floor-to-ceiling glass that you can see right there that's able to capture all the beauty of the bay in this region. We're going to have glass jet bridges. So if you have visitors coming into this region, they can see what Tampa Bay is about from the moment that they step off. This is as you begin to approach Aeroside Deep. You'll see the wood tones there that help reduce stress and bring you into this beautiful area. Now, my favorite feature is up there at the ceiling. These are two massive digital displays. Down at around waist level, you also see digital screens. So imagine dolphins traveling on those screens and then leaping and breaching up into the ceiling. And you can see them beautifully up there, about 45 feet above your head. All of the hold areas will have food and beverage that kind of pushes into them. So you don't have to go and look to see if your flight is going to be boarding. You can kind of sit there and enjoy your meal and your time and keep the rest before you jump on the flight. If you're pulling into the gate, you're joining us internationally. You will go to a beautiful customs facility that you can see right here. Now, in the current construct, our customs is down in Aeroside F, a little dark, kind of like a basement. But this is not going to be that. This is going to be bright, airy, and spectacular, welcoming people to our region. Using biometrics so you can get through queues very quickly, grab your bags, and you're on the way. This is what this region can expect. This is the vision that we have to continue to stimulate the growth that we are seeing here, all the work that you're doing here. This is going to be the crown jewel of a lot of those efforts. And the folks that are coming to visit Pinellas County from around the world, this is what you can welcome to. This is your Aeroside D. So that is what that looks like. And that is the vision for Tampa International to connect the region to something spectacular, all the things that are happening here. But I will also say this, as many of you have heard me say, while we can bring people in at 600 miles an hour, while we can connect our region to the world and the world to our region, part of the thing that I want to do, part of my vision as CEO, is to begin to help connect us to each other. So I live in North Tampa, in the New Tampa area. I left my house an hour and 40 minutes to get here. And I just got here 10 minutes before it was time to start, right? What does that mean? We, as a region, as leaders in this region, have to look at how do we do a better job in connecting our region to each other. It makes no sense for folks to come into a beautiful Aeroside D. They fly into here. And then it takes them an hour to get across the bridge to your beaches. It takes them an hour to get downtown if the lightning are playing. So a part of my vision is leveraging the airport on fixing that. And I believe that we can create a connective point at Tampa International, something I call a multimodal air mobility hub. Now, a part of the other thing that we're doing very quickly, as I conclude, we're looking at eVTOL, electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Many of you have heard me talk about this. This is a real thing. This is happening now. In fact, Florida is one of the eight leading states that will be leading that effort on how we connect the entire country. So Florida will be leading on a demo basis about creating routes, creating a bunch of different pathways to make sure we can blend this traffic in. So my vision is to have a multimodal center where we have multiple modes that connect, including eVTOL. So I want to show you what that vision looks like. Now, keep in mind, this is just exploratory. This is just saying what is possible. And this is not pie in the sky. These are modalities that are already underway towards certification. But this is how I believe we can incorporate it in Tampa Bay. So before we get in there, I wanted to give you this quick slide about the economic impact of all of these activities, eVTOL, Airside D. I really just want to focus on the small business and its jobs numbers. We're looking at creating $190 million of economic activity from all of the things that are happening with Airside D, as well as a lot of the other construction efforts at the airport, 1,400 full-time jobs, and about $763 million of economic impact to Florida. Real serious dollars. There's $458 million-plus in the six-county catchment area around Tampa International, which includes Pinellas County. So these are the efforts that we are focusing on and the impact that it will have. But now I want to just show you a couple of things as we conclude and I wrap up. Here are some of the milestones that are happening right now. Public art is going up. Structural steel just went up. The concessions program is out pretty soon for folks to bid on that. And we expect Airside D to open early in 2029. So we're super excited about that. Now, this is what I wanted to show you in terms of our vision of how we can potentially connect the region. And this is depicting a multimodal center that is right on that 275 corridor where the old Doubletree and Charlie's is. And I think that this is something that is achievable. So let me go ahead and play the video. Imagine you're flying into Tampa. Imagine a region that's connected seamlessly and efficiently. So Tampa International Airport is the multimodal hub. And just on the outside of that, where you see our people mover going, imagine a Skylink station. That's EVTOL on the top that will allow us to connect above the traffic. Mixed shoes down at the bottom. TNCs, all kinds of things can come in there. And the vision is to be able to eventually connect and automate a people mover, perhaps from downtown Tampa and the Water Street District out to that multimodal center by the airport. And then you can connect right into the airport on a people move. And then to do the exact same thing from that multimodal hub and take it across the Howard Franklin Bridge, where FDOT has already made the capital expenditure in there by widening the bridge. This gives us the ability to do something extraordinary, to potentially activate PAI and Tampa International. So if you are flying from around the world and you want to fly into Tampa International, great. If you want to fly around the U.S., you can fly out of PAI or connect into PAI, and you don't have to make these jumps. It's no different than if you would imagine an O'Hara and a Midway or a Love Field and a DFW. If you want to go around the world, you come from out of Tampa International, and if you want to go locally, you have other options. That is the vision that I think this region is worthy of. That is what we are leaning into at your airport, at Tampa International, and that is what we are excited about, shaping the future of this region. Again, thank you. We appreciate all that you do, all of your efforts in making tourism real at the airport, real for this region, and real for the people who want to visit this fantastic community that we call home. Mr. Chairman, I am concluding my remarks and happy to take any questions that you may have. Thank you, Michael. And I heard there was some new stuff in there. I just heard a lot of it, but it was still refreshing to hear all of that again. So thank you for the message there. Anybody have any questions for Michael? Yes. Go ahead, Chuck. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think we all in this body just want to congratulate you. You've taken over Tampa National Airport from Joe and done a fantastic job to bring airside, the new airside, and what it's going to look like. It's something to be proud of for all of us in Tampa Bay. So I just wanted to reach out for this organization to say thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate that. Mr. Mayor? I'd just like to thank you for a great report and all the growth that's really, you know, we're continuing to grow our tourism in Pinellas County, and I think we're going to continue to do that over the years. So air service, as you pointed out, the third of it coming from Pinellas County is really important, too. So what you do is critically important to the success of our county and tourism, and what you said there at the end, I think, is really important. Because of some time constraints, I had to fly Allegiant to Knoxville, Tennessee to stay there for two or three days before I went to Dublin, and then I went straight from Knoxville to Dublin and then Dublin back to Tampa on Delta. So I had to make that transfer from Tampa International to come back to St. Pete Clearwater International Airport to get my car. And I think we're finding, you know, when you book your tickets, it used to be, well, you stick one airline the entire trip. Well, now, you know, if you check on Expedia or whatever, it's, you know, you can get a ticket round trip on multiple airlines to travel to and from a destination. So I think that connection that you talked about is really important, not just for the airport, but for our region to think about how do we connect those two very important airports. Because we know St. Pete Clearwater International Airport drive through Allegiant has really helped our tourism industry here in Pinellas County. So many folks are able to buy on the night before sometimes a ticket to come visit our beaches for two or three days. It's a very cost effective way for a lot of folks to travel, but still Tampa International brings most of the passengers here. So applaud you for, for, for thinking regionally, because I think it's really important that we connect our two airports down the road. Thank you, Mayor. Appreciate that. Thank you, Mayor. Copley. Thank you. Mr. Stevens. Good to see you again. Likewise. Um, we had Mr. Stevens last week at city council in St. Pete. So, uh, I was happy to see the addition of the EV toll. Um, you know, what I would say is we're St. Pete is trying to lead here at Albert Whitted with EV toll. And so we've done a master plan and we've, we've put a commission together. And so, uh, I, I, I would echo what Mayor Rector said. And it's, it's critically important to make sure that we're connecting the airports, but I think just like it's important to get into downtown Tampa, it's important to get into downtown St. Petersburg too. And, uh, I just wanted to, you know, let you know, whatever we can do to partner, to make sure that we're, we're working this together because St. Pete really is trying to lead, uh, when it comes to EV toll and making sure that we're one of the first in the state to, to activate. We've, we've looked at where we can have it already on our, on our runways and what that might look like. And so, uh, we're going after funding and so whatever we can do to partner there, we want to make sure we're connecting. Cause I, again, I would agree with Mayor Rector connecting those airports and our, and our hubs is, is critically important in, in multiple different ways. I love the multimodal and the regional thinking. I told you that last week when we spoke. Um, and so however we can partner there, uh, selfishly from a St. Petersburg perspective, please don't hesitate because we're, we're really trying to lead from the front there. And thank you so much for the presentation. Thank you, councilman. And let me just say, if I, if I may chairman just very quickly to the councilman's point, uh, we are definitely locked in on a city of St. Pete. In fact, uh, most folks in here are aware, but some may not be aware of the very first commercial flight in the entire world happened between St. Pete and Tampa. So as it relates to EV toll, our vision is to recreate that. But now the very first EV toll flight from Albert Whitted over to Peter O'Knight. So we are working on that. Uh, we've already done a lot of our route studies and, uh, that is going to be a, a, a absolute thing, uh, that we're leaning into. So stay tuned, councilman. Love that. Dylan. Um, as a little bit of a marketing nerd, I was, uh, just wanted to take a second and congratulate you and your team for the success you have so much so that as a, the CEO coming to that podium, you led with the social media marketing efforts that you guys do. So it's a really impressive making national headlines and such, uh, from your social media efforts. It's, it's impressive what you guys have done. Well, I appreciate that, Mr. Hubbard. And I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out here to the, uh, folks that are, uh, at the tip of the spear of making that happen. That's Veronica Centron, my vice president of communications and strategy. And Josh, who is, uh, Phoebe's day-to-day handler with the rest of our team. So, uh, they are the ones that make the magic happen in, in marketing and comms, but thank you for those kind of remarks. Um, yeah, I, you know, that vertical transportation system sounds wonderful. As long as you don't let Commissioner Lett Vala drive any of those things. Um, Alex Heider, you're, you're, he was amazing. Everywhere we want, people were asking the question about that connection nonstop to, from Tampa to Dublin, a lot of meetings over there that he was doing out, you know, uh, outside our group. But so, so just really great. And he was a good ambassador, uh, as well for, for your, for your airport. Um, that regional discussion's a really big deal. Um, and as you're probably aware, you know, we're trying to merge our MPOs and, and, and have that discussion about regionalism and how important it is on many facets, on many fronts. And, um, and so, uh, you know, I'm just going to ask you, what are your thoughts as to, uh, uh, that, uh, that regional, that regional component? I know what you feel about regional, uh, connectivity on transportation, which to me fits right into the, to the MPO model and how we can work together. I think, uh, appreciate that question. I think it's absolutely critical for this region for us to speak with one voice. Federal dollars are getting more scarce. Uh, there is a lot of competition out there and the regions that are getting the line share of those dollars are working collectively. They are working to make sure that all boats rise. Not everybody is going to get a hundred percent of what they want, but that's better than getting a hundred percent of zero in Michael's opinion. And, uh, so I think if we can move towards that, uh, from a planning standpoint, from a competitive standpoint, and then last but not least from solving some of these real intractable issues of transportation, I see a vision where, uh, when we look at it from a regional standpoint, we don't have necessarily three different separate transit agencies in the three counties that would make up the MPO. You can have one large transit agency so you can allocate resources. You can go for funding at the FTA level. Uh, you can do a lot of things, the same things that I'm talking about with, uh, uh, Pi and, uh, and Tampa International. And last but not least, that multimodal idea that I just shared with you, imagine cloning that same type of structure and dropping it in Carolina and then connecting from there down to wherever, uh, whether it's with, uh, new technologies like, uh, Waymo or if it's Glideways or a number of different things that are out there. That is our future. I believe that's a future that we're worthy of. And Chairman, to your point, I think a regional MPO will help shepherd that into a reality. I just want to take that opportunity as we try to shepherd the thought process in this area and how important that is. Thank you. And also a shout out to your social media. Veronica's amazing. Josh, it's nice to meet you as well, uh, and the work that they're doing. Cause that, all of that, uh, attention and just information flow and good stuff. So, uh, thank you again for being here. Thank you, Chairman. Nice chance. Anybody? Well, thank you again for being here and, uh, appreciate the, your being here in our offices again for the, for a second time in less than a month. Um, and I know that, I know that you're a regional facility. And so I think with our MPO discussions, it's extremely important that that be recognized. And hopefully, hopefully it will be. Well, Chairman, we appreciate you and everyone on this council's support. So thank you all. Enjoy the rest of your day. Take care. All right. That was, that was great. That was a treat. Uh, we'll move into the destination metrics. Eddie. Oh, there he comes. Well, good morning and happy to be with you all after taking a month off. Um, but you know, I'm looking forward to diving into these numbers. I think we have some pretty positive momentum as, as we look into March. So I wanted to report that for fiscal year 2026, we had nearly 14 million, uh, in TDT collections. This was the second highest ever. Um, the highest being what you see on the screen in fiscal year 2024. I do want to note that fiscal year 2024 had Easter, uh, on March 31st. So we did have a little bit more of a compressed, um, kind of spring period that year that, you know, obviously drove up a lot of demand, uh, in that month more than, than any other month we had seen previously. Um, and we also are up from fiscal year, uh, 2025 by about, uh, 200,000. So looking at the first six months of our fiscal year, um, we are up from last year by, uh, 3.82% and below, uh, fiscal year 2024 by less than 1%. So that's some really positive news. Um, you can see kind of in each month, um, we've kept really close to where that fiscal year 2024 number, uh, has been. Um, so it feels like we're kind of steady, uh, in terms of, you know, what we experienced from fiscal year 2025. And as I note, um, the blue bar indicates, uh, fiscal year 2026. The yellow bar is fiscal year 2025. The green bar is fiscal year 2024. So looking kind of back into March and looking at the different areas of Pinellas County, um, you know, we've really seen some, some green, some positive numbers from fiscal year 2025. Um, the two that I kind of want to call out are Clearwater and St. Petersburg. Um, but you know, where the areas are red in general, it has been kind of still those, that displacement demand, um, in those specific areas. It's positive to see though, that we've really had some sustained demand from fiscal year 2024 in Clearwater, St. Petersburg, Dunedin, um, those different areas. So, you know, while we might be down a little bit from, uh, last, uh, year in Clearwater and St. Petersburg, um, I think we can really see some positive sustained, uh, demand over, uh, the past couple of years from those key tourism areas. Um, and obviously for our vacation rentals being up 16% from last year, we're really have seen that, um, area of our community kind of come back and, and generate some strong, uh, tourism demand. Looking at some other metrics that kind of color the rest of the month of March, um, our total estimated visitors in the month of March was 3.3 million visitors. That's coming from Placer. That's up about 4.6% from the previous year. Um, while down again, because of that strong March in 2024, uh, 8.2%. Our hotel occupancy has remained really steady for the past, um, you know, three years that, that tends to be a very consistent number with 84.1%, uh, in the month of March. Um, our hotel rate is down a little bit from the previous, uh, couple of years, you know, by 2.4% two years ago, 1.9% the previous year, but our length of stay has also been very consistent at about 2.5 nights compared to 2.6 nights the previous couple of years. Uh, in terms of the vacation rental side, uh, we are seeing, uh, the rate increase quite a bit from the previous couple of years, over 10% in both years. Um, the occupancy is up over 7% from the previous year, but again, you know, that March demand in 2024, we're below, uh, by about 4.3%. Um, and we're also seeing a little bit shorter stays on the vacation rental side of things from six nights compared to 6.5 nights in the previous couple of years. Um, and this is a little bit hard to make out from, from this distance, but again, the blue bar represents fiscal year, 2026, yellow bar fiscal year, 2025, green bar fiscal year, uh, 2024. And you can really see, uh, our visitor origin markets by the hotel revenue, um, jump out. So Philadelphia has been up from the previous couple of years. That's been our top market in the month of March. Thanks in part to, uh, spring training, of course. Uh, New York again is up from the previous couple of years, as is our local area in Tampa, St. Pete. Um, so some positive momentum there. And then for the rest of those top origin markets, we are above, uh, last year and kind of going back and forth between fiscal year, 2024. So it's good to see kind of us coming back to, you know, that high that we experienced two years ago. Um, this is a little bit of a different chart. This is looking at our origin market by a place or by geo mobile location data. And this just gives some different perspective in terms of, um, you know, our top visitor markets by sheer volume. So you can see that 41.9% of all visitors kind of come from the greater region of Tampa, St. Pete, Clearwater, uh, Sarasota. And this is excluding Pinellas County. So it doesn't actually count, you know, visitors, um, from within Pinellas County there. Um, Orlando is the next top market at nearly 7.2%. And then the rest of the markets really kind of mirror some of the top markets in the hotel revenue side of things with New York and Philadelphia and Chicago kind of being those top, uh, next markets and then Detroit, uh, Minneapolis and Miami. The only one that was in here that, that wasn't in the previous one is, is Fort Myers, um, which is at about 1.8%, uh, and, you know, one of our top, uh, markets for just visitor volume. Um, jumping ahead to what we expect over the next kind of couple of months here, uh, we think that April is going to be really strong. Um, we see that, uh, hotel nights, uh, was better than fiscal year 2025, as well as fiscal year 2024. Um, you know, obviously we had the PTS concerts that came in and gave a large boost and kind of towards the end of April. Uh, but we really saw strong demand through the entire month. Um, and then in May, uh, June, July, August, we're seeing pacing being better than last year, slightly below the previous year. But as I've called out before, our booking window has shortened a little bit. So there's a possibility that it's, it's more competitive with fiscal year 2024 as we get closer to, um, these months. Looking at the vacation rental side of things, it's, it's a similar story to what I've been sharing this entire year where we're are way up from the previous, uh, year. We're still a little bit below fiscal year 2024, but we are really seeing some strong, uh, numbers from this market kind of come back online. And then the last thing I just wanted to leave you guys with was a little bit of survey data. We, uh, received the state of the American traveler each month. We're actually able to filter this to just the survey responses that are likely to visit or recently visited, uh, St. Pete Clearwater. In this case, I pulled just the survey responses that are likely to visit the area, you know, thinking about that forward planning, uh, 70% of those travelers say, uh, travel is a budget priority. Uh, this is actually greater than kind of the average, which is 61% of all the surveyed respondents. So those who are thinking about a trip to St. Pete Clearwater, um, you know, they're, they're prioritizing that travel a little bit more than the rest of the pack. Uh, 34.1% are likely to travel in the next 12 months. Um, that's positive compared to the 13.8% that are, that say that they're likely to travel less. So as you kind of look at that, about a third of, of those surveyed travelers think that they're actually going to be traveling more and 36.6% say that they're likely to spend more on travel. So, you know, that's another positive sign that, you know, people are still willing to travel. They're still willing to spend on travel. And it's a much smaller percentage of the, uh, surveyed, uh, audience there that say that they're likely to spend less on travel, only 16.3%. I know I've been brief, but I'm happy to take any questions. Any questions? Yes. Dylan. So, uh, on the slide talking about the, um, the DMA stuff where folks are coming from, um, I know you mentioned the place or AI is where you're pulling this from, but, uh, just while I was thinking about it, if someone came in from like New York and went into Tampa, stayed in Tampa for a few days and then came here, would that be captured in here or would it attribute that to a Tampa St. Pete? No, it would be from New York. So it's where the home location is on, on that particular device. Um, so it's, it's not just, you know, them, they stayed in Orlando for a couple of nights before they came over. No, we're able to see a little bit more of the visitor journey too, and actually look at, you know, some of where they came post and, and after, in terms of some of the more specific businesses. Interesting. Thank you. Anybody else? Yes. Thank you, Eddie. Uh, just, uh, your patient report, I have to say it's right on exactly on with what we're, our pace report is, so we are looking favorable for April is, and I think I'm going to come out great, but, uh, even this summer is pacing ahead exactly to your chart, so. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm hopeful that when we look at February, March, April, we'll have some really positive news to, to share in terms of those three months collectively. Thank goodness. Anybody else? Okay. Thanks, Eddie. Appreciate it. I'm going to jump into the film update with Dave. There he comes. Dave Pluto. Yeah, Mr. Chair, before Dave begins, I would just say we're, we're transitioning from Eddie, who you see every month to give you a data report to, um, uh, Dave Caputo, who I can no longer call the new film commissioner. Um, but this is the first time Dave's presenting, and I thought it was a great opportunity because, uh, he and Quinn in the film commission have done some great work, uh, not only on, uh, the film commission as a whole, but also on the incentive program and working collaboratively with the industry. So, uh, um, I'm excited to hear what Dave has to present to you all today. Thank you, Ryan. I appreciate it. Chair Eggers, council members, thank you for having me here. I'm Dave Caputo. I'm the film commissioner for Visit St. Pete Clearwater. And, uh, although not new anymore, I've been here just over six months. Um, and I'll have to say, uh, when I got here in November, uh, pretty much hit the ground running and, uh, we've been busy ever since. Um, traditionally we start to see a little bit of a lag in the film business as we get closer to the summer. Uh, some of that's weather oriented. Some of it's just timing of the way productions tend to work, but we haven't seen the seen any hint of that yet. So we're, we're still in a pretty busy period for ourselves here. Uh, so when I came to the commission, we started to take a look at not only our incentive program, but how we were operating, um, and where our focus was. And we, we wanted to take a little bit of a pivot on some of our strategic priorities, um, leaning into creating more visibility and awareness, not only for the destination, but for our incentive program for our productions to come here and feature our destination and their projects. Um, so Eddie just went through a bunch of numbers, so I'll just throw some more at you. Why not? Right now at the beginning at the top. So production so far, and this is year to date numbers. We've had 93, uh, 473 shoot days, over 1100 crew hires, over 1200 room nights. And we are projecting to have about $8.2 million in direct spending from those productions by the end of the year. So all year to date, except the forecast for the $8.2 million, and that's about a quarter million more than 2024 and $3 million more than 2025. So we are on pace for a really, really strong year in direct spending. Um, I do want to point out that our goal is not specifically the direct spending of these productions when they're in the market. It's really the projects themselves when they hit the screen, when they show up and millions of people across the world see them and start to question, hey, where is that? That looks really interesting. That's our outcome that we're really trying to drive. These are great numbers. They do validate the work that we're doing. The busyness of the activity really does drive the production industry. Um, but we really are trying to get these projects on the screen so people can see our destination. Um, some of the things that we're doing to try and create this awareness based on our strategic priorities is we go to trade shows. So just like every other industry, the film industry and production industry has trade shows as well. Um, in January this year, we went to the Real Screen Summit in Miami, which is the world's largest trade show and marketplace for unscripted programming. So unscripted programming is things like reality TV, documentaries, biography programs. Um, so it's an opportunity to meet directly with producers and talk to them a little bit about not only our programs, but our destination. Um, and what opportunities we may offer them in their productions and try to incentivize them to come in and look at our area as a place where they can produce their series or their documentaries or their biographies. Um, the next one was AFCI Studio Summit. So AFCI is the Association of Film Commissioners International. Um, this is a global organization. And once a year, there's a worldwide meeting. This year it was in Los Angeles. It was, uh, sponsored by Netflix and hosted at Paramount and Raleigh Studios. We had an opportunity to meet with, um, a lot of the decision makers from these studios, and specifically people that drive productions based on financial awareness and incentives. So we've met with some of the folks from Warner Brothers and HBO, as well as Netflix, as well as Amazon Studios. And, um, to be quite honest, they were very impressed with our program. Um, in fact, they had to do a couple double takes and say, can you go back over some of that? Um, because we have made changes to our incentive program, and that took place in October. And I'll get into that in just a second. But it is a very competitive program on a global scale, and I think we're starting to generate the kind of interest that we're looking for. Uh, the next program that's coming up is the Toronto International Film Festival. Um, that will be this September. Um, it's the inaugural marketplace for the Toronto International Film Festival. They've never done a marketplace for productions and media companies. Um, but it is the largest film festival in the world. So it is expected to be very well attended, and there's a lot of energy and excitement about it. So we're looking forward to being at this inaugural event. Uh, regarding the incentive program. So, um, this was launched prior to my tenure here at the organization. Um, Quinn and the team did a marvelous job in trying to create a competitive program, um, that would be recognized and be, um, desired by the production community. We launched it in October of 2025. And we've had an increase of 125% in applications year-to-date for that program since 2025. Uh, for fiscal 26, we are anticipating and allocated almost a million dollars in incentive funding against a budget of a million 25. So we are a roadmap here to where we are going to get to a full spend for 2026. And we also have allocated already into 2027 over 50% of the funding at 610,000. So we're starting to get ahead of this. We're starting to see a little bit of a flywheel effect of how we build a little bit of a tempo around our program and keep the productions coming in. It'll also help us to make better decisions about the productions that we do want to incentivize because our goal here is to have high-impact programs, not just quantity of programs. We want high-impact programs. And we need to create the balance between large-scale productions and small-scale independent productions. All of them are important, but we want to make sure that we're focusing on the most high-impact programs for our destination. A couple of things that have happened recently. So Mermaid, this is a film that was shot in the area in 2023, so three years ago. It was just released in April of this year. It did a limited release in some very small theaters and boutique theaters. It actually did a screening at the Beach Theater, which sold out back in April. I didn't get a chance to see it yet, but I hope too soon. Since that time, it has been picked up by AMC Theaters and is now being featured nationally. The entire film was shot in St. Pete Beach. It stars Johnny Pemberton, who is a stand-up comedian, as well as Kevin Nealon from Saturday Night Live, Robert Patrick, Tom Arnold, Kevin Dunn, and a few others. It's an interesting program. It's a little bit of a dark comedy, so that's kind of your thing. It's very entertaining. You'll enjoy it. It's not your thing. You might not love it, but it's a really interesting program and does feature the destination quite a bit in the entire production. Again, this was shot in 2023, so it was a three-year life cycle from when the project was executed to when it actually showed up on the screens. There's some behind-the-scenes here from this program. So part of our incentive program is that we get deliverables from these productions. It's a little bit of a marketing partnership. So we get the behind-the-scenes photos. We get interviews with the cast and crew. And these are things that we can use to market not only our destination, but to other productions as they're looking for places that they might want to do their next shoot. Most recently, The Statement. So this was a large-scale production filmed at the Don Cesar in St. Pete Beach. This was in early April. It's directed by Academy Award winner Tom McCarthy, starring Paul Rudd, Paul Giamatti, John Turturro, Amy Ryan, Evan Peters, and actually a whole lot more. This is probably one of the larger productions that have shot in the area in over 10 years. This is going to be a Sony Pictures Classics release, and it should be a worldwide theatrical release. The film was shot just this past April and will be released by the end of the year. That is their target. So it shows a little bit of a context here between these different productions on their life cycle. We had Mermaid that was shot three years ago, just released. The Statement was shot just this year, and they hope to have it out before the end of this year. This project will get a worldwide theatrical release before it goes to streaming and DVDs and things of that nature, but we anticipate this entire project being one of the best marketing opportunities we have, not only for our program, but for the destination itself. Sunscreen Film Festival. So just last week, we wrapped up the 21st Annual Sunscreen Film Festival. There were 270 films that were shown at this festival. It's just a couple of the kind of destination metrics here. We had workshops and panels, about 17 of them. We had over 29 states represented, some non-local cities represented, over 186, four different countries, direct business sales at over $1.4 million. So the Sunscreen International Film Festival is one of the largest film festivals in our area, but one of the things that's very interesting about this festival itself is they run kind of year-round networking events for producers. They are in a constant state of kind of this getting energy around the program and the festival and the competition itself. So we're in a constant state of taking entries for their film festival, and it certainly garners a lot of attention in social media with over 600,000 views on many of the pieces of content that they've sent out. So I went through a lot very quickly. I'm happy to take any questions, but that kind of comes to the end of everything I was going to present here today. Thank you, Dave. Appreciate it. Any questions for Dave? Yes, Chuck. Chair. So we're going to talk about the budget here in a few minutes, and your budget's flat for this coming next fiscal year at $1,212,000-plus. You and your group, they're doing great work, and to get this, you're giving the money out, which is even more important. Too many times we end a fiscal year and we see this leftover money. I know we're trying to be good stewards of our money, but we are ultimately a marketing organization. So thank you for marketing our organization via the film incentive program. When we come back here next May for 2028 budget, what do you – if you can ask for some more money, can we get more productions? I mean, tell me what you see in the future in the films. Thank you for the question. I think if I try to foresee the future in 2028, we're looking to grow the program. I think you're going to get to a point where there's not more production to get, but higher quality of production that you're going to want to try and market to. And so if I try to look into the crystal ball a little bit is our opportunity to create visibility and awareness for larger-scale productions that can have higher impact. It's not about more quantity. I think it's higher-impact productions. Some of those productions are incentive maybe not nearly as attractive as some state-level incentives. So it's something we're going to have to take a look at over the coming year and see what interest we're able to garner and to see what incentives we're able to apply and get those types of productions here. But I'm looking for a growth rate at somewhere in the high single-digit to low double-digits on a year-over-year basis. But it can't grow in perpetuity. At some point, we have all the production that we're going to be able to handle, either by infrastructure and locations or just by capacity for the area to handle those types. So it's not going to be a vertical growth curve. It's not going to be something that we're going to see like that. In fact, that might be something that would be very difficult for us to manage. I think something very consistent, very planned out, and something that allows us to focus on larger-impact productions is what we're going to be looking for. Financially, those larger-impact productions tend to cost more to produce and therefore may cost more to incentivize. So we may have to discuss whether or not we have the right amount of funding on the incentive side of it for those larger productions, but it's not going to be a quantity story. It's going to be how much value can we extract from those larger productions when we do incentivize them. Thank you. Great answer and great job this year with your team. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Dave, can I meet you in the middle with that clicker? Dave? Yeah. Now we get to go on to that exciting topic of budgets, messaging. So, Brian, you're up. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And today, before you, we've got our proposed 2027 budget. And it's my hope that each year that we have presented on the proposed budget, we've attempted to streamline this presentation and the information that we provide you each year. So I welcome feedback that you all have. You had in your agenda packet the full budget electronically. You have before you on your desk the budget book as a hard copy that you can flip through. But today's presentation is a condensed presentation that I really thought about this from the perspective of what you're going to see in the budget book and the budget documents. It's very OMB speak. And some of you are familiar with government budgeting. Others are not. And it's complex. And so I wanted to break this down and put this into as black and white as possible and really focus on specifically the operating side. So that's what we'll be focused on today. You do have the capital information, and we can talk more about that if you'd like. But on the operating side, where are we allocating our funds? What types of programming are we doing? What services? Where are we spending our money within our operating budget? So that's what we'll do. And just a little bit of background on this. So the team has been working on this since about December. And I want to give a huge shout out to Frederica, who this was her first budget with us. It was not her first budget coming over from the Office of Management and Budget. So she took on when Terry left in October and just jumped right in, and it was budget time. So Frederica and the team have been working on this since really December, probably even November. And I'm proud that this budget is not a top-down budget. You know, this is collaboratively worked with Frederica and each of the individual directors, the teams. And we're proud of where that is. I think this is a budget that's going to accomplish the needs of each department and something that we're very confident in. Taking in the county administrator, we submitted these budgets in February 28th, I believe was the actual date. I could be off a day or two. But all the county departments did that. They reviewed it, they beat it up, and then we presented it to the county administrator last week, went over it before we're bringing that to you. We made sure we got his buy-in before we bring that to you today. And then from here, at the end of this discussion, I'd be asking for a recommendation that we can then go and take to the BCC. So, this first one, I just wanted to show historically, I think you'll see in the next slide, this year was the third year in a row where we have been, it's been an administrative directive from the county administrator that all departments that report to the county administrator submit a flat budget. And so, just like every department, we did that. And I wanted to show this chart to you. This is from 2015 through 2025. We don't have 26 on there because we don't know the collections. The only number that we would have is the budget. But I want to show you is the blue line on the left is the collection of TDT. The orange line in the middle is the adopted budget for our operating budget for our department. And the green line on the right are the actuals. And what you see is that as TDT has grown, so has the budget. However, in every single year, we have fallen short of what we received in the budget as opposed to what we actually spent. So, while this is the third year that we're seeking a flat budget, we're actually spending more than we ever have. So, I wanted to show that and put that into perspective before we jumped in. So, a couple of the budget highlights for the proposed 2027 budget. Again, we mentioned the flat budget. We came in flat at $49.029890 million. And this is actually $3,100. We came in $3,100 under that flat budget. And we did this without reducing any of our service levels. So, we did have some reductions in memberships, travel, training, promotional activities. And these aren't going to have any impact on our operations. These are looking through the budget. How can we budget better for travel? You know, I know everybody wants to get a CDME every year, but things happen and you're not able to. So, how do we prioritize who has the opportunity to do that? Some of these memberships that we have, we have a number of memberships. Many of these oftentimes are required to participate in certain trade shows or do business access to certain clients. We took a look at each of those memberships and really wanted to make sure, hey, do we need, does every individual need to have a membership or is there a group membership that we can save some money on? Do we have a membership with this organization because we plan to go on a show and we actually didn't and we can get rid of that? So, these are not going to impact our service delivery. You can see we do have in 2027 $500,000 in there to maintain the arts tourism program funding and FTEs remain flat at 50. So, how did we get to a flat budget? So, obviously, there were some required increases to internal county operational costs, inflationary increases. So, we had to find some cuts there and these are those cuts that we found, but I would note these are not, these are gross reductions. These are not net reductions. So, these $247,000 in addition to cutting some of that, some of that was allocated to other areas of the budget such as advertising and marketing. Breakdown of expenditures. So, you have 2026, the current year, the level for each of those, and then on 2027, what we're proposing. And this is what I talked about where in your budget book, it doesn't break it down, this black and white, for lack of better terms. But I wanted to show you exactly where the money is going on the operational side. So, you see here marketing. This encompasses advertising and promotions, PR communications, as well as digital and data. The personnel, that's the people, business development, all the sales teams, business support, that's some of that back-end administrative things. Elite events has its own line item in there. That's something we would look to change in the future probably, but that remains flat. Community relations, tax collector, they are not, we're not expecting them to increase their costs. Arts tourism remains flat. And then in the executive side, that's the budget that we use for, you know, I use for travel conferences as well as the missions and shows that we take our commissioners to. We've been able to look back at the last few years, what have we actually used, and made some decreases there. So, overall, marketing personnel and business support are all getting some increases. And then the decreases come on business development, community relations, and executive side of things. This is just a breakdown of where that money goes, so you can see it visually, but you can see a majority of that is going to the marketing side of things, as well as the personnel, and then elite events, and the business support there. This is a breakdown of the incentive and funding programs that we have. So, these are the big ones. We just heard from the film commission about their incentive program, elite events, sports is broken out there. Chambers has remained flat. This is the money that we provide the 13 chambers through agreements to fund the operations of their visitor centers and to market the destination. Meetings and conferences, what we use to incentivize group business, and then the arts tourism program there. What we did not include in here was capital funding, just because that is coming from the capital side, and that will change every year based on the projects that have been recommended by you all and approved by the board of the county commissioners. And those will be paid out sometimes on the back end, sometimes over multiple years. So, that will constantly change, and if we do need, if a project does wrap up early, more projects are approved, we can always seek a budget amendment for that. So, before I get into the next steps, one thing that came out of the meeting with the discussions with the county administrator, we looked at ways that we can support other departments with our needs. And one of the things that we have, or with our resources, one of the things that we have is the beach nourishment, and obviously, that is a priority for the tourist development tax. And we have one half of a percent that's allocated towards beach nourishment. There are two positions over in Public Works that what they do is they manage the beach nourishment, and they're two coastal management positions. Without them, we have nobody overseeing the beach nourishment and implementing the beach nourishment projects. So, we did discuss if there was an opportunity to support those two positions through the capital side from that beach nourishment portion of the TDT, and that was something that we thought made sense. I don't have details yet on what that would look like, what those amounts would be, but I did just want to mention that because that did get raised at that meeting, and that's not included in the budget that you have before you. So, today, we'll be looking for a recommendation from you all. June 10th, I will present to the Board of County Commissioners at their BIS meeting with the other departments in July. Every department, as well as the Constitutionals, will all present their budgets to the BCC. We'll have a discussion there. The administrator will take the feedback provided by the Board during those BIS meetings, put together a proposed budget that he'll recommend to the Board in July, and in September, the Board of County Commissioners will hold two public hearings and adopt the 2027 budget. So, hopefully, that was helpful to you all, kind of broke it down into simple terms, and I would welcome any questions that you all have and discussion and areas of improvement. One question I had, Brian, was you mentioned, you brought it up, the capital projects not being a part of it because they fluctuate. We pay them out over years. It makes sense. In this bar graph slide, the first slide you showed, I assume the capital projects aren't in there either. No, they're not. This is just operating. Okay. So, because what I'm looking at just offhand, I mean, back in 2015 and even into 2016, what we budgeted and what we spent was pretty close relation to our TDT income, whereas nowadays, the last four years specifically, we are well below that. Is that because of the capital projects? No, that is not because of the capital projects. Yes, we're collecting a lot more now, and our budget has not kept up, our operational budget has not kept up with the amount of TDT that has been collected, and so that would be reflected in the reserves on the operational side that you see in the budget. I will note, I probably should have said this, so, in 2015, our budget was $28.6 million. What we actually spent was about $27 million. In 2023, the budget was $41 million, and we actually spent $37.6 million. And here in 2027, the proposed budget is $49 million, and in 2025, those actuals were $46 million. So, the proposed budget, you can see the budget has increased significantly in those 10 years, but also the actual what we're spending has increased. So, while it's flat, we continue to spend more, and thanks to Frederica and all the directors, you can see that delta between the budget and the actuals is decreasing, and that is because we have some controls that we've put in place where we have monthly budget meetings, and if money's not going to be spent, we understand that, and we have time to reallocate those resources. Most of the time, most of the time, it goes to additional advertising, but I can tell you it's challenging because the software that we use currently for budgeting, countywide, there's delays there on that. So, it's hard to keep up with, you know, pull up the computer today and see, hey, at this point in time, what have we spent? There's always things in process, and we are very glad that we will be getting some new software when we implement Workday here in 2027. Thank you, Chair. A number, I mean, kind of a numbers geek, I just want to make myself understand why they're different numbers. I'll take your, thank you, this synopsis at the end of the presentation, initiatives, incentives, and funding programs, and you gave us those examples. But when I just pull out film at $1,025,000 in your slide, but then I go to our budget books, and I see the 2027 budget at $1,212,000, so we're off about $200,000. When we go to sports, your budget this year is $947,000 for 26,000, but yet when I look at sports, I see 771. So the numbers just aren't there, so what's the answer? Why don't those match? So this is just the incentive within their department. This does not account for all the other things that they're doing in their department. So trade shows, advertising that they're doing, fam tours, travel, lodging, all of that is not baked in. This is just purely the incentive within their budget. Thank you. Regarding the beach nourishment, Brian, and if Phil was here, I'm sure he would be bringing this up. If there's going to be some additional cost in that, supporting them, which I think is a great idea, is there also discussion to increase the percentage that goes to that to build a little more buffer there in case the Army Corps situation doesn't clear up? So I will answer that as concise and as least complicated as possible. There has not been discussion internally about that. And what is, you have a capital funding program forecast, and what is not included in there is a couple things on this recent beach nourishment project that occurred. We had $125 million is what we anticipated the cost of that to be. The state was going to come in with about $11 million to support that. Well, we've completed that project. It came in under $100 million. And so, in addition to that, there is money allocated in the state budget, not approved yet, that would bring back almost 50% of the cost of that project to offset TDT costs that were allocated to that. So that is not even reflected in this pro forma. Additionally, we were going to have a discussion, but next Friday there's going to be an event with the commissioners as well as our friends from the Army Corps of Engineers in Washington down here in Pinellas County. But it sounds like we have reached an agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers for them to be willing to participate in our beach nourishment projects into the future. So at this point in time, we do not see a need for additional funding there. If something were to occur, we could simply do what we did this time and pull from operating reserves on a one-time drawdown like we did for this beach nourishment project. So that was a long-winded way of kind of bringing you up to speed on beach nourishment. Yeah, it will be a ceremonial signing next Friday to kind of memorialize that so that going forward we don't have all of these miscommunications with different folks that sit in those same positions up there at the Army Corps. So excited about that for sure. Yeah, thank you for bringing that up, Brian. Anybody else? Yes, Dylan. So to be clear, you're saying the problem that's been ongoing with Army Corps seems to be reaching resolution? Yeah, yeah. Nice. Yeah, and again. I would have expected some balloons or fireworks or something. Well, the balloons and fireworks are coming next Friday. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, and you know, until it's signed and everybody's there, you know, we've gotten a little bit skeptical. Yes, sir. But, you know, between our staff, between, you know, obviously Brian and Kathleen and their efforts, our state representatives and our federal representatives, Anna Paulina Luna has been incredible at shaking the trees up there and at least letting them understand where this kind of got off track. And so, thankfully, I think we're there, at least we're hoping that we're there, and now we're just going to have that courage to ask for the money that we went out on our own and spent and try to get some of that back as well. I don't know how that's going, but we'll see. Just kind of a reimbursement piece. But anyway, we'll see how it goes. But next Friday, yeah, exciting, exciting kind of a little, like, balloons, as you say, celebration. So, yes, question, as we do the budget up and we hear from our administrator, keep everything flat and all, we've had growth both in Clearwater, a number of hotel rooms, and St. Pete. And I can see in those two areas are actually, as it showed, is down, but it's also because of the growth. Is there any efforts that we've looked at budget-wise to put in for those two pockets? And then we hear we're going to get more from the future in St. Petersburg or Madeira Beach, I think it was in the newspaper today. Are we looking at what else we can do? Because we've got the growth in those two areas. We invested capital money into both of those areas pretty heavy. Is there anything else we can be doing? That's one of my questions. Yeah, so I would point out the amount of advertising and marketing dollars that we have increased has been significant over the last two years. And that is we've gone, in the last two years, we've increased the advertising budget by $12 million. So it's been a hefty increase on the advertising side, thanks to you all and the Board of County Commissioners for authorizing that. But in addition to those $12 million, additional advertising dollars, with the new agency, I believe that we are utilizing those resources in a more effective and efficient manner that are going to produce results. So, yes. Okay, the second part of that, yes, I'd like to hear about is in those two markets, there's new style of hotels. There's new, it's not all luxury, it's not all full service, there's different types of hotels. And so is there consideration of how we do market those with the ad agency and all in those two, and is that in the budget? Yes, so one of the things, and I wish Steve got stuck on the Skyway. Speaking of transportation, there was an accident on the Skyway today, and that's why he's not joining us today. But you'll see in our new campaign who we are targeting in those segments, and those segments will stay in different styles of properties. And they have different spending habits and different travel habits, and that will be reflected in our advertising. I would also say, as you pointed out, one of the things that makes this destination so unique and appealing in good times and in bad times is the diversity in the destination and the properties offered and the different price points offered. So that's something that we lean into and something that we benefit from when we talk to the trade. My second question is, how does this budget compare to like other TDCs in the state? When we look at our numbers, and you go to destination marketing meetings and all for the state, is our $49 million comparable to Fort Lauderdale or comparable to others that are equal size that we are? How does that compare? Have we checked ourselves on how we spend our money, and are we doing more in marketing and advertising? I wish I could give you a very simple answer, but I can't. That's something that, quite frankly, I've struggled with. As I've looked around the state at different DMOs to see their budgets, how they're spending their money, how they're doing things, there's not a one-size-fits-all. Obviously, we've got public DMOs, we've got private DMOs, we have P3 DMOs, and sometimes we're able to get that information and look it up. Other times, we're not able to access that information. The way that we title our funding or categorize our funding differs, so it's hard to do apples to apples. But what I can tell you from my discussions with my colleagues around the state is that we have a very extremely healthy budget for our operating side, but a very healthy budget for advertising side of things. Good. Thank you. Just to that, kind of feeding off of that, what are we looking like on the reserve side for each of those groups, the capital operating? Yeah, so on capital, the estimate at the end of 2026, and keep in mind, this is still a moving target because there are a lot of things in play, one of the largest being the beach nourishment and what we received from the state on that. But it's projected, the estimate at the end of 2026, on the capital side, we would end with a fund balance of $63.9 million. And on the operating side, it is projected that the ending fund balance at 2026 would be $172.8 million. One of the things you're going to talk about in a little bit is the Phillies. Is that reflected in these? Yeah, the Phillies, those are reflected in the capital. You'll see those are reflected in 2027 and 2028. That's not set in stone that those are the amounts, but those are the placeholders that we have in there for those two years to pay out on that. And I would just say that, you know, we talk about the 60-40 split marketing and capital. When kind of the Captain Hubbard's question that he raised on the TDTs increased, right now, we are getting the largest percentage of that 60%. We've never received for our operating the 60, the true 60%. We're getting the largest percent now, and that's about 52 and some change percent of TDT collections. So that's why you've seen those reserves on the operating side grow. And you'll obviously, if we continue at this pace, we would continue to grow those reserves on the operating side at about 8% of TDT collections, whatever the delta is, between the 60 and our 52%. Just one thing real quick. I really, you know, I think our commission listens to this group as much as we listen to anybody. The expertise, that gut feel that you bring to tourism is just incredible. And so when we start talking numbers and stuff, we're also taking into account what this advisory group tells us or gives, you know, your feelings. So keep expressing them, I mean, maybe in conflict with the direction that we're getting, but just keep, you know, that gut feel because you guys know it. You feel it. You lived it. And it's really important to hear continuously from us. This is a bold group in the past, and I hope it's always going to be that way. So anybody? Oh, you, Dylan. Go ahead. You sure? Yeah. Okay. Hope that comment didn't stop. Okay. Go ahead. I'm going to, I'll say, I'll ask one more or say one more if I can. You brought up a good point in listening to us and all, the county commission, which has been a great relationship for years. And we know you approve it all. And you've been very good with us timely and everything to do it and everything. And I appreciate it. All of you. It's been the history for many years. One of the areas that I'm going to bring back up a little bit is you just heard that you and the mayor just came back from Ireland and you did a business development trip to promote here and all. And we've got some major projects coming up in Clearwater and some other areas of the county and all. And the other side of it is that tourism was discussed a lot in your trip and the conversation and everything. Can we be looking at a study or something to look at how can we do more? That business that comes into Pinellas County that starts a new business here, I think I read, is our new customer. They stay in our hotel. They bring meetings and all. Is there something we can be doing more, make it one of our goals for the next few years to help bring those together more than we've ever had before and both beneficial for both sides? Well, it's interesting because we frequently talk about folks that visit here all the time. They're business owners, business leaders, and that's kind of their introduction in a way, in a kind of a weird way, kind of to this area. And they learn about it just visiting the area. And then they look into other opportunities. But I'll let you speak to that. I'll just add to you, David, to yours, is that lots of times that person that's here comes for a meeting or convention. Some association or something that they're seeing or exploring, and then they explore the next step. They like the place or get a good feeling. So you're right on. Well, I would just make the comment, we wholeheartedly agree. And one of the things that has been a priority for the county administrator as well as us at a staff level is how do we do that? How do we work better? Because we know that connection is there. I did struggle to see what would really move the needle rather than just doing things to do them, what's going to make an impact. And so Dr. Johnson and Pinellas County Economic Development, as well as Mike Sweezy at St. Pete EDC, we have been meeting. And actually, about three weeks ago, we did formalize some key areas that we're going to work on. And we're now meeting quarterly. But, I mean, just to give you, I won't go through all of these deliverables that we have. But let's just say we have a freelance journalist in town who writes for travel and tourism. But they also write for economic development and business recruitment. How can we partner with them to bring the destination to life when they're in here? Can we put together some group incentives for corporations that are in Tampa Bay area? And I'm a bull, so I like to use sports analogies. They talk about putting a fence around Tampa Bay and making sure that you don't let that football talent leave. Well, we want to put a fence up around Tampa Bay and make sure that those companies that are headquartered here aren't taking their summits and their annual meetings to a different part of the state. But they're staying right here in America's favorite beaches. So how can we create an incentive program that will only apply to them to make sure we keep that business here? Are there membership benefits we can do? When we have a conference, if it's a business conference, how can we communicate with economic development to bring them in and introduce them to the players there? So there are a lot of things that I think we can do, and we're committed to doing that. If I might share to your point, Russ. So for economic development, two weeks ago or so, I went by Moan in America's, which is here in Clearwater. They really produce syrups and things that go into all flavored beverages, and they really dominate the franchise restaurant business for flavored beverages. They supply all the Chick-fil-A's, all the major franchises, except for one or two, and they're in conversations with the only one or two that they don't serve right now. Their syrup additives are in 10 million beverages per day in the United States. It's just a phenomenal business. Nobody knows they're tucked in off there, off Hercules. But to your point, that company is owned by a French family. It's still family owned by a family in France. And they chose Clearwater because they had been recurring tourists to Clearwater, been visiting here for years, and that's why they decided to start it here. And I can tell you other stories I know, and we all know throughout Pinellas County, where somebody, the CEO or somebody, the founder of the company, has come to love our region and then started or moved their company here. And so I think it was really important, you know, timing that, you know, last year Commissioner Scott was on it, that we have two TDC members, or at least one, on this trip for economic development. Because, to your point, they are so closely tied together. It's worked out that way. But maybe it's something we can lean into heavier going forward because, as Commissioner Eggers said, we certainly talk a lot about tourism on these trips because it's so vital to our economy here locally. And even developing that connection stronger is really important. And I think also we want to, as a hotel industry, thank our elected officials. I know our mayor here that just, he drops a hat and will come over and welcome a group and put in a few good words as far as tourism and economic development and everything, right there at the meetings. And I know the county does it, too. So, and other cities do it. So, that's a great benefit that we do it. And I know, and I know one of the things that Brian's been talking a lot about is the impacts that tourism has, not just on bed tax. I'm just talking about dollars and cents here, but on property taxes and other sales taxes that just feed this area. And the connection with our business community on properties and it's just, it's right there. So, I mean, this, we can't, I don't think we can talk enough about that connection. And whatever we can do, as you say, Mayor, to lean in on it, I think would be a good thing. Anybody else? Okay. Go ahead. Well, I would just close with the final question, asking for a recommendation from this board on the budget. Yes. Move approval. Okay. I would second. All right. We have a motion and a second on the budget. Any other comments or thoughts as an advisor, you know, suggestion or advice to the commission? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. There you go. All right. Now the fun stuff. So, a few updates. I've got a few more than I typically have because we did not meet last month. And since last month when we met, an exciting progression has happened. The county commission, the city of Clearwater, and the Philadelphia Phillies have come to a term sheet for, or to extend the agreement with the Philadelphia Phillies and keep them here in their springtime home of Clearwater for the next 20, actually 22 years, right? And so, just a high-level update on that to you all. So, the numbers that are included in that term sheet, the county would be committing $85 million of tourist development tax dollars. The city would contribute $30 million of various funds. The state, this is pending, would commit $20 million for those facilities. And then the team would be at $75 million plus overruns on that. And so, that would extend the agreement with the city and the team for 20 years, taking that through 2047. And a big piece of this that I want to highlight is the team will be including $850,000 annually in advertising and marketing benefits for St. Pete Clearwater. And the team, this is something that the team started back in 2001 under the previous agreement. That agreement expired a few years ago. The team continued to provide advertising and marketing benefits, even without that agreement in the interim. And this agreement would not go into effect, I believe, until 27 or 2028. However, the team has already, they're already marketing for 2026. We have a marketing and advertising plan worth that full value of $850,000. It's in market today. And we also have a 3% annual escalator included in that, which will begin in 2032. So, over the course of the next 22 years, that is a significant amount of advertising. So, in addition to bringing in more visitors to Clearwater during our spring months, each spring training, in addition to those heads and beds, we're also getting significant advertising dollars in our number one spring inbound market and a top three origin market domestically. So, it's something that we're incredibly excited about. And the Board of County Commissioners, the City of Clearwater, and the Phillies are working on that agreement. And I think that the plan is to hopefully have something in place by the end of this year. But if I got anything wrong there, or if any of the commissioners or the mayor would like to add anything to that, I'd welcome it. Mayor. Well, just City of Clearwater, we're very thankful to the Pinellas County Commission, Board of Commissioners, for your support of this project. You know, and I made the point all along that the Phillies fans don't just come here for spring training. They're here all year long. In fact, I saw three of them pass by with Phillies jerseys on last night walking down Mandalay Avenue on Clearwater Beach. They really have the Delaware Valleys made this their second home in so many ways. So, they're here throughout the year. Very important that we extend that relationship, and we appreciate the County Commissioners supporting it. Yeah, I mean, I think the message was really that less tax dollars for the residents of Clearwater meant a lot to me. I was not real happy with what was going on down in St. Pete when that deal was being put together for the taxpayers down there. And I thought this one worked out really well. When you have a group that kind of comes to the table, when we had a disaster a couple years ago, when they continue doing things that they don't have to do, it makes it easier to have that discussion. But the connection between tourism and what we're doing with the Phillies is, you know, you can't argue with it. I mean, it's real. And it's also, you know, we get these visitors down to it, a really critical part of our tourism season. And it adds to that diversity of activities that people can do here. So, anyway, thank you for your leadership on that and your council's leadership as well. And to my colleagues. The next thing I'd like to talk, give you an update on quickly, is just convention feasibility, convention center feasibility study. I've gotten some questions about that. Just a reminder, we are partnering with the city of St. Petersburg. They are putting out, they have an RFP out right now for a convention center feasibility study. That RFP closed on April 30th. And the evaluation committee will be meeting at the end of this month, next week, on May 28th, to review those respondents and select a firm to conduct that feasibility study. And we are partnering with them on the funding of that through TTT dollars. So, it'll be a 50-50 cost share on that. So, stay tuned on that one. We'll continue to provide updates as they become available. I have a quick question about that. Depending on what that study shows, would you be able to use that study and say that a convention center would be a wise investment anywhere in Pinellas, or do you think it would just be specific to St. Petersburg? I think that it would show, you won't be able to take the exact study and say this applies to anywhere in Pinellas County, but there are going to be a lot of things in that study that would be applicable no matter where you put that. We want to talk about what are the demands out there for the businesses that we may be able to get in there. We want to, where it's looking at, you know, what is the competition? Where are the other regional convention centers? What are the models that are used to operate those? What are the funding mechanisms? So, I think those sorts of things, how many, if you build this size, how many hotels do you need within X square blocks? Those are things that will be applicable anywhere. That's site specific to St. Petersburg, and so there will be some nuances there. Great. The next one is just a quick update on Toy Town. We have been out for RFP on Toy Town for a P3 out there, and some additional information was needed to get a full proposal, a finalized proposal. And so we did, if you'll recall, authorize $250,000 to Geosyntec to perform subsurface investigation work. Those results have come back. There were no surprises found, kind of what they thought was out there was out there. So they met last week to present those findings with Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and they are in the process of finalizing different mitigation strategies. And if you build this, this is what you'd have to do, and here are the ways that you'd have to do it. And FDEP will essentially sign off on their tolerance for different construction methods out there. And at that point in time, we will provide that to the respondent to the RFP, and then they will have – they will provide us with a final proposal. And that will include what they would build, how they would build it, and what the pro forma is for that, and then ultimately what the public investment may be on that. And while we are delayed, we're about a month and a half behind schedule on that. The goal is to still have a recommendation to take to you all in the BCC to move forward, to decide if we want to move forward and continue those discussions by the end of this year. The IPW that I just got back from last night, for those that don't know, IPW, it's the largest show where all international buyers come together to the U.S. And the suppliers from around the U.S., we all get together under one roof for a week of meetings. And that started on Tuesday, and it goes through Friday. I was fortunate to have Commissioner Scott with me. I said I had to get back for this meeting this morning. He asked if he could continue and represent the destination in those meetings. So he's still down there taking meetings, and the team is as well. But because it's in Fort Lauderdale this year, we did something a little bit different this year. Rather than taking up a whole aisle and investing our resources on a booth, we wanted to take advantage of it being in Florida. So we pulled back on the size of our booth and the display, and we went with Visit Florida in what they call the Visit Florida Pavilion. A number of Florida destinations come together in that pavilion. Smaller footprint. But it's an appointment show, so I kind of say it's okay to have a smaller booth. It's appointments. They're going to come anyway. And we invested those dollars to bring over 25 tour operators and media from around the world to the destination. Because while we can talk about it, nothing sells the destination like getting here and experiencing our beach culture firsthand. So on Thursday night through Sunday morning, we had those operators and media here in market. They were staying down at the Vinoy, and we took them up one day. They did lunch and had a St. Pete Clearwater VIP beach experience down at the Sheridan Sand Key so they could get a feel for what that. We took them out dolphin watching. I said, what's one thing you want to do while you're here? Everybody said unanimous. We want to see a dolphin. Well, they got plenty of dolphin out there on Little Toot, and they got to experience the sights, the sounds, the tastes of St. Pete Clearwater. I saw many of them at the show down in Fort Lauderdale. Many of them were sunburned, especially our European friends. But they all had glowing reviews of the destination, and many of them it was their first time here. Those that have been here before, it had been a number of years, and they were pleasantly surprised by what the destination has evolved into. So I'm proud of the team for putting that together because when we had this great idea, hey, they're going to be in Fort Lauderdale. Let's bring them up here. What I failed to recognize is that there's 65 other counties in the state of Florida that had the same idea. So we were all competing to get those visitors here in our destination before or after IPW. So kudos to the team for making that happen, and kudos to our partners for hosting those folks throughout the weekend and giving them that experience. Two more things I've got, just a staffing update. So you see in our budget book, something that we're very proud of is there were no vacant positions on there, and we've come a long way over the last three years at filling those positions. We've had a full team here for some time, but there are two openings on our team as we sit here today since that was printed. One of those is in the Sports Commission. We do have a sports commission manager position that is open, and that is being advertised now. I know we're getting a lot of interest in that one, so we're going to fill that one immediately. The demand is there, and I know Caleb needs a full team to continue to bring those tournaments to the market. The second position is the director of international leisure sales. And this position, we are not advertising right away. Obviously, we're not asking for new positions, so every time that a position becomes open, we're going to review it and take a look to see, as a leadership team, do we need that position, or can we better utilize that position to get our job done? So we're in the process of doing that. It will be some sort. We're not going to take it and go from international leisure sales and make it a film position, but we are reimagining that position to see what that looks like. So that's the reason we are not advertising this at the moment. But I think in the next week, we'll have a clear understanding on the direction we want to go, and then we'll get that out on the streets to be filled. June 12th, biggest event of the year next year, the Ocean Race, coming to town. June 12th is going to be a VIP Ocean Race kickoff. If you don't have it in your inbox now, you will be getting it soon. But it's going to be down in St. Pete. June 12th, it's going to be an evening event. I believe the reception is going to be down at the Dali. It's going to be incredible. We're just over a year out from the race coming to St. Pete Clearwater, and this is going to be a celebration of that. So hopefully you all will be able to attend. Our Board of County Commissioners will be invited, many of the dignitaries, all the dignitaries down in St. Petersburg, as well as key partners will be there. They're actually going to show, my understanding is, if you haven't seen the documentary on Netflix on the Ocean Race, it's incredible. Get your popcorn. Make sure you're sitting down. But it's amazing what they do, and I believe they're working on putting together a video for Inside the Dome at the Dali to bring that to life. So I'm really looking forward to getting down there, and I'm hopeful that you all will be able to join us. And then last but not least, I want to give a shout-out to one of our very own Tourist Development Council members, Mr. Clyde Smith, who last week or the week before, I'm losing track of time, at National Travel and Tourism Week luncheon, hosted by the Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber, was named the Tourism Person of the Year for all the work and advocacy that he's done for the industry in St. Pete Clearwater and the business community during his time here. So we have last year's Tourism Person of the Year on the board. We've got this year's Tourism Person of the Year on the board. So they've set the bar high. And Clyde, I can't think of anybody more deserving than you. So congratulations. They say it's the company you keep. So thank you all. Mr. Chair, that's all I got. Well, that was a great update on so many different areas. Thank you for that, Brian. And does any of the board members have anything they'd like to bring up today for the other board members? Yes, Trish. I was going to say, I attended all three days of the Country Thunder, and I was going to just commend the city of Clearwater for getting it and taking care of it for St. Pete. So it was a great event, and I think we need more of those in the city of Clearwater. So thank you for doing that. Anybody else? Anything? Go ahead. I did have something, but it's been resolved. We had an issue with FWC fishing licenses and fishing access for our out-of-state residents affecting tourism, but we got news from the state legislation that that has been resolved. So no need to involve the team. I heard something about it yesterday, kind of working its way around, but I'm glad that we did. We have success. Good. Thank you. Thanks, Dylan. Yes, Chuck. Thank you, Chair. I had three things, and we've already discussed beach, so I don't want to beat a dead horse, but we have been worried about this, talked about this. It's dominated our TDC meetings for how many years now? Thinking of Janet Long and the team going to the White House, flash, fast forward to all the folks on the BCC that have worked hard to make this happen, and my fingers are crossed next Friday will be a big day, but since we won't see you until long after that's done, I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who was involved, from Kelly all the way up to making this happen. So it's just very important. We wouldn't be a tourist destination without our beaches, so by far, number one, it's what we were all concerned about. Chuck, it starts with us, too, this group here, yelling and screaming and, you know, how important beach renourishment is. So it kind of came from the top, and it comes from all of us here. When I say the top, I'm talking about our federal representatives. So all of it working together. So thank you for that comment. Yeah. Congresswoman Luna, she did it. So the second out of three points was the same thing. Since I've been on this TDC, we've been talking about the Clearwater Phillies nonstop. How can we make this happen? The negotiations that have happened behind the scenes. Thank you, Mayor Rector. And from the county's negotiating ability, we've gotten this done. So thank you to the staff and the BCC to finally getting this done, because it's been a long time we've talked about this. I'm glad it's checked off the box. So, and the last but not least is the people behind us here have worked so hard. People don't realize this budget book didn't just come off a computer. Tireless hours have spent by Brian and his team, and we don't necessarily recognize how much work it takes to do their job every day. Oh, by the way, you need to put in a lot of overtime to make this book happen. So thank you again to the entire team for putting this great budget together. Not an easy task in these days. We're getting challenged all the time about, you know, making those budgets tighter. So, yeah, congrats to the team for bringing in a flat budget again. Okay. Anybody else? Oh, sorry, Councilman. Go ahead. Well, first of all, Chair, thank you for having me virtually. I'm in New Orleans with the Thinking Outside the Berg trip. And so we had a large session on convention centers and visitation. And it was really, it was a, it was a really good session and bringing back some good ideas. And then really what I wanted to say is I realized about halfway through the meeting that you guys had to look at me at an eight-foot screen during this entire thing. So I apologize that I put you through that. And so, but great job, Brian and the rest of the team on the budget. And, and again, Chair, thank you for having me virtually so I can participate. Always look forward to these meetings. And I hate, hate to be gone, but it was a good trip. And thanks for, thanks for having me. Well, thanks for taking the time to participate. We had Brian Scott on the screen last night, the whole time. So we even got him in some pictures with him smiling in the background. So I'm so glad you joined us today, though. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Next meeting is when? July 15th, nine o'clock. And this meeting is adjourned.