City Council - Aug 01, 2024

Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1 and Council Vice Chair, Copley Gerdes, District 2, Brandi Gabbard, District 3, Ed Montaneri, District 4, Lissette Kanowitz, District 5 and Council Chair, Deborah Fig Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, John Muhammad, and District 8, Richie Floyd. Good evening, everyone. I want to welcome you to our August 1st Council Meeting, and we're going to start with a roll call, please. Floyd. Here. Gerdes. Gabbard. Here. Montaneri. Here. Hanowitz. Here. Vic Sanders. Here. Driscoll. Here. Muhammad. Here. Thank you for that. So now we will have our invocation given by our own Council Member, Mr. Montaneri, followed by a moment of silence, but we will now also stand for the Proligible Allegiance after the invocation. Good morning. Please, please pray with me. Lord, this morning we come to you with gratitude. We thank you for being a God of love who is with us right now in this very room. Never leave us and never forsake us. Your grace has brought us safe thus far, and your grace will lead us home, Lord. We thank you for making each of us in this room every person we meet and every citizen of our city in your own image with dignity and infinite worth. We thank you for the calling you've given everyone that lives in St. Petersburg to be good stewards of your creation and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Thank you, Lord, for the men and women that protect our city, our police officers, firefighters, and paramedics. Keep them safe and protect their families. Cast your loving arms around our city staff that work so hard every day to make our city a better place for all people. We pray for our government, our president, and Congress, our governor and state legislature, our county commission, school board, our mayor, and this city council. We have been called to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with you, Lord. Give all elected officials the insight to lead with integrity so that we can reflect and act on what is good and right for our country, our state, and our city. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Please join us in a moment of silence for Detective Herbert R. Sullivan. End of Watch, August 18, 1980. Thank you. We pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please be seated. Thank you for that invocation, Councilmember Montaneri. Thank you so much for that. Thank you. County, we have an agenda before us with an addition of H-4 of a referral to Cal. I entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. Second. We have a proper motion and it's a second. Can you please open the machine for voting? Now that our present Councilmembers have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve the agenda passes unanimously with Councilmember Gerdes being absent. Thank you. Councilmembers, we have a consent agenda before us. Now entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. Now that we have a motion and a second, can you please open the machine for voting? Councilmembers, please cast your votes. Now that our present Councilmembers have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve the consent agenda passes unanimously with Councilmember Gerdes being absent. Thank you. Now we will move to our report items. And joining us for item F-4, a resolution authorizing the mayor or his designee to accept the private and safe neighborhoods grants from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Joining us is our Assistant Police Chief, David Giroldo, and Administrative Services Bureau Assistant Director, Megan McGee. Welcome this morning. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. And just to give you a heads up, ladies and gentlemen, your screen is not working. We apologize for that one, but that one behind you is. Thank you. That's very different this morning. Very different this morning. Well, good morning. Again, I'm Megan McGee. I'm the Assistant Director of the Administrative Services Bureau of the Police Department. I'm joined by Assistant Chief David Giroldo. First off, I want to thank you, Chair Fig Sanders, for highlighting our recent Project Safe Neighborhoods grant in the amount of $73,468 for a one-year project. Project Safe Neighborhood is a national program that is administered through the Department of Justice, through the states, in our case, FDLE. Projects address violent crimes, specifically gun crimes and gang-related activity, and the funding provides overtime for our officers to plan and execute operations all around the city to recover stolen vehicles and often firearms that were left unsecured in those vehicles. Many of these operations are also planned with our federal partners, like ATF, using ballistics technology to trace the firearms back to violent offenders. I'm also pleased to share that this is our third year in a row to receive this funding, and due to our performance on the competitive grant, we were actually awarded $20,000 above what our original ask was. So we're very excited for our grants team. I covered the boring stuff. Chief Gerardo's here to bring in the stats, so I defer to Chief. Thank you very much. Good morning, Council. Chair Fig Sanders, thanks again for giving us this opportunity to highlight the good work of the officers, but also I want to highlight the great work that Ms. McGee and her staff have done in bringing this third round of these grant dollars into the city. This particular grant, as Megan said, primarily focuses on violent crime. The way that we do that is in a very specific fashion. So just over the course of this year, so far in 2024, some of the ways that we've used that dollars is to support operations by our investigative services units, specifically our property crimes unit and our gun response investigation team. So the gun response investigation team, as you all know, investigates lower-level, non-fatal gun-related crime that might not otherwise receive the same level of attention, and we've had great success with that unit. So there are overtime dollars here that go to supporting their efforts. And the property crimes unit, which might sound strange when we're talking about violent crime, but as you all know, stolen vehicles in particular and firearms that are stolen out of unlocked motor vehicles are a major driver of violent crime in our city. So the property crimes unit also makes use of this funding to go out and to very specifically try to address those issues, and they've had very good success with it. So just since September of last year, so roughly about 11 months, they've made 51 arrests during operations funded with these dollars. Those arrests are primarily individuals who are already wanted. Probable cause exists for property-related crimes such as auto theft and auto burglary, as well as subjects who have established probable cause from that gun response investigation team. So this means these are not individuals that we're just finding on the street and finding a reason to arrest circumstantially. It's the result of investigative casework. So it's very well intentioned and planned that these are individuals that we can already substantiate are driving violent crime in our city. So it's 51 arrests in September of last year, four firearms that have been seized, seven vehicles recovered, and a number of citations issued. So, again, I appreciate the opportunity to come in and highlight not just the good work that these officers are doing in trying to have a meaningful impact on violent crime in our city, but the good work that Ms. McGee and her staff are doing in bringing these resources into the city to allow us to try to make a positive impact. Thank you all very much. Thank you so much. I'll push my button if no one else will. I saw this item, and a lot of times we forget that all of the things that help the city run are not all taxpayers' dollars, that we do have a strong grants recruiting and that we are always looking to find ways to finance those things that impact our daily lives. And to hear that, you know, since in 11 months, 51, you've recovered guns and violence, because I always say when you're in trouble, who's the first person you call? Other than maybe mom, right? But you call our officers. And I wanted to make sure that you were highlighted. You were thanked. We are so appreciative of what you all are doing. And when it comes to violent crimes, it's important to all of us. It should be, especially if it is not happening to you. We have to make sure that we're empathetic to those that you're trying to help. So I was just excited when I saw we received that extra money for that, because you know the gun violence and the youth crime, that's my thing. You know, I want to make sure that our city has the resources that it needs to help combat that. So thank you, thank you, and thank you. I appreciate that presentation. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and we have a second. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, can you please cast your votes? Since all present, council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item F4, passes unanimous. with Council Member Gerdes being absent. Thank you. Now we will move on to F3. Resolution approving the grand agreement between the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the city for the comprehensive vulnerability study project. And joining us is our own administrator, Claude Tankersley. Good morning. Good morning, Madam Chair. Thank you so much. I appreciate the introduction. So hold on a quick second, Mr. Tankersley. I just got the notice that Council Member Gabbard would love to introduce you, and we're going to go ahead and give her that opportunity. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I actually pulled this item and the next item, and I believe our presentation is kind of intertwined on the two, item F3 and F7. These items both have to do with our resiliency work that we are doing across the city for our most vulnerable neighborhoods. So I thought that it was good to pull these out of the consent so that we could have a conversation about them today. The first one being the grant with FDEP for the comprehensive vulnerability study. But the second one, which I am even more excited about, is the agreement with the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council to do the first phase of the Resilient St. Pete Action Plan. So this comes out of the work that was done leading up to a conversation we had in February. Many of you in the room may have attended or heard about it. And it was really in response to the flooding that is happening in our most vulnerable neighborhoods. And so we are joined today by Kara Wood-Sarah, who is the Resiliency Director of TBRPC, along with Sarah Vitale. She is our Planning Director at the Regional Planning Council. And way over there, I also see my fellow board member, who I don't want to not recognize, who is the Vice Mayor of Gulfport, Ian O'Hara. He is here with us today as well. This item, the second one, has already been passed by the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council Board and now just needs to come to City Council for us to approve. So thank you for the opportunity to introduce the item, Madam Chair. And with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Tinkersley. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Council Member Gabbard. I appreciate the introduction. I also appreciate your leadership on getting us here. I know that it was during your leadership at the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council that the Regional Resiliency Action Plan came out. And so it's exciting for us to stand here and for you to explain how we, as a city, are going to be a part of that overall plan. Also, Madam Chair, if I may, if you would indulge me or consider the opportunity, since these two items, F3 and F7, are so connected, I'm going to present them both together. And then I believe it's possible that you may be able to vote on them both together. So up to you. And we vote. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. So again, we're here to talk about two different items. And I apologize to the audience that you're not able to see the presentation. But I'll walk through it as well as I can with you not being able to perceive it. But we'll start with item F3, the comprehensive vulnerability study. And so as I'll show in just a few minutes, in order for us to have what we call our resilient St. Pete action plan, and we've got to start first with determining where our vulnerabilities lie. And so the first item we're going to do is what we call the comprehensive vulnerability study. And this study is being funded through Resilient Florida, through a grant from Resilient Florida, to the tune of about $279,500. And so what we'll be doing is we'll be identifying those critical assets in the city that are prone to severe flooding. And those assets are broken down into four categories, transportation assets and evacuation routes. And transportation would include the airport, the port, marinas, obviously all of our roads and streets, the interstate. The second item would be what we would consider other types of infrastructure, such as power. Water and sewer, drainage, sanitation, communications facilities. The third item would be community and emergency facilities, schools, health care, fire, police facilities. And then finally is our natural, cultural, and historical resources. So these are the four areas of our critical assets that we're going to be looking at. We're going to be assessing their risk level and consequences of flooding due to sea level rise and increased storm intensity. And part of this study, a very important part of this study, is seeking community feedback on these asset priorities. Because we are going to find that we have more priorities than we're able to tackle in the beginning immediately. And so having that public feedback helps us prioritize those assets to make sure that we're tackling the ones that we as a community have identified as the most important. The project tasks for this project include identifying those vulnerable assets and the standards, the data standards that we're going to use. We're going to have a kickoff meeting. I mentioned the stakeholders. We're going to have a kickoff meeting that we're going to be discussing how we're going to do the program as well as discussing how we're going to reach out to the community. We're going to assemble that steering committee of community stakeholders, and we're going to conduct several community stakeholder meetings throughout the process. We're going to acquire the background data, perform exposure analysis and sensitivity analysis. We're going to identify our focus areas. And finally, we'll come up with a final vulnerability assessment report, maps, and tables. Now, I'll mention this is all part of our larger St. Pete Resilient Plan, and as this slide shows you, there are four different paths, four different tasks we have to do to implement that plan. This particular study highlights that second item, the vulnerability assessment. That's what this particular study does. We will then move on later on into the next steps, which is coming up with those adaptation strategies and then how we're going to implement them. When we move into those next steps, when we move into the next step of the adaptation, developing that adaptation plan, we're going to prioritize those goals and actions that best minimize the impact to our vulnerable assets. And we're going to establish a process to implement those actions. And then we're going to apply specific adaptation strategies through a wide range of engineering, political, and planned solutions that will be locally accepted. And then finally, when we come up with our implementation plan, this is when we'll put together our schedule of those adaptation actions. We'll identify funding sources and grant opportunities. And then we'll monitor and evaluate our process. So under that item of identifying funding sources and grant opportunities, again, this study is being funded through a grant opportunity from Resilient Florida. But also, we anticipate by doing this, then we'll be able to position ourselves for future grant opportunities for the items that we identify. So that wraps up the item F3, the comprehensive vulnerability study. The next item is related to it, and this is coming up with part of our Resilient St. Pete plan in cooperation and with the guidance and input from the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council. So we are coming to you, item F7 is that agreement with Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council. This is an agreement with them to provide expert services because they are the subject matter experts to support the development of our Resilient St. Pete plan. They're going to provide technical support. They're going to help us with that community engagement we spoke about. And they're going to help us come up with visualization services and items to help us communicate what we plan on doing. And this is modeled after the Regional Resiliency Action Plan that TBRPC came up with in November of 2022. So we're using them as a model. They will provide four tasks, including a crosswalk and a gap analysis of the existing data and reports that we have. Then they'll go ahead and do the gap analysis. They'll look at a vulnerability assessment, they'll be providing vulnerability assessment, technical assistance, and, as I mentioned, engaging in outreach with us and coming up with ideas on that. They will also serve as a technical reviewer for the project that we discussed earlier, the F3 project, the comprehensive vulnerability study. And so, again, going back to that original drawing, and I showed you the sketch of how this is all going to happen. You can see the highlighted areas circled in red where they're going to be providing us assistance under this agreement. Whereas what we call our Resilient St. Pete plan encompasses all of those activities. And so we will be coming back to you in the future with more information. So the administration does recommend that council does approve item F3 and F7, and we thank you for the opportunity to present to you. Move approval. Second. Thank you. Council Member Gabbard. No, ma'am. That's all. Thank you. That's it. Council Member Hanowitz. Thank you, Claude, and thank you for that presentation. I know that we've had many conversations regarding all the plans that we have to address some of the issues that we have in our city. And I just want you to kind of go over how these plans all intersect. So, for instance, we have a stormwater master plan that deals with stormwater systems, right? And that's at a cost right now. I don't know what the number is, between $700 million and $1 billion that's not fully funded. We have an integrated water master resources plan, right, which now we call the St. Pete plan. Now we have two other plans that we're talking about, comprehensive vulnerability study and the Resilient St. Pete plan study. So, if you can just kind of go over, because even for city council members, it's hard to keep track of all these plans. And, by the way, all these plans don't mean that the things are going to get done because you need funding. So, if you can just kind of go over that. Of course. Thank you. So, we are a very large city, and we have a lot of assets. And in previous discussions, it's been suggested that it's possible that all of our assets put together in the city are worth $8 to $10 billion. We have a lot of assets. In order to assess all those assets, what we will usually do is drill down to the details and come up with master plans on specific categories of those assets. So, the St. Pete water plan was our first big master plan we came out with in 2019. And this looked at our water resources, water, sewer, reclaimed water, some of our natural water resources, and a portion of our storm water. So, that's what the St. Pete water plan came up with. It estimated that we have almost $3 billion worth of work to do to bring all those water resources up to standard, up to sustainability and resilient standards. And also, just to make sure that we're replacing them. Many of them are very old. Some of them are 100 years old. So, that's the St. Pete water plan. And I mentioned part of that includes storm water. We then expanded the storm water section under what's called our storm water master plan and dove deeper with that. And that has been completed. And as you mentioned, based off of the assumptions that are in there, I mean, we're looking at between $750 and a billion dollars worth of work just for storm water. So, what this process will do is it will take that information plus other information we have in the city for our other assets, our facilities, libraries, parks, our transportation system, all these other assets, and look at all of them. And it will look at them through the lens of resilience to sea level rise and storms. Because some of our assets, particularly those that are closer to the coast, are more vulnerable to those kind of events than maybe other assets. So, to look at all of those different assets and say, from the water assets, these are the ones that are most vulnerable. And we might want to look at them on an accelerated basis. The same for storm water, same for parks, same for bridges. That's the purpose of this program. And then the comprehensive vulnerability study, is that linked to the storm surge model that we've been talking about? Yes, it is. And so, that will look at sea level rise as well as increased storm intensity. And we used a lot of that data in coming up with our storm water master plan. And so, when you come up with these plans, you're going to have to find solutions to some of these issues, right, that are going to have dollars attached to them, just like these other plans, right? Correct. That are going to be recommendations that at some point we're going to also have to figure out how to fund. Absolutely. Okay. And some of these assets are intermingled and intertwined. And so, you know, we might have a right-of-way that has water, sewer, storm water, and, of course, the road there. And we might have to do some adjustments to all of those different assets. We need to figure out what order do we do them in. If we do the road first, and then we have to go up and dig up the road we just did to do the utilities, that doesn't make sense. So, this will help us prioritize them. No, I just want to, because this is an issue that, obviously, we all deal with in our districts, when citizens are wondering, well, what's going on. And the reality is there's just not enough money to do all these projects. At the end of the day, as you've mentioned in many meetings, our integrated water master resources plan, $3 billion. It's simple math. Do the 20 years, 30 years. Break it down and see how much money in our budget we're allocating to that. Not even close. Same thing for stormwater master plan. So, and I expect this to be the same at the end of the day. It's going to be there's not enough money for any of these plans to get. It doesn't mean we're not going to do things. But when I get calls from neighborhoods like Magnolia Heights and other neighborhoods that are like, we're number 35 on the list. And when you look at the funding, their project, and we had a conversation, a hard conversation, right, with that neighborhood 20 years down the road, 20 years for their project in Magnolia Heights. And so this is what, and I just had a conversation with Historical Northeast about the same issues, and we had that hard conversation again about some of the projects there that have very long timelines. So I just, I want to make sure that people understand that we have some of these issues we're dealing with them, but there is also the funding aspect of it. So thank you. Thank you. Council Member Montaneri. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'm very appreciative for the presentation also, and Council Member Gabbard for moving this forward. Both your district, Council Member Gabbard and mine, we each have a neighborhood that's very susceptible to flooding. We call it a repetitive loss neighborhood. Riviera Bay is a neighborhood that you represent. Shore Acres is a neighborhood that I represent. And before, earlier this year, I put together a meeting with the mayor and senior staff, and we had a PowerPoint presentation that you helped, you put together, Claude, along with my latest lady of aid and myself, to talk about some of the aspects of dealing with all the issues that Shore Acres has been dealing with. That neighborhood is 100 years old. It's got a geography problem the way it was developed. It's basically in a bowl. And over the years, we have seen a cycle of how things have been working in that neighborhood. It usually starts with a storm, and then sometime after the storm, there's a study that has some recommendations. The study goes to the city and goes to the neighborhood, and either the city doesn't have the funding or the neighborhood doesn't want to do the changes. There's been some somewhat radical ideas put forward to solve the Shore Acres problem. One was to create a levy around the neighborhood. Others were to put floodgates in, like create a small version of Holland in the neighborhood, raise the sea walls, put up pump stations. That was rejected by the neighborhood. And we continue, and we've done a lot of work in that particular neighborhood. Just recently, the replacement of all the backflow preventers, the increase staff to help clean out stormwater drains, and other things, those were more immediate fixes. We also have been working long-term on things like the Connecticut Avenue plan, which is a multimillion-dollar plan to put in pump stations to solve problems in that neighborhood. And we've got two other major plans coming forward, the Denver Avenue plan and the Arizona plan also. So I'm glad we are going to put more resources into trying to get to the root cause of the problem because it's necessary, because we do live in a community that's very vulnerable to storms. Anybody that's lived here and knows the history of St. Petersburg knows that we've been dealing with storms since this city was founded. You look at the old million-dollar pier, the reason that was built was in 1921, we had a major hurricane that destroyed the waterfront in St. Petersburg. We had seven piers in the city. It tore them all up, and it really destroyed the downtown. And we rebuilt the city. We're starting to see more problems with flooding, sea level rise, and it's time to continue to work and identify how we can put resources in to solve the problem. So very, very thankful that we're bringing this forward, and I'm very supportive. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Gabbert. Thank you, Madam Chair. So just real quick, you know, kind of to speak about what Councilmember Hanowitz was talking about with, you know, there's so much need, and there's never enough resources to actually fill that need. One of the things I wanted to point to with the Regional Planning Council's involvement with the Resilient Action Plan is that that will be a prioritization of measures we can take, which I think is critical, because when we look at all of these plans, and it's not even just the ones that you went through, right, we're also working on our seawall study plan as well. That is for our public seawalls, but then also how those abut up next to private seawalls, and then how we need to update our ordinances around seawall height will come from that particular study. There is so much. And so for me, when I first started doing this work, just trying to dig into some of the plans that we already had to try to find things that we could do was overwhelming. And so it's my hopes that by partnering with the Regional Planning Council, we're really going to get to a place where when we as budget approvers, as policymakers, look at the CIP resources we have every single year, we have an action plan that we can lay next to it that says, these are the things we can do today, this is the next step, and then this is the long-term planning, because this is not something we can solve overnight. And so I'm really looking forward to having what is almost like a guide path to get us to where we can prioritize the funding that we have available, but also be even more nimble and even more responsive to grant funding that comes down. Our city has done an amazing job at getting grant dollars to solve the issues where we can, but there's more funding coming, and we're talking about getting a grant now, right, for this vulnerability study. There is a lot of resources out there, but if we don't know where we need to direct those efforts, then we don't even know what to go after. And I also think that this particular action plan gives us a lot more to go forward to these grant entities and say, we are shovel-ready. We are ready to do the work. Give us the dollars, because we are leading the way. I was listening to NPR not long ago, and they were talking about communities all over the country that are in the exact same place that we are, that haven't even begun having the conversation. But they already have residents who are no longer able to reside in their homes that they invested in 10, 20, 30 years ago, because sea level rise has already made that impossible for them. And they're not even talking about it. And so I think we're so far ahead. Yes, we have a lot more work to do. We don't have enough resources today, but we know that this is the start of making sure that we are a much more resilient and sustainable community for many, many generations to come. So I'm just really excited about this, and thank you to City Council for all of your support in these efforts. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Yes, this is Administrator Tom Green. Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning, Council. I always love to start the morning talking about grants. And just to share a little additional perspective, I know Chief Gerardo and Megan McGee and Mr. Tankersley have just talked about some very specific ones. But if I just zoom out a little bit, I wanted to share some additional perspective with you. Year to date in fiscal year 2024, we have received, or this council has approved the award of $39.1 million in grant funding. 16 of those grants are federal grants in the amount of $9.3 million. 11 are state grants in the amount of $29.5 million. And then there are a couple other smaller amounts from local and kind of not-for-profit or foundation-type investments. But I did want to just point that out as a big picture, because, Madam Chair, you mentioned that we are aggressive, and this council has supported us to create a really vital, aggressive grants-writing operation and grants-seeking operation. And this is an operation that touches every department through our organization. So we continue, with your support, continue to be very aggressive about seeking grant funding to kind of shore up and supplement the investments that we're making. But I did just want to point out at a high level how successful we are with council's support. So thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you so much. I think I heard a motion for approval. I did. Did I get a second? Yes, Madam Chair. Thank you so much. We have a motion and a second. Can you please open the machine for voting? Now that our president and council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda items F3 and F7 passes unanimously, with council member Gurders being absent. Thank you. Thank you so much for that presentation. Thank you. So now we're going to move on to open form. Can you please read the rules? If you wish to address city council on subjects other than public hearing or quasi-judicial items listed on the agenda, please sign up with the clerk. Only the individual wishing to speak may sign the open form sheet. Only city residents, owners of property, business owners in the city, or their employees may speak. All issues discussed under open form must be limited to issues related to the city of St. Petersburg government. If you are speaking to an item on the agenda, you may only speak once during the open form or when the item comes up on the agenda. In order to provide an opportunity for all citizens to address council, each individual will be given three minutes to speak, and after which the microphone will be muted. If you wish to address city council through the Zoom meeting, you must use the Raise Hand Feature button in the Zoom app or enter star 9 on your phone at the time the agenda item is addressed. When it is your turn to speak, you will be unmuted and ask to state your name and address. At the conclusion of your comments or when you reach the three-minute limit, you will be muted. All raised hands will be lowered after each agenda item. Regardless of the method of participation used, normal rules apply, including the three-minute time limit on comments, the requirement that any presentation materials must be submitted in advance of the meeting and the rules of decorum. If live public comment is disrupted by violations of the rules of decorum, the chair is authorized to accept public comment by alternate means, including by email only. Madam Chair, I'm going to call the speakers two by twos, and we have no one in Zoom at the moment. Okay, thank you. First two speakers, Terry Marks and Susan Pomerantza. I believe I said it right. Go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address city council. Good morning. My name is Terry Marks, 102nd Avenue North, St. Petersburg. I have the privilege and the responsibility of advocating for the arts community as CEO of the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance. In 2021, along with Jason Mathis, CEO of the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership, and representing over 16,000 voices within the arts community and the community in general, the Comprehensive Arts Strategy was launched. This document clearly articulated the need and also the impact of a 1% designation of funding for the arts in the city budget. It's not a grant. It's not a loan, but it's an investment. It would mean it would gain appreciation. Every $1 returns seven. In 2022, the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance, along with Americas for the Arts, conducted an economic impact survey, AEP6, and was proven that the arts contributed over $132 million to the city. And of that, 61.6 million, or 46%, came from the arts community itself. The arts supported 2,121 jobs. The arts generated $26 million in taxes to local, state, and federal governments. The momentum of new corporations, individuals, and investors are powered by our culture, by our arts. The question is, what would happen if we actually provide the arts with the funds that help with sustainability and capacity building? An investment of $7 million based on the AEP model gets matched by audiences by over $8 million, and it propels arts and related income upwards by nearly $10 million, clearly creating 250 more jobs, providing increased tax revenue. And at the same time, we continue to evolve and become who we say we are, a city of the arts. This is best articulated in the comprehensive arts strategy. We've provided all the council with copies of that. Once again, it's on our website as well. It's an inflection point for the city of St. Pete in our history. This is a moment for our city leaders to step forward, where state leaders have stepped back. It is a time when we, all of us together, in step, set high bars for the city because we are smart, because it makes economic sense. Supporting music, dance, performance, books, museums, galleries, districts, studios, murals, sculptures, technology, and those individuals and organizations who are driving this economic sector, we are asking for your support, your voice, your vision, to step forward and leverage our cultural capital for now and for the future by supporting 1% of the city's budget by providing adequate and sustainable funding for the arts. Next speaker. Yes. I am Suzanne Pomerantseff, and 55 years ago, I founded the Academy of Ballet Arts in St. Peter. Address, please. I'm sorry. Address. 515 22nd Street South, St. Petersburg in the Warehouse District. Thank you. Sorry, I'm hard of hearing. The Academy is one of the nonprofit casualties of the vetoed state arts grants, and the children of the Warehouse District need your help in supporting their school. I'm asking that the city council devote 1% of their budget to supporting the small and medium-sized nonprofit organizations, affected so deeply by the loss of support from Tallahassee. I moved to St. Petersburg from San Francisco in 1967, and I was immediately aware that I had relocated to a desert when it came to the arts. No opera house, no Shakespeare gardens, no professional ballet school, and no cultural structure for the arts. My journey from 1967 to 2024 has been a long struggle to educate the community I live in that the arts, and particularly dance, is vital to help children and adults recover from trauma and learn to express their fears and triumphs. The Academy's vision is to reach all those children that don't know they have an artist hiding inside of them, who will have to express themselves through movement when words aren't there. You don't dance because you have a kid. You dance because you have to. The Academy's commitment to excellence in teaching and performing experience has resulted in over 75 of our students becoming professional dancers, choreographers, teachers, and technicians. Audiences in St. Petersburg saw Brianna Reed, Calvin Royal III, Ephraim Sykes, and Eileen Gerdes perform at the Palladium, and the Mahaffey as young artists. Brianna became a principal dancer with Alvin Ailey, and danced Cry in the Morinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia. Calvin is a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theater, the first African American to dance Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. Ephraim danced with Ailey, too, and went on to perform on Broadway in Hamilton, Hairspray Live, and Ain't Too Proud. Eileen went on to become a dancer with San Francisco Ballet. These artists grew up here, and the students that they are mentoring now deserve to be supported by their city. It's long past due that the council votes to make 1% of their budget, designated for the support of arts nonprofits, and create a new entity for the distribution of the funds. Economically and artistically, the nonprofit arts organizations have been an integral part of branding St. Petersburg the city of the arts, and we need your support now. Thank you. Thank you. Next to the speakers, please. Jeff Serena and Victoria Lang. Please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address city council. Thank you. Council, my name is Jeff Serena. My address is 131 41st Avenue North. I'm a St. Petersburg resident who lives in District 3 and works on the Deuces Corridor, District 7. I vote. I support Council Member Driscoll's 1% for the arts proposal. Like many of you, I value the array of free and accessible arts activities in our community. It has made St. Petersburg a world-famous arts destination. I'm the director of operations for the Warehouse Arts District Association, so I know about the other side of the arts, the financial burden associated with being an arts organization. When we provide free arts-based events and programming to the public, we bear the cost. There is an arts infrastructure we must pay for. Artists need places to create. Artists need places to exhibit. The community needs places to gather for cultural events. To be a comprehensive arts organization that provides for these needs, we assume the very real costs for property, buildings, insurance, utilities, maintenance, and staff. This morning, you will hear a lot about the extraordinary value of art, but don't overlook the expense. I urge you to adopt the funding we need to continue providing the community with the free arts activities and events that make this city a vibrant place to live, work, and visit. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Victoria Lang, and I volunteer with the Warehouse Arts District Association, 515 22nd Street South. My work there has been extremely rewarding because of the profound impact a nonprofit like ours can have on the community. Early on, we realized that the build-it-and-they-will-come mentality simply does not serve those who need our programs the most. So what did we do? We moved St. Pete's only free arts education program called Arts Exploration directly into communities and neighborhoods that otherwise would not have access to quality arts programming. This proactive approach of bringing free arts education into the neighborhoods is only possible with subsidies like the one we just lost from the state. This fall, we plan to offer arts education to several organizations in South St. Pete, including Mount Zion Christian Academy, Bowley Centers, Academy Prep, and the Jordan Park neighborhood through the St. Pete Housing Authority. This is not a one-off initiative for WADA or an exception. Since Markus Gottschlich took over, WADA has consistently presented culturally unique and socially relevant programs, benefiting those who are typically overlooked in our society. We have proudly showcased artwork from former inmates, victims of sexual abuse in collaboration with the Sunco Center, ESE students, and clients of Bowley Centers, a wonderful organization that helps people struggling with addiction, homelessness, and mental illness. These programs are nothing short of life-changing. The human stories tied to them are the reason we go to work every day. This type of programming is essential in a community that faces hurt, broken promises, inequality, and injustices every day. There is no specific dollar amount that could ever compensate for the true value of what nonprofits do. However, without support and funding from the city and state, these programs will dry up, and those who get left behind are the ones who need it the most. I appeal to you today to consider the diverse range of arts programming in the communities and allocate 1% of the city's budget to arts nonprofits like WADA. This is how we sustain programs like arts exploration. This is what we should fund. This is what we should care about. Thank you. Thank you. Next two speakers. Next two speakers, Madam Chair, Markus Gottschlich and Barclay-Harlis. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and you have three minutes to suggest city council. Good morning. My name is Markus Gottschlich, address 515 22nd Street South. And before I get started, I just want to make sure that this outpour of support here for the arts really indicates the dire situation that we're all in and the crisis we're facing. Again, my name is Markus Gottschlich. I'm the executive director of the Warhouse Arts District Association. I've had the privilege of presenting arts programs in Florida, New York, New Mexico, New Jersey, various places in Central Europe and Asia over the past 15 years. I stand before you today as a result of the unprecedented challenges that arts nonprofits are facing due to the governor's recent veto. WADA has been at the forefront of advocating for the arts, garnering significant media attention, and amplifying the voices of artists and arts organizations affected by the historic cuts. The core issue we face today transcends political lines. Historically, governors from both parties have supported arts funding on the state level. It's also not about choosing between private or public funding, as some may say. Arts nonprofits have always relied on both to sustain and offer diverse programming. Relying on private funding alone would jeopardize the diversity of our offerings, as programs not aligned with private investments would not see the light of day. Who suffers the most from this funding loss? Arts nonprofits like ours, operating on a shoestring budget, providing free and diverse programming to the community, as we heard from Vicky. Defunding organizations like ours will result in a loss of cultural diversity, jobs, and will erode the very fabric of our community. Last year, we produced over 128 events, many of them free to the public, creating 1.1 billion media impressions organically, not paid organically, which is truly fostering a sense that this is a city for the arts. Many of you may have heard about our initiatives, such as the gun violence prevention program, our efforts to address the food desert in South St. Pete, and immigration issues in Florida through the arts. This highlights the power of the arts and the responsibility of our nonprofits to drive positive change in our communities. The question before you today is whether these efforts are worthy of your support. With rising costs and living expenses, WADA fosters an environment of sustainability for our studio and member artists. Our work in South St. Pete needs subsidies to remain free to the larger community. Today, I urge you to consider allocating just 1% of the city's annual budget to ensure the longevity of our arts community. A fair, equitable, and transparent process should be established to distribute these funds without bias. Ladies and gentlemen, you have a historic opportunity to address and solve this crisis. A thriving arts scene significantly enhances the quality of life in our city, and supporting arts nonprofits is an investment in cultural diversity and creativity. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good morning, Chair and Councilmembers. Thank you so much. My name is Barkley Harless. I live at 2617 First Avenue North, Kenwood. Thank you so much for addressing the arts today. I'm a small business banker. My community involvement, I'm on the boards of Art Club Child Care, Career Source, now Tampa Bay, the Warehouse Arts District, and I'm currently chair of the Downtown Partnership. Our city has seen an immense amount of growth over the last few years, and I would argue that a large part of that is due to the lifestyle appeal of the city, in which I think arts are a major contributor to that appeal. I recall a small business client of mine who moved here and brought his business and his family from San Francisco, which is clearly an international city for the arts. They discovered St. Pete through our beaches and our lifestyle, but they fell in love with St. Pete because of our murals and because of our arts culture and our community. And hearing some of the presentations earlier, I know that this immense growth has impacts on your budget, and you have tough decisions to make when it comes to resiliency, public safety, etc. I would leave you with this thought. If you think that the arts has contributed 1% to the identity of the city, I would argue more. But if it has contributed at least 1%, is it not the right thing to do to support the arts and their time of need with 1%? Thank you so much. Thank you. Next few speakers. Two speakers, Madam Chair, Mark Ayling and Warren Besholtz. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address City Council. Good morning. My name is Mark Ayling, and I am the Board President of the Warehouse Arts District Association. I'm also the owner of MGA Sculpture Studio and the co-owner of South Water Gallery. Can I get an address, please? 515 22nd Street South. Right around 2010, after the Great Recession, the city of St. Petersburg started a marketing campaign to pull itself out of the recession. That marketing campaign branded the city of St. Petersburg as the city of the arts. They did that because the creative community was incredibly resilient and had rebounded from the recession, and there was strong leadership, strong people driving that creative community. forward. That campaign has been very successful. In the last 15 years, we've seen incredible growth and success in the city of St. Petersburg. The creative community is incredibly vibrant, and it is driving business and interest in the city that is internationally known. The funding for the arts has not kept up with that success that the arts community has brought to this city. Right now, we are well behind in funding for the arts compared to other cities of comparable size that claim themselves as a designation of a city of the arts. 1% would bring us on par with other cities and would do justice to the role that the creative community serves for the city of St. Petersburg. Right now, I believe that we are in a position where we need to step up because the creative community is in crisis. The cost of living is growing to a point where artists are having a hard time staying in this community, and then coupled with what the state has just done, we have to keep in mind that the city of St. Petersburg is not known as the state of the arts or the county of the arts. It is known as the city of the arts, and it is the city's responsibility to fund what they have here and to keep it vibrant. The arts community is the goose that has laid the golden egg for this city. It's time for the city to feed that goose. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir. Hi. Warren Buchholz, 3630 28th Avenue North. I'm a multimedia and marketing specialist. I also work at the Warehouse Arts District as well as other places like WUSF, USF St. Petersburg, whatnot, over 10 years. And based on what we're seeing from the press. Did I miss it? Did you give an address? Yes, 3630 28th Avenue North. So based on what we're seeing from the press and the magnitude of response due to this arts crisis has been astounding. Catalyst, Tampa Bay Times, I Love the Burn, all of these different media outlets have been a great response to just the advocacy that WADA has done over this past month. And again, WADA is one of the many organizations that are being affected by these funding cuts. And our community senses a real urgency with this crisis. So is it a crisis? It's not homelessness. It's not world hunger. But it is humanitarian. The people I've interviewed, interviews you can watch online, leaders in the arts industry from Mahaffey to American Stage to arts expert, art therapists, as well as USF economics economists have all said the same thing. The arts improves the economy, and it improves the well-being and mental health of a society. And it is the responsibility and role of the government to ensure the well-being of its people by ensuring the preservation of our art spaces, our art community, and our organizations like the Warehouse Arts District Association. This city was built on the backs of its artists, and now we're trying to defund it. If we want to keep the artists here and the cultural vibrancy of this city, then please fund the arts. Please allocate 1% of the budget towards funding these arts, so that way our organizations and our art spaces continue to flourish and expand. Otherwise, this place would just be full of breweries for people to drink. And that's just Tampa. Who wants to live in Tampa? I don't want to live in Tampa. Not even the people of Tampa want to live in Tampa, so please. Let's not become Tampa. Please fund the arts. Please allocate 1% towards the arts. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Next two speakers, please. Jason, I believe it's Jason Mateus and John Gaddis. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address the city council. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Jason Mathis. I'm the CEO of the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership. We are located at 244 2nd Avenue North in St. Petersburg. Delighted to not be representing Tampa this morning after that. I wanted to just start out, and I've said this before, but I just want to thank each of you for the time and energy that you dedicate. It's truly a difficult job, and you put in so much energy, compassion, thought, and I have to just make sure that every time I speak to you formally, I recognize the role that you play and the work that you put in. Because it means a lot, and I know each of you cares a lot about this city. I guess you've learned there's some stirring out there about art. People are very interested in supporting the art. I think we've also learned that we can't really rely on Tallahassee to necessarily be our partner in this capacity. And for some other cities, that might not be a big deal. For some other cities, it might not be problematic. But this city relies on art as a sense of identity for our quality of life and for our economic growth. When we think about the development that's happened in this city and we see what's gone on in terms of tax revenues, our city's budget has grown by 5%, 6%, 7%, 8% every year for the past several years while reducing the millage rate. So we're actually charging people a lower tax rate, and yet the city's budget continues to increase. So when you're thinking about this 1% ask for art, instead of thinking that we're going to grow next year by 8%, maybe budget 7%, and set aside that 1% for art. Make a philosophical decision that art is important to this community, that it matters to this community, and there's some rationale for that. We already say that with a public building, we're going to dedicate 1% of art for 1% to go towards art in that public building. When a large project is moving forward, whether it's a commercial project or a multifamily residential project, we say that 1% of the budget needs to go to art. Now, I think we make a mistake at capping that at $100,000. I'll talk about that more on a different, when I have more than 57 seconds on the clock. But there's an opportunity to capture an enormous amount of revenue from the development community that could go into creating an endowment to support art, and it's something I think we should consider. You may not be able to get to a full 1% today for this budget that you're talking about, but I hope it's something you'll consider for the future. What I do think the city has capacity for today is to make whole the budget cuts that the governor has created and to make sure that the existing arts organizations have the resources they need to continue to function for the next year. That won't cost 1%. That's significantly less than that. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is John Gattis. My address is 1651 22nd Avenue South, so I live and work in District 7. I work at the Warehouse Arts District Association as the director of events, and I also work with the grant writing. I moved to St. Petersburg a little less than two years ago. My husband's work brought us to the Tampa Bay area, and at the risk of continuing the Tampa slander, we found ourselves spending all of our free time in St. Petersburg, so we moved here a little less than two years ago. Prior to that, I had been in New York City metro area for about 15 years as a classical musician, a teacher, and a fundraising consultant with a number of small arts and arts education nonprofits. I wanted to talk just a little bit about this type of funding and why it's so important for small and medium-sized nonprofits in particular. I've heard a lot of outcry about the veto of the funding from the state, but I've been surprised. I haven't heard even more, honestly. I've heard a lot from my colleagues up north about it, and this is not, I think, part of the reason I haven't heard more from some of my colleagues in town is for fear of seeming political. This isn't a political issue. All 50 states have a state arts agency, even our territories do, that disperse grant funds to arts organizations based on some sort of panel review. State arts agency funding and local arts agency funding is crucial to nonprofits. For new and small nonprofits, this is often the first kind of funding they can receive from institutions that provide general operating support that allows these organizations to move past thinking project to project and just one season at a time, and it lets them begin to start thinking about sustainability, about expanding their impact and reach, about expanding their staff capacity. So this type of funding is really quite crucial for everyone, but, again, especially for these small organizations. Beyond the support for the organization, it also has a kind of a catalyzing effect. It provides a legitimacy to other funders, family foundations in particular who tend to not have much of a staff. They look and they see that a state arts funder has supported an organization. They see that some due diligence has been done, and they feel a little more comfortable funding them. So it can really magnify the effect. So the state, by canceling out, by vetoing this funding, has done a tremendous disservice to the arts community. They've robbed these organizations of the dollars that they had counted on, the impact that that would have translated to their community, and also any new organizations that were hoping to get awarded for this year. It's really kind of decimated their immediate plans. So I would urge you all to step in where the state has stepped back, and please do support the arts at this 1% amount that is being suggested. Thank you very much. Thank you. Excuse me. Next year, we have time for one more speaker of this particular portion of open forum. Paul Carter, please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record, and you have three minutes to address city council. There will be an additional open forum at the end of the meeting if those who wish to stick around and speak. Paul Carter, I live at 341 5th Street South in St. Pete, and I guess I just snuck in under the wire here. I'm here to express my support for Council Member Driscoll's proposal that the city adopt a policy to dedicate a minimum of 1% of the annual budget to support the arts in St. Pete. I've served on the board and staff at the Maureen Arts Center, on the board of American Stage, co-founded a simple theater, served on the Arts Alliance Board for about eight years, and support a number of arts organizations financially. And in every case, these organizations struggle to develop a sustainable source of funding, recently exacerbated by the governor's veto pen. I also served on the steering committee for the comprehensive arts strategy, funded by the city, the downtown partnership, and the community foundation. Our consultant studied a number of cities, and these cities had two things in common, a sustainable, predictable arts funding mechanism, and a thriving, well-recognized arts community. Our consultant's recommendation was, and I quote, to dedicate 1% of the city's budget to support the arts economy, unquote. This is the essence of the proposal we're talking about this morning. Seattle pioneered this model in 1973, and it worked. In the last five years, between $14 million and $19 million was generated per year. And I think, unquestionably, Seattle stands out among American cities for its robust art scene, largely as a result of that dedicated funding. The question is often asked, what would artists and arts organizations do with this incremental funding? In general, without adequate funding, the inclination is to play it safe, to avoid risk, to stick with the tried and true. There's also a crying need for capacity building. Most artists and arts organizations do not have the funds to invest in people, or technology, or marketing. So innovation and increased capacity are the return on this investment. I urge you to take this opportunity to provide our arts community with the support that will truly make St. Pete the city of the arts. Thank you. Thank you. So we will now close open forum, and we will take up our public hearings. Clerk, can you please read the title? Well, the first item is the resolution, Madam Chair, so there is no title to read on E1. Okay. So joining us for item E1, we will have a resolution to approve the Fiscal 24-25 Annual Action Plan. And joining us is our Housing and Community Development Director, Mr. Joshua Johnson. Good morning. Good morning, Chair and members of City Council. I can provide you a PowerPoint presentation or a summary, whichever you prefer. Summary will be a little bit quicker. It's up to you. Summary works. Okay. All right. Summary is fine. So once again, good morning. And I congratulate and thank all of the council members and private citizens who participated on the Consolidated Plan Review Committee meeting on May 16th to review and recommend the applications that are before you today to fund. Those recommendations are included in the FY 24-25 Annual Action Plan, and this plan will be implemented starting October 1st of this year and run through September 30th of next year. It will be the fourth year of the five-year Consolidated Plan process. We are currently implementing the third year of the five-year Consolidated Plan and is accomplishing all of the goals and objectives that are listed in the plan. We have also met the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's expenditure timeliness ratio, which is 1.5 to 1 of the funding allocated. This results in us not having or in jeopardy of having HUD, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, recapture funding. So we're good there. The strategies and goals identified in the FY 24-25 Plan complies with the goals identified in the five-year Strategic Plan and Consolidated Plan. And those strategies are to continue assisting and providing homeless prevention, affordable housing, and support services, continue providing new and or preserve affordable housing for low to moderate income persons, and continue to support public service operations or programs for low and moderate income persons, including the homeless and special need populations, continue to provide economic development opportunities for low and moderate income persons, continue to provide and enhance fair housing and equal opportunity in serving city residents. All of the activities just mentioned are listed in the current or the proposed annual action plan for your approval. An announcement of this meeting was placed in the Tampa Bay Times and Weekly Challenger on June 26, notifying the public that this meeting will be held today to approve the plan and the public may come out and voice their approval or disapproval of the proposal. Administration requests approval of the attached annual action plan and resolution, which will be forwarded to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for its approval prior to August 15th. And with that, I am here for any questions that you may have. Move approval. Okay. Seeing no request to speak, you have a motion and properly seconded. Cormick, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please cast your votes. Seeing that our present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item E-1 passes unanimously with Councilmember Gerdes being absent. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you. So now we're going to move on to item E-2, which requires that judicial. Clerk, can you please swear on all speakers, including city staff? I would wish you to stand and raise your right hand. Can you swear or affirm that the evidence that you're about to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I do. Can I read the title, Madam Chair? Yes, please. Opposed ordinance number 793Z, an ordinance submitting the official zoning map of the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, by changing the zoning of seven publicly owned parcels generally located south and west of Tropicana Field and bounded by I-175 to the south of 18th Street south to the west from downtown Center 2, DC 2, to downtown Center 1, DC 1, providing for repeal of conflicting ordinances and provisions thereof and providing an effective date. And, Madam Chair, we have no cards on this item. Okay. Well, joining us is Planning and Development Services Director, Mrs. Abernathy. Good morning. Thank you. Good morning. I'm Elizabeth Abernathy, your Director of Planning and Development Services. So, we're here today for the second public hearing related to the rezoning for the Historic Gas Plant District. On June 13th, you conducted the first reading and first public hearing and voted 5-3 to schedule the second reading and second public hearing on July 11th, and that was subsequently rescheduled for today. Derek Kilborn kindly stepped in for me and did a very detailed presentation giving you background and a consistency and compatibility analysis at that time. On July 18th, the accompanying gas plant development agreement was approved by Council vote 5-3, and that is the regulatory document that adopts the master plan for the boundaries of the project. This rezoning provides for a consistent zoning district throughout that boundary and that master plan. I do have the backup slides if there's questions about any of the information that was presented at the last meeting or additional questions today, and I'm here to answer any questions you might have. Thank you. Thank you. And seeing that we have no public comment, staff, would you like to cross-examine? I'll waive. Thank you. We'll waive. Okay. Thank you so much. I see. Oh. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you. In the backup material for the public comments, there was just one. It was a copy of an email from a resident who had some concerns, someone who lives nearby at 16th and 1st and had posed some questions. But in the backup material, there wasn't a response, any copy of the response from city staff to this resident's email. It was an email to Britton Wilson regarding the parking garage. And because this is a quasi judicial proceeding, I was not able to reach out to the resident myself or talk to staff or anything. So here we are today. And I'd love to know what happened with this, what the response was, and how this was resolved. Certainly. So that email was included in your package the first time and again the second time. We haven't received any further communications since the notice was sent out or since the first public hearing for today. We did respond back. That gentleman was part of the Central 16th Homeowners Association. And we did have some email correspondence. I'd have to pull it up. We typically don't provide additional staff responses when we have quasi judicial hearings to emails that come in, but we typically do respond back to those. So I can pull up that information, but I know we did provide some information on where the proposed locations of the garages are going to be. And we will continue to communicate with them as the design moves forward. And we know where the access points are and that type of thing that could affect their their project and their access to their site. Right. Right. This. Yeah, it's unfortunate that I only have like the very first part of the communication and the resident brought up some good points. And what I want to do as we move forward with the development and, you know, with any potential zoning changes, we want to be sensitive to the residents who are adjacent to the project. And certainly, you know, as this entire project has been built as something that is truly for everyone and is so inclusive, I want to make sure. That all of the residents around the area feel like they're included and that means their their opinions, too. I am I do have some concerns because I don't see that this has been resolved and I'd like to learn more. I'm not sure what to do, but I will tell you that there are there are concerns that I have that put me in a position where I would not be comfortable with supporting this today. And so I'm wondering if there is and I'm hesitating a bit because it's quasi judicial and so I don't know what I can ask for, but I would really like to have more time. And if it's permissible, I'd like time to learn more about this particular part of it. And so I I think with with that time to have a better understanding, I'll be OK, just not today. And so I'm wondering if this is an item that we can delay or continue in some way and take it up another time. You're certainly allowed allowed to move for a continuance. And just if I may, to provide a little more background, this question did come up at the CPPC hearing and in your minutes on page three of the notes. Evan Morey did step in and speak about the forthcoming traffic plan that is part of the requirements of the D.A. that the developer provide us with that plan. It's going to help us understand what's going to happen on game days and during big events and how the traffic is going to be managed and how that's going to be managed day to day. So that is part of something that will be incorporated in that plan as they work with our transportation team and engineering on how all of that's going to happen. And that's an obligation of the development team to provide that information to staff. That's a condition of the development agreement. So there is some follow up on that specific question and topic about the traffic and the traffic movement. I'm just reading through the the minutes from I read them. Yeah. So that did provide a little further documentation. And as I as I stated, we did have some communication and have not did not hear anything further from from that group. But I'm happy to commit to reaching back out to them when we have that plan and getting their feedback if that provides any additional level of involvement of what we can do as staff as this project moves forward. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um, this email is is from the resident is dated April 17. So there's there's been a lot of time for for this to be resolved and for the resident to be here. I do wish they had been here to speak today. But because this is quasi judicial judicial, I'm very limited on the information that I and all of us can receive prior to this this meeting outside of the backup material that we get. And so, um, and are we allowed to request more information if this is continued? That's actually a pretty standard basis for request of a continuance is to request additional information. So, okay. And do I need to give a date certain for the continuance? Um, yes. Um, due to public noticing requirements and and all of that sort of thing. Um, we do we have a city council meeting next Thursday, August 8th at, um, three o'clock. Is that does that interfere with public noticing requirements? No, no, we're, um, the, the, the continuance is permissible without having to restart the whole ordinance noticing process. And it sounds like there is, um, sufficient information that if it's that it could be shared. And, um, with plenty of time for city council to review, uh, within one week, I mean, this isn't a huge, um, ask. I don't, I don't think. Can I clarify? Am I hearing you that you'd like me to reach back out to this individual to see if he still has concerns or, um, we do have Evan here today. He could answer questions about the traffic plan. I know we're not going to have the plan done in a week, but, um, I can certainly reach back out to this person to see if there's any remaining questions or concerns. I just want to understand what it is you'd like me to bring back. Right. And I went, I went, um, I, I really do want updated feedback from the, from the resident, um, because they initially reached out in April with their concerns. So what I want to know is what happened next? Because all I have is the email and if this, this is all we got. And so I was wondering if anyone ever even responded to him, but we don't have anything more in the minutes from this. I do understand the traffic line. Of course we're going to do that. But my concern is making sure that, um, this resident and the, and the residents that he's representing, um, from his, from, you know, his development are, are being heard. And that we're being sensitive to that and not just steamrolling over this, you know? I mean, I too have, um, some questions about whether or not, uh, uh, what, what this, what a parking garage might look like, what it might, um, what it might, um, interfere with. I mean, I, I have a lot of questions about that, but so did this resident. And so knowing how they were taken care of is going to help me a lot. My concern is because this is a quasi judicial proceeding, how am I, how am I allowed to receive information? Because I can't have conversations. Well, I mean, was there a response given to the, I, I believe so, but that was several months ago. So I need to go get my email, I don't want to testify that yes, I sent back an email and without, without double, without double checking, which I'm happy to step aside and do, um, and provide you, but we didn't get any further interaction. So, um, that would typically say to me that that person was, you know, did not have a continued concerns to bring forward at either the CPPC hearing or provide me with any more, you know, information about their concerns. So, and, and Liz, didn't we, uh, notice the, uh, the vesting development agreement with the same. So that letter that made it out to this resident was for notice of the vesting development agreement ordinance in addition to the zoning. Is that correct? Is that correct? Right. And that, that's really the vesting DA that talks mostly about the uses and the traffic plan. As opposed to the zoning, which is more, you know, DC one to DC two, what is the meaning of the two different zoning districts? So this, this action is, um, a little bit different than the development agreement where the master plan was approved and the conditions related to traffic plan were incorporated. Um, so let me, I mean, happy to go step aside and see what course, you know, I, I know we didn't get any further correspondence or we would have included in the packages. And we don't, um, again, with these quasi judicial rezonings, um, the backup materials that we provide counsel are typically the emails we get in, not also the emails that go back out again. So, you know, that's. Yeah. That has happened. Yeah. Um, I've, I've followed along with, with many conversations in the past related to quasi judicial proceedings, but not this time. Okay. The bottom line is I, I'd like more time and I'm sure I can get there, but I'm not there today. So the choice is I'll vote no, or we can have a continuance and I'd like to hear from the administration to see what they prefer. We defer to the body. Thank you. I'll make a motion to continue this item to the August 8th, 2024 city council meeting. Second. Second. So I'm going to verify with legal with this, um, in regards to the actual procedure, because it seems to me that we've jumped into executive session. Yeah. So if you wouldn't mind asking Ms. Abernathy if she would like closing state. Yeah. We completely skipped that whole step. That was my next. I know it's academic, but yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So would, do you have closing remarks or a butto Ms. Abernathy? I'll wave. Thank you. So since we've now ventured into executive session and we do have a motion in the seconds on the floor, I do have another council member that would like to speak in regards with that council member. Thank you, Madam chair. This is just a procedural question for legal. Um, because I mean, if it's possible that Ms. Abernathy could get the email correspondence printed out for us, um, between the resident and Ms. Wilson, could we take, I mean, this, I guess is a question for council member Driscoll. Could we take a 10 minute recess and review that information and come back and be able to have executive session on this issue today versus tabling it for next week? Cause I mean, it sounds to me like what you want to see and correct me if I'm wrong is the documentation of the communication back and forth. So if we could get that today, give you time to review it. I mean, I know there's been instances in the past where we've had like a 10 minute recess for us to be able to do something, research something, look at something, review it and come back and be able to vote with all the information we're asking for. So I don't know if that's possible today. Um, but I wanted to ask that question and offer that as maybe a way that we could move forward today. Hmm. Thank you. Madam chair. Yes. Council member Driscoll. Thank you. Um, I would, I, I wish that I could say, yes, this is something that I can definitely get past today, but I think I'm going to need more time to really understand what happened, uh, with this resident and with the concerns that were brought up. Um, I do think I'm going to need more time, but I, I appreciate the, um, the suggestion very much. Okay. So right now we have the motion on the floor for continuance. Council member Ed Martinieri. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to confirm with administration. If we do, uh, approve this and delay this till next week, just going to have any impacts on the project moving forward. I don't believe so, sir. Okay. Thank you. Okay. This is where we are. We have a motion on the floor to continue. There's been motion and properly seconded. No further requests to speak. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, can you please cast your votes? Now, now that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam chair, a motion to continue agenda item E2 to the, uh, to the August 8th meeting passes unanimously. With council member Gerdes being absent. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. Thank you. So now we'll move to our report items beginning with item F1. And joining us, joining us are our transportation and parking management director, Mr. Evan Morey and transportation manager, Ms. Cheryl Stacks. Welcome. Well, I don't see Ms. Cheryl, but. Oh, she's here. Oh, hi. Hi Evan. Good morning council. Um, we do have a presentation to pull up. Um, I'm Evan Morey, director of transportation and parking management. And as you mentioned, Cheryl Stacks is here as well. I'll go through the slides. Cheryl might, uh, help with questions. Uh, I would like to thank the HL, excuse me, uh, HL UT committee for considering this item. Um, a few weeks ago and that this was, uh, supported by that committee by unanimous vote. So this slide, uh, tells you what we're going to go into, but I think more importantly on the right side shows you, uh, the partnership that we have. This is an effort between the city of St. Petersburg, Gulfport and Ford Pinellas. Uh, Ford Pinellas was the, the lead on this study. So why 49th street? Um, the primary reason is that, uh, for Pinellas did an analysis of all the roadways in Pinellas County and developed a high injury network list. And this is on that list. It's not a list you want to be on because it is the three percentage of the road segments in this county that have 40% of the serious and fatal collisions. So the primary purpose of the study is to identify safety improvements that could be done along the corridor from first Avenue North to 25th Avenue South. It is a study that was funded by Grant. Um, primarily the city of St. Petersburg put in $12,000. An orientation slide here for you. Uh, St. Petersburg is colored green and Gulfport is colored yellow. Uh, so it shows you that for most of this corridor, this is a shared street right down the middle. The St. Petersburg, uh, is and Gulfport are separated by the yellow lane line in the middle of the street. Um, an important point here is, uh, the traffic count is 15,000 average cars per day for the project schedule. This is really in hindsight. These are the steps that we've already completed. Um, one of the steps was a lot of community outreach and we, uh, dealt directly with the emerging fusion 49th street association, uh, quite a lot on this. And we have some members here today that have joined us. We did three guided walking audits, uh, including one at night because we wanted to see what are the conditions during the daytime. What are the conditions at night after dark, uh, kind of went high tech. The consultants brought in a crowdsourcing map and 135 comments were made and geo located to specific places on the map. We also had an in-person workshop and online survey. The online survey had over 600 responses. And for the walking audit, uh, the clear first primary concern is for pedestrian, pedestrian access, pedestrian safety that have 52%. And then for the walking audits, when we went into actual topics or more specific topics, pedestrian concerns were still at the top. Because sidewalk and crosswalks for the top two, some pictures from the April 1st community workshop. This is well attended. And in the pictures, you can see there's a presentation style, but also interactive style where the participants went to boards, looked at maps, put sticky notes up, basically voted for things with their dots for what they wanted to see. The survey 643 responses and by the survey results, we can start to hone in on a preference for alternate one, uh, between two, uh, two alternates that were suggested by the consultant for consideration. Uh, here's alternate one and alternate two in a street view, um, for you. And both of these alternates would consider or would add a wide sidewalk or trail on the east side, uh, the St. Petersburg side, which just works for, um, the conditions out there a little bit better than the other side of the road. Alternate one is generally a lane repurposing, uh, there's four lanes out there. Now it would consolidate it to three, one lane in each direction, plus a center turn lane. And then alternate alternate two would be to maintain the existing roadway configuration, but add some traffic calming elements through raised crosswalks. Uh, we evaluated both options and have listed some pros and cons or opportunities and challenges as listed on this slide. And a couple of call out here are alternative one provides speed moderation without vertical traffic calming and also minimizes crossing distances for pedestrians. Uh, as we know, that's the number one concern from the results that we received. Uh, challenge that it, uh, may induce some vehicular delay, which probably won't, um, only happen, um, in a, in any kind of meaningful way at intersections. But remember from an earlier slide that there's only 15,000 vehicles per day and the FHWA has conducted studies that three lane roads easily carry, uh, 20,000 vehicles per day. So it's well under that threshold would have some room for growth into the future, quite a bit of room alternate two, uh, does provide speed moderation. But through that vertical traffic calming through the raised crosswalks currently, that's not allowed by our comprehensive plan. So if we wanted to move forward with alternate two, we would have to modify the comprehensive plan. And if that didn't work, then we would not be able to do, um, this, this strategy at all. Um, also it, it likely would not be as effective, um, in improving safety. Here's an overhead view. So the first one was kind of looking at it for, if you're standing on the street, this would be, if you're looking at it from above. And, um, this is the southern most section. And in the committee meeting, we learned that council members really liked looking at it this way. So we added more slides. Um, this is the section further north. Uh, and then further north again, this is 11th through Emerson. This is Emerson to first Avenue north. So we included all the sections in the presentation, but more importantly in the backup, because I know you, you can't look at all the details with the time that we have right now. So for, uh, short term projects, you know, these alternate one and alternate two, they're more longterm, like any potential lane repurposing or changing the comp plan. That's going to take some time, but there's some lower hanging fruit that we can do sooner rather than later and start to see some improvements out there. Um, so we could add leading pedestrian intervals. That's where, uh, you see downtown and other streets where before the vehicular light turns green, the pedestrian gets a headstart three seconds to start to get across the street. That really helps with pedestrian safety. That's not in place there now, but it could be, and it's low cost pretty, pretty fast. I mean, we're going to do that. Um, also lighting is an issue out here. We learned at night, a low cost option is to convert to led. Um, we could raise the existing stamped medians, the stamped medians. If you've seen out there, um, they're, they're decorative, but they're, they don't serve much of a purpose. If we raise those up where they exist now, it doesn't affect the vehicular traffic, but it could help with, uh, refuge for crosswalks. Um, so again, as supported by the HL UT committee, we're recommending alternate one. Um, I will say that before we move forward with actually implementing alternate one, much more work needs to be done. We need to identify the funding and some of that additional work definitely includes more public engagement, ensuring that we have a significant buy in from the community. I think we're already there to great extent, but we'd like to see more of that. Also, um, additional study needs. This study was a great start. Um, we can do some of the low hanging fruit, but for some of the more complex, uh, things we, we really should engage in additional studies. And those are listed out here, um, maybe most importantly, or, or the biggest study would be a really concentrated look at what would be the impacts of the, of a proposed lane reassignments for alternate one. And so we could measure what those impacts were before we move forward. Here's the longterm projects. Again, additional work needs to be done before we move forward with several of those next steps. Uh, we'd like to finalize the study, uh, essentially now with council's endorsement or, um, I'm sorry, with, uh, council support and, um, the city of Gulfport already had a resolution of support passed on June 18th. Um, just, uh, a little bit over a month ago. And after, uh, city of St. Pete council votes today, uh, for Pinellas does intend to take this to the for Pinellas board. We'd need an MOU between the city of St. Pete and Gulfport because of the shared jurisdiction. And, uh, you know, this, the money came in for this study through, uh, us DLT safe streets and road for all grant planning study. So that sets us up really well for a future application for a demonstration project. Um, perhaps we want to try, um, uh, the lane repurposing before we make it permanent. That could pay for that, or we could go for an implementation of the, of a, of a permanent, um, change if we're comfortable with it. So we will, we'd make that decision after the next study and after additional public engagement. Also, uh, for some of the low hanging fruit, this is within the St. Pete CRA. So we're looking at adding some funds into next year's budget so we can hit the ground running and make some good changes soon sooner rather than later. Cause I know I'm talking a lot about additional studies, but we want to see some real action soon as well. Uh, so today's, uh, request is for city council to approve the resolution supporting the draft plan and other actions as detailed on the resolution. Thank you very much. I'm happy to answer any questions that, that you might have. Thank you. Do we have any comment on this? Yes, madam chair, Aaron Kennedy, Nancy Dunham. Please approach either podium, state your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes to address city council. Hi council. I'm Aaron Kennedy. My address is four, seven, five, seven, 10th Avenue South. I'm on the St. Pete side of the 49th street, um, improvements. And we're just here from 49th street, fusion 49th district, um, as an association to, uh, support the union and further agreements between Gulfport and St. Pete as this district develops. And we want to, uh, provide our support for this approval today. And thank you all for your, um, studies for sure. Hello. Um, I'm Nancy Dunham, president of the fusion 49th district. Um, address 808 49th street South. Um, I just wanted to say thank you for everyone that's been supporting us thus far. Um, we are definitely eager to get this project going. Um, we does have, we do have a lot of the community support. Um, I also want to acknowledge a couple of my, um, colleagues that's in here in regards to the fusion 49th and itself. Um, if you guys would stand for a brief second, just so they can see that it is a couple of us in there with us in here right now. Um, we do thank you guys tremendously throughout everything we've been doing. We do have a lot of support from all different jurisdictions. So we know that this project is very important for everyone. It doesn't affect just the city of Gulfport or St. Pete. It affects everyone around. So this is something that's well overdue. Um, and we just appreciate you guys everything John did thus far. Thank you so much. Any additional cards? No more cards, Madam Chair. Okay. He's having no more for the comment. Uh, council member Hanowitz. Thank you, chair. And thank you, Evan, for your presentation and everyone that's here today. Um, you know, when I hear about, um, the studies about improving safety for residents and everyone here in the city in terms of, um, car accidents, killing pedestrians and all that, that is a number one priority for us. Um, we've all read the articles in the newspaper. It's always heartbreaking. I mean, just, I, I look right now and I put in, um, on Google pedestrian death in St. Petersburg, and you will get somebody's name every month in an article every month. And, and it's heartbreaking because these are people that living their lives day in and day out, just trying to go to work or whatever they're doing, or maybe go walk their dog or take their kid out. And, and it ends up in some fatality or serious injury. Um, in my area, um, we're off of MLK, um, in district four, and they had done the lane reduction. And when we had those discussions, they went through the community, like they did with you all in the community, gave feedback. The biggest issue was safety for everyone crossing that street. And the people most impacted weren't the cars that were traveling through the area. The people that live in the community, right? The fact that you can't go from one side of the street to the other without worrying about crossing that street. I don't care if you live off of 9th, 49th floor street, you should be able to be able to cross anywhere and feel safe. So I, I commend, um, uh, Evan and his team and administration for taking safety seriously. Um, and with that being said, I just wanna, I wanna go back to the background and purpose in that map because I, I wasn't in the HLU team meeting. Um, and not on the committee, but I, I just wanted to kind of focus if you can put it up on the screen, cause I think it's important for people to see that. So Evan, all those areas, all those thoughts, by the way, are throughout our city, throughout our districts, right? Those are all areas that are, have serious and fatal collisions that are at that 3% or? They disproportionately represent those serious crashes because they happen on those streets at a higher rate than the other streets that are not highlighted in blue. Okay. So these are all priority areas, obviously, that we have that we need to improve safety for our citizens and it's throughout our city. Yes. And, and you'll see like, uh, most of the north, south roads that have the highest fatalities are FDOT roads. Right. 34th street, 4th street north on there. Uh, this is not an FDOT road. This is up to the St, to St. Petersburg and Gulfport. Uh, that's one of the good things that we can make these decisions on our own. And it, yeah, it makes it much more difficult when you have other players, whether it's the state or others that are controlling a road that you can't make those decisions. They're making decisions for you. So I'm glad that we're making the decisions, um, and priority prioritizing safety for our residents. So thank you for that. And I am supportive of this. You do. I'm done. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Montaneri. Thank you, chair. Uh, thank you, Evan, for the, uh, for the report. Going back to that slide that council member Hannah was just talked about. Uh, so you have the red dots that are, uh, the hotspots and then you have the blue areas. Can you tell us the difference between a hotspot and? Well, luckily Chelsea's here. This is a four panelists map. And if I tell you the wrong thing, she'll come up and push me out of the way and give you the right answer. But that's where intersections have, um, a concentration of, of higher crashes. So you have the linear blue lines show a roadway that might be a few miles long that have disproportionate number within the intersections are highlighted. If, if in that intersection or right around that intersection, there's also, uh, more crashes than, than others. Okay. I was right. Okay. Good. And then the, uh, the high injury network that for Pinellas high injury net network network. Can you, can you kind of give me a little more information on that? Um, they just looked at all the crashes and Pinellas County assigned them to the, to the roadways and ranked, started ranking them for what's the most dangerous through the, the least dangerous. And got up to, um, 40% of the crashes happening in, in 2%. So you could use that information and you could find out, well, if it were 3%, is it up to 50% or what is it? But that's kind of a, I think, uh, just a demonstration of a very small portion of our roadway network has a high percentage of the crashes. So if you want to invest your time and your money where you're going to get the most bang for your buck and your time, you should look at those places that, that have the most problems because there's more problems to fix there. Okay. And then, uh, later on in the presentation, you talked about the workshop that had 46 attendees. Yes, sir. But I didn't see any, any sort of feedback of what, what their preference is. You, you talked about how they, they put notes on different things, but. Yeah. Um, we showed the numbers for the online survey. Cheryl, do you remember the numbers for the in person? So, yeah, so they were, um, the attendees were asked to complete the survey and put the notes and then the notes are translated into the, the draft document and the actual draft report. But the, the, um, survey really kind of captured the, the same information. Okay. All right. Um, thank you. And then this area of town, uh, is there any large developments being planned for this segment, like north or south? I, I'm just kind of getting down to, you talked about the 15,000, uh, cars that are using, using this roadway daily. I'm just trying to get a sense of is that because we're in a fast growing city, are there any big developments that might change? Uh, not that come to my mind, I think relatively small projects or do you know one? No, I'd agree. Mr. Morey. What I would say is that there is a church on second avenue south. It's been for sale for quite a while that could, uh, have some high density there. So in the future, that's a possible project, but that's the only one I'm aware of. That's a larger potential. Okay. All right. Um, well, I, you know, when, when it comes to, uh, public safety, that's job, job number one. Uh, I, I always want to just make sure that we understand what we're getting ourselves into just looking at the demographics of where we are going as, as a city. And I've repeated it multiple times that in 30 years, we're going to have another 90,000 residents in the city of St. Petersburg. So making sure that people can get safely from one point to another and efficiently, uh, is, is kind of where my, my mind is. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Muhammad. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Evan, Cheryl, for the presentation. I just really wanted to take the opportunity to thank you all and the members of Fusion 49th for the work that has been done to get us to this point. Um, Chelsea and, uh, for Penelis and your leadership on, you know, getting us here. I think the, it was kind of like the stars aligned when we began organizing on 49th Street. Um, you know, reached out to Nancy in response to her, you know, how can I help? Is there anything I can do to help you council member? And I said, just be patient. We have an idea and, um, gave her the idea for what we wanted to do. And I mean, fast forward to a year later and here we are. So just, it's really amazing to see, you know, how you stepped in your leadership and then Lenny and others who just, you know, was to walk everybody, you know, in the district who really rallied around it. And then again, the timing of it was like, okay, well, what are we going to do? And then the administration was like, hey, well, we got something that you can do. And so the hours worked and it's everything and how it all came together. So thank you for that. Thank you for the support. And of course, you know, with public safety being, you know, job one, being able to make these changes, recommending these changes. Of course, we still know that funding has to happen, studies and all of the stuff that goes into it. But I'm just really excited about it and looking forward to seeing what happens in the district. So I'd like to move approval. Second. Thank you. Now that we have a motion for approval and it's been properly seconded and no request to speak for the resolution supporting the 49th Street Safe Street study and its recommendations. Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please cast your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item F1 passes unanimously with Council Member Gurders being absent. Thank you. Thank you. Now we'll move on to F2, which is from our City Clerk Director, Mr. Chan Srinivasa. Madam Chair, is it okay if I sit down here? No, I want you to stand up and just, you know. Hopscotch. Yeah, no. No, go ahead. Yeah, before you, a resolution for approval for support services from the Supervisors of Elections for our general election. In the amount of $35,753.10, which includes advertisement costs for polling locations and translations if need be. Okay. I see no request to speak. Do we have a motion? Move a per vote. Second. Now that we have a motion and a second on F2, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please cast your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item F2 passes unanimously. with council members Gerdes and Gabbert being absent. Thank you. Now we'll move on to F5. And joining us for that resolution approving the first renewal option to the agreement with Capital Council, LLC, for Federal Government Relations Services is our Director of Government Affairs, Mr. David Thompson. How are you? Hello. Good afternoon. Oh, good morning. Good morning. Getting ahead of myself. David Thompson, I think it's sorry. David Thompson, Director of Government Affairs. I'll be speaking on item F5, approving the first renewal option of the agreement. I don't have a presentation, so I'll keep the remarks brief. Before you is a resolution to approve a one-year extension on the existing agreement with Capital Council. The original agreement was executed on September 1st, 2022, and the vendor has agreed to renew under the same terms and condition. Administration recommends renewal of the agreement based on the vendor's past satisfactory performance and demonstrated ability to comply with the terms and conditions of the agreement. The renewal will be effective from the date of approval through July 31st, 2025, with one annual renewal option remaining. This extension will allow us to keep our momentum going and provide stability through the pending presidential election and transition. As stated in the resolution and relevant materials, Capital Council provides services to the city in support of both our policy initiatives as well as appropriations and grant priorities. The work of Council, Capital Council, is guided by the joint legislative agenda developed in partnership between the city council and the administration. Over the first two years of the contract, Capital Council, represented by Rob Diamond, has proved itself a responsive and effective vendor to the city, facilitating meetings with the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, Department of Transportation, Department of Housing, Urban Development, FEMA, and members of the House and Senate. In addition to advocating on behalf of city priorities, Capital Council has been a problem-solving partner, supporting the city in a number of efforts, including the issuance of the major disaster declaration following Hurricane Adalia, interfacing with the Treasury Department to assist in our use of ARPA funds for the Renter Utility Assistance Program, and numerous engagements with the Army Corps of Engineers. Capital Council has also been a key addition to the aggressive posture the administration has taken in securing grants, relieving the burden on residents for major projects. Capital Council attends bi-monthly grant meetings with each administration and is an embedded part of our team. That investment has paid dividends as the city has grown the value of its grants accepted by Council from $15 million in FY22 to nearly $40 million in FY24 to date. Moving forward, Capital Council will continue to be available and responsive to the City Council, and you'll be seeing outreach from me in the next couple of days about scheduling one-on-ones in advance of Rob Diamond coming down for our August 15 Federal Lair meeting to discuss any specific federal priorities that U.S. Council members will have. And with that, we would ask approval for your, ask your approval on this item. Thank you. Thank you so much. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. You also set up a meeting with me and Mr. Diamond in the past. He seems really good, so thank you for that. Whenever this was presented to us last time, one of the things that was reiterated was that we felt like this would be a good partner for trying to access the infrastructure funds that had recently passed, and I just wondered if you could speak to that and how that's gone over the past two years. Yes, absolutely. That is a huge priority of our team, and it's no question we have not yet brought a grant agreement to Council on the infrastructure dollars. That's something we continue to work forward. The grant process has been extremely competitive, but working with our transportation team, we feel really solid. We're getting in a rhythm, and look forward to securing those funds in this final round. So they'll be grouping the remaining dollars, almost $700 million in one round, as opposed to expending it over three rounds, and so we think that'll give us a really good opportunity to make it within that cut. Okay, thanks. And I bring that up because last time we had this conversation, I was critical of the choice because there was a small discrepancy in scoring between the top scorer and the second scorer, and when I advocated for us to reconsider, I was told that, like, oh, it's really crucial because the infrastructure funds are coming, and we've been unsuccessful in getting those over the past two years, and so I'm a little frustrated by that. And the reason I asked for us to reconsider was because there was no consideration given towards who the lobbying firm does business for at all. And I'll just repeat, you know, actually, I'm going to frame this differently than last time. While we were also using this lobbying firm, this same firm was also lobbying for weapons manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, oil and gas companies, tobacco companies, and private prisons. All at the same time, they were lobbying for us. And what I would like to have seen was for the selection committee to give consideration to what kind of company that we're doing business with, because the second place firm on the scoring that was only like a point behind this firm lobbied for museum boards, transit authorities, aviation authorities, and I was frustrated that that was not considered at all, and I think that would have put the second firm over the top. And so I'm not going to support the renewal of this. I would like to see us go back out to bid and consider who we're doing business with in the future. We're providing financial support to a company that's lobbying for things that are bad for our planet and bad for people. And so I'd like to see it sent back out with that as a consideration. Maybe we get bids and, you know, lobbying is a dirty, nasty thing. Like, everybody comes back and they all have got marks against them. But that wasn't the case the first time we did this, and I'm frustrated by that still. And I'm frustrated that we went two years, and one of the things that I was promised was infrastructure money, infrastructure money, and we failed. We haven't gotten any over the last two years. And so I don't see a reason to just automatically renew this. I think it should be sent back out, and I won't be supporting it today for that reason. Thanks. Thank you. Seeing no other requests to speak, but I do have a question to follow up Councilmember Floyd. So with that request and us doing a year extension, and you're having those conversations in regards, because we're going to see this again in another year. Yes. What are the possibilities of looking at those other services that they're providing and to whom? And when are they going to actually be in the ranking in regards to how we select partners moving forward? And it's not just for this partner, but any other partners that we're looking at, because we do want to remain conscious of some of those things that we're, as a city, helping to support. So I'm going to support this today, but that, you know, Councilmember Floyd did bring up some pretty good points on this. And I would love to have us have that conversation as well. Absolutely. So we'll have the one year extension. There'll be an option if council chooses for an additional one year extension. And then, you know, it would, of course, have to go out to bid after that. I will add briefly on the clients. We are one of only three municipal slash state government clients that Capital Council has, which means all of their background in local and state government is dedicated to us. There are a number of, and I'll speak from personal experience, having worked in Washington, D.C. There are a number of firms that have 20, 30, 50 local government clients. You know, that they do that. That's what they do. But at a certain point, it does get difficult when you're advocating on behalf of your client for, you know, a set amount of infrastructure. dollars, can you actually pick one over the other? So I think we do get the benefit of a targeted experience and respected firm when it comes to their local government practice. Okay. Thank you so much. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you. So if we do this one year extension, but then work on doing an RFP for future services so that we can explore all of our options, I think that's just a healthy thing to do. Absolutely. We'll take that. I think Councilmember Floyd has made some really good points. I want to make sure that we have the absolute best because this stuff is not cheap and the work is not easy. I've been happy working with Mr. Diamond, but I just think it's good to look and see who else is out there. There were other good firms that sent in a bid for this. How long would it, how long does it take? So if we do the year extension, when would the RFP go out for the next? And Madam Chair. Because I'm thinking this just gives us time to do the RFP. We would have plenty of time between. I mean, I think part of the thing and Mr. Thompson talked about that was the election may change our outlook on the firm that we may want representing us in Washington, D.C. So our thought would be get through the election, start the RFP process soon after the beginning of the new year, which would give us plenty of time to work through an RFP and then determine which firm to represent us on a going forward basis. That's kind of the general timeline that sitting here today that I would present as what I think is reasonable and doable. We certainly have plenty of time during the next calendar year to work through that. Right. And in the meantime, approving this today ensures continuity so that we don't have that vacant at a very important time right now. So I'm going to support this today, but I do look forward to seeing the RFP go out as we understand the consequences of November and how that would affect our future relationships. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Councilmember Montaneri. Thank you. I'll be very brief. Thank you for the report, David. I'm supportive of this. Council has been, I think, a very good representative for us up in Washington, D.C. I, too, was going to just bring up it's an election year possibility. We may have a new administration. And, you know, it seems to me the timing is we've got the timing right on this. So I'd like to see this go forward. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair. And thank you for, first of all, the presentation. You did a great job delineating everything. And Councilmember Floyd, for your concerns, I mean, I understand it. And you're right. I mean, I think it's probably a very dirty business to be in the lobbying area. And it all changes depending on the year and who you're dealing with and whatever administration, whether it's state or national. They obviously deal with national politics. We're lucky here in city council where we're nonpartisan elected officials. And, yeah, that's not the same environment when you get to that level. So I think they've been doing a great job in terms of working with us. And I think it was a new thing when we first brought them up. We really didn't have a federal relationship like that in a lobbying firm. But it's healthy to kind of look at it and see where we're going to go in the future. It's always healthy to kind of take a step back and figure out how we want to handle it. And I do think, depending on the election, we will see how things happen and how we will handle that going forward. So thank you for the conversation, but I'm supportive. Do we have a motion already? I do not. I'll move approval. Thank you. Now that we have a motion and a second for F5, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please cast your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item F5 passes 5-2 with councilmembers Floyd and Mohamed voting no. Councilmembers Driscoll, Fick Sanders, Gabbard, Hanowitz, Montaneri voting yes. And Councilmember Gerdes being absent. Thank you. Thank you so much. So now we're going to move on to F6, which is the FY 2025 Utility Rates Update presentation. And joining us is our Public Works Administrator, Mr. Clyde Tarkisley. How are you? Madam Chair, I'm doing very well. And it dawned on me that in some way this presentation is related to what we talked about earlier. We talked about a lot of work we have to do in the future. And this is one of the ways that we're going to pay for that work. So I thank you for the opportunity to bring you an update on the utility rate study. You guys have been very busy this year working with us on this. We've had two one on one meetings with each of you. We've had two BF&T meetings discussing this. There's two BF&T meetings roughly about four hours between the two of them. And now I'm trying to narrow it down to 10 minutes. So I'm going to give you just a very brief overview of the overall proposed utility rates changes for this year. So if we look at the table on the right with the yellow and the green columns, this table has a breakdown of the proposed rate adjustments for each of the utility systems. The green middle column, which was last year's forecast of what we would be proposing for this year, those numbers were calculated and estimated back in August of 2023 for what we might consider for fiscal year 25. The yellow column shows you what we are actually recommending for this year. I want to highlight two utilities in particular, and those are stormwater and reclaimed water. As we are all very aware, the past 12 months have seen a significant increase in weather related and sea level rise flooding events that have put pressure on our stormwater utility. In response, administration and council have accelerated some of the capital improvement projects such as our backflow preventer program and projects identified in the stormwater master plan. On the operation side, we have tripled the number of stormwater pipe cleaning crews from two to six crews. These accelerated projects and operational costs have put upwards pressures on our stormwater utility revenues. On the reclaimed water side, it's important to remember that the reclaimed water utility rates have remained flat. In other words, a 0% utility rate increase for three years, fiscal years 21 through 23. So relative to what we had projected last year for fiscal year 25, we've had some additional costs allocated to our reclaim system. And those additional reclaim costs have increased by roughly $250,000 while the reclaimed rate revenue has fallen by about $150,000 for a net deficit to reclaim cost recovery of about 400,000. So that's why we have to look at this rate increase this year. This year, we are also adjusting our water and sewer retail rate structure, and I'm going to get into the details on that in a little bit later slides. But this includes significant decreases to some of the fixed charges for water users. We are also aligning our water volume tiers to bring them into balance with our customers' actual usage patterns. And again, more on this later. However, the result of combining the general revenue adjustments with the water and sewer retail rate structure adjustments is that the majority of our customers will actually see rate increases that are smaller than those shown in the yellow box. This can be seen in the gray colored table on the left. And so using the combined rate increases in the yellow box, which is the typical basic utility bills, we anticipate the basic utility bills for about 88% of our customers. It would have been 8.29% increase overall, but is now estimated to be about 6.14% overall by including this proposed water and sewer retail rate structure changes. And then for those customers that are on our reclaimed water system, that bill without the rate structure changes would have been approximately a 9.21% increase. But now we're projecting a 7.48% increase with those proposed changes in the water and sewer rate structure. So I mentioned that we have these water and sewer rate structure changes that we're proposing this year. And so really the way we're approaching our utility rate changes this year is a two-pronged approach. The very first way that we're adjusting it is the typical way we adjusted it on an annual basis. And that is just the general utility rates. This is our normal process of determining the revenues needed for utility capital projects and operations in fiscal year 25. And then uniformly adjusting those rates accordingly. And then the second way we're looking at it is we're adjusting rates this year by redefining the water usage tiers to really address our current customer demand patterns and usage characteristics and to address some of the inconsistencies in our rate structure that have evolved over the last 20 plus years since they were first established. So the way these two adjustments schemes work together is that we apply the general rate adjustments that were calculated to provide the overall revenue needed for the systems to cover operating capital budgets. This approach looks at the rate payers as a whole unit treating everybody the same. The retail rate structure adjustments are then applied to the general rate adjustments in a revenue neutral basis to more equitably distribute the revenue burdens to the individual customers based off of their personal water usage and demands on the utility system. This step acknowledges the individuality of each rate pair and re incentivizes water conservation thus empowering rate payers individual rate payers with more control over their utility bill. So I want to talk about the summary of the bill impacts. We've broken this down into four types of utility bills based off of different usage patterns. And so the first one we want to look at is what we call our low usage monthly utility bill. This is this. This is a small family or an individual that uses only about 2,000 gallons of water a month and has a small impervious area for their stormwater utility. Now 2,000 gallons of water a month is less than the average our average utility usage for water for our single family residential users is about 3,500. So 2,000 is less than that. And so due to the combination of the retail water structure adjustments as well as our general utility adjustments. We have seen that the fixed charge, the water fixed charge has decreased by $4.60 from $14.95 to $10.35. With this decrease, we now have a proposed bill increase for one of these users would be a roughly 3.77% or about $4.15 per month for those users without reclaimed water. If we had not done the structural analysis and structural changes, then that would instead had been instead of $114 per month, it would have gone up to $118 per month. So we've seen about a $4 reduction in what would have been. The next is what we call our typical usage monthly bill. This is for someone or a family using about 3,500 gallons, which is the average for our water and wastewater and with a tier two stormwater impervious area. And so, as you can see, for this utility user, if they do not have reclaimed water, they're looking at about an $8.62 increase or 6.14%. If we had not applied the changes to our water rate structures, then that increase would have gone up by about $3 more. It would have been a bill of about $152 versus $149. And I'm assuming we are. There we go. Good. I just need to look behind me. Thank you. So for the higher usage water bill. So this is somebody, this is a family that's using about 5,000 gallons a month with a tier three stormwater impervious area. This bill is proposed to go up about 9.65% or about $16.60. And they, because they are using higher water rates, higher water usage than the average, they are actually going to carry a slightly higher responsibility under the retail rate structure adjustments, which is why their proposed rate is the 9.65%. And then finally, for those really high users, and there's not that many of them out there, but for those really high users who are using 6,500 gallons or more per month and have the tier four impervious area for stormwater, they're looking at a typical bill increase of about $24.16 a month or about 11.62%. So next I want to go briefly through the retail rate structure program and the changes we're proposing there. So as I mentioned, for the past 20 plus years, we've had a five tier inclining block rate structure for single family dwelling units. The first tier established a specific volumetric rate for the first 5,600 gallons of water a residential customer would use. The second tier then established a slightly higher rate per gallon for the next 2,400 gallons of water a residential customer would use. And water became more expensive for each successive tier of water used, which is why it's called an inclining block tier structure. In other words, the more water a customer uses, the higher the cost per unit, recognizing that we're trying to encourage conservation and, you know, we want people to use only the amount of water they need, not anymore. So the use of this five tier inclining block rate structure combined with efficiency gains in water using appliances has brought our average single family residential customer usage down to the 3,500 gallons per month. So what we're proposing to do is to change those tiers. And in the current tier with the 0 to 5,600 gallons, we currently have about 83% of our single family home residential customers are within that tier one. Whereas in the current structure, 99% of our single family residential customers fall within tiers one through three. So this risk resulted in our existing inclining block rate structure no longer realistically represents our usage and it doesn't offer realistic opportunities for customers to reduce their utility bills through additional conservation. So therefore the proposed inclining block rate structure tiers aim to restore that balance and restore those cost saving opportunities to more of our customers. So instead of having 83% of our single family residential customers falling into tier one, we are now proposing to have 59% of them. And instead of having 10% of our single family residential customers falling in tier two, we'd have 32% of them in tier three. We'd have about 6% of our single family residential customers with 3% our highest volume water users in tier four. We have proposing to completely eliminate tier five. And so as you can see, we're now really kind of trying to set up the tiers to be more consistent with our current usage profiles on the system. So what this results in is that under these proposed adjustments, you would see that single family residential customers who use less water will see their utility bills become lower than they otherwise would have been. They will see less of an increase than they would have without the changes in this system. However, the top third of our single family residential users, those who use the most water, will see a rate increase above the average. So finally, I want to discuss our sewer capacity fee. This is the final adjustment we're proposing this year in our rates. Our sewer capacity fee, what we also call our water closet fee, this is the impact fee that developers and customers will use when they are adding new users to our system. So if you have a new condo unit going in that is replacing a unit that had 100 units and now you have 200 units, this will help pay for that additional 100 users of our system. And so we call this our sewer capacity fee. Last year, if you recall, we did an analysis of the capacity costs of the wastewater system. And we calculated the cost per new bathroom connection, also our water closet, called our water closet, the new cost for that bathroom connection for the infrastructure to provide system capacity for that new connection. Based off of 2022 data, that cost was calculated to approximately $1,000 per water closet or per connection to cover the new capacity in 2023. The sewer capacity fee was only $350 per restroom connection, bathroom connection, and it hadn't changed in many years. So starting this year and the year we're currently in, we began escalating that water closet fee on a programmatic basis since the jump from $350 to $1,000 was such a big leap. We anticipated that the ramp up to $1,000 per sewer connection would be limited to a 12.5% annual increase based on our interpretation of state statutes in 2023. However, over the past year, our crack legal team has done extensive research and analysis and determined that we are not limited to that 12.5% increase per year after all. Therefore, administration proposes accelerating that recovery schedule to get to the $1,000 fee sooner rather than later. We propose shortening the period to a three year period, which will get us to the $1,000 cost recovery fee by fiscal year 27. Since we use 2022 data to calculate the sewer capacity fee, we propose to recalculate this fee again before 2026 to make sure that we continue to stay current moving forward. So administration does recommend that we accelerate the implementation of the phasing of this sewer capacity fee and to keep it current to existing costs. And the importance of the sewer capacity fee again, of course, is that it will allow new users of our utility to pay for their fair share of the portion of the system that they will be using. And this will help mitigate some of the pressure on the utility rates to cover utility costs. So I know I've given you a lot of detail in a very small amount of time, and there's a lot more detail that we've discussed with with the the BF and T committee on January 11th and January July 11th and July 25th. So I do want to encourage those who may be watching this presentation to go and find those two BF and T meetings on the city website and watch the recordings to learn more about a lot of the details that go behind this. I do thank you council chair for the opportunity to present this to you today. And this is the end of my presentation. Thank you so much. Council member Floyd. Thank you. I'm going to be quick and just say thank you so much for the presentation. Um, might not seem like it's a people who are at home, but this is one of the things I'm most excited about as a city council member. Um, and I think one of the most impactful over the long term to our residents, uh, the retail rate structure changes, um, are going to lessen the impact of the utility fees, uh, on the overwhelming majority of, uh, residents in our city. And so, um, it's been a long time coming. I, uh, I mean, I, the last few years, um, getting the study done, um, convincing everyone that the study was needed, uh, and getting it implemented. And I'm really grateful to see it coming to fruition. And, uh, I couldn't be happier that, um, the study came out the way that it did and showed that we could make our bills, uh, make more sense, first off, and make them more equitable at the same time. Um, and then the other thing is the, um, water closet fee. I'm just blanked on what, cause we've called it water closet fee so many times. What was it? Sewer connection fee. Sewer connection fee. Yeah. Um, the, uh, I'm grateful to legal for, you know, confirming that we could increase it at a quicker rate. Uh, it seems direct to me. It's, you know, the people who are making money off of developing in our city actually paying their fair share to, um, develop in our city. And I think, you know, we've been subsidizing development for a long time, uh, through utility rates because we were not adequately capturing, uh, the cost of, uh, upgrading the capacity of our, uh, sewer system with all of the development. Um, and I know that's one of the biggest complaints that I hear about development. About development, probably the biggest complaint that I hear about development in our city is, uh, you know, are they contributing to the infrastructure problems that we have? And we're having to subsidize them, uh, in the past. And we're going to catch up very quickly now and make sure that people are paying their fair share. So today is, uh, and this presentation, really good, really good. And I'm very pleased. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Y'all that is council member Floyd being happy. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for, excuse me. Thank you, Claude, for the, uh, Reader's Digest version of this presentation. And I'm glad you, uh, you mentioned to the public that might be watching that we have had two pretty intense, uh, committee meetings on this and then intense one-on-one meetings, uh, behind the scenes. Uh, I just have, uh, a couple of questions. You talked about the, uh, increased increases for the reclaimed water and the storm water. Uh, and, uh, earlier in our meeting today, we talked a little bit about storm water and, and some of the capital needs that we have. Uh, so I want to touch on those two things. You mentioned that the reclaimed costs have gone up $250,000. Um, how much do you, uh, do you know off the top of your, your, your head? A 13% increase in the reclaimed water fees. You know how much, uh, revenue that's gonna provide? Uh, roughly the $400,000, uh, offset deficit that, that, that I had mentioned. Is it 250 or 400? I thought I heard 250. So it was, it was 250 additional costs that we were incurring, but we saw the revenue drop slightly, uh, by about another 150,000. So you add the two up is the 400,000. Okay. And then same thing for the, uh, stormwater, uh, increase. How much increased revenue for the city? It's mostly going to our, our, um, capital improvements program. And so this year, the capital improvements program is approximately $17 million. What we're proposing for 2025 is to go to $25 million. So that's an $8 million increase just on the capital improvement program side. Uh, there's, there's a corresponding increase on the operating side, but I don't remember the, the magnitude of it. It's probably in the, the, the million, one to 2 million range. Okay. All right. And then, uh, I just want to throw this thought out there and I, I forget if this has come up, but the, the, uh, sewer capacity fee. It's gonna take me a while to remember that term. Uh, I just think of, uh, so we have a priority here in the city to, uh, to, to build more workforce and affordable housing. Uh, I'm wondering if we should be thinking about trying to limit that those raises for that sort of housing, uh, to try to keep the cost down so we can build more. Sure. So, so yes, we actually do, uh, do do that. Um, our, our expert on that would not be me, uh, probably Amy Foster, but I know that we do provide, uh, waivers on, on those sewer capacity fee for, for certain, uh, low income developments. So yes, sir, we do. Okay. All right. Very good. I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Hanowitz. Thank you, chair. And thank you, Claude, for the presentation. I, I've lost count how many times we've had the presentation cause we had it a few times. Um, but I want to highlight some of the great things and some of the great work that you've done and, and echo, um, council member Floyd's comments on, uh, the rate structure changes, which had not occurred for decades, decades. And so I, I think it's just such an important thing to make sure, not just for making it make more sense, which is what council member Floyd said, or for equity, but for water conservation, the people that are using more water. When you look at the spreadsheet and you look at how you disperse costs, I mean, there should be something that connects both because right now we are in a water shortage and it should be like, okay, well, if I'm spending, if I'm using a lot more water, then you could see my water bill increases. And if I spend less than it should decrease. And I think that conservation should be something that I think should be highlighted because we need more of that. Um, and for, for people that are not aware in terms of what our, um, water issues are, I mean, yes, we've had rain, but April and May, half the expected rainfall. June still was lower than average and a reservoir is like 16% full. So it's still there. People think it's gone. It is not. And so I think, um, that is something that everyone should be focused on and I can't emphasize that enough. And I'm glad, I know it's going to take time for people to get used to not using the water closet fee, but at least a sewer capacity fee tells people what it is because most people are like, what is a water closet fee? I'm not, I don't know anyone who uses the term water closet anymore, but, but the fact that now it actually says what it it's supposed to cover. I think that's important. And I do get the same questions that council member Floyd does from everyone are the people that are coming here paying for, uh, uh, their use of the system. And this is going to improve that. So I don't want to be redundant, but thank you so much for all the work. Thank you, chair. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Tentersley for the report. All right. Excellent. Thank you, madam chair. So next we will now move on to our new ordinances beginning with the G1 and joining us is controller manager, David Godu and clerk and assistant city administrator, Tom Green. Clerk, can you please read the ordinance title? Yes, ma'am. Madam chair, I have the motion to approve, I'm sorry, proposed ordinance number 590H in ordinance amending section 21-125 of the city code related to we keep watching monies temporarily placed in an available investment with little risk of principal reduction and providing an effective date. Public hearing for this item is on August 8th, 24 and we do not have any cards. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, council chair. Thank you. David Godu, controller in the finance department. This is an ordinance change for the Wikiwachi investment fund ordinance that gives us flexibility and allows, if there's excess funds from a project or a project gets changed or the funds come back, it protects those funds from a market value loss. Right now, the ordinance has those funds going back into the Wikiwachi fund and the way that investment vehicle works, there's benchmarks. If you hit the benchmarks, there are disbursements for Wikiwachi projects and under the current ordinance, the funds would go back and they would be subject. If there's a market value loss, the funds would be lost. This change protects those funds from any market value losses and allows them to be redeployed to another project. And they can be placed in a money market fund or a CD making, I think it's 5.4% right now. Sounds good. Is that the conclusion of your presentation? No presentation. No presentation. That is it. So seeing that we have no request to speak, I'll entertain a motion for the new ordinance. G1. Move approval. Second. Now that we have a motion and properly seconded, clerk, can you please open the machine for G1? Council members, please place your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item G1 passes unanimously with Councilmember Gerdes being absent. Thank you, Mr. Gadu, I appreciate you. So now we'll go to G2A and B. And joining us is Urban Design and Historic Preservation Manager Derek Kilborn and Planner Braden Evans. But before we have the clerk read the ordinance titles, I just want to note that due to the quadri-judicial nature of this item, there is no presentation or discussion regarding the merits of the appeal or requested MAP amendments during this first reading. City Council is only being asked to set the date for the appeal and public hearing. And with that being said, no public comment is being taken during first hearing. Clerk, could you please read the title? We'll let Chan read the titles, Madam Chair, but public comment is permissible on the first reading. Okay, so that is not here, but I got it. We're flexible. Thank you. Thank you. Do I need to swear them in? No, not for first reading. Can I read both ordinances together? Together. Proposed ordinance number 761L, an ordinance amending the future land use element of the comprehensive plan for the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, by changing the future land use map designation for block 70 and a portion of block 69 of the Pasadena on the Gulf Section B subdivision from I institutional to RM residential medium, providing for a repeal of conflicting ordinances and providing provisions thereof and providing an effective date. The public hearing for this item is on August 8th, 2024. Proposed ordinance number 794Z, an ordinance amending the official zoning map of the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, by changing the official zoning map designation for block 70 and a portion of block 69 of the Pasadena Gulf Section B subdivision from NT3 neighborhood traditional to NSM1 neighborhood suburban multifamily, providing for repeal of conflicting ordinances and provisions thereof and providing an effective date. The public hearing for this item is also on August 8th, 2024, and we have no cards. Okay, so do we need to get a presentation on this or are we just going ahead and entertaining the motion and second for the dates? Entertaining the motion. Thank you. I entertain a motion to set the dates. I move approval of both ordinances. Okay, we need a second? Second. Now I have a motion and a second to approve the dates for this for G2A and B. Clerk, can you please open the machine? Let's have the clerk confirm that there's no one here for public comment. He said? We didn't have any cards. He said, yeah. Okay. Do you have a card? No, Madam Chair, I represent the appellant and the applicant, so we're here just to be sure it's set. Okay, yeah, I didn't think we had any cards. Okay, thank you. Can you please open the machine for voting? Councilmembers, please cast your votes. Seeing that all Councilmembers have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item G2A and B passes unanimously with Councilmember Gerdes being absent. Thank you. Now we will move to our legal item, J1, and joining us is Assistant City Attorney McCall Dyer. Good morning, Chair and Councilmembers. Before you as a resolution, the City of St. Petersburg Health Facility Authority met on the 23rd of July and is requesting your approval of the attached resolution, which your approval is solely for the purposes of Section 147F of the Internal Revenue Code regarding the issuance by the Orange County Health Facility Authority of Revenue Bonds. And those revenue bonds, a portion of the proceeds will be used for facilities here in St. Petersburg and also other health facilities throughout the state. Okay. Thank you. Seeing no request to speak. Move approval. Second. Now that we have a motion and has been properly seconded for item J1, can you please open the machine for voting? Councilmembers, can you please cast your votes? Seeing that all present Councilmembers have voted, can you please tally and announce your votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item J1 passes unanimously with Councilmember Gerdes being absent. Thank you. So we will now move on to our new business items beginning with H1. Councilmember Floyd. Thank you. This item follows up a recent discussion that we had and I believe PS&I, I mentioned it there. I am respectfully requesting a referral to the Public Services and Infrastructure Committee. A discussion regarding codes compliance assistance moving to proactive enforcement of our short term rental ordinance. I'll move approval. Second. Thank you. Okay. Do we have public comment? We have one card, Madam Chair. Jeff Schor. Please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. We have three minutes to address City Council. Oh, he left. Okay. They were against the change. So we have no one else to speak. We're good on this? Administrator Foster. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to address this new business item because I thought we had talked a little bit about this in the last committee and Councilmember Floyd and I talked about it and it seems like maybe it was unclear. So I wanted to correct the record. We are proactively enforcing the short term rental ordinance as it stands. We have also recently created an Office of Housing Justice that will be doing this work. So we took two codes positions that were vacant and are repurposing them. So the position was open on our website. I think it closed yesterday for a housing equity specialist position, two of them, who will be doing a couple of different things. And so I wanted to outline that since they go along with the mayor's priorities. One of them will be enforcement of the short term rental ordinance instead of having every investigator do it. It's really a unique kind of research that has to happen. And so these two people will be tasked with that. In addition to that, they will be doing all of our interior warrant inspections. We have those from time to time. They will also continue to help with our eviction prevention work that happens other CRA and housing programs and codes programs that have some overlap. They'll work with that. And then we have had a growing need for interior inspections of apartments. As you know, you have approved a lot of funding for affordable units. And all of those that have ship funding and HUD funding and that type of thing have to have an interior inspection. In the past, we've been able to do a sample of those units like 10%. Now we have to inspect every single unit to stay in compliance with the state funding. And so that has increased the workload. So they will assist with that as well. And so we didn't get into all the details of what those two positions will be doing. This is a net neutral thing. We're not adding money to the codes department. It's just a matter of repurposing two codes positions that we had vacant. And we were able to take the map and increase the areas that each investigator responded to to kind of create a niche area for some folks to work on. So those positions closed. We'll start interviews and hopefully hire shortly. We'd be happy to come to a committee sometime in the future and give you an update on that. But we don't see the need for the new business items since the positions had already been created. And we are currently enforcing the short term rental ordinance. Thank you. Before I go to Councilmember Hanowitz. Councilmember Floyd, this is your new business item. Did you just hear what the referral was? Yeah, yeah. And so, I mean, I'll like to listen for my colleagues. There was a motion and a second for it already. And Councilmember Hanowitz would like to speak. I mean, I think it's good to have this so that we can have something on the referral list to get that update in the future. And I don't know if that means we need to put the word update in here or not. But I'll listen to everybody else first. Councilmember Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair, and to Councilmember Floyd. First of all, Amy, thank you for that update. But my understanding from the meeting was we wanted, you want more information on this at some point in time, an update as to everything that was going on. So I think this is not going to make it in the next month or two or even three. So I think we can have this discussion along with an update of what are changes and what's happening and all these other changes you're happening. Because I think it's going to be more of a status and where we are at and what's happening. And I think that will be part of the discussion because I thought when we had the discussion at the meeting at some point would be good to see where this is going. So that's where I'm at with it. And I'm fine with having that discussion in the future because of the conversation we just had at PSNI. And it would be good to hear, like all these other programs that you're doing, how they're coming along. So that's where I'm at. Thank you. Thank you for that. So it's been properly motioned and seconded. No other further requests to speak. I had something that I wanted to say, but I'll just go ahead and move forward with it. So, clerk, can you please open up a vote for H1, please? Council members, can you please cast your votes? Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item H1 passes unanimously with Council Member Gerdes being absent. Thank you. So the next new business item is H2. And I am requestfully respecting a referral to the Youth and Family Services Committee and other relevant committees. An update on our Boley Summer Youth Program. I'd like to stay on top of the activities in regards to what our children are doing and the employment of those children with the funds that we just increased for that program. And with that, I'm asking for approval. Move approval. Second. Seeing a motion and seconded, can you please open the machine for voting for item H2. Council members, please cast your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item H2 passes unanimously with Council Member Gerdes being absent. Thank you. Now moving on to new business item H3, which was a staff request. This is a referral to the Youth and Family Services Committee for an update on the Community Support Hubs Program. And with that, I'll entertain a motion for approval. Second. Second. It's been properly motioned and seconded, can you please open the machine for H3. Council members, please cast your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item H3 passes unanimously with Council Member Gerdes being absent. Thank you. Thank you so much. And moving right along to H4, we have a referral to the Committee of the Whole for the selection of a PSTA citizen at large representative. And with that, I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. Second. Motion and properly seconded, can you please open the machine for voting for H4. Council members, please cast your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce your votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item H4 passes unanimously with Council Member Gerdes being absent. Thank you. We will now move to our Council Committee Reports, Item I2. And presenting is our BF&T, Vice Chair, Council Member Mountaineer, filling in for Vice Chair Gerdes. Council Member? Thank you. Mohamed. Mohamed, Mountaineer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Respectfully requesting City Council approval of the Budget, Finance, and Taxation Committee's recommendation to add the Salt Creek property project to the Wikiwachi project list. There's a resolution attached and I'll move approval. Second. Okay. Seeing that it's been properly motioned and seconded and no request to speak, can you please open the machine for voting for I2. Council members, please cast your vote. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item I2 passes unanimously with Council Member Gerdes being absent. Thank you. Now we will move on to open form. Do we have any cards for open form, public comment? I just want to continue down the list where we left off. Two at a time, Christie Bruner, Polite Glenn, Walt Driggers, Jeff Score. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record. You have three minutes to address City Council. I forgot what I'm here for. So good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Walt Driggers. I'm here today representing Friends Albert Woodard Airport. My address is One Beach Drive Southeast, St. Petersburg, Florida 33701. As many of you know, Friends Albert Woodard Airport has a scholarship program that we started in September of 2023. Our scholarship program emphasizes and has achieved inclusivity for the underrepresented in aviation minorities and women. Last year we awarded 19 scholarships, five $1,000 scholarships. We had 14 $5,000 scholarships for a total of $75,000. However, that was so successful that more than half of them got their license. And so we were trying to create professional pilots and a pathway to a professional career. So we created $10,000 scholarships for this year. This year, on February 10th, we gave away 30 scholarships. We gave away five $10,000 scholarships. No, we gave away five $1,000 scholarships, 16 $5,000 scholarships for intermediates for people to get their private pilot's license. And we gave away eight $10,000 scholarships for advanced scholarships for people to get their instrument rating and their commercial rating so they could actually be on their way achieving their dreams to be a professional pilot. Two years, 49 scholarships, totaled $241,000 since April of 2023. So far, eight of those people have received their licenses. We have more of them in route. And we also have a lot of them who have achieved their instrument rating and three of them who are waiting for their checkride for their commercial one. I believe within six months, we're going to have somewhere between six to 12 months, we're going to have three people, commercial pilots, making money from our program or help from our program. It's emotionally moving, it's rewarding experience to watch these hardworking kids achieve their dreams and goals. We applaud the city's pillars for progress and educating the young, specifically the one for education, young youth opportunities. We also applaud the workforce development from St. Petersburg. So I'm here today to ask if the city of St. Petersburg wouldn't like to tap into some of their funds and give us and fund one of each of our scholarships for next year. That would be $1,000, one $1,000, one $5,000, one $10,000, a total of $16,000. Many of those people within 10 years will be able to be in the upper 5% of wage earners, and several of them will be in the 10%. I did the calculation, that's .00019 of your budget. Thank you so much. Not that I'm an art person. But we did do murals. Next two speakers. I don't see Jeff who's in here. Next two speakers, David Manson and Susan Betzer. They're not here. Alex Harris. He's gone too. No more speakers. Seeing no requests to speak, I do want to, well, you know what, I'm going to go ahead and move on before I speak to get us out of here. But thank you, Mr. Jurgers, for that. I do appreciate that presentation. Do we have any announcements? Councilmember Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair. And it came to my attention yesterday that there was an article that came out at 12.03 PM yesterday regarding the raise owner and the potential deal to sell the team that fell through. And I don't have any information whether the article is factual or not. So for the need of transparency in terms of our partners, I want to know if the administration has had any conversations with them, has any information as to the article that came out. Because I'm already getting people that are reaching out to me and it's already making its way through all the Facebook pages, as you can imagine. And so it would be good to get some information as to the accuracy and whether or not there have been ongoing conversations to sell the team while we have been negotiating with the raise. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember. We have no reason to believe that the raise are in any sale and we're excited to get going on this transformative project. Well, my question was, have you had that conversation with them? I have. Whether you, you understand there's a difference. I want to know and I want to specifically know whether or not this is true. I don't want any reason to believe there are our partners in this and it's a big deal. Understood. And I still have no reason to believe that the team is for sale and have had no conversations with the raise. Has anyone asked the raise? I have not, but we can report back. That would be wonderful. I think at some point the public's going to need to know because this is public money. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to go back to the airport and the scholarships. I am a big fan and I want to publicly thank Mr. Driggers for providing that because we talk about community and opportunity and introducing our young people to new and different career paths and options. And when you came and made your presentation, you heard that request in increasing not just diversity of, you know, of color, but of our young women. And when I have attended those scholarship ceremonies to see the young people that are taking advantage of those opportunities to learn how to fly a plane. I don't even like getting on one, but learning how to fly a plane just speaks volumes to me. And again, I want to thank you for hearing that request that I asked for and that you have gone out and funded that on your own without city assistance and providing those opportunities. And there are a couple of those pilots, one in particular that I'm extremely fond of that introduced us to that program. So I just want to thank you and take this opportunity for the Friends of Albert Witter to provide another option, another view, another perspective of ensuring to our young people that you don't have to be constrained to normalcy in regards to what it is you're supposed to do for the rest of your life. But introducing them to one of the treasures that we have here in the city of St. Petersburg, and that's learning how to fly a plane. And so I just wanted to thank you for that and thank you for sticking around to share that information for us. And again, I do appreciate on behalf of the students that I know in the program to thank you for that continued service. And with no other request to speak, I am going to go ahead and adjourn the council meeting for August 1st. August 1st.