City Council - Aug 15, 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 Montenari, 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 afternoon, everyone. We will now call to order our August 15, 2024 City Council Meeting, beginning with a roll call, please. Floyd, Gerdes, here, Gabbard, here, Montenari, Hanowitz, here, Vic Sanders, here, Driscoll, here, Muhammad, here. Thank you. Today, we are blessed to have our invocation given by the Elder Dr. G. Greg Murray, who is the pastor of Mount Zion Permanent of Baptist Church. Following that, we will have our Pledge of Allegiance, so will everyone join me in standing? Let us pray. Dear God, I come to you this afternoon with a humble heart and a righteous determination. Thank you, dear God, for one more day. God, I'm asking you for your divine direction for my life. I'm asking you for those who seek out your love and your light, that you unite us all under the umbrella of your divine will and under your blessed hope for all of us. I humbly ask your blessings over our honorable mayor, my brother and my friend, Ken Welch, and his leadership. I humbly ask your blessings for our city council's chair, my sister and my friend, Debra Fick Sanders, and her leadership. God, we humbly ask your blessings and your guidance over this city council and the work they do for the residents of St. Petersburg. I humbly ask your blessings over this city and all of its residents. I pray for every faith leader throughout our city, every synagogue, every mosque, and every church. Please, dear God, guide us through these turbulent times. Guide us toward even greater economic development and opportunities for everyone. Show us the way to even more affordable housing. Strengthen our local businesses and lead us toward an even healthier St. Pete. Protect our youth and our seniors and everyone in between. God, bless the work that will be done here today. Empower us to be all that you have created us to be. It is in the name of Jesus that I pray. Amen. 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. Pastor Murray, thank you so much for those words. Thank you for the invitation. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Council members, we have an agenda before us today with a request to add item F-10, a time change resolution for our September 5th council meeting, and I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. Second. Now that we have a motion and a second, can you please open the machine for voting? Now that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, a motion to approve the agenda passes unanimously, with Council Member Montaneri being absent. Thank you. Council members, we have a consent agenda before us. Do we have any public comments? Madam Chair, we do not. We do not. With that, I'll entertain a motion for approval of the consent agenda. Move approval. Second. Mr. Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, can you please enter your votes? Now that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, a motion to approve the consent agenda passes unanimously, with Council Member Montaneri being absent. Thank you. Now we'll move on to open forum. 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 individuals wishing to speak may sign the open forum sheet. Only city residents, owners of property, business owners in the city, or their employees may speak. All issues discussed under open forum must be limited to issues related to the city of St. Petersburg government. If you're speaking to an item on the agenda, you may only speak once, during the open forum, 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 raised 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 asked to state your name and address. At the conclusion of your comments, or when you have reached the three-minute time 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, like public comments, is disrupted by violations of the rules of decorum, the chair is authorized to accept public comments by alternate means, including by email only. And, Madam Chair, we do have some speakers. The first two speakers is David Ramsey and Andrea Hosley. Please go to either podium, state your name and address from the record. You'll have three minutes to address council. Good afternoon. My name is David Ramsey. My address is 1460 Serene Way South. St. Petersburg. I've been a 50-plus year resident of the city of St. Petersburg. I love the arts, and I love St. Petersburg. I've been a volunteer, a board member, officer, and a supporter of many St. Pete art organizations, including the City of St. Petersburg Art Commission, which I've joined Gina on. And I came to the St. Pete in the early 70s. I have a master's of public administration, and I served as assistant city manager in Gulfport, and ultimately a city manager in Treasure Island, and then spent 40 years in financial advising, retiring from Raymond James after 20 years of service. I think I understand city government, and I definitely understand finance. And since the 1990s, I have witnessed how the arts organizations in St. Petersburg have created a really distinct vibe, vitality, and energy. The energy has created a huge attraction of people, residences, and businesses in downtown. And all that growth has helped increase downtown St. Pete's property value. That, in turn, increased the city of St. Petersburg's property tax revenue. And today, the arts continue to do that. They generate huge amounts of funds because of all the people that are coming because of our culture. Today, there is a crisis among the arts organizations. The loss of the annual state funding has created, in some cases, dire problems with some of our arts organizations. It threatens their survival and really has become a huge problem. Now, as council that has all kinds of different things to think about, look at this in another way. Suppose Tropicana Field had a problem. Let's say, obviously, it's the cornerstone and the landmark we value highly. But suppose, and this is obviously a supposition, a big sinkhole appeared in the outfield. It's not funny. It's actually serious. It jeopardizes the entire building and whatever goes on there. Without question, the council and the city would act as fast and as prudent as they could. But they would have to spend a lot of money to do it. So, without question, that is an asset you want to protect. Well, I'm here because the arts are an asset you need to protect, too. And for that, I really would like to have your cooperation and support for an emergency funding for the arts and also a continuing funding, which you'll hear from the St. Pete Art Alliance. If nothing else, this is something that doesn't happen often, but your city has been the beneficiary of all of this generosity from the arts. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Andrita Hosey, and I live at 515 46th Avenue South, St. Petersburg, Florida. And I am a proud former arts educator with the Pinellas County School System. I'm here today to appeal to you, sorry, too loud, there's a theater coming out, to appeal to you to provide for the arts for our community. And why is the art so important? Because it creates creativity, motor skills, creative thinking, cultural awareness, self-expression, social-emotional being, and it provides our city with an aesthetic that helps everybody grow. And so I'm up here today to appeal to you on the parts of the Arts Alliance and all of the arts educators to please provide funding for the arts. Thank you so much, and thank you for what you already did. And the next two speakers is Tony Armour and John Wittner. Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Tony Armour. I live at 1857 Clearbrook Drive, Clearwater, Florida, and I am the founder of the Sunscreen Film Festival here in St. Pete, now going into our 20th year. Some people know me as well because I was the Pinellas County Film Commissioner from 2014 until the beginning of 2023, and I'm currently the Head of Production for Talent Entertainment Finance. And like these other good people in the arts community, I just want to advocate for that funding for the arts that we've lost due to the state of Florida cutting that arts funding. The 1% back that has been proposed, really just like throw my support behind that. The Sunscreen Film Festival, like I mentioned, going into its 20th year this year, has had an over $40 million economic impact on the area, has brought in thousands of hotel room nights over the years, has brought people in from all over the world to visit the great city of St. Petersburg, and a lot of that has turned into people moving here, buying businesses, and then coming back and actually filming, creating film and television shows based here in St. Petersburg and the area. And so the arts don't just provide the ancillary benefits of beautifying the city and providing that great cultural experience, but there's a great tourism and economic benefit as well that was provided. And I think sometimes film is one of those arts that maybe gets forgotten a little bit and thought of as just something big in Hollywood, but at the same time, it's very grassroots and very grounded here in St. Pete, and it's become a part of the fabric of the city over the years. And so, again, just wanted to throw our support behind the initiative for more funding for the arts and that 1% advocating for the arts. Thank you very much. My name is John Wittner. I'm the founder of KW Commercial Tampa Bay and KW Developer Services at 360 Central Avenue. I have also been a great lover of St. Pete throughout my life. Growing up in Tampa with all my cousins living in St. Pete, I visited about every other weekend and have established all of our businesses and soon will live in St. Pete. What I have seen is that the arts and culture are the magic element that makes St. Pete the place that people want to be and make the residents the proudest group of people that I've ever encountered. We see this with very direct evidence. Me being in the real estate business, I can tell you the price increases for property or lease rates have more than doubled. And the arts district and throughout St. Pete and all the better places. And that is a direct result of the impact of having so many fine institutions, as well as individual and small group artists all around this city. There's a reason why we were selected best midsize art city to visit a couple of years ago. We have incredible big city facilities. We need to keep our advantage and we need to flex our advantage. I have talked to several mayors in the past who have told me without any hesitation the very best and most impactful investment that we have ever made is in the arts. We get the biggest return and that is why people are coming from Miami looking for property, from San Francisco, New York, Texas, you name it. They can't find it. They recognize what we have. The arts is the common element that makes it so special and creates our culture and the feeling and desire of inclusion that is so pervasive in St. Pete and so unique. So I am asking you to please strongly consider not only the city 1% of budget, but also to take a strong look at the development code so that we can make sure to fund permanent art on new developments as well as the individual artists locally, not just for the big sculptures, but for the little guys that work over at the factory that are trying to make their way and become the next great St. The next two speakers is Sean Kennedy and Christy Bruner, please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes to address Council. Hi, good afternoon. My name is Christy Bruner, Vice President of Advocacy with the St. Pete Chamber, 102nd Ave North. In light of the recent arts funding cuts throughout the state, including close to $2 million just for city arts and culture grant programming, we realize what a detrimental impact this can have on not only the St. Pete vibe of readily available live performances, public art installations, and education opportunities, but also how it affects our community economically. The chamber has advocated for some non-traditional chamber issues over the past few years, including attainable and affordable employee housing, resiliency efforts, early learning initiatives, and yes, arts and culture. We realize that all these aspects contribute to the quality of life for our residents, our visitors, our employers, and our employees. We need to pay our arts employees, artists, and makers fairly so that they can afford to live here, and they can in turn afford to support our other local businesses that keep our economy moving. The youth in our community need to have exposure to arts, not only to give them awareness of new ways to express themselves and learn about the world around them, but also because it has been proven that children who have a robust arts education score better on standardized tests and go on to succeed in arts and in life. St. Pete is not the only city that prioritizes arts. We recently visited Austin on a benchmarking trip, then learned about how that city commits sustainable funding to help keep Austin weird. The city of Austin provides, for an example, $13 million through their Thrive and Elevate grant program. St. Pete needs to keep pace as we grow to remain the city of the arts as we joyfully proclaim. The St. Petersburg Chamber encourages the city to continue funding the arts program and, if possible, increase that funding to ensure that current programming, jobs, and opportunities are not at risk. Thank you for consideration and thank you for your service. Thank you. Hello, I'm Sean Kennedy, 1759 Massachusetts Avenue. I'm here on behalf of Creative Clay, a small local nonprofit that will be celebrating our 30th anniversary next year. I want to add to the chorus of people asking you to consider greater funding for the arts, especially when you look at nonprofits. Sure, there's amazing economic development impact from the arts, tourism impact, but also, forgive me, small nonprofits are filling in some of the gaps that result from cuts in education funding and elsewhere. Creative Clay has a program with Pinellas County Schools to support the folks transitioning out of the school system who are not quite ready to live on their own, but they get a great arts education and a great jobs education. We get them hired. We get them to make art and sell art. We were impacted almost 10% of our budget by the cuts in funding from the governor, and we are desperate to make it up, as are many small nonprofits in this community. I hope you'll consider us and consider the multiplicity of impacts that are felt throughout the city from nonprofits like Creative Clay that work in the arts and work alongside many of the folks you're going to hear from today. Thank you so much for your consideration. The last two speakers is John Shaw and Alex Kaufman. Hello. My name is John Shaw, and I reside at 4945 2nd Avenue North in St. Petersburg. For the past 28 years, I have served as the principal percussionist in the Florida Orchestra and have been a resident of St. Petersburg for 22 years. I'm here on behalf of the orchestra to support Councilmember Gina Driscoll's proposal that the city allocate no less than 1% of the annual budget to support the arts in St. Petersburg. Perhaps more than any other facet of a city's makeup, its commitment to the arts is what makes it a desirable and fulfilling place to call home. The Florida Orchestra, rooted in St. Petersburg, is the largest professional orchestra in the state and one of the best in the entire country. From my vantage point as a performer, I see firsthand the impact we have on the population of our great city and the nourishment of its collective soul. I see the impact we have on the legions of schoolchildren through live performances and educational outreach training for their teachers. In addition, free programs such as our Vinoy Park concerts reach tens of thousands of citizens each year. I was personally very proud that the Florida Orchestra found a way to bring the healing power of music to the city during the pandemic recovery and was amazed at how therapeutic it was for our audiences. People were longing for a restored sense of togetherness and meaning in a bleak time, and we managed to give them that through in-person and live-streamed concerts. St. Petersburg's Orchestra gave more live performances that year than any other in the country, and it was one of the greatest gifts and healing aids that a city could give its residents. I'm very proud of that, and the city of St. Petersburg should be proud of that. The Florida Orchestra is the largest arts employer in the Tampa Bay area, with close to 100 musicians and staff members combined, most of whom choose to call St. Petersburg home. This city is essential to us, and we are essential to St. Petersburg. We have a wonderful symbiotic relationship. We could not have the impact that we do without the support of our patrons, donors, and community at large. This is why ideas such as 1% for the Arts are so critical to the economic and emotional well-being of St. Petersburg. On behalf of one of the best orchestras in America, your own Florida Orchestra, I ask for your support for this wonderful initiative. Thank you for all the work you do for our great city. Alex Kaufman, 940 Granville Court North, St. Petersburg. Hello, my name is Alex Kaufman, and I am an artist in St. Pete. I'm a lifelong Floridian from Fort Lauderdale, and I've lived here for the past 12 years. I currently work at MJ Sculpture Studio at the Nonprofits Arts Exchange, which was founded by passionate individuals with the goals of creating a sustainable arts community, void of a strictly money-driven bottom line. I'm the lead designer at MGA, working with eight full-time artists that are employed through this arts business. Everyone at the studio is under 40 in the beginning of their arts career. Together, we have contributed to the artistic landscape of the city, whether it was the bronze dolphins at the sundial, the first flight sculpture at the pier, or the gladiolus blossom in front of the police station. I deeply love this artistic community, and I'm amazed at the depth of talent and quality of the people here. I didn't move here as an artist. I was a college graduate with an engineering degree that liked the warm weather, good vibes, and cheap rent. I won't get into the long story, but through Art Walk, a free art event, I ended up working at MGA Sculpture Studio as a designer. Eight years later, the studio is making around half a million dollars of high-end sculpture, allowing it to pay young artists a living wage and learn about the making of public art. We buy local metal, hire local engineers, with most of the money going back into the community in some way. Today, I give tours for Art Walk. I talk to 100 people in a night about art and life. I see old friends and make new ones. I welcome people that just moved here and tell them the places they need to see now that they are local. Once a month, I give back to the arts community that has given me so much. I am forever indebted to the city, but I could not have had the same story today with the cost of living and general lack of money in the arts community. Funding the arts and arts programs, investing in it and growing it, not allowing it to be beholden to economics and money and developers, these are the things that will keep the artists, such as the ones working at MGA, here to stay. Once again, St. Pete is going to be my final stop in Florida. If you'd asked me a few years ago, I would have told you I'll never leave. But that is not exactly how I feel today. What we have today is unsustainable in the arts. To be honest, I find myself traveling more and more to other art cities because I know this place will not feel like home anymore soon at the rate it's currently going. Santa Fe, Asheville, Boulder, these are some of the places I'm currently looking at to give the prime years of my life to. They won't have all the things I like about here, but they will have a community that is more dedicated to the arts financially. It is sad for me to think of St. Pete in this way. The city has molded me into who I am today and given me so much, but the harsh truth is that I am not beholden to the city in any way except my love for the community. I personally believe that this funding of the arts is paramount to keeping the culture of the city. I do hope city council considers the budget change to try and keep the community here and support and help grow the livelihoods that so many people love and cherish about St. Pete. If the city makes no changes to the current structure, makes no investment to the arts, I am just one example of the types of people that will soon leave and St. Pete will be a pretty place, baron of the people that helped make it. So, thank you. Thank you so much. Madam Chair, no more speakers. No one in Zoom as well. No one on Zoom. Thank you so much for that. Next, we will now close open forum, and we will take up item F1, St. Petersburg Police Department quarterly report, and joining us is our own police chief, Chief Anthony Holloway. Good afternoon, Chair, Council members. Good afternoon. It's going to be the quarterly report, our second quarter for this year. First of all, I want to report that crime is still continuing to trend downward slightly, but it is still going downward. Our three-year average now is about 3%. A homicide for this year to date, last year we had 10. This time this quarter, we're at 10 again. The seven homicides that you see there now are two related to argument, one drug, one accidental, and three domestic. And also, as you can see, they're all closed. All the homicide in 2024 have been closed with an arrest. Our grant team, Madam Chair, last month you highlighted that, the grant that we received. Our grant team is still doing great investigation. And just to remind council what this is, is anytime we hear a shots fire call, we will respond, officers, to that scene. If we can collect some type of evidence, shell casing, we'll then take those shell casing and compare them to other shell cases we have found throughout the city so we can possibly link them to other crime. And as you can see, the case closure to those is up. And again, anytime we hear a little shots fire call, we do respond to them. Stolen guns, I'm here to report something that I thought I would never report. As you can see, they're going down. But also what I want to report to is, believe it or not, this quarter, and ready for this, we had 101 guns turned into us. People actually brought their guns in and said, here you are. So, and that ranges from handguns up to rifles. I was shocked that we did it again twice just to make sure. But that says a lot about people here and what we're seeing being responsible gun owners by turning in their guns that they're not using anymore. Our crime offenses are, as you can see, they're up just a little. The robberies are up, but I can tell you now they're going to close. That's what I was telling councilor about a couple of months ago. We're having a group come into the downtown corridor, and they were stealing cell phones because the cell phones have people's credit cards. We're actually able to arrest two guys from out of the Miami area. So we're looking at possibly linking them to all the stolen phones and credit cards that were used in our city. It also relates back to an arrest that you can see there. Traffic stats, you can see we're pretty busy out there, and this is a good time for me to remind everybody schools back in. So is the traffic team. So slow down and make sure you watch out for our kids. Second Chance program, you're going to see those astros there because during the month of April, May, and June, the Department of Juvenile Justice, their computers were down, so we weren't able to put any of our kids into the Second Chance program, but we did monitor them during that period of time. These are the kids that we're still monitoring that are going through our juvenile diversion program with the Sheriff's Office. The PATH unit is still making contact with our homeless and unhoused citizens in the city use of force for the past three months. And there's a complaint, still no complaint. None of those complaints are related to use of force. Our call program is still going quite strong. We're still receiving phone calls throughout the nation, people asking us about our call program. The biggest thing I want to highlight in this is bullet three. We're now at 90% of the calls are not being responded to by law enforcement. The navigators are responding to them without us. Also, the call team received a grant from the NFL for $450,000 that will also give another juvenile specialist to this program so we can work more with our children. And thanks to the mayor and the citizens, we also received another grant for a million dollars that we're going to be adding on to the call program that we're going to. We're not going to call them navigators anymore. The kids helped us out. We're going to start calling them life coaches so that the kids that are going through issues that they'll have a coach that will assist them through that. Thanks to Lisa Willow Bowman that we're going to be able to talk to the child, talk to the family, and try to figure out what can we do to break these cycles because we have to do that. We have to start with our youth, not wait three or four months down the road when they're trying to wait for their court proceeding, but three or four days trying to get these children the help that they need. And with that, I'll open up for any questions. Councilmember Hanowitz. Thank you. And thank you, Chief, for your presentation. I have a question. In your crime offenses PowerPoint slide, you have robbery, burglaries, breaking and entering, and motor vehicle theft listed, but the crime arrests actually has also theft from motor vehicle included. Are you going to be including in crime offenses the theft from motor vehicle? It doesn't match. So if you go to the next slide, those are the arrests. So we have four different categories. We'll add them in there. I'm sorry. Yeah, I just wanted to see what the numbers are in terms of the offenses and then the arrests because they don't, yeah. We will get that done, ma'am. Sorry. Thank you. And then the other question I had in terms of PATH, the number of referrals has gone down from last year. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Sure. So that also could be related to Ms. Foster's team because we have two teams that are out there. Not only do we have our PATH team working out there, but you have Ms. Foster and her team that are out there. So they're also working with us hand in hand. So they may be doing some referrals that the officers are not following up on already. Okay. And maybe, yeah, maybe she either, she or her could just clarify that, make sure that's what's happening with those numbers. It's just, it was a, you know, significant kind of change, even though I know that it's growing and it's handling more. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Chair Girdis. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chief, thanks for the update. Always good to see you. I know we're on the east side, Chief. I understand that, sir. I think usually we get an update on Park, Walk, and Talk, and I didn't, it wasn't included in this presentation. If somebody from the team or you could email an update just on how that went and the map of Park, Walk, and Talk, I'd just be interested in it. I can get that to you. We're trying to make sure we. I appreciate that. That's all I have. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good to see you, Chief. Thank you. Council Member Montaneri. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good to see you, Chief. Thank you for the update. I've noticed, I'll start off with the good news. I've noticed not as many people panhandling at intersections anymore. I don't know if you all have stepped up enforcement of our panhandling ordinance, but I'm glad to see that. There was people, like, when you're getting on and off the interstate, you'd see a lot of panhandlers out there. So are you all doing more enforcement in that area? Yes, I think of credit where credit due. The officers are out there educating people more on the ordinance, but also remember this time of the year. It's hot out there. So as we move toward the fall season, we'll make sure we continue to do that enforcement. All right. Well, the other observation I have is I see a lot of people sleeping in public. I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Sleeping in public. Yes, sir. On my way from my home to City Hall, I see a lot of people, not a lot, I see quite a few people sleeping on park benches up and down 4th Street. And then when I go to church on Sunday morning, I go down 4th Street to 1st Avenue North. And between 4th Street and 16th Street, there's just a lot of people sleeping outdoors. And can you talk a little bit about our enforcement, how we're doing that? And is the PATH team getting involved with those situations? Yes, sir. The PATH team is involved with that. But remember, the ordinance is from a certain time of the day that people cannot sleep. And most of that is at nighttime in private property. So if the officers are seeing a violation and they can see something that they can't enforce, they will enforce. If it's something that they cannot enforce, right now there's nothing that we could do with that. I can put you more offline to have the PATH team and look exactly where you're talking about to see if we do need to put a trust pass at that location. Is it on public or private property? So we can make sure we stay within the law enforcement needs. Okay. Yeah, what I'm saying is over since your last report, you know, it's recurring. So it's just not a good look for our city. And it's something that we need to address to make sure that the people that don't have a place to stay know that we have services and we have people here in the city to find them places to stay so that they're not sleeping out there on the street. And again, if they're violating that law, we will enforce it. We handle it. And again, we have a great partnership with other city departments here, and we will put people on notice. But again, if they're not violating the law, we're going to kind of be stuck on what we can and cannot do. Okay. I may give you a call offline and tell you a little more specific, a few more specifics on where I'm seeing people. And I'll be happy to have our PATH team go out and look at those locations. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. Thank you for the report and for all the progress that you're making in these areas. I'm glad that Vice Chair Gerdes brought up the park walk and talk. That's always one of my favorite things to look at because it's such a true reflection of the community engagement that the police department prioritizes. So I'm looking forward to seeing that information and the map. Have you had, regarding the new law regarding the sleeping in public, have you had people asking you questions about it? Is there anything you can share with us as far as how we're adapting? I know that we were pretty much compliant with it already, but I know a lot of people have questions about why is this still happening? Why is that still happening? Are you getting those questions as well? And if so, are there some easy ways that you can explain what's okay now and what's not regarding the new law? Sure. Thank you. It's very confusing. We are. We have campus out there. We have a task force meeting where all the agencies in Pinellas County meet together to make sure we're on the same sheet of music. I think everybody gets confused. The law that came out, it says no sleeping, but there's a time limit restraint to that. So when people say, well, you know, they're sleeping in a park at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Well, the law doesn't say that. The law says at night or a certain time. And our parks are different times. Some parks close at 6 o'clock. Some parks close at 10 o'clock. So we have to go by those guidelines. So if a park closes at 10 o'clock at night, so from 10 o'clock at night until sunrise, no one can sleep in that park. But at 8 o'clock in the morning, they could be sleeping there. So that's where the misconception is there. So we keep trying to educate business owners on that. But it's just, again, as they call in, the PATH team and the officers go out there. We've got a lot of information on our marketing department. So people just need to be made aware of it, again, just because someone's unhoused and they're sleeping at a certain time of the day. Call us. We'll be more than happy to educate you on that. And we'll do the best we can to continue to give our unhoused people, give them the information so that they know there's a lot of facilities here in the Pinellas County area that will be willing to help them. Thank you. And, finally, it's been a while since you've included your report and update on the number of residents or businesses who have registered for the Eagle Eye program. And, you know, that's something that I'm always interested in. And so I'm wondering if that's something that's still being promoted. And, you know, we all know how helpful that can be when it comes to identifying the bad guys. So what's the latest on that? Because it just feels like it's been kind of deprioritized. It's still there, ma'am. And, again, I'll be more than happy to add these slides back into the presentation. But I'll take more time and I have no problem sending it to you. Or I can send it to you prior to our quarterly report, so if you have questions, you can see it in that direction. So whatever the chair and the council want, I'll be more than happy to put more slides back into the presentation. Okay. We just want to see you longer. That's all. Okay. No, it's such a great program. And I hope that the CSOs are still talking about it during neighborhood meetings and encouraging people to sign up because it's just a great way to help our police department. And I'll add on, it is a great program because when I told you about those closures, they work well because I can tell you the first thing that happens whenever there's a shooting or a crime in our community, the first thing that happens, the officers go out and canvass the neighborhoods, and they go, there's a camera there, there's a camera there. And I'm going to say give credit to the officers and to the community because it's captured on video so we can say, okay, there's that person I'm looking for there, and here's what happened afterwards. So it works well for us. So we do continue to promote that program because it is helping us reduce the crime in our city. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. And I will also piggyback on that. I'm glad Councilmember Driscoll did bring that up because that is awesome, and it has helped. I know on my street, those of us that actually have those cameras and have helped with that, so that is an excellent program. I have a couple of questions for you, Chief. The 96% of responses are independent of law enforcement. Can you give me an idea of what that call sounds like? How does the dispatcher know that a call navigator is the only resource needed to be sent out to that particular call? Sure. And thank you. We have a chart, so to speak, that we ask people certain type of questions, and if it meets that criteria, then we go ahead and send a navigator there without a police officer. A good example, if they say there's a weapon in the house or a weapon was used, then we're not going to send a navigator. School time, my child won't go to school. Well, you don't need a badge and a gun. You need someone to go there to figure out what's going on. Or one of my family members is going through a mental crisis. He or she hasn't threatened anyone, but they need someone to go there. So the navigator can actually call the home first and say, I'm on my way there. Or when he or she gets there, they can talk to the person. So the call taker has like a list that they go through, and they do the checkbox. Then it's looked at. Then it's forwarded into the comm center supervisor. Then he or she looks at it. Then it's also then forwarded to the call supervisor, and they make sure that, okay, we can go ahead and send one of our navigators there. So it's like a check, a double check, and a triple check. So that's why we can say we're up to 96% of our calls now that the navigators are not asking law enforcement, and they're meeting the criteria. And I think the biggest thing is during this council, people are educated on it now. So people may call 911 because that's the easiest thing, but they'll say, I don't need an officer. I need a call. We can go, thank you very much. We'll send a call to you. So when the navigator leaves those calls, are we assessing their comfort level? Yes, we are, and that's done through Director McGee. We get a report, and we go through, did they feel comfortable? What else could we do? So it's a check, some balance. We make sure we have that communication back and forth to each other. Sounds good. Thank you. Another question. Now, the call program still are having the, using the title of navigators, but the million dollar donation, is that a separate project where you're not, no longer calling them navigators, you're calling them life coaches? Well, it's the same program. It's under the call umbrella because under that million dollars, what we're going to do is our tier three system in that is where when the youth get in trouble and they've committed a nonviolent felony, that we're trying to get somebody out there to figure out how can we help that child, how can we help that family, how can we assist. And then with that is that coach, that life coach is saying, okay, I'm here for you, what can I do for you? But it's still under the call umbrella and still trying to use those same type of people to help with that child because that child could be going through some difficult time or that family could be going through. We only say that because sometimes, you know how kids are, they don't want to say, I got a counselor. Sometimes, you know, I got a coach. Everybody likes to say they got a coach, and that just sounds better by coaches coming over. And those are referred by the navigators. It could be done several ways. It could be done by the arresting officer. It could be done by Lisa Willow Bowman. It just is a lot. We're going to explain it to council once we put everything in place. So there's a lot of people that could be done that way, but it's like as quick as quickly as possible. We're trying to render service to that family so we can try to break that cycle in that. So the simplest way is we'll be looking at tier three is when a child has been arrested for a felony, not a felony, to how do we get service now to that family, try to break that cycle with that child, assign that child a life coach so he or she can say, okay, what do we need? Does that child need a job? Does that child need mentoring? Does that child need something in school? How do we make that child successful? Thank you so much. Thank you. Always a pleasure, Chief. Thank you, ma'am. Seeing no further requests to speak, we thank you for your report. Thank you. So now we'll move on to our new ordinances, beginning with items E1, A, B, and C, which is the first reading, and there's no presentation for this. But joining us is our Public Works Administrator, Clyde Tankersley. Mr. Tankersley, how are you? Madam Chair, would you like me to read the ordinance? Yes, please. Good morning, Madam Chair. You've got to read the title first. Of course. Would you like me to read them together? You can. Ordinance No. 593-H, an ordinance relating to sanitation rates and charges, amending Chapter 27, Section 27-557 of the St. Petersburg City Code, amending rates and charges for sanitation services, providing for severability of provisions, providing an explanation of words struck through and underlined, establishing a date to begin calculating new rates for billing purposes, and providing for an effective date. The public hearing for this item is September the 5th. Thank you. Are we ready, Mr. Moore? Two more. Oh, okay. We've got them all at the same time. I'm trying to get you going, Clyde. Thank you. Madam Chair, I'm assuming, Clyde, would you prefer to do them? All at the same time? Just making sure. Okay. Ordinance No. 594-H, an ordinance relating to utility rates, amending Section 27-405, subsections B1 and B2, of the St. Petersburg City Code, amending the stormwater utility fee, amending the tier rate structure fees for single-family residential parcels, providing for severability of provisions, providing an explanation of words struck through and underlined, establishing a date to begin calculating new rates for billing purposes, and providing for an effective date. The public hearing for this item is September the 5th. Ordinance No. 595-H, an ordinance relating to utility rates and charges, amending Chapter 27, subsection 27-3G, 27-4, 27-6A, 27-6D, 27-109B, 27-109D, 27-113B, 27-141A, 27-141B, 27-142A, 27-143A, 27-143B, 27-144B, 27-177D, 27-177A, 27-177D, 27-252A, 27-283A, 27-284A, 24-284D, 27-234D, 24-A, 24-284-D, 27-284-D, 27-334-D, 27-335-D, and 27-337 of the St. Petersburg City Code. Amending requirements for customer deposits, amending liability for certain charges, amending method of determining adjustment to accounts, amending charges for portable water connection, amending base and volume charges for water service, amending various service charges, amending wholesale... Amending various water services? Charges? Charges? I think you might have missed the word in there. Amending various water service charges? Service charges. Okay. Amending wholesale water service charges for this city of Gulfport, amending the definition of combination fire service, amending base and volume charges for irrigation-only accounts, amending base charges for commercial water-only accounts, amending rates and charges for reclaimed water service, amending through capacity fee, amending retail and host... Amending wastewater. I'm sorry? Yeah, it should be amending wastewater service charges. I must have... Okay. Amending retail and wholesale wastewater service charges? That's okay. All right. Keep going, Patty. Okay. Amending provisions of the grease management program, amending grease discharge permit fees, providing for several billion provisions, providing an explanation of words struck through and underlined, establishing a date to begin calculating new charges for billing purposes, and providing for an effective date. Public hearing is scheduled for September the 5th. Good job. All right. Thank you, Patty. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we're ready. I wouldn't want to read that. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank the Council for all the hard work you've put into this with the administration for the last seven months, the many committee meetings, the many one-on-one meetings, the presentation we had on August the 1st. We've got nothing more to add to any of those, and so we're just here to ask for approval to move forward to our public hearing. Move approval, E1, A, B, and C. Second. Thank you. We have a motion for E1, A, B, and C. Properly seconded. Seeing no request to speak, Council, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter 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 E1, A, B, and C. Passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you so much. Now we'll move to E2, an ordinance amending Chapter 22, Division 6 of the St. Petersburg City Code related to the 1984 Supplemental Police Officers Retirement System, and can you please read the title? Ordinance number 591-H, an ordinance of the City of St. Petersburg, Florida, amending Chapter 22, Division 6 of the St. Petersburg City Code relating to the 1984 Supplemental Police Officers Retirement System by amending Section 22-280E by providing a minimum service requirement for Section 185, Non-Service Connected Disability Benefits Applications, provided for severability and providing for an effective date. The public hearing for this item is September the 5th. Move of approval, E2. Well, we did have, or we do have, our Human Resources Director, Mr. Quisguella. Did you have anything that you want? I was just here for questions, if anyone had any. Okay, very good. We have a motion. Was it seconded? Council Member Montanari seconded. I don't, who's seconded? Council Member Montanari. Okay, very good. So, we have, I see no request to speak. We have a motion and a second for E2. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve a genitem of E2, passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now, we'll move on to E3, an ordinance approving the vacation of two partial rights of way on the north side of 3rd Avenue South. Can you please read the title? For December 1167-V, an ordinance approving the vacation of two partial rights of way on the north side of 3rd Avenue South for the property generally located at 3200 1st Avenue South, setting forth conditions for the vacation to become effective and providing for an effective date. The item, the public hearing for this item is October the 3rd. Thank you. Joining us is our Development Review Services Planner 2, Ms. Cheryl Bregalio. I see no request to speak. Good afternoon. I have a presentation if you would like it. Move up for a long second. Okay. No presentation. Well, we do have a presentation. Anybody want to see it? No. Okay. We have a motion and it's been properly seconded for E3. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, enter your votes. Now that our present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve it to an item E3. Passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Now we're going to go ahead and remove to our report items, beginning with F2 and joining us is Engineering Director, Mr. Brijesh Brayman. Good day, Council. And if I may ask permission, we do have three items. They're all combining items. So you want to go ahead and do F2, F7, F8? Yes, please. And I also have you for F3. Yes, F3 is a difference. Oh, okay. See, it doesn't show a difference on this one. Okay. All right. Let's go. So today we're here to present on the, and this is typically what we try to get towards is actually having a contractor and all the support services all coming into one contract at one point. So that way you see the encompassing cost of that project and all the services related to it. In this situation, you do have the construction contract, which is Conan Graham, which is F2, F7, which is Lochner for construction, engineering, and inspection. That is separate from post-design services for Kissinger Campo. And I'll go into that a little bit in the depth in the presentation. So just to give a context of where the location is, because I myself am challenged driving through that neighborhood. It is along Venetian in just, if I may say, west of Shore Acres Boulevard and between Dover and Shore Acres. So that bridge is originally constructed in 1957. That is an excerpt from the original plan set for that bridge that you see above. The bridge is a type of construction referred to as the sun or void construction. And typically, sun or void construction is an acceptable method of construction. It's cost effective. It gives benefit in speed and constructability. However, with the 40th Avenue bridge, that triggered a lot of movement on the sun or void bridges across the state and across the nation, where sun or void bridges have now been adjusted in their national bridge index rating because of the uncertainty of that void. So if you may look at that image at the bottom, the sun or void is essentially a concrete slab with hollow sections in the center of it. And I'm sure you've seen some of these trucks driving, delivering parking deck slabs. And that's, you'd see some of these as examples. And everything is context appropriate. What we ran into on some of the previous bridges, of 40th specifically, and which triggered that national movement, was corrosion, salt water intrusion was happening into that void. But because it was on the inside of the beam, you never saw the rate and accelerated amount of degradation to the concrete structure itself. So having these type of sun or void structures within coastal or tidal or salt water environments is a substantial risk. So that's why sun or void bridges have been accelerated in the replacement cycle. The existing bridge is approximately 29 feet. So it's just within the spanning distance of what is considered a structure. The bridge is classified as functionally obsolete. That does not mean the bridge is not safe. It just means that the bridge geometry and its configuration, if you try to do anything to it, it cannot adapt. Meaning the lanes and the sidewalk are not wide enough to probably put a bicycle lane. So it just doesn't meet or you can't increase it. In this situation, the vertical curve on the bridge exceeds the minimum ADA standards. So just some examples of what we would consider functionally obsolete. The sidewalk on the image on the top right, very narrow. And on the top left, you can see the condition of the structure as well as how the utilities are supported along that structure. Now, this one, this image kind of gives a perspective of the staging of where the project begins and where it ends. And I want you all to take good perspective as to there are some driveways within this configuration and the length of the project. Because on the next slide, I want to explain a little bit of how those driveways and contexts come into consideration. So here, you really see the depth. And now you see that connectivity of that sidewalk and increase in the functional use for the neighborhood of that asset. Now, I'm just going to flip back quickly to that image with the driveways because that's what's critical, those driveway locations. And on the vertical curve. So the previous bridge, you would see to your right, it dropped down drastically, the dash line. So that section just didn't meet the current maximum curves, vertical curve. On the left, it was fitting relatively within the vertical curve. The bridge was slightly higher on one side to the other. So what we've done is with the design, we are limited by the amount of our geometry that we can do the vertical approach and a vertical curve for the maximum clearance we can get. We've maximized the most we can get out of the clearance underneath the bridge, increasing it from 5.25 to 5.68. But we are limited by those driveways that I showed on the images because we don't want water flowing into the properties. Here's a good example. Here's a good image. On the top, you'd see the existing structure. The sidewalk was about four feet, two inches with 12-foot lanes. Steel pipe guardrails on one side for the pedestrians separated by a barrier to further the vehicles. On the bottom is where you see the current plan for the bridge. Newer type of slab, still 12-foot lanes, trying to keep those lanes at a minimum so that way we don't enhance or encourage speeding. But you'd also see a six-foot wide sidewalk on the north side, while on one side a five foot on the other, making room for the utilities on a much more stable structure. Aesthetics. This is, I would like to call it almost like the St. Pete barrier type now, because that is our new city standard. What you see on the left is the existing concrete barrier, and that's typically what you would see in most bridges. Working with FDOT, we did come up with a design that is crash rated and really patented after the Snell Isle bridge. And that is our existing, what we're installing in all of our new bridges. So it's much more aesthetic, fits within the community and the character. Here's a vertical, here's an elevation of that structure and what it will look like. If you may also note, we're replacing those transition of those steel sheet walls, sea walls, as they transition to the private property. And you would see also the width of the bridge has increased slightly as well, allowing for some better flushing of water through that. During construction, there will be settlement and vibration monitoring. That will be done specifically during the pile driving operations. Once it exceeds the maximum threshold at that point, and that threshold is guided by FDOT, again, it is monitored, those alarms trigger off on many people's cell phones, and immediately shut down operations. So once we see that threshold, or once that alarm starts to trigger, we immediately shut down operations, stabilize the situation, and then slowly start back again once we've stabilized. Construction duration. The total construction is anticipated to last approximately 12 months. Estimated to begin in the winter of 2024. 2024, it may not necessarily mean physical construction. We have a lot to do, meaning the contractor, when you're buying a house, the first thing you want to get out is you're going to go to the place where you are looking at the colors, picking out your cabinets, picking out the color of the walls. All those things we have to do with the contractor. They're going to send in what they call the shop drawings. So we're going to make sure the mix design is correct. We're going to make sure the calculations on the beam design for how it vertically curves is correct. We're going to make sure that the calculations for the concrete piles are correct. So we'll have all that work to do before the contractor could even start ordering the material. So, yes, we will start construction in the winter, construction phase. But as we work through the next few weeks with the contractor, we'll get a really definite timeline on when they expect to start physical construction on the site. Why that's important? Because it leads towards a public meeting in September. We did a public meeting originally with the community to let them know about the project. Now, this public meeting is with all the information we gathered from them, how we incorporated it into the project, and how we're going to implement the project. And by that time of the public meeting, we will have a definite schedule as to this is when we're going to be on site. This is the type of impacts they can expect in the timeline of it. The bridge is expected to be constructed in one single phase. This will help with expediting construction and increased safety for construction personnel as well as for the traveling public. The bridge is an ideal location for traffic control. So, the blue is where you see the project location and the detour that will be provided for residents. This detour map is simplified from what is in the engineering plan. It is the exact same thing that was included in the plans that we put out for bid. But we just wanted a cleaner version for you all to have a good context of what was recommended, what is being implemented, and this is what the contractor will be implementing. So, F2, we're asking for approval on the construction contract for Cone and Graham. F7 is the task order for HW Lochner. Because it is pile driving and structural cambers, this is a specific type of beam. They call it FSB beam. We have specialty bridge inspectors that are going to be on site ensuring that the sequence of work bridges are constructed in a way so that they accept their loads and do not put themselves into failure prior to its design load being achieved. So, that's why we have our CEI specialty inspection. F8 is for post-design services for Kissinger Campo. Kissinger Campo is the design firm. However, we need them for post-design services because they'll have to close out all of the Army, the Coast Guard, do as-built, and all those necessary permits. They'll have to do all the reporting and closing out of those. And with that, I do ask for approval for items F2, F7, F8. And I can take any questions. Thank you. So, can we all, and I say you, Council Member Montaner, so can we vote on them together? You can. Thank you. Council Member Montaner. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Brej, for the presentation. Just because of the location of this bridge, right in the middle of Shore Acres and the access bridge, I wanted to have this presentation in a City Council meeting. And I'm glad we're going to reach out to the neighborhood again. But I wanted to get some questions out of the way. So, the houses that are in close proximity to the bridge, is their access going to be cut off to their driveways while the construction's going on? So, the contractor will be required to maintain access for the residents. So, we'll construct one half at a time. There will be ability to work with the residents. And we generally always, it's not the first time we'll run into the situation. And we coordinate with the residents as far as access, even if it means putting a temporary driveway for them for the time being while we replace their concrete aprons. Okay. Okay. And then utility work in that area. Tell me about any reclaimed water lines, other utilities, are they going to have to be affected? Like, will people lose water access to their homes or anything like that? Or services to their homes. So, there are some lines that are being replaced. But typically, what we do is a bypass plan for maintaining operations. And if we do have to do any shutdowns, we usually schedule it during the midnight hour or late when there's no major flow. And also, to help with construction, what we tend to also do is dry construct the sections of pipe and then just pull and swap the new lines. So, there are sequins, but all that will be worked through with a schedule on a contractor. And it's called a maintenance of operations. So, we have a maintenance of traffic for vehicles, and then we have a maintenance of operations. Will residents that are affected have to boil their water or anything like that? No. So, typically, if all goes well, we do not put a line into service until it reaches that DEP clearance. So, we will have the old line or the existing services already still in service while the new line is constructed. Once we get the DEP clearance before we are able to put that into operation, then we switch over. But, again, we typically, this is something that we do on a daily basis on operations as well on the construction site. It's only, if anything adverse happens, there's a line break or any unforeseen. But unforeseen will happen. That's just the nature of the world. But it's not planned that we'll have boil notices or anything of that nature. So, you said that you're going to construct some of the road work, half of it at a time. But you said earlier in the presentation that you're going to just complete the bridge all at once. Yes. Can you kind of clarify that? So, the roadway section, as it approaches, we will have to sequence the approach itself to the bridge because we'll still have contractors, vehicles, storing material back and forth. So, the lanes in and out will have to be sequenced in construction, but the actual bridge itself will be essentially pulled out and a new bridge constructed at one time. All right. Thank you. And then you mentioned the bridge height is from the water. Mean highway. The bridge being raised from five and a quarter to 5.68 feet. Yes. Will the bridge, from a boater's perspective, would access underneath the bridge have to be shut down? So, when we're setting beams, yes. And we typically, what we've done in the past is usually have operations of shutting down the navigational access at that point. So, we coordinate that with the neighborhoods. Okay. All right. Now, if I may add, for perspective, right now, the bridge clearance goes like this as opposed to will be like this. So, for the residents, it will look like a cleaner. So, the maximum, so it's a little bit misleading when I see the existing bridge clearance is 5.25 because it's 5.25 at the highest point. Right. Which a boat can't ride up against. Instead, it's going to be this at 5.68. Okay. All right. Thank you. And then, the traffic plan that you have on slide 13, are there any traffic devices, lights, temporary traffic lights or anything like that involved within any of this? Not in this type of operation. This will be strictly detour signs. So, we'll be maintaining those, but it's just going to be detour signs or road close signs. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for the presentation. On a couple of these bridges that have been done in my city council district along the way, whether it's the 40th Avenue Bridge, the Tanglewood Bridge, and now this one, there always seems to be some sort of issue. And I want to get some of these questions out of the way at the front end. So, I appreciate council indulging my questions on this project in Shore Acres. And I'll move approval of F2, F7, and F8. Thank you. Seeing no further requests to speak, I have a motion and properly seconded. Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please, enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda items F2, F7, and F8. Passes unanimously with Council Member Driscoll being absent. Thank you. Thank you so much. And so, now we're going to go ahead and move on to F3. A resolution adopting the City of St. Petersburg Stormwater Master Plan. Mr. Praman. So, this was an item that we presented at Coe, and I am here to answer any questions. Same presentation, right? Yeah. Move approval. Second. Okay. I have a motion and it being properly seconded for item F3. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please, enter 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 F3. Passes unanimously. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Praman. As always, thank you, Council. So, now we're going to move on to item F4, which is a resolution adopting the 2023-2024 Fenellas County Multi-Jurisdictional Local Mitigation Strategy and Multi-Jurisdictional Program for Public Administration Annual Update. And joining us is our floodplain manager, Hannah Rebholz. Did I say that correctly? Yes, ma'am. And I think she's on her way out, Madam Chair. Okay. How are you? I'm well. How are you? Good. Hannah Rebholz, floodplain manager. I am presenting probably the longest name of the day. The 2023-2024 Penellas County Multi-Jurisdictional Local Mitigation Strategy with its adjoining public information, program for public information. Hannah. Okay. So, we go by the LMS, Local Mitigation Strategy. In 2020, the city adopted Penellas County's LMS as our own. We were doing our own and providing our own, but we realized it's a much bigger picture and it's more thorough when we go with the county. By doing so, we also became part of their PPI, Program for Public Information. This was probably one of the smartest moves we could have done back in the day. As we can see, the county has now excelled in CRS and is a Class 2, and in turn, we get to use all of that information for our CRS audit and rating. In a nutshell, the LMS and PPI, it basically identifies the community's hazards and in a very organized and clear way presents how to find solutions for these hazards. The PPI has also been a major benefit for the city of St. Pete because we can use what they do countywide and get credit for that. The annual update. So, we've developed a city internal LMS team recently. This is including people from our grants accounting, from public works, from transportation, from all of us. And our suggestions and updates are submitted to the county quarterly, and it gets put into an annual update. To keep it a live document, that's what we have to do. It is a, it gets updated every five years, but to keep it live and to keep it active, we have to do an annual update. And in order for us to get credit for it on our CRS audit, we have to adopt this annual update yearly, staying relevant. So, the LMS group meets quarterly. We're working on beefing up our participation in the LMS, the county LMS, with the city employees and our stakeholders. We are really pushing to get more people involved and really pushing to get more people's opinions and suggestions to add to this multi-jurisdictional strategy. With our new city LMS group, it's looking really good, and we're looking forward to having way more pull in the LMS. Right now, we've kind of just been sitting by, so we're looking to do much bigger things and use this money to, or use this program to get money for the city, for public works, for our FMA, our home elevations. So, we're really going to try to target LMS as a tool for the city from here on out. Recommendation. Staff recommends approval of this resolution, adopting the 2024 LMS and the adjoining PPI annual update. Is there any questions that I can answer? There is. Council Member Gabbard. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Hannah, for the update. So, I just wanted to kind of give my, I guess, echoes in your comments around whenever we decided to go from having our own PPI to working with the county. I was on our local PPI at the time and thought that that was an amazing idea because the amount of work that those stakeholders were doing, and it was kind of becoming a little repetitive. We had kind of the same people around the table all the time. And so, with such a big topic, I felt like it was important that we have more voices. I do agree. I do listen to some of those meetings from time to time, and I do agree that I think that in the city of St. Pete, we could have a stronger voice. So, anything that my office can do to support you in that way, please let us know. Now, you talked about on the second slide our current rating of five, and you talked about Pinellas County and how amazing they have done getting to a two. I remember that one of the things that we had to do in order to resubmit and look at moving ours was the Stormwater Master Plan. We just approved that. So, can you give us an update as to where we are on going forward, trying to get a better rating for our residents? Thursday is our site visit audit. So, it is the big day, next Thursday, the 22nd. So, now that we officially have our Stormwater Plan adopted, and our engineering department kind of went through with a fine-tooth comb to make sure that it matches everything the CRS wants. We're looking really good for a Class 4. That is not the only requirement that we needed for a Class 4. There's also other points that we have to get. There's another list. We have crossed everything off that list. We just turned in the actual Stormwater Master Plan yesterday to our auditor, because they have to look at it before. So, I haven't gotten word back yet if they accept it, but I have high hopes that they will. So does engineering. Roger Johnson did a really good job at picking through it. And so, that's Thursday. Thursday is the day that hopefully we go to a 4. Well, we look forward to that news. So do I. We will keep the entire city in our thoughts about that, because it's critically important for our residents, especially, like we talked this morning in Lair, right, about we need to do more in order to help our residents be able to afford to ensure their properties. And there's a lot of challenges at the federal level with that, but there are definitely things that we can do as a community. And so, this is such an important issue, especially to the residents that myself, Councilmember Montaneri represent, and throughout the city, that I thought it was important to kind of talk about what's next and how we continue to get there. One other thing I was hoping maybe you could share today, because I don't know how widely this is really being discussed, but the importance of what we do in maintaining our CRS system, because recently, Lee County got a real opening, eye-opening, with changes that were made to their CRS, because they were not doing the kind of work that we're doing, and essentially, pretty much lost it completely. So, can you just talk a little bit briefly about that, so that people understand how important it is to continue to move forward and not get stagnant? Yes. So, it is, it's a group project. So, the city and all of our staff, we have our own tasks that we have to do to not only maintain, but always try to strive for a better class. And I think we're getting even more and more participation throughout the departments for it, it's becoming such a big deal that more people are stepping out and saying, oh, I can do that. Oh, I can help you with that. So, the city is not, is, is also getting more involved in it. But we also, we also want to put the point out there that our residents, they have a part in it, too. I don't want to say the only reason Lee County got kicked out, but a big reason was they didn't pull permits. When they got hit in Fort Myers, FEMA came back and said, show me your permits for your 6,000 homes. And they couldn't. So, they don't care if you're in a disaster. They don't care if you haven't had power for the entire city for 10 days. They want you to still, still hold true to your regulations and your processes. And that's a really tough thing to do. Just by, it looks bad for us saying, you know, you just got hit with a hurricane, but you got to pull your permit. But also, there's multiple benefits for pulling a permit. Responsibility, accountability for your contractor, making sure you're building code, not just the CRS system, but the CRS rating system also looks into that, too. So, and that's not the only thing community can do. Residents, they can also adopt a drain. They can keep clippings out of the street. So, they also have other things that they can do to help our CRS rating as we do our job as well. And then you had shared at our Riviera Bay meeting. So, Riviera Bay's most recent meeting, they called it like their flood meeting. And Hannah was there and she did a great presentation. And there was a lot of conversation about this, right? Not only the responsibility on the city, but also the responsibility on the residents and working together and how the city has come so far in the resources that we provide, especially in response. Can you talk just a little bit, do you want to talk a little bit about what we will be doing with permitting, the mobile permitting, if you will? So, picking up what you're laying down. Yeah, yeah. We have started a whole new, we haven't implemented it yet, thank God, because we haven't had a surge over four feet. But we started a program called mobile permitting. And basically, if the surge gets over four feet, then that is majority of the whole east coast of the city. So, that is in their homes. So, what we will do is we will dispatch three mobile permitting locations to help better access to permitting, to our license plan reviewers for questions, to our permit technicians for documents. There will be a station at Roberts Rec. There'll be a station at Azalea. There'll be a station at Enoch. So, we figured that was a good representation. Everybody can get there. And also, we're not imposing on that rec center and what they do as well. So, there's a lot of rec centers that help during and after storms that we didn't want to stop that. So, we found some centers that they can accommodate us. But we want to be out there. We're going to be out there directly after damage assessment happens. We're going to be there to issue permits, answer questions, and also give them a lot of information for FEMA help and city help debris and stuff like that. So, it'll be a nice information center right there in the middle of flood-prone areas. Well, thank you for sharing that with everyone because I just think it's really important for people to know that, you know, the city hears them. They understand the challenges around all of this. But we support the importance of it and not only how it affects this rating, but also how it affects our city and the quality of construction in our homes and how they are rebuilt also helps them be more sustainable and more resilient in the future. So, thank you for thinking outside of the box, finding ways to be responsive to the residents. I so appreciate working with you and everything that you do. So, thank you so much, Hannah. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Seeing no further requests to speak, I'm not sure if we have a motion and a second. Move approval. Second. Thank you. Now that we have a motion that has been properly seconded, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Now, seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item F-4 passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Post. Thank you very much. Now, we will move on to F-5, a resolution authorizing the mayor or his designee to accept a grant for $125,000 from USDOT for the Safe Streets and Roles for All Grant Program for the Complete Streets Implementation Plan of Date Project. And joining us is our transportation manager, Ms. Cheryl Stacks. How are you? Hi, good. How are you? Great. I'm very, very pleased to be able to bring this item to you today. I see it as a very exciting opportunity for us to partner directly with USDOT to improve transportation safety in St. Petersburg. So the Safe Streets and Roles for All Grant Program was initiated in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. So it began in 2021. It is a little unique in that it allows for cities and MPOs, Metropolitan Planning Organizations, to apply directly to USDOT for funding. So typically, our surface transportation dollars that come from the federal government would be passed through FDOT. In this case, it's directly with USDOT. The program is set up to support the USDOT's National Railway Safety Program and Vision Zero. So it's aimed very much at a safety-based approach to the funding and the projects that they fund. There are three different types of funds available through the program, planning, demonstration, and implementation. And while there are three types of funding awards that you can get, at least 40% of the funding is required to go to the planning and the demonstration projects. We have applied at every cycle that's been offered. The first one was in 2022 and stretched into 2023. In that cycle, we applied for implementation funding for design and construction of projects on 22nd Street and 18th Avenue South, and we unfortunately did not get an award. Last year, when they offered the program again, we refined the application to focus on 18th Avenue South, which has a more significant crash safety issue and safety challenges. And then we also included supplemental planning within the application to update our complete streets implementation plan. And so from that grant application, we were awarded the planning request of $125,000, which requires a $150,000 city match. So a little reminder about our complete streets implementation plan. It was adopted in 2019 and following a pretty long process of community engagement and interdepartmental collaboration. It serves as our guide for the development of streets and safely and comfortably accommodate all people, all modes, all ages, all abilities. And the intent has been per our complete streets administrative policy to routinely update the implementation plan. And that's really to make sure that it's still adapting to changing technologies, infrastructure needs, and community, and just being overall responsive to the community. The complete streets implementation plan update, the project scope for this particular project that the grant funding would go toward would be to update the implementation plan to include an analysis of traffic crash data for our whole roadway network, including a review of human factors that are contributing to different crashes. It would also allow us to confirm what we've identified as our high injury network. Those are the roads that you see in the map to the right that we've organized. These are the roads that typically are overrepresented and severe and fatal crashes across the city. And you can see that we have some roads that are under the jurisdiction of the state, some of the county and some that are city roads. But we'll be able to take a deeper dive into the data and confirm that really that really are those really are the roadways that are overrepresented. And those probably should be prioritized for for safety improvements. We expect that there will be considerable public engagement as a part of this effort. And, you know, we need to kind of refine the goals and objectives and abstract and and strategies in our current plan to make sure that it's consistent with the community needs and wants. We'll be able to update our existing conditions, kind of recognize some of the projects that we've completed, particularly those in partnership with FDOT over the last few years. We also have an opportunity to incorporate new technologies that were not around when we did the complete streets implementation plans such as scooters. So we'll be able to develop prioritization criteria that considers equity and that's a big deal for us because right now our prioritization of our complete streets implementation plan projects are generally driven by matching grants and other means. But this will really have us focusing on prioritizing equity as a part of determining how do we how do we make sure that we're implementing the highest priority projects first. And then lastly, it'll also include adoption of a traffic safety plan as an element within the complete streets implementation plan. And again, that equity action plan as a part of the plan adoption. So the total cost of the project is $275,000 of which we'll have $125,000 that comes from USDOT. It's on a cost reimbursement basis, and that needs to go into our bicycle pedestrian safety funds. And then what we'd like to do is have an additional $125,000 appropriated that would come into to match that we believe we have about $25,000 in in kind services that would be provided by the city as well. And so some of the information that you see in the resolutions would be to move those fundings around to get them lined up so that we have one complete project at $275,000 for the complete streets implementation plan. So we will be expect that we would put this out for a consultant to have a consultant assist us. So that would be part of our next steps really would be to finalize the scope of services and get that consultant underway using the $275,000. So with that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions. You can see the requested council action there. Move approval. Second. Second. Thank you. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. If you could go back to that funding page real quick. I don't think we need to stay on it quick for very long. I just want to make sure it's clear to anyone who's wondering that moving the funds from the bicycle pedestrian safety improvements fund to the complete streets implementation plan doesn't mean that we're deprioritizing bicycle safety. Yes. It actually puts that in with a bigger plan. Yes. That just helps us combine the funding from the grant into one area and then our city matching fees from impact fees would come into the other area. They would all combine so that we're kind of leveraging our city funds with the federal funds and it just kind of puts it puts it in the right pots. So. Right. Which in which. Yes. Still prioritize bicycle and pedestrian safety. Absolutely. So our bicycle pedestrian safety improvement funds. Those are the home of all of our other grants that we typically get that would be directly from FDOT. So those house a lot of different projects. Mm hmm. I'm glad we're finally at this point. I remember it was March when I was at the National League of Cities Congressional Conference and they interviewed me. The USDOT did an interview with me because we had been notified that we received the safe streets and roads for all grant. And they asked how it's going. And I had to say, well, we don't have the money yet. And we know we got the grant, but we don't even we haven't even been able to learn what the next steps are. So we talked about how great it's going to be. And it was a very nice conversation then. I'm so happy to see that we're finally getting on the road, so to speak, with this one. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And seeing no request for the request to speak and it's being motioned and properly seconded for F5. Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. I'm sorry. Sure. Now that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes. Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item F5 passes unanimously. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ms. Staggs. Now we're going to move to F6, a resolution establishing the codes compliance assistance program for eligible homeowners. And joining us is our codes compliance assistance director, Mr. Joe Waugh. How are you? Good. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of council. Joe Waugh, codes compliance assistance director. So I'm excited to be here this afternoon to request approval for a new assistance program that will help homeowners that are currently facing code violations. I do have a brief presentation if you all would like to see it. Move approval. I'd like to see it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Waugh. Okay, so just some background. Over the last couple of years, as we have directed citizens facing code violations to various assistance programs, we have found that there's been a gap and certain violations could not be addressed by programs that we have currently. During the FY 24 budget cycle, we had funds that became available because we closed out our foreclosure program. And so we saw the opportunity to reallocate funds from there and the FY 25 budget. And then we have 100,000 that we directed towards that. So the goals with this again would be to expand on available programs to ensure more residents in need can receive assistance by expanding the use of the accessibility accommodations program. We're hopeful that that's going to reduce the workload on our neighborhood team when they have ramp projects, because those can be very time consuming. And then we'll be able to redirect those resources to completing some other projects. And then, of course, it supports the housing opportunities for all by preserving existing affordable housing units for residents facing potential fines and allowing property owners to agent place. So the proposal creates a new assistance program that's going to target violations that fall outside of current programs. And we're specifically targeting driveway disrepair, accessory structure disrepair, and hazardous tree removal. They are going to also provide supplemental funding beyond the existing $5,000 that is available with the accessibility grant program. And what we're hoping to do there is remove that barrier in case there is a homeowner who has a project that costs more than 5,000. And they do not want to get into a situation where they have to enter into a loan agreement and will be able to supplement these funds to eliminate that barrier for them. We are going to propose that we're limiting funding to $5,000 per property for this, but there is a potential to increase that amount to 7500 with the approval from the administrator. There will be no repayment requirements, but there will be a five year period where if you've already received assistance, you would have to wait five years in order to get assistance again. So eligibility, the owners must be their homestead property and they cannot own any other properties. They must be at or below 100% of AMI. And again, the assistance piece there can only be available every five years work will be completed by contractors covered under the current blanket purchase agreements or by city departments. If the resources are available, the owners will sign a waiver agreement that standard with our other city assistance programs. And then specifically properties that are receiving services to remove hazardous trees in order to continue to reach our goal for preserving our tree canopy. We will actually be replanting a tree at those properties as well. So again, the request is to approve the proposed program. Happy to answer any questions that you all may have. Thank you. Seeing no request to speak and it has been motioned and properly seconded. Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members have entered their votes. So seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, motion to approve the agenda item F6 passes unanimously. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Waugh. We'll continue on to F9, a resolution approving the plant of Greenwood townhomes, generally located at 2203 16th Street North, which was pulled from CB4 by Vice Chair Gerdes. And joining us is our Deputy Zoning Official, Mr. Scott Wolliart. How are you? Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, council chair, council members. For the record, Scott Boyer with Development Review Services. The Greenwood townhomes plat is located at 2203 16th Street North on property zone CRT1, corridor residential traditional. The property previously contained two platted lots and is being replatted to create seven lots and four tracks for the development of seven townhomes. This is the layout of the site from the preliminary plat showing the building footprints and vehicular access off of Greenwood Avenue North. The preliminary plat was routed to city departments and private utility providers for comments. The only substantive comments received were from engineering who included conditions of approval to be addressed on the final plat. Their comments were related to easement documentation and easements that were shown that needed to be removed along with the comment that issues have been addressed via the building permit. The city code requires that the preliminary plat be approved prior to the issuance of any building permits for construction and the preliminary plat was approved on April 3rd, 2023. This is a photo of the site taken from the intersection of 22nd Ave North and 16th Street North. Here's a view of the site from 22nd Ave North looking north up 16th Street. Here's a closer view of the townhomes currently under construction. This view is looking northeast on Greenwood Ave North, which has medians limiting access to the site. The driveway for the townhomes is currently being installed and there is an existing medical office located across from the site. Here you can see the driveway being installed that provides access to parking on the first floor of the townhomes. City code regulations for CRT zone properties requires vehicular access to parking to be provided off of an alley or secondary street when present. There are no alleys abutting the property on Greenwood or there are no alleys abutting the property and Greenwood Ave North is the secondary street. The final plat, which is what is before you today for approval, was also routed to city departments and private utility providers. Utility providers had no objections to the plat. Engineering provided a memorandum with standard conditions of approval for development. Compliance with engineering's conditions is included as a condition of approval within the resolution. Fire is requiring a portion of the median to be cut back to provide adequate access for emergency vehicles. Transportation provided a memo citing that per city code provisions access is required to be provided from Greenwood Ave North. They also cited policy T 6.1 within the comprehensive plan indicating that 16th Street North is not the appropriate access point as it is classified as a minor arterial on the city's future major streets map. And per city code requirements, no certificates of occupancy shall be issued until the final plat has been recorded with the county. This graphic shows the modifications required by fire that will be made to the medians within Greenwood Ave North to accommodate turning radiuses for emergency vehicles. In this photo, we're looking southwest down Greenwood. Construction crews have already indicated with white paint where the median modifications will occur in the field. The yellow line shows approximately where the new curb will be installed for the median. This is a view looking northeast up Greenwood. And again with the changes to the median shown in yellow, that crepe myrtle is likely to be removed as a part of the changes. This concludes my presentation. If you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to answer them. Thank you. We have cards on this. We have one card, Madam Chair. Trevor Burgess, please state your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes to address Council. Hi, it's Trevor Burgess, 129 Bay Point Drive Northeast. And I'm just available to answer any questions anyone has. I'm the owner of the property. Thank you. Council Member Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair. So I want to talk a little bit about these townhomes and the median modifications for emergency vehicles. Um, let's start off with the fact and I would just put this on the record. There was a lot of angst and anger in Greater Woodlawn about this project. It's built into City Council. It came here. And for those that may be watching, we didn't have a say on any of it. Okay, our code actually allows all this to occur. To occur. Now, what our code did not account for, and when you look at the median modifications for emergency vehicles, for instance, how you cut that curb. What's interesting about Greater Woodlawn is literally the design of the neighborhood and all those streets and how they are made. As a matter of fact, that's part of what makes the neighborhood unique. It's part of the planning documents for that neighborhood. And because of the way our code is written, none of that was taken into consideration when these modifications were considered because our code allows it. Now, what I would like to understand from someone in administration is when you have lots that have been consolidated like this. Originally, the entrance was on 16th Street. If it would have stayed on 16th Street, you wouldn't have to cut the curb. I'm not saying all the neighborhoods would have been happy about it, but it would have been less of an impact to what makes that neighborhood unique. That is a main entryway. So I would like to have a discussion about what our code requires and how we can somehow make it a little better than what the default is right now to take into consideration special circumstances that may arise. It could be in any one of our districts. It can be any block. It could be any neighborhood where we can't even have the discussion to see if there's another alternative. So that's what I would like to have a little conversation about, because it doesn't mean that development is not going to happen. Development will happen, but that could have been two or three lots that have been consolidated. I don't see why the entrance would have to be through the neighborhood and why it couldn't be 16th as it is right now. Same thing. It was before on 16th. So I see Corey is kind of inching forward. So, of course, if you want to talk a little bit about that. Corey Milishka, zoning official with a developer of youth services. Correct. So there was a curb cut actually on both sides of the street when it was a business. So they did a full demo of the site. So once you do a full demo of the site, any redevelopment has to comply with current code. So when we do a demo, the old curb cuts have to be removed. And so new development comes in, has to comply with current code. Current code says exactly what Mr. Bolliard said. Now, yes, you can request a variance to the code, but we can't require a developer to go through the variance process. So that's where we had to permit the access. Right. So the way the code is written right now, it says vehicle connections access to parking shall be designed to take advantage of the first available alternative in the following prioritized list. Access shall be made from the alley or secondary street. And when no alley or secondary street is present, access shall occur from the primary street. And you see what my concern is. I mean, that is something that the code probably did not contemplate no seven when it was written. Right. You know, we are working again on tweaks to the code and that's something we can take into consideration for future redevelopment of other blocks in this neighborhood or throughout the city. Throughout the city. And not only that, there's also the design issue, the design standards issue. Obviously, there is a huge difference between the commercial requirements versus the residential requirements. And yes, when we had talked about that previously, and we're also looking into that as well. Right. So I just I pulled it because I thought it was important to have the conversation because one thing is looking at a package and another thing is looking at pictures. And actually, it would even be helpful if you actually saw the whole neighborhood and the whole design of how the street layout is to understand what we're talking about. And look, this just happens to be Greater Woodlawn. It could be anywhere in the city as far as we just had a contentious appeal here. And I do really believe that we have to have mechanisms in place to kind of take the certain considerations into fact, you know, for the different areas that may apply. And when our hands are tied, it becomes a problem because we can't respond. Right. And I mean, that's, you know, that's just adding on to the description of secondary alley or primary of non orders or some other language such as the character of the road network, something that can be added. Right. So that's that those are things that we could work on. OK, because it really I mean, that's a granite curb. Right. They're all granite curbs. Right. The median, the whole thing. So we somehow kind of because of the way the lot was designed, have to change everything around it to fit it, even though the neighborhood and everyone else was like, can we do can we work here with something that may fit better? But our code didn't allow for any of that. OK. The other thing I want to just mention in the memo that was attached, I mentioned this to legal. It says the reply is required prior to development of the property with townhomes. I know that's a standard form that you guys use, but that's technically not correct. So if an outsider reads it, thinks, well, you had to approve this before the townhomes are already built. So I'm hoping that there could be some language there to make sure that when things that are not the default come through and maybe, you know, you had a preliminary plan. This doesn't indicate that. So you see my my situation. Somebody can come back to us and it's like, well, hold on. It came to you and you had to approve it beforehand. But the reality is, no, it went through the preliminary process. Correct. And the subdivision regulations of the code speak to that. Right. About when we permit issued and when CEOs can be issued. And if that's something that the memo itself and legal can correct me, you know, what is law and not law with that regard. But CEOs cannot be issued till the final plats approved and that which is before today. Right. I just when somebody reads this and I had this conversation with legal, it could be a lot clearer as to what's before us and what we're deciding. Because the reality is it's a ministerial function at this point for us. Right. The guardrails and the criteria set forth in the statute in Chapter 177 are so clear and objective that largely yes. Yes. OK. You would have to be able to pinpoint a dispute on one of the different criteria that final plats are reviewed against. And basically say that, oh, well, actually, we think you didn't do this one right or et cetera. That kind of thing. OK. I just want to put that on the record and I appreciate you all for being here. And with that, I'll move. Well, Councilman Curtis. No, go ahead. You can speak and then we'll. Yeah, that's all for me now. OK. Thank you. Vice Chair Curtis. Madam Chair. I'd totally welcome that discussion. If if if you remember the the rezoning we did on 66 just north of Central Avenue. So townhomes could be built where there are single families home, single family homes. Now, the entrances and driveways are currently on 66 Street. If they were to redevelop the townhomes, they put that entrance behind an office building on Central Avenue. And so which that again, same same type of scenario. Why wouldn't you just keep the entrance on 66 Street? Right. And so I would totally welcome that conversation about how we can make this fit a little bit better. And I appreciate you bringing it, bringing that up, because, frankly, that's that was one of the questions that I had about this and why I pulled it. That's really the only comment I have other than I just appreciate staff and Trevor for reaching out after I had pulled this item. I appreciate all the work you went through with with with fire and just really appreciate you guys putting up with me pulling this item. Again, I think some of us have gotten all those emails, just wanted to make sure that we had taken all the steps necessary. And and I'm very glad that we have and and thanks for being good partners. I'll move approval. Thank you. Council Member Monteneary. Thank you. I just wanted to weigh in because I remember for it had to be at least a month or two. We had people coming to open forum talking to us about this issue. And a lot of people talked about access for emergency vehicles. And and I understand that our hands were tied. But it's I'm I was I was kind of confused why we are approving a final plat after the building has been built. And I'm glad Council Member Hanowitz that you looked into this and I'm glad Vice Chair Gerdes that you you pulled it because I had a lot of questions when I when I read this. And yeah, I remember like it was just yesterday when when we had multiple people coming from the neighborhood and in addressing this this exact thing that we're talking about here. And now we're going to do modifications to a beautiful neighborhood and and because of the access to the street. So I'm glad we're going to have this discussion. And we need to we need to make some modifications to our code there. Thank you. Thank you. Seeing no further requests to speak. We have a motion with no second. Second. Okay. Now we've just been properly moving second. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council members have entered their votes. So now that our president council members have voted, can you please tell me and announce the votes? Madam chair motion to approve agenda item F9 passes unanimously. Thank you. Going now to F10, which is the resolution to change the start time of the September 5th, 24 council meeting to 3 p.m. I am asking for approval. Move approval. Second. Now that we have a motion and approval for F10, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members enter your votes. Seeing all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam chair motion to approve agenda item F10 passes unanimously. Thank you. We're going to move right along to our next, our new business item, which is G1. And I'm going to turn it over to council member Floyd. Thank you. I am respectfully requesting a referral to the budget finance and taxation committee for discussion regarding the art and public places ordinance. This is something that I have mentioned a couple of times in meetings. And I think it's just a good chance for us to review it. And I'm on the public arts committee. I think that the committee has some ideas about how the ordinance could be made better. So I'll move approval. Second. Thank you. Council member Driscoll. Thank you. Not to have a discussion now, but could you provide any little detail about like what those improvements might look like? Because. Absolutely. I've been looking at some things too, and I want to make sure I'm not duplicating your efforts. Okay. Um, so the first one is, uh, the, um, I can't remember the name of the report, but we got a report on the arts recently and it suggested, uh, increasing the amount that we fund towards, um, public works projects are pieces of arts and public works projects. Uh, there's also considerations for the committee has been, had some issues with maintenance and maintenance funding as well as, uh, people offering us pieces of art and the committee not having money to be able to, um, place those pieces of art in the public collection. So increasing the funding for those few reasons. Um, also, uh, considering letting developers both give to our art fund as well as, uh, create their own art as well. Right now it's an either or option. We were talking about, um, letting them do both. Um, and, uh, maybe some flexibility in locations. That'll be part of the conversation. Uh, maybe an expansion of the geographic area where developers might, uh, need to, might have to give money for our public art. And so, uh, it's quite broad and I have been talking with legal and, uh, Celeste, uh, about it and will present like a variety of things that we think could make it better. And anything you'd include, uh, I would love to talk about as well. Thank you. Um, so what I, the part of this that I was looking at and, uh, just to give you a heads up and, um, hopefully I can talk with the city attorney's office about what the, um, what we're able to do. I'm wondering if there, I've been wondering if there is, um, when it comes to the developers either including public art or contributing, if there is something in there that can be, um, weighted at the very least towards using a local artist for that. So just at, while we're in the sunshine, that's the part I've been looking at is how do we, how do we inspire developers to look at local artists first when putting a mural on the side of their building or, um, you know, anything like that. And then that contribution amount is, I believe it's half of the value that was, is required if they actually do something. And so I had wanted to look at that as well. Um. Duly noted. Yeah. I'm looking at Mr. Chapter 16 here. So I really look forward to this and I thank you for bringing it up. You just saved me a separate new business item. Yeah, we've, I've been talking about it in the committee for a while. Red, red. Red. Adam Gould turned him red. I'm sorry guys. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Oh no. Dean is distracting us by flipping his hair over here. Yeah. Professionalism. 101 here folks. At its finest. Yeah. Okay. I'm back. I'm sorry council member. On that note, I have no more comments. Thank you madam chair. I've noted what you've said here and I'll add it. Thank you so much. And seeing no further. Some of us have been sounding too much fun. I know but that's quite alright. Just supposed to be able to smile if now and then. Seeing no further request to speak. Do we have a motion and a second on this one? Yes ma'am. Okay. So can you please open the machine for voting. Council members in your votes. Seeing that our present council members have voted. Can you please tell in and out of votes. Madam chair motion to approve agenda item G1 passes unanimously. Thank you so much. And now we're going to go into our council committee reports. Which is H1. Which is the May 16th 2024 HLUT action item. A resolution requesting city administration to consider including the notice of rights language. In the negotiation of affordable housing agreements. And report to city council where the notice of right language is included. In whole or in part. Are excluded in any individual affordable housing agreement. And this was brought by council member Gabbard. The HLUT chair. Council member Gabbard. Madam chair. I think you did a lovely job of presenting that item. So this was actually an item that council member Floyd brought forward. He worked very hard on this resolution that you all have in front of you. So as the committee chair. I would be happy to yield my time and turn it over to council member Floyd to talk about the resolution. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. So the resolution was follow up from the tenant bill of rights repeal due to state preemption. You know worked towards coming up with something that could you know continue that piece of legislation's legacy. And you know within our legal bounds. If you read the resolution you'll see we've gone out of our way to make sure that that's the case. That it's doesn't come butt into anything that we're not allowed to do. And so we're just asking administration when they negotiate housing deals to you know ask the developer or anyone that we're doing the deal with to include some language about providing tenants with their notice of rights and a list of rights that we'd like to see them include. If they can or can't get it into the agreement we just want them to come back and tell us what they if they were able to or not whenever they present agreements to us. And so it's really simple just asking administration to negotiate in the notice of rights and if they can and no matter what happens just let us know how it went. And so I'll leave it there I guess I'll move approval second. Oh I'm sorry chair could I add one thing. This process also went through a robust feedback effort particularly with a hack and they were supportive of it. I brought it to members of a hack before I ever even brought it to city council committee and I feel like we got good. Thank you. Thank you madam chair. Just wanted to thank Councilmember Floyd for bringing this forward and the work the HLUT community and along with legal and administration it was this was one of those that I thought was very well thought out. I just I just wanted to essentially put it on the record. We did get an email. I don't know if legal saw it from Bay Area Apartments Association essentially saying that this resolution by the way I'm in favor of it. Obviously I just complimented but I just want to I just want to make sure and just have it be said out loud that this is not. We are not preempted here by asking the administration to just contemplate it in their negotiations when built when developing housing. Well I can't speak to the email because I haven't seen it but we we put a lens on that from the very get go. Yep. And we have acknowledged the existence of this preemption and it's completeness and that's why this resolution is decidedly non regulatory in nature. And it only speaks to essentially a policy pronouncement to just consider it when negotiating the city's own resources such as money or land in these types of deals where you know nobody is forcing anybody to do anything. And so legal's confident that this would be the lightest touch possible that and it doesn't veer into that regulatory realm where we're clearly preempted. Thank you. That's all I was looking for. Thank you very much. Vice chair. That's all I had madam chair. Thank you. Councilmember Monteneary. Thank you chair. Well I have the bill before us. It pretty bill seems very straightforward. We're clearly preempted from doing something like this upon my reading of the bill. And it seems to me that we're trying to pass an ordinance to do an end run against around state state law that's preempted us to do this. I don't understand why we would even attempt to do something like this. And I'd like to talk to like to ask administration what what do they think of this resolution. Councilmember Monteneary. I think we provided that input at the committee level that it you know every deal is really different. And so I think this gives your direction to us that that still allows us the flexibility to you know if for some reason that doesn't work to negotiate that that you would have the ability to ask and see why we we didn't do that right. So we want to have flexibility in how we work with developers on every deal. But we felt like this helped accomplish that and didn't hinder us from possibly bringing you something that that didn't have any of these requirements in it as well. And then would have to explain that it was because we couldn't get there with the developer. So what I'm hearing is administration is in support of this generally. Yes. Okay, that's surprising because I just look at this this bill. It to me it's they put the kitchen sink in here couldn't couldn't be more more clear. So I'll be voting against this. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you. In paragraph five of the resolution, it says that city council is expressly not requiring the inclusion of the notice of rights language. I think I don't think it gets any clearer than that. And I don't think that the preemption prohibits us from saying the word rights. And I don't see the words climate change in here. So, you know, I think we might be all right. And I'm voting. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Council member. Well, thank you. Council member Driscoll. I completely agree. The wording to me is very clear. Council member Floyd. I want to thank you for your hard work on this and your dedication to your values and the reasons that you came here to protect people. And constantly we are being put up against Tallahassee with preemption after preemption. I was just reminded earlier today of an issue in one of my neighborhoods that a resident is concerned about that. We used to have something on the books that we could have helped yet several years ago it was preempted. And now we can't address the issue that this resident is concerned about. It happens over and over and over again. So where there is leeway for us to be able to work things into negotiations that stand by our value system. I am always going to support that. We just had a conversation about apprenticeships and disadvantaged workers last week where we're going to have to find creative ways to work with our development community and our contractor community to stand by the people of our city. So I completely support this. I thank you for the work that you did. And I'm happy to vote yes with you today. Thank you, Madam Chair. Council member Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair. So I want to make clear this is not an ordinance. I know it was mentioned. It's a resolution. And I've also mentioned in other meetings, there have been other councils that have passed resolutions that I may not agree with. They're not binding on me. They're not. They're just expressing what a council in, I don't know, 1980 thoughts or 2000 or 2010 or 2017 or 2020. And it's and it's brought up many times. This is a resolution of what we desire administration. We're not directing them. We're just desiring them to consider something again, not binding. And so I never have a problem with that. I don't think we're stepping on the toes of administration. And frankly, I would never want to step on the toes of administration. They have their job to do. We have our job. We can express our opinion on many things. We do it at every meeting. Sometimes we put in a resolution. Sometimes we just do it in an ask. But it's it's kind of the same thing. It's just in writing. And administration is going to take it under advisement like it does and make a decision decision at the end of the day on a case by case basis. And I don't have I don't feel like this rises to a level that we are violating anything in the law. And I think the language that legal has drafted is pretty clear on that. So thank you all for working on this and making sure that that pretty much her ducks are in a row given the state of affairs and and what we have to deal with. So and I'll vote in favor it. Thanks so much. Seeing no further requests to speak. I just wanted to also thank Councilmember Floyd and those that were open to being being creative in ensuring our constituents. Although you know there are some things that we are preempted from doing that we are still reaching and looking outside of the box to further show them that we hear them and that we understand the state of affairs here in the city of St. Petersburg. And we are creatively trying to help maintain residency here in the city. And so I appreciate Councilmember Floyd for bringing this forward. And with that, like I said, seeing no further requests to speak, can you please open the machine for voting for H1. Councilmembers in your votes. Seeing that all present Councilmembers have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes. Madam Chair, agenda item H1 passes 7 to 1 with Councilmember Montaneri voting no. Councilmembers Driscoll, Fick Sanders, Floyd, Gabbert, Gerdes, Hanowitz, and Mohammed voting yes. Thank you. So we're now going to call recess until public hearing at 5-0-1. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you. Welcome back everyone. We're going to call our council meeting back to order and we're going to immediately go into our public hearings. And we're going to start with item J1, which is confirming a preliminary assessment for lot clearing numbers LCA 1659. And joining us is our codes compliance assistant director, Mr. Joe Waugh. How are you again? Good evening Madam Chair, members of council. I believe we can take all these items at once if we would like to. Okay, very good. Second. Move approval J1 through J4. J3 and J4. Okay. Thank you. I'm asking, I heard a motion, I heard a second. Does anybody? Oh, y'all are good? Yeah, we're good. Oh my goodness. Well, not at all. Okay. Well, council member. I'm just kidding. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Are you sure you have no vote? I'm fine, thank you. Well, okay. We have no, seeing no further requests to speak, it's been motioned and properly seconded. Can you please open the machine for voting and council members please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, motion to approve agendas item J1, 2, 3, and 4 passes unanimously with council member Gerdes being absent. Thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. We appreciate you being present for this quick item. Now we're going to move into open forum. Do we have any cards for open forum? We do not. Anyone on Zoom? No one in Zoom. Sounds good. Okay. We're going to close open forum. Anyone have any announcements? Oh, I'm sorry. Council member Garrett. Well, since council member Gerdes isn't here, I guess, oh, do you want to do birthdays? I will yield my time. You are more than welcome because we have a bunch. No. We do. And I was trying to remember them off the top of my head, but if you got a postie, go for it. I have a postie. So, on the 15th, happy birthday Mayor Welch. August 17th, happy birthday, Lisa Willow Broman. On the 17th, happy birthday, Mr. Jim Nixon. On the 19th, happy birthday, Ms. Rita Wesley. On the 19th, happy birthday, Mr. Chan Srinivasa. And on August 30th, happy birthday to Liz Mikofsky. Did I say that correctly? Wow. You sure did. Yay. So, we have a whole bunch of birthdays. None of them are out here to sing happy birthday to. But, you know, I will go ahead and allow someone to give us a verse of happy birthday. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to everyone. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. All right. And seeing no other announcements and no one requests to speak, we now adjourn. Thank you, Chair. Be safe, everyone.