City Council - Aug 21, 2025

Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1 and Council Chair, Copley Gerdes, District 2, Brandi Gabbard, District 3, Mike Harding, District 4 and Council Vice Chair, Liseth Hanowitz, District 5, Deborah Figg Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, Cory Gibbons, Jr., and District 8, Richie Floyd. Good afternoon. We'll call to order the August 21st, 2025 City Council Meeting to order. If we could do a roll call, please. Floyd. Here. Curtis. Here. Gabbard. Here. Harding. Here. Hanowitz. Here. Driscoll. Here. Gibbons. Here. Okay, thank you. Today's invocation will be given by Pastor Clarence Williams of Greater Mount Zion AME Church, and then please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me in standing. Mr. Chair, members of the City Council, all of our members and constituents, let us pray. Father, we're thankful and grateful yet again for that wonderful privilege of living in the United States of America. Thank you for free speech, for an elected government. We're grateful for the members of this chamber, for the constituents in which they serve. We're grateful for our leadership. We give you praise and thanks for this chamber, for the work and the deliberations that will go here. We're grateful for our individual members whose sweat equity and commitment have all together made our city better. We give you praise and thanks for the city of St. Petersburg. We pray, O God, that with your powerful hand, that we will be able to establish your justice, not just here, but among nations and the world. Amen. Thank you. Please be seated. Pastor Williams, always good to see you and thank you again so much for joining us this afternoon and giving us that beautiful invocation. Okay, councilmembers, we have an agenda in front of us. I'll entertain a motion for approval. Second. We have a motion and a second, seeing as no other councilmembers wishing to speak. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Councilmembers, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present councilmembers have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Mr. Chair, the motion to approve the agenda passes unanimously. Okay, we've got a consent agenda. Do we have any cards on consent? Mr. Chair, we do not. Okay, councilmembers, we have a consent agenda in front of us. Move approval. Second. We've got a motion and a second, seeing as no other councilmembers wishing to speak on consent. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Councilmembers, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present councilmembers have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Mr. Chair, the motion to pass the consent agenda passes unanimously. Okay, we're going to move into open forum. Clerk, could you please read the rules? If you wish to address city council on subjects other than public hearing or quasi-judicial items listed on the agenda, please sign up with the clerk. Only the individual wishes 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 raise hand feature button in the Zoom app or enter star 9 on your phone at the time the agenda item is addressed. When it is your turn to speak, you will be unmuted and 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 live public comment 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 Mr. Chair, we do have some speakers. Okay. Let's call two at a time, please. Two speakers. The first is Jen French and Heidi Stiller. Please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. We'll have three minutes to address council. Good afternoon, council. I just have to say in remembrance of Wally Dutcher, I want to appreciate this podium. It's been a while since I've addressed city council. We need your name and your address, please. Oh, sorry. Jen French, 1950, 43rd Street, North, St. Petersburg. Thank you. Sorry for being official. We let you get away with the Wally Dutcher. All right. Thank you. How can I get away from the Wally Dutcher? Thanks. I'm here today in front of you as a longtime resident of St. Petersburg, and particularly a resident of Destin Heights and the Harshaw neighborhood where we live. As many of you know that we are at the high point in St. Pete, not only St. Petersburg, but also in Pinellas County. And we are actually in a non-evacuation zone, and we purposely bought in that neighborhood for that purpose. However, we do know that storm systems are a hot issue in this city, and we appreciate that there is a capital, a large capital system or capital budget or capital improvement project that will be coming forward here soon. And I'm happy to be part of that project, or at least part of that conversation in the future. However, I'm not here about that capital project. I'm here about maintenance. So as you might be familiar in that neighborhood on 22nd Avenue North, and 43rd Street North, there's a series of lakes, and those lakes drain and help to keep the water off of the streets. And that system has worked for decades. And it's worked very well. However, in recent times, we have found with strong rains, our streets are flooding. So as neighbors, as we went to go investigate that we found that the drainage pipes between those lakes are clogged. They're overgrown with debris. And in fact, over by 17th Avenue and 40th, you'll see where the Duke energy project where they put in barriers, those barriers have now fallen into the creeks where the drainage is supposed to be backing up the lakes and flooding our streets. So I'm here today to please ask the City Council to in the city to please do the maintenance on the systems that we have today. Our neighbors have put in multiple complaints with multiple pictures, and we have not had any response. And I have to say, we can do all the capital improvements that we can do. But if we don't maintain the systems that we have, we are still doing damage to our residents. Thank you. Thank you. Heidi Stiller 4400 20th Avenue North also the Harsha neighborhood. As a resident who now faces flood risk due to climate change, I appreciate everything the city is doing and wants to do to mitigate that risk. But I and my neighbors need more information on when stormwater projects in our area can likely be completed. And we need the city to keep up with maintenance as Miss French just spoke to these two issues influence how we prep for storms, our insurance purchases, and ultimately, if we should stay or go. When we looked to buy a house 10 years ago, flood risk was a major consideration. I worked for Noah for over 20 years, we only looked in x zones well outside the worst case surge plus sea level rise. However, we still bought flood insurance, even though we're in an x zone because there's a retention pond across the street. Now climate change fueled increases in heavy precipitation events, both during hurricanes and the more frequent regular thunderstorms in our area mean risk has increased. Last year water came up our driveway during a regular thunderstorm. And then in Milton, the water came into our home. We were very fortunate. It was only a small amount of water that came inside. I 110% understand that city stormwater system wasn't designed for the rain events we're now experiencing. It'll be very expensive to upgrade and funding is going to be challenging, especially given the chaos and uncertainty surrounding federal funding under the current administration. Turning to maintenance in recent rain events, as Jen mentioned, the retention pond rises and water enters the street much faster than it used to. It's possible Milton caused new clogs, but the drains in the neighborhood are not being maintained. In particular, the area around the big Duke energy development on 17th has drains that are repeatedly clogged. When we submit a C click fixed, the generic response back is that the city's working on a stormwater master plan with a multi year implementation plan. It's nice to get a response, but that doesn't help us plan. We need to know if maintenance is going to happen and when and we need to at least have an estimated timeline for bigger projects. I reviewed the Jacobs best management practices alternatives analysis report from December 2023 and see multiple measures are proposed for our area and the relevant project bundle ranked relatively high. That's good. I also reviewed the FY 26 budget and capital improvement plan online. It appears stormwater work is planned for FY 26 at Jorgensen Lake by the main library. This might help where we are because all the lakes are connected. I'd really that's a question for the city engineer, but it's only going to help if the maintenance is also occurring. I don't see any additional elements of the project bundle for our area in the five year capital improvement plan. So does this mean we face that risk for five more years 10? Again, really appreciate what the city is working on in terms of planning. The St. Pete agile resilience program is great, but I'd still love more information on when all the work in that Jacobs report might be able to happen. And I'd love maintenance to keep up. I do wish we could make additional stormwater investments. I appreciate the council members Gabbard, Mr. Floyd, who have advocated for additional investment. I also understand affordability is a real challenge for the many residents. Please keep communicating. Thank you for all you do. And please don't soft pedal the risk residents need to know to inform our own important economic decisions. Thank you. Thank you. Next two speakers. Cassie Gonzalez and Melina Fortunato. Please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. Casey Gonzalez, 1113154th Avenue North. Good afternoon, council members. My name is Casey Gonzalez and I'm honored to stand before you as Mrs. Black United States, but more importantly, a lifelong lover of the Sunshine City. My family moved here in 1995 when I was four years old. So my grandfather could pastor Cornerstone Community Church on 38th Avenue. My brother and I grew up here, played sports, built our lives, attend school, and I'm blessed to raise my kids here and send them to the school that I attended. But I also know what it's like to struggle with the high cost of electricity in the city. Just six years ago, I was a single mom living on 4th Street. Month after month, I had to call Duke to extend my due date because I was faced with a choice between buying groceries or keeping the lights on. That's a choice that should never fall on any parent. And I know I'm not alone. Families across St. Pete are living the same reality. Six years later. Right now, there are elderly and children. who are living on fixed incomes who are now paying $300 power bills that used to run $120, $150. If they fall behind, their electricity is cut off. And then they're stuck in 98 degree weather with no power, no air conditioning. And it's not just uncomfortable. It's dangerous and can be deadly. Waiting on Clearwater's feasibility study, in my opinion, makes no sense because Clearwater is not St. Pete. If you truly feel a study is needed, why not two studies? A bigger sample size, a clearer picture, and it's a decision based on facts unique to our city. I know what you're thinking, the cost. Let's talk about it. When it comes to transparency. I've been compared to doge for asking questions about the City's budget. I laughed it off at the party. But it was hurtful to be compared to a program that most certainly does not have the people's interest in mind. the cost let's talk about it when it comes to transparency i've been compared to doge for asking questions about the city's budget i laughed it off at the time but it was hurtful to be compared to a program that most certainly does not have the people's interest in mind when i most certainly do that kind of dismissal does not build trust the people of st pete deserve honesty about how their money is spent especially when millions of dollars from hurricane damage have been passed on to consumers while duke spends untold sums on ads trying to convince us that they care a publicly owned utility would have one priority serving the people not their shareholders council members you were elected to make things happen yes this is difficult but nothing worth having is easy and the people of st pete are worth it i urge you to dump duke and stand with the people you represent thank you thank you melina fortunato 6521 22nd street south department 499 st petersburg florida 33712 i am a district 5 resident um i would first uh like to i am here speaking um i am um here as a resident that is all for um a public option um and against the renewal of the duke contract in 2026 um the reasons uh before i get into the reasons being um i i i would like to say that i think that st pete should have its own feasibility study um when and that um the amount of money that is invested into that should should not be a hindrance given that we are looking the reason why i live in this city as opposed to any other city in florida is because this is a city that looks at a few things the future looks at sustainability and and it's a values-based city and i'm here um to represent as a resident that um one of one of my and one of many of my uh fellow constituents core values are sustainability um first and foremost duke is not a company that is focused on sustainability they are not a future focused company and this city can do better they can absolutely do better we can do better than a company that is stuck in the past and stuck on just lining the pockets of shareholders who need their money now and so given that sustainability is a main value that a public option would squarely support um we would be looking at things like renewable energy options at solar things that duke is vehemently against um the second reason why not just sustainability but we're going to hear a lot about cost we're going to hear about real people whose energy bills are going up we're going to hear about real people who cannot afford uh the service that duke is providing and unfortunately providing shoddily not giving enough notice when it comes to outages overcharging and not working with people with working class people that have everyday issues so cost for our residents um i believe would offset any investment that um a feasibility study uh would require and the third would also so we're looking at and reliability which i just mentioned um duke is not a reliable company we have the power to take things into our own hands and there is precedent for this um it is not unprecedented that do that a public uh option um in florida happens that where where the city itself takes it takes it upon themselves to give its constituents um a better option duke is not the only option and given that their contract is coming up they need to be aware that it is that this is not their only option and um and the city that i was referencing is winter park thank you next two speakers next two speakers is dale dylan dames and robert curry go to either podium state your name address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council hi council my name is dylan dames and i live at 4546 5th avenue north on behalf of the faith in florida pinellas chapter i would like to urge council to advance a request for a proposal for feasibility study on public energy in saint pete i live on fifth ave in central oak park which is rumored to be the highest ridge in the city and when my wife and i moved in um you know our landlord told us that that meant that we were invulnerable to flooding um anyone that's been in a three mile radius of that era or has ever lived in district seven or eight knows that that is not true um and what worries me more about power outages from floods isn't that we're going to lose power but the communication and transparency alongside those power outages milton was a nightmare we had so much water enter our house in the highest ridge in the city and our estimated return of power changed three times on duke's website um i actually had to do a double evacuation i came back to saint pete uh with my dog and then i had to go back to tampa with my dog because they kept lying about when the power would come back on um council member givens as your constituent i'm very grateful that you shared with coalition partners and i that you would support a feasibility study that would move us closer to public control of our energy and i'm grateful that this item is being considered in general today because it is all news that the private sector will never choose us every challenge that you will face under a shifting national and state administration that i've heard you talk about in committee is because of profit-seeking actors in our government and honestly everything that you'll ever hear me talk about from this podium is because of profit-seeking actors in our government and the truth is we don't need to wrestle corporations and investors into better behavior because they are not dysfunctional they are working exactly how they are supposed to work and they have different goals than a city government i think your pursuits are different it's responsibility and governance and care for the people and i think we get there by increasing the public voice increasing public control across things like energy but also things like housing and governance and i just think that we need to move in the direction of anything that'll give residents more of a say and you know no one no one here's clairvoyant we don't know what's going to happen we don't know what kind of proposals will come or how much money it'll cost but to vote no on something that costs nothing signals to residents that you're not even going to bother and try and increasing their public voice so that's what i'll share for today first time off script thank y'all um for letting me speak thank you hello i'm robert curry i live at three 3100 central avenue apartment three through two i just moved there recently into district seven and i want to speak about the duke energy thing that's coming up later i i don't have a script to go off so i'm just going to talk uh i i want to reiterate and i agree with what dylan and the other speakers said earlier i was born in st petersburg i've lived here in the tampa bay area my entire life but i i really prefer being here in st pete and i think it's it's incumbent i electric bills have been going up my family my sister my mother i've seen their electric bills go up i've seen my bills go up my neighbors have experienced the same thing and what are we getting for it we're basically taking money out of individuals and businesses here in st pete and sending a tribute to the shareholders of duke energy that's money that's leaving our community and not benefiting ourselves and our neighbors the people who need it the most you know although i don't have any trouble paying my electric bill and i never have i know other people do and we have to consider not just what's right for the people who have it the best but the people who need our help if we're not here for other people who are we here for so i really hope that you consider voting yes later on the proposition to study replacing duke energy with a public utility because that's something we need to know and your constituents deserve to know that you've done everything that you can to help them in the face of rising electric costs because why else are you here and i'll keep it short that's all i have to say thank you thank you the next two speakers is chris steinocker and william kilgore please state your name address for the record please call three minutes to address counsel good afternoon i'm chris steinocker president and ceo of the st petersburg chamber of commerce 100 2nd avenue north 33701 i thank you all for your leadership and your commitment to our community i i came here to talk about the mahafi presentation and the rowdies about the private sector and their investments in our community and good heroes in our community and then i got caught up in all the conversation that's happening now about duke as well and it appears to me i just want to bring an observation from the chamber of commerce you need the private sector in your community and you need them to do well because that's where the jobs come from in your community as well currently in st pete cost of living is 97 the national average i didn't make that up that's on every website go look at it right now so there is an issue here and it's not that things are costing more they're costing more everywhere in the world everywhere in this country what we're trying to do is raise wages and so some of this uh talk about that hey a city can take care of itself now they need private sector people in our community that that pay the wages so so what i'm here to mostly talk about is how we take care of our private sector partners because they've got their own money into it and they need some assurances and and care as well i'm proud that we have on the agenda today to to get the rowdies a one-year agreement i think we need to make sure that we take care of our rowdies and mahafi and let them know we care and we want them here and we want their investment here and we need their jobs here they do a lot for our community that's not on the field as far as mahafi i'm here to speak on behalf of one of my board member bill ma bill edwards he has done more in this community for anybody and everybody than anyone else that's here right today and i say that assuringly knowing just how many investments he's made for everything good in this community from all children's hospital to signage for our community to care for anybody who asks so i think all he's asking for is some support for what he's doing he's putting good money in the mahafi theater right now to keep us afloat and to keep the water out he just wants to make sure he understands it we have something called our waterfront committee he's part of that he along with all the partners the rowdies the grand prix and the dolly and the airport all sit together and we talk about how we can work together we do want you all to investigate looking at the entire what that uh arts arts center as one place we do want to look at what al lang means to us in the future so as you get these new reports we want to see the whole thing again and we're confused why we're not so to me today's presentation from the mahafi and the rowdies and duke is all about the private sector and how we're going to take care of each other the the private sector is not asking for anything but a certainty in their relationship with your community and they will perform and hold them to that and if they're not then we have some issues but i i think that it's wrong to make people feel like they're doing something wrong just for doing their jobs in this community i think that was mentioned there are better ways but i really believe today is about let's take care of those who've got us here and have invested their own resources and and because we don't have them enough as a city your budget shows me that thank you hey thanks chair uh william kilgore uh 25 50 uh 28th avenue north uh and uh with the st pete tenants union um we're out here today you may have heard us uh earlier um a uh you know talking about the morgan apartments uh i know that there's a lot of things happening right now there is i one of the reporters said there's a press statement about that they had made a payment or something like that i don't i don't know i can't confirm any of that um regardless uh you know i still wanted to speak on what is uh you know the city's response to this whole thing uh and and that it was wrong uh you know the way uh it was responded you know because the landlord is taking tenants money uh for utilities and not paying it and then the city is effectively you know punishing the tenants by saying we're going to turn off the water um you know and that is you know and then you know telling them you know hey you know you should find somewhere else uh to live uh it's not that easy to just pick up and move i think most people are struggling just to get by uh just through the end of the month let alone you know pick up and put down a deposit on a new place and move uh you know and it kind of it makes the city look implicit and you know this you know whole thing when they really shouldn't be the city shouldn't be a villain we don't i don't want to see the city as a villain because we support our private sector and we want to see the expansion of our our our private say public sector um you know and we want to see an expansion of our public sector uh you know and so uh we're obligated to call it out i think it's interesting here when we're talking about the duke energy stuff because we're having there's an issue with the utility stuff uh you know that's a city enterprise and you know here we are we have elected officials who we can hold accountable and we can come face to face you know we don't vote for duke we don't vote for uh this landlord at the morgan uh uh lauren another uh fine uh private sector individual uh here another wonderful private sector uh you know who's who's doing this to tenants and not just with the utilities but that whole building is run down storm damage mold all kinds of things you can't even imagine and it's not the only place like that that's the majority of these big corporate landlords who own these buildings uh places like the morgan osprey point all those places down there uh you know and so somebody like that that landlord belongs in jail uh frankly um you know so uh i i think it's an opportunity though for the city has an opportunity to endear itself to the people and you know to actually do the right thing and to like look at this and like how do we respond to this next time because next time it could be an apartment building uh where any of us live you know that is having this same issue uh you know and so how how can the city respond how can the city hold these landlords accountable and hold these bad private sector individuals accountable uh you know so anyway thank you very much i appreciate your time thank you no other speakers no more speakers okay we're going to close open forum and move into new ordinances we've got e1 and we've got rich lesniak joining us but clerk would you please read the ordinance propose ordinance number 618-h an ordinance in accordance with section 1.02 c5b charter of the city of st petersburg florida authorizing the execution of these restrictions and assurances regarding airport availability required as a condition of acceptance of a federal aviation administration grant in the m in an amount not to exceed 95 percent of the total cost for the construction phase of the rehab airfield vault project or albertwood airport 19235 estimated to be 1 million 163 million dollars faa grant upon the city being awarded such grant authorizing the mayor or his designee to accept the faa grant upon the city being awarded such grant authorizing the mayor or his designee to execute all documents necessary to effectuate this ordinance providing an effective date and providing for expiration and the public care for this item is september the 4th and we do not have any cards okay move for approval second we have a motion and a second on e1 seeing as no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote chair the motion to approve agenda item e1 passes unanimously okay thank you all right we're going to move into reports and we've got f1 we've got our quarterly saint pete police department quarterly report chief holloway welcome good afternoon chair council member thank you very much for allowing me here to be here with you this morning this afternoon where i am uh i've done like three times already today chief don't you worry about it i'm thinking it's still morning so this quarterly report is going to cover from april may and june so first of all i'll tell you overall crime is down by 16 percent in the in the city violent crime is down by 27 percent and property crime is down by 13 percent so homicides for this quarter as you can see we had three compared to seven uh from last quarter i mean from last year of those three three two were by uh firearms one was by a knife the two by firearms were drug related and the one by knife was self-defense year to date homicides in the city down by 20 percent and our grit team unit that's a unit response to any time shots are fired they relocate any shell casing as you can see last year we had 100 cases this year we only have 48 so that means that the officers and the community is still doing a great job and we're seeing some of our shootings are decreasing our stolen guns as you say we keep getting better and we have these highs and lows uh for this quarter we had 67 guns that reported stolen 55 out of vehicles like remind everybody again please lock your cars please take your guns out of your cars and we say that over and over again the 19 guns that were recovered two were recovered uh local stolen elsewhere the other 17 were recovered local stolen local but i also want to say on the high note of that we had 53 guns that were turned into us by the community so that still is working and 32 guns were found now robberies for this uh compared to last year robberies are down by 27 percent burglaries are down by eight percent and auto thefts are down by 25 percent arrests reflect of our our crime rate going down so you can see compared to last year this year traffic we are doing a lot of traffic enforcement out there we continue to do it if you follow us on our facebook page you can see we have several operations throughout the month even though we tell people where we're going to be we still write over 250 tickets at that location so i want to commend our men and women that are out there enforcing traffic the new one you see that are no wigs on i'd like to thank councilmember galbert for bringing that and getting it affected and that is the new slide that we put up and that is when we have a storm and the streets are flooded the citizens can call in we will have the officers respond to that location and if people are creating wigs we'll give them a warning the second time out we'll give them a ticket to let them know they shouldn't be doing that in our city and also the fines are posted there so thank you councilmember for that our second chance program is still going very strong uh we have other agencies throughout the nation has called us asking us about that again there's no one can say they've never done anything wrong and this is why we try to turn our children around in our community our home initiative again we still go after the kids that are committing crimes again for the radar those are kids that have been convicted of one felony intense supervision those are the kids that have been convicted of five felonies basically the court puts an order out there and we make sure we monitor them 24 hours a day seven days a week our path program as we talk about this all the time we cannot arrest our way out of this situation and i want to say the path team not only does our downtown quarter but they do the city why i think a lot of time people get confused when you see that 667 contacts that is not 667 people that are in our community those are also that are out there making contact over and over again in our downtown community we i have them now doing a unofficial count and we have somewhere between 40 to 50 people that are in our downtown quarter but again the path team is making contact with those individuals every day i also want to give credit where credit is due amy's foster team is out there also making contact with these people every day we have a call team out there making contact with people we also have saint anthony's hospital that has a nurse practitioner arrives every week with our officers to make sure we can bring medicine to our homeless situation so we have more services here in saint pete in pinellas county than anywhere in the state and i'm only saying that because our clients that are out there are telling us we have more services here in pinellas county than anywhere else our park walk and talk program as you see the officers are still out there it's been a little warm so of course those numbers are going to go down but when the weather goes down we'll be back out there again uh the eagle eye program we had an additional 15 people sign up for this period our use of force stays about the same our complaint as you can see zero complaints so that so in reference to you saw the numbers of use of force we used but we had no complaints of use of force during this quarter our call program which is our signature program we not only myself and megan mcgee we go out through the united states i've gone to canada to talk about this call program because how efficient it is and as you can see the numbers are going up you can see the zip code that we're responding to the number that i always like to highlight is what we talk about when we go out through the nation 97 of the calls that the uh navigators go on is without police they're helping the people navigate their way through a situation that is not criminally related and again the bottom part is zero incidents we also the mayor also took the team out they walked around downtown to assist you can see they also won an award this year for two thought they got another additional two thousand dollars this initiative i like to call this is the mayor's signature program that he started but also council approved this budget and again myself and megan mcgee we're going throughout the nation and people are coming here and talking about the program how we're doing three things how we're preventing crime how we're diverting crime and then how we're making arrests and as you can see 75 of the kids that are going through what the program the mayor started have not re-offended that means we're getting in front of the situation we're helping these kids and helping their parents the biggest thing i like to see is a lot of these single parents cannot pay for certain things and we pay for that you see all the teams that are there you need a helmet whatever you need this organization cfy is taking care of that pal we still have pal that's pretty strong and art conservative also not everybody's an athlete so there's other programs that we get kids involved in and also reading so this program is going quite well quite strong again council voted for this the community voted to send this dollars to this program and this was the mayor big initiative for us so with that i'll open up for any questions okay quickly chief i just have one clarifying question on the crime offenses before we go to council members because i i heard you talk about the stats down on this page over robbery burglary and motor theft and i think the only way that would be the case is if you took the ones off of burglary breakering ending in 2025 there's 100 there's 120 136 compared to 41 120 compared to 43 129 i i gotta believe there was a one added there and and councilman for this is our ucr is the number added there this is for ucr for the whole year i'm only giving you a snapshot for the quarter but when i'm talking about those 20 and 19 that's from january now until through the year okay thank you thanks for the clarification that was that was the one thing that jumped out at me that i i wanted to just make sure we touched on real quick okay thank you for your help clarifying thank you councilmember gibbons thank you so much chair and thank you chief holloway for being with us today always good to see you and uh i just wanted to celebrate you all you know oftentimes we hear what you're not doing so i want to commend you for what you are doing uh i've had an opportunity in my first eight months in office to go out there and to do at least i think four park walking talks now um we haven't done it as many this summer because it's been hot but i'm looking forward to those cooler months uh so i just wanted to shout out officer bletch officer goforth uh sergeant matthews for their hard work and their boots on the ground strategy um not only when we were out there but even behind the scenes they've been contacting me calling me when they come in contact with young people who may be looking for opportunities to engage in some of our youth programs so um the last report we mentioned some of those programs so i want you to know we've been doing a great job working together uh because i think collaboration is what it's all about so i just want to commend you for your leadership and thank each of them uh for a job well done with these park walk and talks so thank you for that thank you sir of course and then also job well done um with addressing the issue of homelessness um i know it's not something that law enforcement is tasked with that's not necessarily your job um but you all have been great partners in addressing that issue and finding some plausible tangible solutions um so 667 contacts um i think that's really good um i think the path team is doing a great job i commend them also but i i want to understand a little bit more about what exactly they're doing when it comes to the process um so are they doing outreach and engagement with referrals so you are referring out if they need housing or treatment are you doing any of that at all yes sir they're doing all of it when they're out there and sergeant hancock and his team they do a great job when they're out there talking to that unhoused situation they're asking do you need food do you need shelter what do you need because we've again we have all the services there it's not just a path team you got amy foster team helen and april uh you got again nurse practitioners so when we're out there those officers are bringing a service to that unhoused or homeless individual we're not out there to make that arrest is what can i do to help you what can i do to bring you to services so those officers come with all those referrals and as you can see then they can take these uh individuals to these locations if you if you want something we're we've got things in place that we will try to get that for you or we will try to connect you to the right service thank you for that chief and i just wanted you to be on record saying that because i've gotten calls even this morning uh from leaders in tallahassee telling us how we should handle our problems here at home uh and i think we're doing a great job at handling those problems and mitigating the situation with our unhoused um you've mentioned them our social services department miss foster her team dr slaker uh helen i think they're doing an awesome job but we can do more with the right funds right um this is more of a question for administration but how how much um does the social action department get to help with homelessness because that doesn't have anything to do with the police department's budget correct council member that's budgeted in multiple different areas we'd have to put that together for you and we can give a total to city council gotcha okay i look forward to seeing that because in our conversation that we had this week we we discussed that right them being able to do more with more funds so as we go into the budget season i just want to be cognizant of the fact that you know they've kind of been sitting in the same place for the last few years um when it comes to funds and i think they could do more uh with the right amount and i don't know if administrator foster wanted to comment on that but i just saw her walk in uh but we were talking about our unhoused and i would just commend in your department and asking about funding where you all have been the last few budget years and where we're going next year is that enough to address the issue thank you for the question council member um the amount for social action funding specifically which is what goes to other organizations to assist the homeless has been seven hundred thousand for a few years i think um a few years prior to that it maybe was five hundred thousand but as administrator girdus already mentioned that is one funding source right you have a number of what i'm going to call legacy funding contracts that go into that as well so you know we have a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the day center at st vincent de paul we provide funding to safe harbor we provide funding to pinellas hope you increased that last year to allow us to add 25 beds in preparation for the state law to change um there's money for neighborly home network for seniors for meals on wheels because that's a part of homeless prevention we have homeless prevention dollars at more than 250 000 we have 260 000 towards the childhood childhood homeless project um the rush funding which you've recently been made aware of that's more than a million dollars and then in addition to that we do have our federal funds that we are very lucky to receive now the majority of those go to capital projects but esg which stands for emergency solutions grant and public services portion of cdbg which is capped at 15 percent does allow us to use dollars towards these types of things we actually have a white paper that i can share with all of you that we recently prepared that gives you a breakdown of all of those investments that you've been making thank you so much and thank you for going above and beyond in description and what we're doing to address the problem and all i wanted to just go on record saying for those who may be listening in tallahassee is that we are doing our part we're investing in solutions and so i thank you so much for the work that you're doing administrator foster and thank you so much chief holloway um we know that we can't arrest our way out of this problem um but you said it earlier um you guys are working hand in hand uh proactively to try to address the situation so thank you so much there um and then lastly this is probably more so um a question for administration but i did notice that there were 67 guns um that were stolen in total between the months of april june that's a three-month period 55 of those were taken out of vehicles um this is an issue that i brought up a few times is how we can address this problem right i know we can't solve every situation we're preempted every which way when it comes to gun control in the state of florida but full support of the second amendment here i don't think we're doing enough to tighten the rules here um i'm looking at 55 guns stolen within a three-month period out of 67 total i see tampa has a program where they're giving out free gun trigger locks to try to combat this issue i'm wondering is that something that we have looked into i know i brought it up uh there are vendors who are literally giving out these gun lock triggers to try to help to local municipalities is that something we've considered there we have free gun locks and i've we have told you that so if people want to get them we have station they can pick them up at any given time we have boxes of gun locks so there's any organization that wants to pass them pass them out they can contact us and be more than happy to give those gun locks out if an organization has to contact you a resident couldn't visit the saint pete police department and get it uh no sir because we have to teach well we could let me phrase it we will do that we just have to show the person how to put the locks on the gun so any resident can visit the police department get a free gun trigger lock i would tell them to call that way we can have somebody respond to them a cso or some officer will show them how to use it and we can give them the lock okay thank you thank you chair thank you council member gabbard thank you chair and thank you chief for the presentation um and i just want to continue to thank you for reporting on the stolen guns issue to us that was something i had asked for quite some time ago and you continued to uh report that so that we can continue to advocate for our residents because really for me that is a public responsibility issue um police can do everything in the world to try to inform we can hand out gun locks we can do all of that but if residents who own these firearms are not being responsible with them how are we supposed to solve that issue 82 of the guns stolen came from cars it's irresponsible enough to leave your car unlocked then you go and you leave your firearm in it it makes zero sense to me so i continue to pound this like into my residents heads and yet still we continue to have these icons on the map over my district um but i commit to you that i will continue to try to get that word out i think as council members that is our responsibility is to continue to try to advocate in place of all of the other things that quite frankly we cannot do um so really just want to send that message to residents that this is a piece of um really our community responsibility that we need everybody to be working towards so thank you for what you do on that um most of my comments actually are just a word of thanks because um i wanted to thank you for the wake zone uh legislation that we as the city were able to get past collaborative process that took place alongside um of our representatives senator nick disigley uh representative lindsay cross we had emergency management cppd sheriff galtieri's office and this is really um you know kind of an example of when we all come together and we all rally around an issue that are a concern to our residents we can make change happen so this didn't just end up being a great bill for st petersburg this is a great bill for the entire state of florida so i'm very happy that you uh inserted a slide in there thank you to the officers that have been going and educating our communities on this we hope that we don't have to use it but it is now another tool in our toolbox to keep our residents safe and so i just wanted to say a public word of thanks on that and then the last thing that i have is just in response to the path team i do want to thank everybody who really um is working to try to address the needs of our homeless population it is a city-wide issue um we talk about it kind of in the microcosm of downtown but it is a city-wide issue and if we focus only in downtown then the issue just becomes greater elsewhere and so i'm really glad um to see all of the different and have the conversation i'd love to see that white paper about all of the different resources but i just wanted to say a special thank you to major patterson because i know there are numerous times i see a resident in need in district two i will just text her let her know what i've seen and she will have someone go out and speak with them and try to offer services and that means the world to know that you know you all are just a phone call away and we can directly connect those resources i just really wanted to say thank you not only to her but to you for your leadership so thank you chief thank you ma'am councilmember harding thank you chair chief thank you very much congratulations on your team's success it seems like you're working yourself out of a job the um the second the second chance program um is both unique and successful and i i was hoping you would take a minute um i don't i don't think everyone really clearly understands what it is that uh that's that's being achieved will you take a moment and explain what the program is sure so the it is a team effort so the way we look at it as when that child he or she shoplift so it used to be three or four months before they got anything solved that week if the child admits that he or she has done something wrong the family admits they've done something wrong then we take that child we work with lisa willow bowman we work with the call team we give that child a coach lisa willow bowman then looks at what programs and we get that child started in the right way maybe that child was shoplifting because they didn't have anything to eat what's going on in the family what type of counseling can we give that child so that's what we work with we don't wait three or four months for the court to resolve this issue we work on it right then and there and the biggest thing is then that child does not have a record if he or she does exactly what's supposed to do that report is not sent to the state attorney's office so when that child later on he or she's trying to get a job they can say they never have been arrested which is a true statement but again the child has to admit that he's done wrong he or she has done something wrong the parents have to agree to it and it is done within a week period of time so we can jump right on the situation thank you chief um and congratulations on the success for that with that i i i want to i know that that recently um we have talked a lot about and it's been in the news that the issue and and to to uh to to councilwoman gabbard's point um homelessness hope the the unhoused population and what's going on in in downtown st pete and and i want to uh i want to come back and um and make a point and thank you uh for being here today that the the core competency of your department is um is is criminal justice that that's that's what the uniforms are for that's what the lights and the cars are for um it is unique for um for not only a department and a leadership team but also uh a municipality to look at issues like this in a different way um the the the idea that folks are unhoused is horrible and it happens everywhere and it's it's not going to go away unfortunately we're going to continue to battle it but i i want to call attention to um the uniqueness not only the uniqueness but the success of the call program of the path program of uh administrator foster's street teams and um and i greatly appreciate um the willingness to try new things um and i would imagine along the way and i'm not aware but i would imagine along the way that chief you tried some things that failed um and they had to in order to get to to where we are my point in all this is thank you very much for um for using um your position your department your leadership team for things other than um just the the the criminal enforcement part of what a police force does it it is unique um there there there are models to be uh to be looked at here and i encourage you to to keep moving in this direction thank you very much thank you chair thank you councilmember driscoll thank you and thank you chief for the report it's always good to see you um it's good to hear that um your numbers that you said at the top of the presentation are moving in the right direction um i did have an additional question regarding um crime offenses year over year on um one of the first slides they're not numbered um it looks like so so the total for the quarter year over year for burglary burglary and breaking and entering um seems to be up significantly that's comparing quarter to quarter yes ma'am and i and i i want to go back and check because as i'm looking at those those numbers it could have been just we have to the the old way was doing it uh was if a burglary happened on one street it the old use uniform crime reporting would be if there were six burglaries that happened on one street it would be classified as one burglary because it happened at one period of night but now we had to change the way we we take reports so now it's six burglaries instead of one under the way the government wants us to classify things now so like if if three cars were broken into it happened the same night the old way would be that was one now is three well that would explain it do you have a way to break it down do you think it's just hard to look at this because you know when i looked through the report when we got it i was wondering why are burglaries up by so much why is breaking and entering up by so much is there because you're really good at finding the root cause of something or when there's an uptick you often know the why behind it so that's what i was going to ask you now it sounds like you've changed the way that the reporting is done and so it's not really an apples to apples remember i explained to city council how i would change january one but i will double check because that could either be an accounting error but let me go back and i would definitely give you an answer by tomorrow or monday to make sure yeah that is correct that would be good it it does look like an anomaly with all of this you know throughout the report so i'm thinking that it is simply because of that um the use of force incidents so crime being down overall and yet um use of force is staying the same so is it just the crimes that are happening are shifting and there's a higher percentage of incidents where use of force is used so council uh councilman if you remember we at saint pete we do it differently anytime we use force we mark it down so if two officers on the scene and two officers use force on one person it's two incidents not one it's two so anytime i use any type of force where i put you up against the wall or i take you down to the ground that is use of force so if i taser you twice that's two if i take you down to the ground that's three and that one incident so that's why you're going to start always see those numbers like that because we count everything a lot of agencies don't count everything any the key word is force if you use force it is counted if there's three officers there and three officers use force on one person three uses of force every ulcer has to fill out a form yeah i understand that it's just with if if crime overall is down but use of force is staying the same that means there's a higher percentage of crimes that involve a use of force and it just could be there could be more officers on the scene instead of one officer there could be six officers there could be three officers on a takedown so i would have to really do a deep dive to figure out why the numbers are staying the same it could be again it could be two officers and both officers going to get counted for that use of force so again if we could do a deep dive to see exactly how those numbers are it's going to take some time but i could get that to you yeah at your convenience i just i really like looking at trends and this this tells us a lot of that but then when you do want to look more closely it takes more than us yes ma'am powerpoint slide to to to get to that um it looks like the um path unit is you know continuing to stay busy it's great to hear that there's so much support on the dice for for what that unit is doing are you looking out at expanding the path unit anymore at this time because you're up to six now no ma'am we're not but uh chief gilliams is already looking at how we can bring other officers from other areas on peak time so we can cover more and again like miss foster's here right now it's a team effort not just path it's everybody in the team that's working on on house situation because those clients as we want to call them they need the assistance so by me adding more bodies to the past team it will still be city-wide not just in one area so we're using our csos our community service officers more to where we can put them to where we can uh address the problem and i should have said that earlier uh doing this quarter now we're keeping track of that that the path team alone handle 85 c click fix tickets that's a lot that's people calling and complaining about something so again the team effort is there and i'm not just going to put the we have 557 officers that work for us so i expect my 300 and some odd that are in patrol i expect for all of them to learn the tools on how we're going to deal with our unhoused situation so we can give those the same service so adding two more people to the team of wouldn't it could help but again i have more officers out there they can learn the traits that they learn because they need to take time off so if i got an officer working midnight he or she should know the same thing as the path team and the same services that are available throughout the city all right great and then i finally wanted to let you know earlier this week i spent some time at the salvation army on 4th street south um and um the gentleman who's leading it now is um very nice and and very very much an open door for our members of the police department to visit and learn more about what they're doing so i wanted to make sure that that invitation was extended i don't know when the last time you was that you were there but they've made some some really nice improvements inside and it's worth a look so i wanted to just bring that up for you and um not just the path unit but others as well um that they should make a point to um arrange for a visit sometime soon and there could be some opportunities to talk about how um what um good neighborhood relations can look like there yes ma'am all right thank you so much thank you chair thank you councilmember fix sanders thank you chair and thank you again chief for the presentation um and all that we're trying to do to make it better so i i have two comments one i want to thank you and the mayor for the innovative equity project the four together i was with the mayor when he listened to the community in regards to youth crime and um you know i thank him for having the initiative and giving the direction to create it especially when i see the child's park rattlers and the saint pete gators which are our young people and you all did not hesitate in making that move with that program so i want to thank you for that and then also you provide information for the second chance program i am hoping that this request will be added to again not only do you provide second chances for you but you also mentor them at the preschool age we continue to forget about the pops program that you financed and it's the police officer program where we send police officers it's not just to read books but we send police officers to preschools because a lot of times the fear of men and women in uniform start very early because of bad experiences with parents and what they are being taught at home and we're i want to say we're in the third year of that program and at kids world it is still extremely successful so now our young people are not fearing uniforms they're looking forward to police officers we've actually been able to convert some of the parents um and some of the attitudes that they had toward um law enforcement and police officers so when we talk about everything that's good don't forget that that's good because we're starting at our babies we're deterring them at such a young age because some of the things that some of i don't know if you all heard some of our four and five year olds but you would swear that they've been here before some of the conversations that they have but let us not forget the awesome programs that you are doing that you know to me i think are extremely relevant to send the police officers in to deal with children in preschools um and that you're establishing and setting a standard at a very young age so i want to thank you for continuing to allow your officers because we get a lot of warning uh requests for police officers to want to participate because that's a fun activity for them as well and it's not just going in a room and sitting and reading books um you know the pops program they get the lollipops uh popcorn popsicles the derivatives of pops um but it's a fun but more importantly it is teaching them not to fear and to not walk in fear with our police officers thank you again for funding that for us i appreciate it oh another question i forgot speaking of funding we're working in the on the budget now with the innovative equity project can we kind of count on those to still be for 2026 that program is for 18 months i think it runs i can tell you exactly when it runs out march yeah my understanding is we're in good shape for fy26 on the program okay thank you thank you chair thank you well chief always uh good to have you here thank you for the quarterly update just quickly uh i mean you know the things that i mostly talk about the park walk and talks the even in the hot months the you can see the continuous growth and the spread of those throughout the city so just very thankful for that and then i think council member harding hit it on the head with just all the the work that we're doing in in multiple different areas just thankful for for you and and the entire uh department and and let me give a special shout out to your command staff over um you know my time here been able to to have multiple conversations with a lot of them and they just they just do such a good job from leading in the front and i know they get that from you um but i just wanted to give them a shout out because i know um you know they they feel what we talk about what the community talks about and i just wanted to say a big thank you to them um because because i know that they're doing a great job too well i want to echo that sir i'm good at what i do because i have three great assistant chiefs so they make me look good yeah well chief thank you so much for being here and thanks for the update thank you sir okay all right council members we are going to move into f2 our mahaffey presentation i think we have beth heron dean from city development and bill edwards from big three entertainment welcome beth good afternoon uh chair girdus vice chair hanowitz members of city council i am very pleased to bring you our big three entertainment duke energy center for the arts mahaffey theater uh annual report um the theater was formerly uh under chris palestra's purview but i am very happy that um it has become my facility uh after chris's retirement last spring so i do have a very unique perspective and love for the theater as um in my previous life i served as event manager operations manager and gm uh in 2001 through 2005 and and i was very fortunate to be involved in the renovation of the theater after the arena was demolished in december of 04 so but for today as you know mr edwards and big three entertainment have been managing the mahaffey theater since september of 2011 following a competitive rfp process they came out of the gate very strong with top acts such as don henley mark anthony cedric the entertainer and over the years have continued to provide popular diverse and accessible programming for our entire community including of course our florida orchestra and the class acts children class acts arts education program for for school children unfortunately last year as you also know the facility did sustain damage during helene and milton so i would like to thank mr edwards as well as general manager jim beeman and production manager um nick mitzis for working with us on uh getting the facility repaired we're still working on things but working so hard to get the facility up and running and i know mr edwards has a little bit to say about um about that as well and then following the storms um with the help of engineering we did do a facility assessment um to identify other capital needs because as i mentioned um in our in our earlier one-on-ones the building itself was built in 1965 and was a fairly plain jane um bayfront auditorium in 87 it was renovated into the beautiful european style theater that it is now and was renamed uh the mahaffey um and then um the latest renovation was in 2000 uh 2005 following the the demolition of the arena and each of those renovations did not include all of the systems within the the theater so not everything was fixed every time it was renovated so um so you all thank you council for recently approving several uh several capital items and we are looking to use our fy26 capital proposed capital funds um for additional roof repair so um the current agreement is set to right now to expire in september of 2026 um we have talked to mr edwards about a potential one-year extension just to work us through some of these capital repairs i know he'll he has a few things to say about that but today is not for any action today is uh is really just simply as part of the management agreement uh big three uh gives an annual report and that is what we are here for today they have prepared a beautiful video um that i believe the clerk is is ready to show and then following the video mr edwards has some remarks as well so enjoy thank you nearly 15 years ago the city of st petersburg made a forward-thinking decision to entrust the management of the mahaffey theater to big three entertainment and visionary leader bill edwards hi my name is bill edwards and i am very happy to be here today i've been running the mahaffey theater for 14 years i always liked projects that had a challenge and this was a failing theater i've been putting on concerts for 35 years all over the world here in st petersburg i started the taste of pinellas raising money for all children's hospital then i purchased the rowdies it was interesting because i had never been to a soccer game and the first soccer game i ever went to i own the soccer team we worked on that for about six years and it became very successful and we took it from bankruptcy to a very successful soccer team and the tampa bay rays bought it from us they still run the team and i'm very proud that we saved that team and and at the time the rays were leaving and the routers were the only professional team left in town and somebody said to me you got to take it on here at the mahaffey theater big three entertainment started with a bang we had don henley we had mark anthony we had cedric the entertainer those were the three acts for the first weekend i brought it brought in record numbers of people and made them aware that the theater was here since then the duke energy center for the arts mahaffey theater has become a cornerstone of downtown's cultural and economic vitality last year we welcomed over 225 000 visitors and over 290 performances bringing our total to more than 2.6 million guests since taking over hosting world-class entertainment and creating measurable impact for local businesses and the broader community to date bill edwards has personally donated over 12 million dollars to elevate the mahaffey into a top-tier venue improving infrastructure programming and the guest experience as a result we've attracted premier talent including christina aguilera tony bennett and patty labelle last season we brought in top-tier acts such as riverdance burke kreischer's netflix special fortune feemster wanda sykes paw patrol live elvis costello the black crows and endless more amazing shows each year over 200 000 visitors pass through our doors many of them traveling from outside the city that influx supports local restaurants hotels and small businesses contributing directly to saint pete's economic ecosystem but the mahaffey is more than a place to see a show it's a platform for community enrichment through the bill edwards foundation for the arts we've reached over half a million local students many experiencing live performance and arts education for the very first time class acts continues to engage educate and entertain students across the tampa bay area reaching over 28 000 students last year and that's not all class acts has since expanded to include a hands-on summer camp for aspiring young actors we also provide a professional home to the florida orchestra offering them nearly 100 dates annually never increasing rent in over 11 years when the orchestra faced financial difficulties bill edwards stepped in donating over 2 million dollars to keep them performing here at home this year the 2025 to 2026 season is projected to be our most successful yet with a diverse lineup that includes john mulaney circ dreams holidays morrissey the coral reefer band pink martini forever motown and of course the florida orchestra behind the scenes our operations go far beyond the stage we offer fine dining in-house unique among regional theaters and have partnered with trish duggan and the imagine museum to bring major visual art installations to our campus uniting the performing visual and culinary arts in one destination i'm very proud of the accomplishments that in this theater i i hope the city and the city council understands my involvement and allows us to continue within excellence i want to thank the city council and for allowing us to be here today thank you so much and have a great day welcome thank you i want to thank the city council for allowing us to be here today i'll try to be as quick as possible um proud to share our accomplishments for the past 12 years um as an operator as a booker as general stuart for the mahapi theater um as part of this um we brought again we brought 2.6 million people into this theater that holds 2031 people so i think that's a heck of a accomplishment um over the last few years um we have diverse programming um we average about 200 000 plus people a year into the theater i think we've been benching that and i just want to thank first of all beth harrandean and and james corbett for all the time and energy they put in to help us get through hurricane uh uh damage um we had some pictures that we wanted to show but we couldn't get them up here but they were before and after of the orchestra pit which is an intricate part of a theater is the pit of an orchestra and um and so um it affects us it affects the florida orchestra affects everyone um in the last year uh we haven't had one that's been broken and so i want to thank this body for giving us the money and the time and the energy to take almost a year just to fix that one thing okay we fixed a lot of different things we need more help in regard to repairs it's been 22 years since we had a sound system a lighting system changed our our speakers changed um we lose a lot of entertainment because of that okay and we need to uh fix the technological obsolescence that we're dealing with okay and we deal with it and we've been dealing with it for many many years um um and i'm hoping that we can get money from the budget to be able to have a regular situation um for the last 14 years um we've pretty much been on the same path as far as how we get paid for this theater and how we repair the theater and and so we need help in that respect to get it caught up because obviously you know if uh costs go up 35 percent 40 and we're still sitting with the same budget year after year after year it's very hard for us to increase our situation so it requires extra money that's where the extra money came in that i've donated okay but i can't continue to do that and so i need um i'm happy theater um to to be fixed one and two we're asking the city's offered us one year to um um continue on with the theater we're asking two more years it gives us five years and we can continue on doing with the job that we're doing thank you very much thank you okay let's go to public comment yes the first uh the first two speakers is robert blackburn and lance rogers please go to either podium state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council i think some of us were was wondering if there was a robert blackburn in the room thanks uh thank you very much robert blackman 119014 street north um really quickly i just wanted to speak as a citizen on uh the mahaffee theater uh where it's where it's been where it's going and its future um bill edwards just gave a presentation the ceo of big three um and i just wanted to kind of remind people of his love and what he's done for our city he literally put saint pete on the map when he put the big signage on the highway announcing that you were in saint petersburg it showed that we had arrived and that you had arrived when you came to town but he also supported all children's he's brought the rowdies back from the brink of extinction and made them a world-class organization again he developed the tropicana block which is a long blighted long vacant uh commercial block right across from janice landing he also saved sundial when it was going through rough financial times as he he managed taste of pinellis and he also gave money to walmart they gave three hundred thousand dollars to bring walmart to tangerine plaza when that was a food desert and it was vacant and i read an article yesterday about mr edwards axe and it said um he came for an update before council and some of the predecessors of everybody up here today uh council member darden rice council member charlie girdus council member bill dudley when gay newton and steve cornell all showered him with praise uh for his good acts to the city and in his philanthropy but uh i'm also acutely aware of the fact that nostalgia cannot impede progress and that being said we need to look at what the behalf is going to be moving forward and i think we all acknowledge that the city has a lot of big projects going on you know you had public speakers and you guys have been discussing starting a new utility what's going to happen with the marina tropicana field municipal services a new entertainment district along the waterfront the manhattan casino tangerine plaza the job core site potential redevelopment of al-lang the sunshine center when i walked by here the mirror lake library has tiles missing off the roof and a lot of our citizens are still without homes and with all these big projects i think we need to stay the course because i'm reminded of what happened with excuse me the manhattan casino it needed help we didn't give money till it was too late and it's been vacant now for five years if we don't put money into the mahafi right now from perhaps the cra because the mahafi is in the cra district we need to protect our own asset as taxpayers and as stewards of taxpayers we need to protect that asset by putting money into it now to make sure that it's world class for our taxpayers but also for the arts because we do not want it to be vacant i also would please employ you to consider giving the extension mr edwards he's done a fine job and i think anybody new would have such a learning curve or discover so many problems with this facility that it would really be a disservice to our citizens and our arts community so i please consider uh would ask you to consider funding and uh giving mr edwards uh more time to continue his good works thank you very much thank you i'm lance rogers lance rogers fine art and i'm more of a visual artist i've been around here a long time i remember the original bayfront being built in 1965 my first concert was herman's hermit but more importantly the opening act was the who no one had ever heard of them i'm a sixth grader i'm seeing pete townsend throw his guitar up in the air and smash it and it was like man this is such a cool place and it's kind of gone through its ups and downs but it still is um my wife and i have in the last few years we've become members of the mahafi and we've just enjoyed every minute of it and to see the transitions and the things that bill edwards has done and uh he's not only a music and entertainment guy he's an art collector i i know because he showed up in my house one night and bought three pieces off the wall of my house and it was a good thing and so anyway he's very aware of all of this and the uh you know the concerts that leapfrog i mean they might leapfrog this area if they don't have the right sound system this is a weird area anyway in concert they might go to jacksonville go straight to miami so any advantage we can have to get them in this area and all you're really doing is getting them up to snuff they're you know not going to any great great uh uh leaps down the road but uh you know the mahafi's such a beautiful waterfront jewel and uh under his leadership the mahafi has blossomed and i just encourage you to let him continue to let it flourish he is a visionary and uh he's uh his passion through this venue has been evident but passion doesn't pay the bills trust me i know um but uh anyway i just wanted to say give my two cents and please help mr edwards continuously and seamlessly stay the course on the vision that the mahafi theater has so thank you very much thank you no more speakers okay councilmember gabbert thank you chair and uh thank you for the presentation always look forward to it and uh mr edwards i want to thank you for our impromptu conversation we had on the phone a few weeks ago uh very much enjoy always speaking with you and um just your depth of history for how we've gotten to where we are on so many things in our city uh just really wanted to thank you for that taking that time with me that day um also want to thank you one of the things in that video that really speaks to me the most is the work that you do with our youth and with our kids as a little girl that fell in love with the theater at 10 years old but was in a small town and didn't have a lot of access what you're doing for our children and helping them explore what our art can mean in their lives um is such a beautiful thing so i just wanted to thank you for that personally uh the question that i have is around this extension uh so beth can we talk a little bit about this because you mentioned this kind of towards the end and we've talked about this we've talked about this so i kind of wanted to talk about it now um there was a mention of one year can we talk about how administration came to that decision um because well i'll let you answer first and then i'll give you my opinion sure i think we uh came to that decision uh mainly because we we know that the theater needs um some repair work and and and that um and the current agreement that we have now we we know that mr edwards is looking for and understand looking for some changes to that agreement and um you know knowing that i think we were comfortable um getting the one year so that they could could continue to book and continue to operate while we worked on something potentially longer okay um and mr edwards i don't know if you have any comments about the one year and kind of your feelings about that because i have some concerns over that short of a time period well here's the situation okay the situation is that when we repair the theater we're right now we've we've had to repair the orchestra pit we've been closed and we've been dark all of august okay we have two or three payrolls going on inside the theater okay we're a for-profit for big three entertainment we're for so big entertainment does two things it books and it runs a theater okay um and it also runs a restaurant okay and so all those people have a payroll okay and when we're closed the payroll still continues on maybe we have to so recently um i think we spent about 148 000 in payroll and we've been closed all of august in september we have 12 shows and after that we have a bunch of shows um all the way through the year but again the point is we lost 148 000 in august while we spent 700 000 fixing the orchestra pit which is a beautiful job they did an amazing job it's new cylinders it's new electrical it's up in the air it's where it belongs it's it's a great job they did and we're very happy for what has happened i was up and down on that orchestra pit the other day so i enjoyed the fact that it worked okay finally okay so um and and so so but in the same instance our payrolls run on and no one came and said hey i'll help you with your payroll and quite frankly we needed that help we still need that help we're going to ask you for subsidy for it you know somewhere along the line here because i need to be reimbursed for the fact that i've been closed because of something that happened a year ago and and we're still running a business inside the theater that where we have employees and we have staff and we don't want to lose them so we of course have to pay them we have to pay their insurance we have to pay their matching taxes and all things go along with being in business um it's it's very expensive and um so um stopping and starting is not a good thing for a theater um we talked about this this is the i i say it's a lifeline to the to the um the waterfront district uh of the arts and and that's because people come to the theater uh for all times times of hardships um during the hurricane we had um we had a situation where between hurricanes we were supposed to put we had sold sold out black crows okay and i expected because right in the middle of it they were in the state our orchestra pit was 10 foot of water we pumped it out we fixed the theater we had mold we got rid of the we remunerated it we took care of it all thanks to help with uh staff and we were able to put that show on and when that show came on 1500 people showed up out of the 2000 that we sold seats over 1800 and uh 1900 and i was amazed that anybody came because it was we were supposed to be you know evacuating for the next storm so i asked people why are you here and the answer was emphatically we needed a break this is where we thought we'd get it so this is born a theater this is a place for the community to come and be comfortable during pandemic and i won't okay during pandemic we were the only theater that opened up for the florida orchestra for social distancing okay now we put up the plastic we got the we paid for the masks you know we did everything as a theater that we needed to do and we were socially distanced in the theater and we're socially distanced on the stage so the florida orchestra played in sections okay i mean it was really a very interesting thing in the meantime the edwards family foundation which hadn't done much you know during the pandemic i was at it was asked by meals on wheels for kids to give them money we ended up packaging those groceries inside the the theater in the in the front lobby and getting them into the trucks and delivering them to the families that needed them and we were able to put out over 50 000 during pandemic over 50 000 meals out of that theater that theater has been used that's a very special place in this town for everyone and it's special to me because especially everyone everybody goes there okay um they expect us to be there and give them a great a great we sell fun we sell you know we're the ones in town that sell fun and so you know i'm just saying hey you know um we've we've done a lot of things we just you know we just need help from all of you and you know we've got so many things we you know this there's millions of dollars it's going to take to to get this theater up to speed you know it's been 20 plus years since the city's really put any money into the to the theater and it needs to needs to badly okay whether i run it or somebody else runs it you need and we all need to fix a piece of city property that's not mine that needs to be fixed and and if i may interject for just a moment um we'll be working together to pursue both county and state funding so we already have that on the on the books yes well and and to my point i mean you know the it needs a lot of work like you just talked about and it's not just hurricane damage it's upgrades that need to realistically happen um i think with that amount of work what i see i think if i were in your shoes i would want a greater time length commitment um i don't want to be the one that fixes it and gets it right right and then you go out to for bids and somebody else says oh this is great i'll take it exactly so and that's my point and and i have here with me today also live nation and representative from live nation that's here on behalf of our i'm just going to turn that here and say hello and and a lot of other people here that you know realize all the hard work and and effort we put into this and it's important that we keep it this way so i guess maybe rob i don't know um if you want to chime in as far as the administration's flexibility around looking at a longer term extension um i don't know with everything else going on right now and recognizing that we have this you know commitment for the work mr edwards is going to put in more commitment more time um one year to me doesn't even seem to really like even get us there i think we'll probably still be doing work on the facility throughout that entire year what would be the flexibility to give a little bit longer of an extension so there is more certainty and then my next follow-up question to that would be is it the administration's intention to go out for rfp at that point once whatever that time period of extension is ends so i appreciate your question council member we're certainly having good discussions with mr edwards and we'll see where we end up at uh on a potential one-year extension we do think that if we weren't able to achieve that it probably is time to look at an rfp of course you know mr edwards could go through that process and be selected as part of that but it's been a long time since we did an rfp and we think it probably would be a good idea okay i'm not sure that i agree um i think that's still up for a lot of discussion and uh i just i i think also there's a follow-up to the damage that we saw from the storms and i realized that you know that was kind of a unique piece of damage to a city facility and um you know we've fixed it now but did we mitigate the actual entry point where that water came in because you don't want to just continue to throw good money over bad if we would god forbid have another event yes and and we've started that work for example with the orchestra pit um the electric that was down where the water got to it all of that electric has been raised um we are working with engineering to do some other things to make sure that that um those most flood prone areas are protected in the future we need to do the same with other mechanical equipment because it's all at that um that ground level yeah very good i'm glad to hear that and so i'll just reiterate before i i yield my time chair that i just feel like we've got a lot of moving pieces here i don't know that the time is right to go out for a new rfp i certainly would support having a conversation that looks like a longer extension with big three at this point so uh that's my position i'll leave it there thank you chair thank you vice chair hanowitz thank you and thank you for the wonderful presentation um robert blackman did a good job of talking about all you've done for the city in a broader context and for those that are not aware of what you've done for a city just in general i'm very appreciative of the day i will tell you this the foundation for the arts that you mentioned your pinellas county schools partnership you know having a one million students go through there i went there as i'm a mentor to one of the school one of the children in pinellas county schools and i went to one of the events and it was fantastic and you do this all the time and my daughter and i've mentioned this before at meetings you know she uh is a dance studio and they get to do their dance performance at the mahaffey and watching kids in our community up there in a stage like that is fantastic um so so i love all that i will say right now what i'm really concerned about on the city's part and we've the last time that we renovated this was 2005. so there was a renovation in 1987 and then 2005 so that's about every 20 years we're at year 21 and again so we are at that point we've had so many conversations about city assets that need money there was a laundry list just given and i'm not even sure if it obviously did not include everything um but i want people that are listening to understand our city does have a lot of needs including the msc in in in downtown so we really do before we start looking into other things we really need to address some of these things i know that you're looking at state and federal funding but at the same time we have a responsibility to do some of this work and there it is in the it is in the cra and every time we've had these conversations before in different contexts and i'm just going to put it out there i've mentioned this before in different contexts there are assets we need to invest in because we own it so that's i'm going to say i'm not going to get into the one year two year any of that because i'm going to wait for you all to do your thing and i will have my opinion on it and i'll give you the opportunity to do the magic that you all do and then bring it to us but i i do have those concerns we went to rfp on the marina and guess what now we're doing it we're going to probably do it all ourselves so i just i you know um i think that investment is important because i think at the end it costs more money when you don't invest and to clarify thank you uh council vice chair we are also looking at the cra funds in addition to state and county funds as well so i'm glad putting the package together so i apologize i left okay i'm glad you said that that's all i want to hear thank you thank you councilmember driscoll thank you chair and thank you both for the report and bill for all that you have done and continue to do for our city um the mahaffey is um an extremely valuable asset for our city um and it is it's really difficult to see it in the condition that it's in i mean most people when they go to a show they don't really notice but i have the misfortune if you will of knowing um more than most about what's really wrong there and um i could not be more supportive of investment um especially through this area that's that's part of what it's there for so let's not let it let's not let it sit there um we need to take care of this we do not have plans anymore for another performing arts center in or near downtown this is what we've got and as vice chair hanowitz said we have so many other things that we're trying to take care of right now but this is one it's one that actually is um a strong part a significant part of our arts community our performing arts community in particular but you do have opportunities to bring in the visual arts to highlight other types of arts so um any investment that we can make not just in repairs but in upgrades and really modernizing the facility and this is going to get me uh give me a little bit of a segue into talking about the florida orchestra because there are changes that need to be made to the mahaffee theater to make it um more um user friendly for the orchestra so you're talking about the um changes to the stage things like that but i don't feel like anything is going to happen after seeing this video here today because it wasn't really talked about as one of the assets that comes out of the mahaffee and i'm really disappointed that there wasn't more said about that it was first brought up as if it was you know some homeless orphan child that was taken care of the florida orchestra made it through the pandemic yes with help yes with creativity what you saw them doing online while they weren't allowed to work together the way that they had to rehearse separately for shows that they would perform together was absolutely extraordinary what they give back to the community is extraordinary they are not just a tenant and yet and they have their full calendar of events if you look at what is going on at the mahaffee if you go to the mahaffee's website and you click on the upcoming shows there isn't a single florida orchestra performance listed they start in september just like every just like the others i don't understand that there is no reason why a website for the mahaffee doesn't list the florida orchestra performances it's as if they don't even exist may i speak yes sir okay first of all the florida orchestra is a rental art company and they rent from the theater okay they sell their own tickets they have their own website they do their own thing and they end up renting the theater as their place to play okay so they don't sell the tickets to us they everything is is the florida orchestra is a totally separate organization that comes to us and rents it rents the theater and the space um from from us they're a rental organization right um that's totally different business animal than what we're dealing with which is we sell tickets through live nation and through ticket master uh rather and um and because that's what we do we'd be happy to sell tickets for the florida orchestra but they sell their own okay so if they sell their own and they're doing everything themselves then what they do is they rent the stage and they pay the union and you know we we haven't raised their prices in 11 years it's it's it's below the race of any um long profit organization out there we haven't changed the rates in 13 years even though prices have gone up 35 40 so we support the florida orchestra and i personally support the florida orchestra financially for years okay so i i appreciate what they're doing um i try to give them as many saturdays as possible i'm right right behind me is the people from live nation who beat me up because i don't have saturdays because i give them to the florida orchestra and they beat me up because i can't get put the shows that want to play on saturday that's a big night to play in the theater i give those nights to the florida orchestra okay so they have almost 80 90 dates 100 days something like that that's already booked for next year and um and we support them so i i can't support them anymore other than what we do they get the use of a members lounge um that that we made for our members of a foundation that you know is the bill edwards foundation for us with people who pay okay um so we rent that lounge out to the world orchestra so they can have a lounge to be in and we do the best we can to support them bill if i may add just like clarified only because typically the season the orchestra events are on the website so i just said why aren't they a website um the the mahaffee folks i guess received the um assets from the orchestra uh late last week and are in the process of putting those on the website now so you should see those on the website any any minute for this uh season that starts next month all right i'll hit refresh soon thank you and and yes it is because of the um the agreement between the city and um big three entertainment that the florida orchestra gets those dates because it is very specific in that agreement which we don't have with us here i have a copy but we don't have it in our backup um it is in the use agreement that the florida orchestra be prioritized and that's why i'm always looking for that yes they need to have the dates but they also need to be recognized as an important part of the mahaffee experience and so if we're talking about continuing this partnership if we're talking about working together to make improvements if we're talking about extending this in any way we need to be talking about the florida orchestra i am very interested in doing an rfp process for this after 14 years i think it's healthy for us to do that especially in the entertainment industry things are changing all the time it's a tough business we want to make sure that we have an operator that really meets the needs that we have today for the mahaffee and that very well could be mr edwards and his team it might be someone else but i think going through that process is going to be a very healthy exercise for us all and so i wanted to since we started talking about that i wanted to make sure it was clear where i stand on that today but no matter what happens i'm going to be watching to see what happens with the florida orchestra because what i saw today and and what i've seen in the past is an area where i think there is opportunity for great improvement thank you thank you chair thank you council member hardy thank you chair bill thank you very much um i want to make sure we recognize uh not only the the the experience and expertise that you you've brought over the the past decade plus um but the the the commitment from both your foundation and your personal family um and and that goes a long way there are no other city assets where we have we have citizens putting money into the asset itself and um and i want to recognize that and thank you i um i agree with you and this should be on the agenda that um that this this asset is important to the city um it's not a not a not a core asset but it's a it's a cultural important asset and uh and i'll look forward to uh to to talking about um to to councilmember hanowitz's point that every 20 years um there's need for an upgrade and this time probably more than most um we need to recognize this asset and figure out what we're going to do with it and i'll look forward to that discussion thank you very much thank you chair thank you councilmember floyd thank you i put myself on here just to ask one quick question of administration um i think it might have been answered by councilmember driscoll but how long has it been since there was an rfp done the last rfp was done in 2010 in late 2010 with the big three taking over in 2011. okay thanks i just wanted clarity on that because administrator girdus had mentioned it had been a while but i didn't have it firmed up in my mind uh okay um other than that i'll just say uh you know thank you for uh the work that you've done at them happy uh i support us um investing in it uh and i'll just take this moment to say like uh when we have assets the city owns that are revenue generating i feel we should be creative uh i think that's a common uh refrain you hear from me all the time uh this is one of them they bring me a lot less qualms to invest in than other things because i know that there's opportunities for us in those investments so i look forward to getting into more depth on this but i'll just leave it there for today thank you thank you councilmember fix sanders thank you and thank you beth and thank you so much mr elwood how are you i agree with definitely with councilmember harding um with the aspect i've come to the mahaffey i've come to see and participate with the children of class act because you didn't have to extend it out to the children the way that you have and i did a facebook post because if you were to just walk and close your eyes and to hear the laughter of those children um and to see what you have introduced them to um and your efforts to bring inclusive acts to the city of saint petersburg i'm going to say thank you i i agree with councilmember gabbard about that one year um i agree that you know you haven't invested a lot of your own money um into the mahaffey and i guess you know people say well he has it but still does that make it right um it's a city uh own facility but again thank you um but my biggest biggest gratitude is for what you do for the children of the city to see all the school buses come um and tour and be outside and and to actually laugh and to be introduced some of our greatest saint petersburg citizens are angela basses are you know that are out there doing those things what if we had more children that were introduced to things like that so again thank you and i truly support um the efforts that we're doing here today and um i think that's all i have chair thank you thank you well mr edwards thank you so much for i mean it's been echoed across you know thank you for all you do throughout the community east west south north um you know i don't it doesn't get unnoticed by i think our residents and certainly by us so we're very appreciative um just just quickly i'll comment um you know i agree with vice chair hanowitz you know i'm gonna let administration do their thing and then they'll come back to us and we'll and we'll have that discussion but i think the i think what you've heard is the over overwhelming support of making sure the mahafi is what the mahafi thinks what we think it should be and what we expect it to be and so how we how we do that whether it's cra and tdc and state you know um i i had that conversation with beth about td about tdc i sit on that board and so um you know i i know some iteration of it almost came two years ago but anyway i i think again my the point of all of this is we believe in the mahafi you've been a great steward of the mahafi over 14 years and so um whatever administration brings us back at that point then we'll have that discussion but the big thing i want to i want you to walk away with is i i'm so proud when i watch a you know six and a half minute video of that um you know i i got to bring my kids there a few times this past year uh i i will give council member driscoll some credit um one of them was a uh uh i'm getting emotional because my my son had such a great time it was a florida orchestra event and he literally spoke to cynthia arrivo from the stands one-on-one having a conversation with her and so uh for the ability for him to be able to do that um that's a memory i'll never forget that's a core memory that my heart will never let go and so um i i know that you want to help create those memories that's been talked about uh over the last you know uh 30 or 40 minutes already but thank you for what you've done we're going to continue to to work through this path with you and uh looking forward to the next conversation that administration brings back to us thank you so much mr good to see you okay i had to hold back a tear all right uh we're going to move into f3 and we're going to talk about uh tampa bay rowdies an extension of their agreement and beth is going to stay with us i am hello again everybody um i'm also very excited to bring forward i hate to say it but a one-year agreement for the rowdies to continue operating and managing allang stadium uh their current agreement is scheduled to end in november of 2025 but we want to get that to november of 2026 so they can plan um their next season and get that underway um the rowdies have been playing in allang since 2011 and they've managed the facility since october of 2014. it too as the mahaffey's next door neighbor sustained sustained damage during helene and milton and i want to thank uh team president ryan helfrick and vice president of operations uh jeff parkinson behind me for all of their work and of course engineering for working to get the facility repaired in time to um to get the players back on the pitch we are still working on sustainability efforts we're raising again mechanical and electrical and doing those things but we first wanted to get the the team back on the pitch and the fans back in the stands and now we're working to to improve that facility as well so um speaking of the fans and uh of course specifically ralph's mob the rowdies average about 5 500 people per match and about 6 400 per match per playoff match um and i'm sure you all know when there's a match going on because you see the green and gold hoops um walking around downtown so it's it's definitely um a great asset for our downtown uh in that way and also the visiting teams stay in our hotels and they do away watch parties and some of our bars and restaurants downtown so the rowdies have been a great partner for us so um we are only doing a one year to to let them get through and we've we've got some some things we're working through otherwise um which i think we both sides agree that the one year is is the way to go for now which brings us to november of 2026 the agreement is uh truly uh the same as it has been with one um change and that's only just uh increasing the number of parking spaces they have for staff because they've increased the number of staff they have working out of the out of the facility because you know ticket sales and a new beautiful um store and all of those things so that's the only substantive change everything is exactly as it has been um for the last few years so um so with that we would just ask for council's approval of that one-year agreement and again the team president ryan helfrick is here and we're happy to answer any questions that you have thank you beth councilmember driscoll thank you were there no public comments i don't i don't think so okay um thank you for that and thank you to the team for um continuing to provide uh such an incredible um sports you know sporting experience for our community i have um said to quite a few people lately that if at the end of the day we end up where we just have the rowdies and that is st petersburg's sports team it's it's actually i'm okay with that because because the right as much as i want as much as i would love for the the race to call st petersburg home forever we know how that might go but i'm really hoping that even beyond this extension that we are able to work towards a path for the rowdies to call st petersburg home for the long haul i mean just watch the families that go watch the ralph's mom i mean some people go just to watch all of that entertainment you know but it is it is just such an incredible experience on our waterfront um with a sport that really speaks every language and um touches everyone in some way it is an incredible asset for our city um i do have um i wanted to give the team um i wanted to give you an opportunity to speak if you um if you would like and say a few words i also would like to know from either of you um are there repairs and and upgrades i mean we had things that needed to be done before the storms so i'd like to know what are we looking at this is yet another asset where we've got to put money into it to keep it going um but where do we stand with that and is there um along with this extension is there a plan for continued repairs maintenance upgrades to keep us moving forward with soccer here well i'll certainly let let ryan jump in but just from a city perspective um contractually um the city does provide 200 000 per year for a general cip and they provide a plan and we're doing that the above and beyond that we are working on repairs um we we're full steam ahead getting ready for the season we're a little bit slower now doing getting the rest of the things but engineering is working on that getting all the sustainability things but yes as we're looking at the cra and looking at all of the things within it al lang is certainly in that conversation so there's we haven't made any determinations at this point but absolutely it's it's in that those conversations and in our conversations with the center for the arts and with the feedback we receive from council so we are talking about that yes okay okay great good afternoon thanks for having me uh so the rowdies are tampa bay's first professional sports team started in 1975 in the modern era and the rebirth of the rowdies was in 2010. i've been blessed to uh to be the fifth employee with the team and with them since 2010 and as we have played at allang stadium and been able to call that home the last 15 years we've created a lot of special memories for people all across the region more importantly we've given back to the community we actually just held last week our back to school or a couple weeks ago our back to school clinic where we brought in close to 100 kids provided them with backpacks school supplies and our players ended up putting on a clinic for them those are the things that we like to do and we love to give back in the off season we're focused on bringing high school soccer to allang stadium we also will work with local youth soccer clubs to have them play matches at allang stadium and we would like to get back to a point where we're hosting other events at allang as well so we appreciate the support thanks i'm i'm glad you brought that up it was actually um the other question that i had um or really just a statement as we as we look ahead and um and look at a possible further extension the additional events like the the non-soccer events is something that i really miss and it seems like we're we have such an incredible opportunity to to bring in um you know to book outdoor concerts and and things like that um things that we used to see haven't seen in a while and um i'm hoping that we can come to an agreement to start bringing that back is is that part of the future that you see uh we will see i think the one unique thing about soccer is the ball rolls on the pitch and to replace that pitch is anywhere between 400 and 600 000 and when you have a concert take place there and you have to put down flooring and the stage it kills the grass on the pitch and during the season it is tough to replace the pitch and give it six to eight weeks rest before we start play again so we're exploring different options i can tell you we would like to see more events there as well um but we'll see how we can bring all that to fruition all right that sounds good well thank you um thanks for all you're doing and beth thank you for the for overseeing um what looks like a small stadium but it's a it's a big job so thanks for all you're doing thank you chair thank you councilmember harding thank you chair thank you uh to both city and the rowdies um soccer has gained popularity i am uh a rowdies fan from uh the original rowdies um my my family is a soccer family um and uh and yeah i i am still reffing today i don't know if you guys need refs um just throwing that just throwing that out there um and the uh you need a fourth job she's laughing about what i look like in shorts um and uh and i i greatly uh appreciate um the the sport itself right there are nine um private private kids groups just in the saint pete area every high school has a team um it is definitely still an up and up and coming sport to this day um the the city uh did a an amazing job taking what what clearly is a a baseball arena and in a shazam kind of moment transforming it into into what it is today the uh the rowdies um have have been a great organization we have season tickets um no we've met plenty of friends this is this like the mahaffee um is part of the culture of saint pete and and look forward to it continuing so thank you for the efforts and thank you for the success okay thank you i'll move approval okay uh just quickly beth thanks for all the work on this and then um ryan i think you've heard it from us i mean we we really enjoy having the rowdies here i know my family does the city does culturally it's a part of the fabric um and i'll just i'll repeat myself from the last item i think if we're going to use ci or we're going to use cra for cip there then we have county tdc um and so we gotta we gotta find avenues where we can and if we're gonna if we're gonna invest in it i think first professional sports team here in pinellas county we gotta we gotta use the tdc for for what it's there for and i know you know that beth i'm just saying it out loud okay we've got a motion and a second seeing as no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item f3 passes unanimously okay thank you beth thank you very much for both of the items thanks so much okay we're going to move into f4 we've got an uh we've got a site plan approval extension for fairfield avenue uh and council members there is no action required on this item this is an update only mark welcome thank you thank you good afternoon council members council chair uh i'm here to this afternoon to uh kind of give you the latest on the fairfield avenue apartment project and uh just to confirm the uh site plan extension site plan approval extension so uh i didn't prepare a presentation because we've recently been able to connect with all of you on this matter but i wanted to give you a few updates um in in recent weeks the developer first of all back in april before the uh expiration of their current site plan approval they did apply in writing or request in writing for an extension which was a condition of granting that so they did meet that requirement in recent weeks they've completed demolition on the site in preparation for construction and most importantly they have now received a firm commitment from hud for their 221 d4 loan which is a cornerstone of their project financing so for all of those reasons we did the pod or person of designation was able to approve a site plan approval extension for them to be able to begin construction soon so i'm available for any questions i also have representatives from the developing development team here if you have any questions okay we'll go to councilmember gabbard thank you chair i'll be brief i just wanted to say thank you mark thank you amy for continuing to stay on this project this is a very special project to me um one of the first that we put through the 1339 legislation that we did that was groundbreaking back in the day and we continue to push this project forward and i'm so glad um see angelo and fred here today and so glad that you all have secured financing through hud that things are continuing to move forward the demo is done we're going to put a shovel in that ground one of these days so i'm looking forward to it and thank you again for your continued commitment to making this project happen so thank you thank you chair and i should mention that uh financial closing on all funding sources is currently scheduled for october 22nd and i believe there will be a groundbreaking soon after that okay vice chair hanowitz thank you and council member gabbard ditto with everything she said y'all are doing great work here i just want to get kind of and mark you just started with kind of a timeline of what we can see in the future i'm not holding anyone to exactly a timeline but just so those that have not we have new council members on here um just to kind of give us what you see when this is going to happen and what moving forward i'd invite uh angelo to come up and and provide kind of the latest from the development team on what the timeline looks like as we go through these few next steps thank you mark and uh we've been working on this project for so long that mark originally started the project working with the county and rob had a different job and amy had a different job and but i've had the same job the entire four years on the project so uh we're very fortunate uh my business partner fred is one of the lead managers on the development team senator jeff brandis uh his family originally owned the piece of land it was very complicated structure because half of the land was owned by the lumber company and half of the land was owned by the family um the the 64 000 question is taking a little longer be ultimately because of financing and raising the money and what makes the project really unique in addition to being 100 affordable housing it's being built by concrete concrete is 25 more expensive than building your typical uh affordable housing apartments and really market apartments if it was been built in lumber we probably would be finished with the building uh in the next few months so the short answer to your question uh councilman henowitz we will plan to break ground in october my birthday was october 16th so i was aiming for that but it looks like the week of the 20th worst case within a week or two of that because the demolition is finished the building permits are ready uh they have to be in order for a hud loan closing to occur we anticipate breaking ground immediately so all kidding aside the loan servicer who's been working with us for four years has offered to pay for all the golden shovels and you'll be invited um hard hats included and with a little luck we will be starting you know first first day in november it's uh scheduled for about 18 month build which in construction world means 20 months um and the beautiful part of the uh actual deployment of the construction is there's three separate buildings uh pinellas county housing authority is involved they'll be managing the buildings 20 of the 264 units uh are allocated for 50 ami the party piece that i'm most proud of uh 25 of the project will be allocated for 80 mi 80 ami and the other 55 for up to 120 ami market studies indicate that the uh 55 probably will anticipate to be averaged around that 100 110 ami number because there's three buildings one should be ready in 18 to 19 months the second one within six weeks and then the third one was within another six weeks and the idea being that you can deploy each building and all the ami uh residents will be spread out somewhat equally through all three the buildings there will be a pool a community room a bike corral it's right on uh pinellas trail and there will be a computer lab in each of the three buildings for the residents use we've jokingly called this project a unicorn it checks all of the boxes and so we're very excited and and i shout out to both the former mayor the current mayor the city council here the county commissioners and certainly amy and mark and mr gurdas for just helping us keep this thing alive but most especially i want to um thank state senator uh brandis's family um i told them we could get it done in two or three years so i got pretty close they have they have stayed committed to this project they view this as a legacy for their um grandfather who started the lumber company or bought the lumber company back in the 30s so well thank you for that overview it's a wonderful legacy wonderful work we want to keep that unicorn alive i'm sure that when you started this like all of us we never imagined all the things that are happening geopolitically and everywhere um terrorists and all the other crazy stuff that are coming down the pipeline and you know i want to see this sooner rather than later so 18 months i'm looking forward to it even maybe 22 but but we're looking forward to seeing it so but we're using the same contractor that fred and i used to finish reflection we started reflection in april may of 22 and we had the co in august of 24 was a probably a more difficult time that was a lot more complicated project 18 stories so we feel like we have the same team ready to go and feel pretty confident in the timeline good good well thank you so much well uh thank you for the update mark and team and uh i would just echo everybody's excitement i think to uh one get shovels in the ground and and then open the doors for this so thanks for bringing this update uh mark and team thank you so much my pleasure all right we're going to move into f5 this is our cdbgdr implementation implementation support and technical assistance and this was pulled uh by council member gabbard council member gabbard i'll throw i'll turn it over to you you first chair um yeah so i went ahead and pulled this uh because i mean we have all been very anxiously awaiting um you know kind of what the path forward to deployment of these dollars is going to look like and uh i was sitting on council when we got arpa funding back during covid and it was very important uh council member fig sanders council member driscoll that we uh had council involved every single step of the way as it pertained to not only executing programming around those dollars but the implementation and uh really being able to give our feedback i look at this money very much the same way um this is kind of one-time funding you know we've got a lot of diverse priorities with funding but um we get one shot to get it right and so when i saw this large amount on the consent order i thought that it was appropriate for us to pull it have a conversation about it and kind of set that precedent that city council really wants to be engaged in every single dollar that is spent through these this program so um that's the reason why i pulled it and with that i'll go ahead and turn it over to amy foster thank you councilmember gabbard um before i turn it over to aubrey i just wanted to do a quick thank you um as many of you know this work along with all of our other recovery work has been piled on top of the normal work that staff has been doing and without aubrey's leadership and just right now i don't know that we would be here today um we also had a great team with horn who helped us put together our action plan next week is our 45-day deadline from hud so we're hoping to hear about an approval um next week and looking to bring you some type of grant agreement hopefully in an early october time frame so i just it it has been way more than aubrey and jess every department in the city has been a key component of this claude's department has had a heavy lift as well as finance and legal and so it's exciting to be here today to move forward these consulting services agreements but i just wanted to take a moment to thank all of the staff members across the city administration that have been a part of this work and with that i'm going to turn it over to aubrey thank you administrator foster and council members happy to be here and there's the clicker as i'm aubrey phillips strategic initiatives and grants director for the city uh today we're here to request council approval for vendor agreements to support the 159 million sunrise st pete disaster recovery program that's funded by the community development block grant for disaster recovery and that's a six-year grant program so just as an overview of these two agreements uh it is two agreements one with horn llp one with icf incorporated for a total contract value of just over 12.9 million over the six-year grant period these two vendor services agreements provide the capacity and expertise needed to ensure effective and compliant implementation and this really is important with these funds because it helps to minimize the risk of non-compliance and the federal of penalties associated with non-compliance so today we're requesting a council authorization to execute these agreements and related documentation and approval of the supplemental appropriation from the cdbgdr fund to support these agreements for some context on this i definitely appreciate and uh that council wants to be engaged and we've appreciated council's engagement up to this point in this process we did originally place this on the consent agenda in anticipation of that forthcoming hud approval of the action plan we'll speak more to this in the next steps as well but once we receive that action plan approval we'll be coming back to you again with a full report that includes the grant agreement with hud a staffing memo and an amendment to the city's agreement with horn for those direct beneficiary costs that are associated with residential recovery and relief particularly and so today's action is critical for it really permits us to continue our planning activities with this vendor support and expertise and really ensure that we are ready to proceed without missing any beat once we receive that hud approval i do want to emphasize here that this is unlike some of the coveted relief dollars cdbgdr is governed by decades of really layered complex federal regulations so there's extensive federal registry requirements that apply to these funds and non-compliance really risks not only that our community is unable to benefit from these funds but worst case scenario would be a recapture of funds where we're having to pay back grant funds so that's something that we're really wanting to make sure that we've got the capacity and the expertise to make sure that staff are supported in implementing these projects compliantly oh i may have pushed it too many times no that's it so just to um refresh everyone's memory on our timeline to date in january we received notice of the allocation of these funds also in january we issued an rfp for comprehensive disaster recovery services which included services associated with implementation of the community development block grant through february into june we did a lot of consulting with council and community engagement to inform the action plan development that included surveys two public hearings a pop-up session at city hall on tour and a 30-day public comment period on july 15th we submitted our draft action plan to hud as approved by city council hud has been reviewing that and as administrator foster referenced we're expecting approval by the 45-day period ends august 29th so the draft action plan that was approved by council at the june public hearing directed the 159 million in cdbgr funds to a variety of programs over that six-year grant period that included residential recovery and elevation programming affordable rental housing public infrastructure mitigation and disaster relief programs that helps get checks in people's pockets very quickly to help with the financial impact of these storms at this point i'd like to take a moment to introduce our vendor partners who are here with us today deb siefert is from icf incorporated she's going to be providing support on capacity planning along with the rest of the icf team and technical assistance as staff get familiar with these complex federal requirements and then also joining us are scott keller ryan flannery and tyler bridges from horn llp ryan and tyler are going to walk us through the next few slides detailing the residential recovery program and the public infrastructure programs that they'll be leading up the implementation on felicity council it's great to be in front of you again ryan flannery horn's director of policy and compliance if approved i'll be serving as your client executive and senior advisor tyler will be serving as your program director i just wanted to take a moment to thank the administration to thank staff for all the great work and collaboration that we've that we've had along the way developing the plan and just take a moment to to thank council for consideration of this contract we're very much looking forward to supporting the city's recovery efforts as you all know it's deeply personal to me so this opportunity really is special and i look forward to everything that we can do to support again in this recovery i'm gonna hand it over to tyler but both scott and myself are available for any any questions you may have after thank you good afternoon nice to see everyone again so we're going to go over just a few slides here to focus particularly on the residential recovery and elevation programs and also the disaster relief reimbursement program so with the residential recovery and elevation program there's two pathways rehabilitation or reconstruction and that would also include providing funds for elevations or participation in the elevate florida program as non-federal match whereas the reimbursement program allows for reimbursement of repairs already made and through the date of application so 35 million and 12 million dollars respectively and we're looking at serving 98 households under the rehab recon pathway and 288 households under the reimbursement pathway and then finally with the disaster relief reimbursement program this is available to both homeowners and renters those earning less than 80 percent ami and this would allow money to get out the door quickly to households in need and they can receive up to fifteen thousand dollars for a maximum of six consecutive months for expenses that they've already incurred such as rent mortgage utilities etc all know under the residential recovery programs they are available to both lmi households or those earning less than 80 percent of the area median income and urgent need if the funding remains available after the prioritization um you know goes it goes through so prioritization will be on low-mod households uh and also you know families with dependents such as children or elderly etc okay so the immediate next step is to get these programs up and running um so we want to immediately um you know engage the public um with this uh concept no wrong front door which is to make this as easy as possible and make entry as easy as possible as well and so uh through outreach engagement uh social media the web working with community partners and non-profit organizations and also with city council to help you know make the public aware that uh these programs are launching um and they're going to be available to apply um to receive assistance soon um so not only will the city be providing regular email updates and reports to council and working uh with council you know through the program design and implementation uh phases um but we're also going to be making sure that the public is aware um that this is coming and they'll be able to you know apply shortly uh we're already looking at locations to establish an in-person customer service intake and call center um it'll be you know geographically uh accessible and also ada compliant and accessible we're looking at hiring uh bilingual staff for the case managers and call centers and also translation services will be available and then although i will be open of course during business hours we're also looking at uh staffing on evenings and weekends to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to get that in-person uh you know customer service um and then finally uh the application status will be available to the applicants every step of the way it will be available online and we'll also be providing regular updates of course to council and also the public at large about the the status of all applications and even individual applications um you know that they'll be able to access uh where their application is at so this is just a kind of high level workflow there are three colors here the green color is a key step for the homeowner the blue is a key step for horn as the consultant and then orange is a key step for the city the all parties are going to be involved in every step of the process the entire way but in summary the applicants will apply we will then complete the intake and eligibility review process so make sure we have all their documentation their applications are filled out they'll have a designated case manager that will walk them through that entire process we then perform the damage assessment and dob stands for duplication of benefits so we look at the funds that they've already received either from insurance or for you know other sources and then calculate what assistance is needed to make their award whether it's additional repairs that need to be made or repairs they've already made themselves that then goes to environmental review um and the city uh is the responsible entity so it's required the city of course uh sign off in those environmental reviews and then the city also has a step built into the process to perform a qa qc and ultimately ultimately make that award to the beneficiary of the homeowner or or the renter and so the city is actually engaging in that process and signing the agreement we then get to where we all want to be which is construction um and uh eventually when the construction is complete we turn the keys back over to the homeowner and hopefully they're happy and we're all happy too and we get to close out the the each application and then eventually the entire program okay with that give it back to aubrey so horn will also be providing support to our public works administration on the public infrastructure and mitigation program helping with some of that planning about which projects we're pursuing um we do have a requirement as our we discussed back in june that these funds must 70 of the funds must benefit folks who make 80 of the area median income or less and that requirement is program-wide including the public infrastructure mitigation program so that'll also inform the planning about what projects are pursued where in terms of the background on this procurement and how we got to today so as i mentioned earlier in january we did an rfp for comprehensive disaster recovery and emergency management consulting services and really our discussion as staff was we're going to need to do an rfp to get vendors to help support cdbgdr implementation hey is there an opportunity here for some efficiencies and going ahead and making sure that we have vendors on call that we can qualify now so that when an emergency strikes we have pre-qualified vendors who we can go to to help support emergency services management consulting services so we had five vendors that we pre-qualified for those selected services and then as needs arrive vendors submit proposals that are tailored to those individual project specific needs those agreements that are executed on a project specific basis they follow the city's standard contracting processes including council approval for any contracts over a hundred thousand dollars so these two agreements before you today one is with icf for overall technical assistance and capacity building one of the things that staff we've done with program design to help manage costs while making sure that we've got the appropriate capacity and expertise is many of our programs outside of residential recovery and relief and public infrastructure we are implementing in-house where we have existing programs that do buyouts and acquisition or home buyer assistance we're leveraging that existing staff expertise and knowledge of how our community works but we're supplementing that with this technical assistance and capacity building from icf to make sure those programs are done in a way that's compliant with hud's requirements and then horn is providing specific program management services for that public infrastructure residential recovery and relief those are our first priority programs to get up and rolling based on council's prior direction about the priorities to get folks assisted out in our community as part of recovery and get investments critical investments made in our infrastructure these costs for these two consulting services agreements are reimbursable under our cdbgr grant some of the costs may be charged to the five percent administrative cost line item that's part of the the overall budget others are eligible for direct activity delivery costs that is billable to each program's budget that we're anticipating as i mentioned earlier hud's approval of our action plan and that grant agreement is uh it will be pending that approval of that action plan that grant agreement acceptance will be brought to council as i mentioned along with an amendment to incorporate those direct benefit costs as tyler was describing this is really a turnkey service for residents they're not having to learn how to manage general contractors or great quotes from vendors it is a member of the community saying i was impacted i need help and they are walked through the process with their case manager and that also has a savings for us on the city side that we're not having to set up hundreds of homeowners as vendors in the city's financial accounting system and then in terms of next steps we'll be executing the vendor agreements pending council's approval we're anticipating in the next week or so hud's approval of the cdbgdr action plan we understand from hud that they have the grant agreement ready to go so the action plan approval and grant agreement should come to us right together if not one right after the other in september we'll bring that back to council for grant agreement acceptance and appropriation you'll see the staffing plan to approve those we are not filling any cdbgdr dedicated staff until we have that approved grant agreement and then the amended vendor agreements as mentioned previously in the fall we'll really be getting into engaging with council on program design and launch designing the application intake portal the intake center site selection completing the staff hiring and training making sure that everyone knows the way that we need to do things to make sure that we are meeting all the compliance requirements and finally advertising the programs to be ready for a program launch in early 2026 and that is again of those residential recovery and relief programs so our recommendation to you today is to approve the resolution authorizing consulting services agreements with horn llp and icf incorporated and the supplemental appropriation of 12.9 million from the cdbgdr fund to support those agreement and execution of necessary documents associated with those two consulting services agreements and i'm happy to take any questions you may have thank you councilmember gabbard thank you chair and thank you for the presentation uh very uh glad that we're gonna move this forward and keep you guys kind of rolling on this very complicated quite frankly program um so i don't want to get too in the weeds with it but i do want to kind of understand so we are looking at 12.9 million dollars today for these two agreements and you mentioned that the administrative allowance for kind of the total is five percent so is this being taken because i tried to go back and match this up with what we were given in the action plan the numbers i understand they're kind of probably a little bit all over the place so can you just kind of break it down this these dollars that we're approving today kind of where do they come from in the individual yes so most of what is covered by horn would be covered by horn and l and icf under these agreements would be activity delivery costs so their vendors or the vendors are providing services that are helping deliver the programs that five percent program admin costs and i'll be honest this is one of the things that we are very excited to get expert guidance on helping us navigate because it's important that that activity the program admin cost has that five percent cap per hud requirements and that is for general program administration costs so things like finance uh review and approval of things if it's related though costs associated with delivering particular programs that's where it can come in that activity delivery cost got it so this 12 million is separate from that five percent admin correct okay yes good to know thank you um on the residential program and recognizing this is not all like we're kind of building the plane while flying it once again like we like to do here in the city but we're actually fairly good at um so you know we've got a lot going on and residents that i talk to who are still in very desperate need are looking still for the availability of layering programs that we are going to have with say for instance elevate florida which you mentioned um can you kind of help to walk us through we talked about that timeline and so council received the the item earlier this week that you shared that was kind of that breakdown of the number um and and they name it weird things but in you know kind of total it's 152 um applications that have either been earmarked to proceed or have been finalized and submitted to fema so we know for sure we're going to have 152 right like pretty much and um that is starting to kind of move with the state but we're looking at not having the matching potentially ready until early 2026 how is that all going to work for individuals and recognizing it won't be all 152 because we have those ami limits right um but for those individuals that potentially we could help them with that match how's that timing going to work yes so and thank you for the question because it it has been confusing and it's been an evolving situation that we've really had to stay in close communication with the state to try to navigate um when we originally briefed committee uh back in may maybe it was quite a while ago it seems like ages ago now um one of the early discussions we had about this concept of having cdbgdr be available as that elevate florida match was our concern that the timing may may be the biggest hurdle um as we got more communication from the state about how they were progressing with elevate florida they communicated to us that they are notifying and making final decisions on all elevate florida applicants this month in august um so that and they were telling us that basically if folks are going to wait for your cdbgdr funds to be their match they're not going to qualify for elevate florida because elevate florida is only making awards if folks have that cash in hand to make the match when they're offered the grant award from the state so what we're doing instead is the state has shared with us the information about the applications they received so we're preparing a proactive communication plan to reach out to those applicants they've already expressed interest in elevating their home to help them understand what assistance may become available through cdbgdr whether they might be eligible to apply and if they aren't eligible to apply because of those income limits what other assistance might be available to them so we're looking at flood mitigation assistance and whether that will continue to be an option for homeowners so unfortunately the using cdbgdr is a match for elevate florida because of the state moving very quickly which is great we're happy that people are getting assisted it doesn't look like that's going to work out for that to work out but we are working to make sure that those folks are getting shepherd over into the appropriate programs where they're available so if the state is sharing the information about those who did get approved what about those who have not been approved that's who we're preparing that communication plan getting that information as well yes i mean i have some residents that i've been kind of personally like hand-holding through a lot of this because of the layers of confusion and really quite frankly just this feeling of desperation that am i ever going to be able to get back home yes um and so uh i just wanted to shout out uh representative michelle rayner and representative lindsey cross who both met me at a residence property earlier this week um because she is an elderly lady who is wanting to remain in her home um she has been living first she was in a hotel now she's in an apartment and she had owned that home for 40 years and she kept her insurance in the bank so that she has the match and it's looking like unfortunately according to the information that she's sharing with us that she has been waitlisted and waiting for someone else who probably had the means to go ahead and move forward and do whatever they were going to do for their living to basically drop out of the program and it's incredibly frustrating because if these programs are not built for people like her who are they built for it makes zero sense to me so i'm trying to work and kind of navigate that sort of situation for some residents who are in that kind of unique space right fixed income doing all the right things and have been holding out hope for a program like this that isn't going to happen so then what you're saying is that there could be opportunity for someone like her maybe through this program um so you guys are assuring us that you're going to make that outreach to individuals if we as council members have residents like that can we funnel them over because i mean i did talk with amy about her last week i talked with rob about her in the past um like these are the individuals we should be helping with this these dollars so yes however i will so i'll put a couple caveats on this just because i want to manage expectations recognizing that folks have been through a lot um one the state has been directing folks as has the county who are getting letters that they've been declined from elevate florida to sunrise st pete.org and while there's not specific information you know we haven't gotten our approved action plan yet so it's hard to say yes this program will be available on this state they can sign up there for updates and we'll be pushing notifications and updates as on a recurring basis but also as program applications open for those that did apply to elevate florida as i said we have their application information so they will be getting a direct outreach we also have as part of their elevate florida application they were asked to self-report their income and household size so that's part of how we can get an understanding now of whether and how many folks are likely to fall into our different prioritization criteria that were included in the action plan okay so the message is don't give up hope nothing is guaranteed but we're going to continue to try to provide as much relief as possible yep and if folks go to sunrise st pete.org they can sign up and they'll get those updates as programs launch and applications become available did you have more you want that so council member we also have about nine to 12 applicants from the we are st pete applications that we are holding for sunrise st pete that we believe are going to be more appropriately helped by something with a much higher cap based on the types of needs that they have and so we will refer those into the program whenever it opens as well and aubrey stated it correctly but because i know there's so much so many eyes on this project i do want to just kind of clarify the record a little bit in full transparency so the answer is yes that the majority of this work for our contractors is going to come out of activity delivery costs that is more true for horn with the single family residential program than it is for icf so there will be cost out of that 12.9 million that hits the admin line and i i just don't want you to be surprised by that later so it's a both and there's going to be activity delivery costs in the single family homeowner program as well as some admin and but icf's program is largely going to hit the admin line item got it thank you for that clarification um the last thing i'll say about elevate florida and i know that's not what we're here to talk about today but i just want to remind uh administration of some conversations i've had you know behind the scenes and we had with um the chamber and a permitting task force a couple of weeks ago about um the vendors that have been selected by the state that are going to be coming into our community they are not from our community they do not know our permitting process they do not know how the city works i continue to encourage administration to get that list of contractors reach out to them start to work with them and then looking to collaborate with you on some sort of forum where we can connect those large vendors to subs within our own community because they're not going to do the finishing work they're going to do the elevation they're going to get the properties up or they're going to build the new but there's going to be sub work and we want that work to stay within our community so i just wanted to lift that up again just to make sure that we don't forget about that and then the last thing i have specific to this presentation is the mitigation program um and this may not be an answer we have today but just kind of thinking out loud we had residents come today from other parts of our city talking about what they're experiencing the flooding that they're experiencing and the concern that some of that might be from damage from milton and i know even in my own district there is dredging that residents are asking for in riviera bay because of the siltation that has gone into those canals that is specifically from helene and so i'm just curious if things like that that are potentially what this 25 million could potentially be used for because there is if we can correlate a direct impact from the storms for those dollars is that something that we think with our consulting team may be able to be used for that if you all feel like i misspeak don't hesitate to come up here and add to it but um with painting in broad strokes yes the the devil is in the details in that um these funds can't be used for regular routine maintenance so we have to be cautious of that and then currently our allocation does not include milton so this is one of the things that staff have prepared communication to hud seeking guidance on how we navigate that and what the impacts would be in relation specifically to infrastructure mitigation so we're actively working to navigate those because we're hearing that i'd forgotten about the difference between helene and milton and what the funds were supposed to be used for so the riviera bay example i used yes but maybe not the issue with harshaw and distant that we were hearing today um but i definitely want us to keep exploring that so all right very good with that i um move approval and uh thank you chair thank you second okay councilmember gibbons thank you very much chair and thank you all so much i appreciate you good to see you aubrey i'm happy to see that we are going to be serving our most vulnerable citizens those living 80 percent or below the ami i've had those calls as well when is help coming um it's nice to know the help is on the way um there is light at the end of the tunnel i understand it's a progress excuse me a process and a rigorous one at that um but it looks like you guys have done a great job at sort of addressing those areas of concern i did have a quick question i just wanted to differentiate between the programs on the proposed programs on slide four i see on the residential recovery elevation uh rehab and then i see um non-profit community support services so how do the two differentiate because i i would love to see non-profits supporting horn in their efforts of outreach and engagement but i just wanted to know is that more so uh their sole focus are they looking to bring in non-profits or other third party organizations to help them there are those two different pots how does that work i very much appreciate the question um and yes horn will be uh working with and will be working closely not only with city council but also with community partners as we get that outreach and communication out um the non-profit community support services program though is a distinct program that is specifically targeted at providing grants to non-profits to deliver community support services so that could be programs related to food security it could be programs related to mental health and you know recovery efforts related to that so that's more about service delivery versus outreach and education and horn yes will be connected with our community partners and helping get that message out because we know that's where where folks have trusting relationships if i could i also this gives me an opportunity to come back to regarding elevate florida and then bringing in subcontractors for the residential recovery program there will be an rfp process that horn leads so if we do have local contractors there'll be an opportunity for them to to throw their hat in the ring and want to participate and get that experience as well that's good news and i'm glad councilmember gabber brought that up because those have been my conversations since i've been on the dais making sure we can engage our local contractors on every opportunity and any opportunity that we can so that is good news um so the residential program you kind of alluded to it aubrey i believe that members of our community are the most trusted source to engage other members of our community um not knocking horn or you know who is it icf but i definitely believe we want to rely as much as we can on organizations like metropolitan ministries the hub st pete free clinic these people who are already engaged with people who may not necessarily be engaged with us but they need that relief they need that help can horn sort of speak a little bit to their their track record and their experience with working with maybe faith-based partners non-profits because i just want to make sure that we are engaging those boots on the ground people so you don't have to reinvent the wheel absolutely council member and thank you for that question it's a great question it's a very important part of our strategy for outreach and um you know we've been doing this for 20 years now going back to katrina um every location that we work every state local government that we work in part of what we'll do is we'll develop an outreach communications plan that plan will include everything it'll include for everything from social media to sort of direct opportunity for direct contact like we've talked about we have we have you know the the roles from elevate we have the fema individual assistance applications all those things are very sort of easy and upfront ways to get to people but they're also easy ways to get to people that you know we already know need the help where we need to focus in on or for those populations that are hardest to get to and and again having done this for a long time it's critical to get out there with those with the local leadership with non-profits with folks who are serving those populations to the extent that you all have connections we very much look forward to working with you all to be able to make sure that we're getting to those populations and and the key here is making them aware and making them comfortable with applying one of the things that we've seen is that there is sometimes a hesitancy to engage with government we want to make sure that they understand that this process is going to be as as easy as possible that we're working through these things as a partner with them to help them achieve their recovery solutions so in general it is a part of what we do it's how we operate it's something that we take very seriously it's very important to us very good news and thank you so much for the assurance i was happy to hear that we are going to have those in-person intake call centers um i'm thinking about our you know technologically disadvantaged populations right those people who may not be computer literate they are going to need that help and that assistance that's the reason i've been pushing the cert teams right making sure we have people out there boots on the ground able to help people who may not necessarily be mobile able to get out there to those centers making sure we have people who are able to drive and go to them um i think that's also important you you mentioned comfortability with applying um that's important because i think people have a hard time trusting government and it's the people that you mentioned uh previously the latter those who aren't already engaged right we have to that's why i mentioned our community partners engage those community partners so i'm really looking forward to the fall aubrey uh administrator foster so that we can work with you on this marketing plan um i have some great ideas some some great targeted populations that we need to be looking at going to and not expecting them to come to us uh so thank you so much for what you do i appreciate it thank you chair thank you aubrey thank you for the presentation um and uh looking forward to getting this going okay we've got a motion and a second on f5 seeing as no other council members wishing wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item f5 passes unanimously all right we're going to move into new business g1 council member fig sanders thank you thank you um colleagues it's been i want to say maybe three years since we've received an update from usf st petersburg because it's right here in the backyard and some of you know about my work with the educational ecosystem with usf ptc eckard college and who am i missing in usf st pete college yeah spc um usf eckard college and ptc there you go um so there has been a while since we've received an update from usf st pete because of when we went into the preeminence mode we did lose a lot of participation from our young um graduates here in the city of st petersburg so during that time we received an update in regards to the the subsidies and the financial assistance that the city of st petersburg actually does um partner with usf st pete but i would love to once again get another update as to where we are with enrollments and how we are actually benefiting from our partnerships with usf st pete and with that i move approval second council member driscoll thank you i i do wonder if um as part of this discussion that um the folks from the college of marine science be invited as um you know they are continuing to get state funding for eos and to expand on the college marine science it's an important part of the university as well as an important part of our marine science sector that we have here in the city so i think it would be interesting to include that as part of the presentation i was also going to invite um cynthia deluca who's the vp for student success and to actually come whenever we get a date awesome thank you okay we have a motion and a second seeing as no other council members wishing to speak unless you want to go again no no clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item g1 passes unanimously okay we're going to go to g2 back to councilmember kick sanders thank you um on this one as we all know um i want to say 2009 we started discussion about the community benefits agreement in regards to certain areas of the city with um economic with with development and we and those of you that were here in 2020 that actually voted on it it was my item and i couldn't be here to vote on it because that was the one meeting i missed because i had covered so i am still grateful for those that actually moved this forward but we are coming on to up to our fifth anniversary with the cba and i want to see where we are in regards to how it has helped us um as the city is concerned as well as invite a couple of those that were um very valuable in helping us move this across the line so with that i'm request respectfully requesting referral to the economic and workforce development committee or other relevant committees for discussion on the advantages of the cba since its adoption and also with that i move approval second councilmember driscoll thank you um and the wording on this says it would be a discussion on the advantages of the cba i know that now that um this process has been followed a couple of times um there have been comments here and there about ways that it could be improved so i wonder if the discussion will also improve involve um potential changes or improvements to the initiative so thank you for that question that is the main gist of it because when we adopted it in 2020 it wasn't halfway of what it was that we actually asked for so that's why i wanted to have the conversation to see where we are and where we can move a little bit closer to the original request that we had for the cba so thank you for voicing that question because that will be a part of the discussion thank you okay we've got a motion and a second on g2 seeing as no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please send your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item g2 passes unanimously okay council members before we go into council committee reports we're going to take a break and so and then we'll come back and that should time us up pretty well for cram public hearings so we're going to break until 4 45. council members we're in recess council committee reports and we're going to go to h1 we're going to go to vice chair hanowitz thank you chair respectfully requesting city council to remove the following items from the public services and infrastructure committee referral list a presentation on the findings of the private laterals pilot study discussion to include consideration of potential financing programs for residents to administer by self and this was council member gabbard's item and a discussion on the no wake zones on roads during flood events potential signage and enforcement under florida statutes uh section 316.183 this was also council member gabbard the chair brought it up at the meeting and so um i just wanted to give you opportunity if you had no i mean i think that oh chair sorry my here absolutely go ahead okay um so i mean she said what i was going to say so i was going to give it right to you no the first item we had just kind of left on there because we weren't sure if it would need to come back after it had gone to cow and now the program is kind of rolling out so i'll work with administration if there seems to be a reason to bring it back for another update we certainly can do so as far as the wake zone legislation we've only we've talked about it today right like we talk about it a lot and i think everyone's very clear on what happens so yeah i'm good with it okay little approval okay yeah i'll just add quickly uh council member gabbard certainly wasn't trying to step on any toes but thought it was two while we were cleaning up items on there that i felt like had gotten moved to a point that if we needed to bring them back we could yeah okay yeah thank you very much okay we've got a motion and a second on h1 uh seeing as no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item h1a passes unanimously it's just h1 yeah they've got it as h1 a on here on our agenda so yeah it is h1 is it okay there's a report then there's in the yeah yeah i guess i guess the report is h1 yeah i see it on mine it's okay as it is jackie yeah okay all right okay we're gonna move into h2 uh council member floyd yep i am pulling it up right now uh we are respectfully requesting city council approval to remove uh the following items from the housing land use and transportation committee referral list uh it's two items the first one is percentage of required permeable green space for yards abutting streets which was yours chair and then potential amendments to section 16.20.120.6.2 regarding the calculation of floor area floor area ratio bonuses for workforce housing that was council member driscoll's item i'll move approval second we have a motion and a second on h2a seeing as no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item h2a passes unanimously okay we're going to go to h3 back to council member floyd great uh this time we are respectfully requesting city council add an ongoing report item from administration to the housing land use and transportation committee for the cdbgr cdbg dr money and that the administration can bring items forward as needed to the committee prior to taking them to city council i'll move approval as well on that okay we have a motion and second council member driscoll thank you in the committee when this was brought up i voted um against this simply because we have this adds another layer of bureaucracy to something that already has a lot of red tape and as we saw just earlier in this meeting the item while i agree that it should not be on consent it can be reported directly to city council with robust conversation and therefore i don't think that it really needs to go to a committee which really just holds up the process so i'll be voting no on this item today thank you chair thank you vice chair hanowitz okay i i wasn't at the meeting if i guess if someone can explain a little bit kind of the background and and typically typically um no go ahead by share i'm sorry i just no that's all right um i mean typically these are really early meetings at 8 o'clock so a lot of times i think my daughter to school i can't make these meetings so i just want to understand kind of the basis before i vote i was i was going to give it to council member floyd as the chair but it was council member gabbard's item so i'll go ahead to i'll defer to council member gabbard yeah and just the reasoning as to why we'll go to hlut since we just had a discussion here because it was important for us to hear it yeah so the pardon my i have to like take my brain back to that meeting right and um as i remember the conversation you know a lot of it had to pertain with the fact that you know this is a lot of money being expended there's entire programs that are being built um some of that i think is very worthy of city council committee discussion about how those programs are being built getting our input making sure that you know we're very clear on those details and that for me really is work that should be done in the committee when appropriate there was the concern brought up about timing and so we did discuss that and i think that um you know we tried to kind of i think thread the needle on dealing with the timing issues certainly i don't think that if there was something that could not make it into the committee and had needed to come as an emergency i think my only request of administration was that it not be put on consent that it actually be put on the agenda but i want city council to be involved as much as possible in all of these decisions and there will be some complicated building of programming and so i'm not as concerned about the timing of it because i trust administration to tell us this was an issue that it just didn't work out we have to get it before you now and if that is the way it is so be it but this is what this committee is for is to discuss funding that is specifically for housing programs and so that is why it was important to me to go ahead and make sure that we move that forward i'm sorry not housing programs but um resiliency and those sort of things okay sorry yeah by sharehanowitz okay so that i guess the only concern i would have the only concern i have is it's not just housing and so it's resiliency and i just i mean is that the right fit versus somewhere else i don't know because i don't think it's just housing well this is a hundred and yes i mean it's what's the total amount we're getting a hundred and 160 million almost 160 million dollars so i and it's an early here's the thing my my only concern is if we're going to have a committee and my only concern it's an early committee that some of us sometimes i have children and i mean a child that have to take to school and car line so if it's something important i can't make it and if it involves something that i that is important to me i don't know about other council members that's the only concern i have i whether we work it at a committee level is it going to come to city council is it just going to be the housing items maybe that go to hlut versus you know if it's something that should go to hers maybe it should go to hers i you know i don't want to complicate it but maybe it should be the housing or whatever fits within housing go to hlut and then if involves something else sustainability goes to hers or the appropriate committee maybe i don't know if that complicates things too much yeah because then it would have to live on the referral list of numerous committees and i think that almost muddies up the works even more yeah that's just my opinion i mean everyone can vote the way they're free to vote as far as i'm concerned this was the conversation that came up in committee it's here before us today and i still support us having committee discussion about these dollars so i'll leave it at that okay okay thank you uh councilmember fix sanders thank you um i understand what councilmember gabbard is trying to do and i understand the question that vice chair hannah was just had and my only contribution to the conversation is that all council members are invited to every committee that we have regardless of what it is we get the agenda items ahead of time so we know what what it is that we're going to be talking about um but i do think this it the dr money is a six-year commitment right um and that's why i sent my reports to committee because sometimes you can't get in detail when we're here um in council so i understand the purpose of it i'll be supporting it but um i don't know if there's a way if we needed to try to separate it depending on it it just seems like it'll be a lot to do um but as they stated earlier we're early in the process we're going to go ahead and get it done but we've always been very mindful in being able to talk about everything at committee level i don't think we've not voted to at least be able to engage in the conversation at the committee level so i just wanted to put that out there thank you thank you just quickly before we go to council member gabbard rob would you just remind us kind of administration's position on the difference between straight to council in comparison to a committee and then council yeah i mean we'll defer to city council where we're happy to work with the chair of hlut um as council member gabbard said where there's time we can work through that we can bring it to hlut if it's an urgent item we can let the chair of hlut know and let council know we're going to go straight to council so if if this is a setup that council would like we're fine with it and we'll do our best to work through it okay so administration's willing to be nimble on if it's something that needs to get done faster than we just communicate with those chairs yeah okay okay council member gabbard two other points i put my glasses on i read it again so let me just point out hud is the one that gives us this money yes it will be used for other things besides just housing but it comes from hud so i think it's really important that we align that and make sure that we are having these conversations in the appropriate committee based upon where the funding is coming from second um an ongoing report this was really the crux of what i was trying to get at because to your point council member fix sanders this is a six-year obligation and this council long after i'm sitting here should continue to be engaged and understand and have reporting come back to a committee about how that how is it going and so this is a legacy item that will live far past me being here and it will give the future councils the empowerment to say wait a minute we have this on here we haven't had a report on this we don't know what's going on with these dollars long after that programming is built so that is another reason that i feel very strongly that we need to have this living on a referral committee so that it continues to have legs and it continues to have a conversation that is keeping council engaged okay vice chair and the only the only thing and i'm fine with supporting it just to be clear and it is going to be a lot of work hlut is busy so there's hers that may have more i'm just throwing it out there i i don't if it's the to do the work it's fine one or the other i don't really sit on either one of them so i you know it's not a big deal for me in terms of work right now but you know that's also a possibility too in terms of timing if it is something that administration needs to get on for you all to hear so and you know and maybe we the chair could talk to that but you know hers is also more flexible but i'll support either way councilmember floyd i'll just say uh i'm chair excuse me both of those committees and uh hers does not meet every month and has been very busy this year as well yeah so and now we might have a little more time at the end of the year than we will in hlut but i'm not sure that that's even the case right now so that that is a committee that's quite busy as well uh all right that's all thank you okay do you have a motion in a second okay just making sure i skip that step sometimes all right we have a motion in a second seeing as no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please sally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item h3a passes seven to one with council member driscoll voting no council members big sanders floyd gabbard girdus givens hanowitz and harding voting yes okay we're going to go into h4 back to council member floyd my turn again all right this one is an action item from hers uh we are respectfully requesting city council approval of a resolution requesting that administration issue a request for proposal for a municipal electric utility feasibility study which requires city council approval before a contract is awarded to an offer to conduct the study uh i'll just sort of foreground the conversation and we've heard a lot of things from speakers and when we had the meeting in hers we got into details is the difference and whatnot but this is just a very like initial step to uh begin us as a body having a conversation about studying this issue when we have a big decision coming up next summer uh on our uh uh franchise agreement renewal so uh i just want to make sure like people we i don't want us to get lost in the weeds of what is and isn't possible because we'll find out what is and isn't possible if we were to go through with this so i just wanted to remind everyone that and with that i'll move approval second okay let's go to public comment please first two speakers the first two speakers is marley price and alex schrechter please go to either podium state your name address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council hello marley 50 34 32nd ave north long day today it's cool though that the duca representatives get to get paid to be here for this wish i could um so i don't think people really understand just how frequently i'm losing power at my house earlier this week i was going to a community meeting but the usual location had a power outage but in my house the power out goes out so much that we've nearly perfected the process we have a generator an overnight battery pack a portable ac backup internet so i guess it really comes in handy but i cannot fathom how we pay some of the highest rates in the entire state and i've had to accumulate all of these things so most of you know that's why i really care about our contract coming up um but one of the issues i want to talk about today really highlights the difference between duke and the city when it comes to utilities so i'm asking you two things today first please vote yes to start the process for sending an rfp to get bids so in however many weeks you can vote again on a feasibility study with the actual cost in the details in front of you and i'm really hopeful you will choose this route instead of continuing any backroom negotiations that are happening with duke completely out of the sunshine which is something that was said to us in a one-on-one meeting like it was a good thing for an agreement that touches every single person in the city and we haven't been able to have input on in 30 years your constituents deserve accurate information information and transparency and the second i feel like this is really what sets the city apart from duke to me i know the city administration cares about negatively impacting hundreds of its residents because of some mega landlord in texas that bought up a bunch of complexes i guess without having any money but does duke think about those residents when they're doing shutoffs because what i've heard from tenants is that they call duke to try to find out if the account for the common areas is past due and duke won't tell them because they're not the name on the account but when those same tenants call the city to learn if their water is going to be shut off do you know who tells them would you guess which entity is willing to make the distinction between customer and neighbor it's the city so i'm also asking you please do not shut off water at the morgan not today not next month and not two months from now thank you thank you my name is alex schecter 5034 32nd ave north um i don't i'm not good at scripts so i have a few bullet points but i want to first and foremost thank you councilmember floyd and and gabbard for getting us to this point and i want to additionally thank you councilmember gabbard for just being the one to mention that the residents want this this is not something that came out of nowhere the residents want this i've spoken to hundreds of republicans democrats and independents alike at their doors on their phone um you know after they're done working their very long nine to five or you know uh their physical labor jobs um and this is very much a bipartisan uh effort um i also just wanted to uh bring up that uh you know us personally at our house we had our highest bill ever and we also lost power twice during this billing cycle so it's just kind of uh wild to me that we uh have a higher bill with some portions of it that we did not have power um also i just want to point out at the um the meeting on the 24th of july there was an individual who brought up um he was part of the private sector and he brought up the concept that businesses don't want to invest in saint pete due to the concept of uncertainty and i just found that ironic because that's what we're asking for we're asking for a feasibility study so we can be certain of the most feasible path for not just not the business heads but the residents of saint pete that keep the city alive uh thank you so much thank you next two speakers please jason scott and jill jill bailey please go to either podium state your name address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council good afternoon jason scott 4636 redfish lane first i want to thank the hers committee for bringing this to a vote i believe this step is the bare minimum to give residents transparency on what the costs are for feasibility doing this rfp has no cost tied to it i know we're all excited to hear clearwater's feasibility but i want to remind everyone we are not clearwater and our leadership is here in saint pete we certainly welcome the results and we can take a look into that but saint pete will still be lacking transparency if we wait for clearwater i also want to add that according to jeff baker from duke the city receives 24 million in franchise fees in the last year alone i don't see how a multi-decade agreement with such value doesn't require you to do your due diligence and ensure your residents have a good deal thank you hi i'm jill bailey i live at 540 carillon parkway 33716 and while i understand that some of the council members may have some concerns of dropping duke there's really no harm in at least conducting this feasibility study this is to ensure that these the residents of saint petersburg have a say in what happens to our utilities this is not uncharted territory other communities have done this and done so successfully this is just the first phase and many many members of this community are asking for this we should be able to allocate a very relatively small percentage of our yearly nearly billion dollar budget just to look at this study to give the residents what they're asking for a public option allows the community to have a voice and a choice in the direction that the community wants while duke only has to answer to their shareholders i'm not somebody who has a particular concern or issues with duke but i'm also a firm believer that electricity should be a public utility because it affects the public directly i really hope you all consider moving forward with this study if nothing else because it is a minor cost and it's something your community is asking for thank you thank you we have somebody in zoom okay um christy ibrahimovic i'm going to bring you into the meeting space when i do please unmute yourself state your name and address for the record and you'll have three minutes to address city council christy uh perfect can you hear me uh yes go ahead please okay great um good afternoon my name is christy ibrahimovic on 6249 17th avenue north um at the open forum last week i told you how duke energy nearly set my home on fire left three special needs children homeless refused to take responsibility for the damages that permanently disabled me and continues to endanger my family every time they are on my property today i'm here to tell you how they got away with it despite the proof i've already sent to this council duke energy has built its business to be untouchable they are self-insured that means when they damage your property your livelihood or in my case your body they're not just the negligent party they're also the judge deciding whether you'll be compensated imagine being hit by a drunk driver and then the driver gets to sit on the jury of their own trial this is the system duke created and the verdict is always the same denied unlike every legitimate insurer in florida duke energy holds no insurance certificate with the state that means that they don't answer to the office of insurance regulation and they don't answer to bad faith statutes they operate in a vacuum where there is no referee no oversight and no consequences when they deny claim within hours without inspecting damages or reviewing evidence it isn't a glitch in the system it is the system and the florida public service commission they don't regulate they enable directly quoted from their own template response the utility will be contacting you to address your concerns the utility will attempt to resolve the matter directly with you and is required to notify us regarding the resolution in other words duke investigates duke and when complaints are filed the public service commission looks the other way i know this firsthand i have filed five complaints six since october 1st 2022 duke has been found non-compliant more than once they have even been caught lying to the public service commission falsifying timelines to shift the blame onto me and when that lie was exposed the florida public service commission did absolutely nothing no fines no penalty no further investigation for three years i have filed complaints with every regulatory body in the state not one has opened an investigation to duke's actions or into the public service commission's failure to act that includes the auditor general and the joint legislative audit auditing committee my next step will be the department of justice because there is no justifiable reason why every single oversight body has refused to even look at the evidence i will not stop i will invoke every statutory right available to me including equitable tolling due to fraud and concealment until duke is held accountable and they can't do this to anyone else ever again so let's be honest about who we're dealing with this is not a company making mistakes it's a company that has designed its entire structure to be untouchable a company that knows regulators will look the other way a company that has proven over and over again that they do not care about the people of our city it has happened to me three times on my own property so imagine what's happening across this city and that leaves all the families ratepayers and communities trapped in a system where safety fairness and accountability does not exist council members this is not sustainable we cannot we cannot hand unchecked power to a monopoly that lies denies and injures then escapes consequence every single time they do not care about you they don't care about this city and until real accountability is forced on them they never will please approve the feasibility study thank you the next next two speakers is nick carrie and mary gerkin please go to either podium state your name address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council mary gerkin i'm speaking on behalf of suncoast sierra club sierra club supports the feasibility study to provide the needed information to make a prudent decision on duke's franchise agreement details there's been a revolution in electrical electricity generation and energy management since saint pete's last franchise agreement 30 years ago sierra club volunteers collected and analyzed what our saint pete citizens have done regarding clean energy through solar yesterday sierra club forwarded another update showing that more than 6 300 saint pete homes across all neighborhoods and demographics are already using solar and saving more than 16 million dollars per year unfortunately duke energy continues to fall short in this area ranking a dismal 47th out of 53 investor-owned utilities on value and accessibility of energy efficiency program according to the american council of the energy efficiency economy we can do better many of you have shared that your constituents are crying out for relief from skyrocketing utility bills and but you need more information about the costs and benefits of a municipal utility and and that's where the feasibility study comes in florida can currently has 35 existing municipal utilities that prioritize citizens not the corporate shareholder return funding this study is a prudent investment that will provide important needed information on how saint pete can ensure affordability for residents and businesses alike for the next 30 years whether through an improved relationship with duke or a local locally controlled entity you've done a great job asking the right questions we ask you to take today to take the next needed step and start to receive some real answers please vote yes to approve the feasibility study thank you thank you nick carey i don't think nick's here anymore okay he's four okay any anybody else okay let's go to councilmember harding thank you chair um i i have no issue moving this forward at at uh at what councilmember floyd is asking for before we get to a point of approving an rfp um i think that there are some very basic questions that need to be answered um before a study is done uh you are talking about building from scratch a billion dollar company um not only is it a billion dollar company but it operates more like the police station than a regular company it um it needs an emergency operation center it operates 24 hours a day it has to be able to do things literally instantaneously it needs to be a part of our emergency system uh it needs to be part of the the storm response system it has to coordinate with uh with several other agencies and and and and we literally need to be ready to do that the next day so i'd like to hear from public works i'd like to hear from um from someone on the administration side that that better understands what it's like to do something like this this is this is this will be an administration that is literally bigger than then then well it's bigger than public works by a lot and we need to start it and we need to hit the ground running the next day that we that this purchase goes through and um and can we do that do we have the ability to do that i also would like to know about the appetite to do this um at the end of the day we need the mayor's support and we'll need to hear from the mayor on if this is something he's willing to consider um we should hear from finance the uh the there is a number right at the end of the day there's a cost benefit analysis and the and the the benefit is that that that you can have whatever opinion you want to do but what we're talking about is their profit margin so that that number um can we overcome that with borrowing whatever we need to borrow and then starting a power company on our own and these are some questions that um i mean there's these are this is a a massive undertaking for the city um and i would like to know uh if we're capable of doing this the um and so and so i intend to vote yes unless we can move this i i think it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a good discussion to keep having and obviously there's there are plenty who are concerned by it um we keep coming back to the the amount spent on a feasibility study not so much concerned about that more concerned about the fact that that we need to have answers from our own team before we have other people look at this and um and i think we can get there um and legal sorry i forgot that and we really need to hear from legal um this is not a this is this is not a this will not be a friendly purchase um you won't have two willing part two willing parties and that's okay that leaves us because we're we're sovereign that leaves us with an option um and we can go after um eminent domain what does that look like what's the possibility of that happening uh what's the time frame for that happening what's the cost for that happening uh and and the and that's a that that could be a a big red flag in right from the get-go but these are the things that uh that we should ask before we go out and ask another company to take a look at us thank you chair thank you vice chair hanowitz thank you um so for me on this issue i think procedurally this is more cart before the horse i would rather have the clear water study i think we need a committee of the whole so we have both sides of the issue before we actually have a resolution asking already for a proposal on a feasibility study the problem that i have with these type of resolutions is the public what they think is we're going to do a feasibility study immediately like it doesn't matter what it says or what this you know it's we're requesting administration that's what i'm hearing out there and i just don't like that i rather have a real conversation first i think we are going to get the clear water study and i think this is going to really be a robust conversation at a cow with all of us and then we can have an appropriate vote with the information we have i don't think in terms of timing or anything it's going to change anything so i'm a no on this just because i i don't like these type of resolutions i think it confuses the public and i think at the end of the day what's going to happen practically speaking is administration is going to probably get the clear water study it's going to review it and we're going to get more information before even going forward with it so that's why i'm on no thank you thank you councilmember driscoll thank you i voted no on this item in the committee because i do think that it would be in our best interest to wait and see what the clear water study says what we can glean from that before we start expending time and funds on a study of our own i would much rather have the administration working on improving the utility that we already have so i will remain a no on this although in the grand scheme of things i am very interested in hearing more from the public and from experts and the administration on what this might look like going forward but for now i want to wait on clear water and i'll be a no today thank you thank you councilmember gibbons thank you very much chair i'm just curious if we can briefly hear from uh legal what would it look like if we were to go to court uh with duke uh to battle this out well this would be that duke would not be a willing seller since they are not a willing seller to the city of clear water and that we would have to go to a process of eminent domain and more importantly valuation and that is a time where both sides bring experts together to estimate the value of the assets of duke energy and then once that has been accomplished um it will be up to the court as far as us showing a municipal purpose for uh seizing those assets through eminent domain and the value of those assets through eminent domain thank you very much janine appreciate that i heard it mentioned earlier that there is no cost associated but i want to make it clear that there is a cost um we could end up in tedious litigation that could go on for god knows how long and cost taxpayers god knows how much um so i'm realistic but i'm also that council member who's willing to give people a voice who's willing to listen to my constituents and to give them an opportunity to have a say in the democratic process and i think part of this discussion is affordability our consumers are hurting at the pockets and i'm one of them 450 was my bill yesterday the highest bill that i have ever received and i was disgusted because i felt what my constituents are feeling and i don't think waiting 10 15 20 or 30 years for a public power utility is what they want to hear they want help now so yes i am happy to have conversations with duke i am happy to talk to duke i don't want to just hear from administration what the conversations are i want to be in the room myself i want to be at the table making the demands of my constituents known that they want help now not later single mothers who can barely afford to put food on the table now have to try to figure out how they're going to pay their utility bills every month it's a matter of do i have power do i have food or do i have water those are the the questions that people are asking themselves these days meanwhile we want to talk about spending god knows how much on a study i am perfectly okay with pursuing the study because i want the study to tell us what's possible what's not possible what can we afford what can't we afford but what i don't want to do is just frivolously throw money away at a problem that we cannot fix i want to be realistic i have had those conversations i've done my due diligence i have done my homework i've spoken to leaders in in local florida municipalities to say how are you handling this situation what are the challenges and how can we overcome it should we decide to pursue this i think there's a reason it hasn't been pursued in the last two decades but again i want to also see what clearwater study says but correct me if i'm wrong it's been about a year or so maybe longer and we are still waiting and so i want to set a realistic timeline this can be a question for administration or for legal but i believe we have until july 31st of 2026 to come up with some sort of an agreement and negotiations with duke um what happens after the 20 the 31st july 31st of 2026 should we not come up with an agreement would you like to take that miss williams absolutely um if we don't come to an agreement then the status quo is basically what happens there are a couple of court cases that demonstrate that um it's sort of like a tenant a holdover tenant i'll say um in an apartment so everything continues as long as the rent is being paid so the franchise fee would be continued to uh be accepted from consumers which would be remitted to the city until there is an agreement that is reached so in other words we're still at duke's mercy um and and that's what i want to make clear is we have to have a clear exit strategy and what i want to work on is contingency plans i want to make sure that there's an exit plan in place so that we don't leave our constituents you all the rate players people like me we don't put you on the hook to pay this bill because it's going to come at a cost and i want to make sure it's affordable to you all before we just bought off something that we can't chew and so again realistically i am supporting this study simply because i want to take it to the next step to see what can and cannot work but at the same token i just want to be realistic and i want to also make it be known to duke that you know we don't want another 30-year agreement we want to look at a shorter timeline 10 15 years because yes should we decide to pursue this public utility option we want to make clear that the relationship's over and we want a way out so thank you chair thank you council member gabbert thank you chair so we're on a level set where we are today just because lift up some of the things that people have said you know earlier in open forum just now that really the step we're taking right now costs us nothing because administration hopefully will go with our guidance and they will issue this rfp and then that is going to come back and it's going to tell us what that feasibility study would even cost what that would look like and then from there we'll make that decision this is a step-by-step process today just begins that process and to your point we're running out of time we don't have time to wait on someone else's study or for us to gather information that quite frankly i think will be gathered through a feasibility study and will help to guide what that could look like overall i see no danger in us moving forward past today i see a lot of danger in not moving forward past today because then we're going to be forced to go ahead and move into a negotiation without all of the information and without doing all of our due diligence and that is what i hear residents asking for the residents that i talk to are very keen on what the realities are around the potential for a municipal electric the residents that i talk to and the ones that we hear from i don't hear them thinking that this is an absolute that once we vote today well then they're going to give us a municipal power i that's not what i hear i just hear them asking us to lift up their voices in looking for alternatives i want their voices to be our guide through this process because they are the ones that are paying these bills they are the ones who are feeling this pain and so that's why i'm so adamant about us moving this forward today because we cannot make the proper decision negotiate in the right way look at the future of this city without this step and so i would vote yes today a million times over to make sure that we continue to get the information that we need to make the best decision possible so i'm very happy to support this and looking forward to hopefully this passing today and then looking at what those next steps might be and then as far as administration i really hope that administration will walk lockstep with us in making sure that they are also doing their due diligence and that no one is rubber stamping a 30-year agreement with a private company who is beholden to their shareholders without looking at every single other opportunity that may exist so thank you thank you uh before going to councilmember harding we're going to go to councilmember fix sanders thank you thank you thank you well um again thank you all for your feedback and input on this so my perspective dump duke is not my perspective um but providing the information that we need to move forward one way or another is why i am supporting the feasibility study which is going to tell us what we can what we cannot how much it will cost um because at the end of the day we are living under a 30-year contract that we're not happy with on a whole another different area so i'm not going to support another 30-year contract however i do want to know that whatever decision we make we've had all of the information it you know when you go and and you know you want to buy into something and then you agree to it only to find out that you didn't have all the information information you step back and you look at what it cost you to get to that point versus the frustration you've had by not having information so i would rather have the information and know than to not know we're going to go back to do i would think that duke would be interested in us wanting to know because they know what it's going to cost they know how expensive it is and this is a huge undertaking taking this isn't something we're going to do in 10 years i don't see it happening anytime soon because of the cost so you do the feasibility study you find out what it it costs we talk about it and discuss it and we may come to the agreement this is just a lot too much bigger than we can than we can handle so not having information to me is not doing due diligence to the constituents not having not doing the study to me it's not doing due diligence to us as decision makers um so i'm going to support it because i just want the information this is about education for me this is not an end game of dumping duke this is about having the information to move forward so um with that being said i'm hoping that we remain objective i'm hoping that we keep you know um our constituents as our first line of decision making when it comes down to helping to relieve some of the financial burden that we've had all of us have highlight bills and another question was was asked of me so if we do the feasibility study where are we going to find the money i hate when they ask those questions where we because every time we need something money is always found why can't we find it for this to to to educate our residents why can't we find it to have the information and be armed with what it actually would look like i know they keep saying waiting on clear water we're not clear water this is the city of saint petersburg it's going to look different it's going to be different and we can't gauge what we do based on someone else's progress we don't know when clear water is going to finish it was supposed to be finished i don't know how long ago and we're still waiting so i don't i think that's a poor excuse for us to not go ahead and move forward we want to wait on clear water i don't i don't gauge my household based on my neighbors i do what's best for my household and i'm hoping that we will do the same thing i'm going to support it but again i like that we're taking baby steps on this because we get back and we may not go any further than what we're doing here today so i just wanted to put my two cents in there for me it's not don't do is educate our constituents thank you chair thank you council member harding sorry i'm going to skip you one more time and go to council member floyd and let first round go through thank you i want to make you wait a little longer thank you and i really want to say thank you to all my colleagues for their contribution today it's been a really thoughtful conversation actually uh all day has been and so i appreciate it starting this morning in hers um and uh you know we've spoken about clear water a few times i waited for a long time to bring this forward to even have a discussion waiting for clear water and i just determined i couldn't wait anymore and i do hope that before we get into any more in-depth conversation we'll get theirs back i'm really anticipating that but again i can't say for sure and then i wanted to just comment on something council member harding said earlier um about like all the questions you want to see answered um hopefully by administration i can't say you know i don't know if administration is going to be able to answer a lot of them some of them are like uh cornerstones of what feasibility studies in this uh realm do but i do think that uh when i'll continue to work on this issue and as we bring it back i think we some of the getting as much information as possible from administration is definitely going to be a good part of the initial conversation i think so i think you brought up some really reasonable points um and i do look forward to actually getting as much info as we can before we make any other big steps so i'll i just wanted to let you know i've taken that to heart and i'll continue uh to work on getting as much info as possible thank you chair thank you councilman i could have gone but i figured i'd let you go thank you chair um i'd like to to thank my colleagues first this this is absolutely the the best discussion um that this body has had since i've been on it um this is this is what discussion should look like and i am uh i'm i'm very happy and appreciative uh so thank you uh i would i would like to get a little bit of clarity from uh from legal um the i i the the the i think it's called a france the agreement that we have now i'm not sure what you term it with duke a franchise agreement a franchise agreement the franchise agreement that we have with duke now um does it have anything to do with whether we want to try and purchase them or not or is it irrelevant if we wanted to try and buy them tomorrow or sign a new one and buy it then um does it is it relevant or irrelevant the franchise agreement does not include a provision regarding that uh so in other words we could try tomorrow or we could sign another one and try the day after so it so there there's no deadline and when i say deadline i mean if we wanted to we could file papers tomorrow you guys have to stay up all night i'm afraid um but we can file papers tomorrow correct you say file the paper to for however eminent domain works file papers of the court or whatever you could start the process now the franchise agreement does grant a non-exclusive uh right to provide electricity within the service area so you could start the process but to uh start another electric uh facility you would have to wait until the term ended in that franchise agreement to be able to do that okay all right thank you for that um the the the point was made more than a couple times about taking steps and that and that is my um and that is my ask and um and i'll back up a step uh i haven't been doing this long enough i appreciate vice chair hanowitz educating me um i i see the value in um in this going to cow i didn't think about uh that as an option and um and back to the the the point and thank you uh council member floyd um i i would just like to i would just like to hear not definitive answers but i would like to hear from and and uh and to uh i'm going to go ahead and say it now to my favorite council member fig sanders i apologize all the rest of you but i also have a favorite kid um to her point um it's my favorite too i love you all equally i'm just kidding wait a what's up um i i would like to hear from administration um on those points they might not have definitive answers but again you're you're talking about um and this is a discussion again well worth having you you're talking about doing something that is that is absolutely bigger than anything the city has ever done you're talking about borrowing more money by twice as much as this city has ever looked at by at borrowing in its history you're talking about creating uh an administration that uh that rivals police and fire together and um and if that's a discussion that that and if we're going to move forward with it absolutely but we should hear from the people who do that kind of stuff first um that again spending the money on a feasibility study if that's where we're headed and if that's what what our constituents want then we should do that but it seems to me that before we do that we should just hear from the people who are going to have to carry that weight um on whether on whether they support it on whether they think we can do it um and on whether they they think we can we can pull off that the legal financial part based on you know on on rounded off numbers so um so i would i would prefer that um that this go to a discussion before it goes to uh uh an rfp for a feasibility study um and so i'll vote no on this but if it moves forward i'm all for it okay um so i i made comments in committee on this and you know i i very much struggle with this and i've met with the some constituents met with administration met with i did a couple of one-on-ones up at flc uh last week and um you know i i very much am struggling with all of it but i'm going to stick by what i said in committee which is i will move this item forward and see what comes back but it is a i am a far way away from a yes vote when these proposals come back when i see the cost and scope and i know there were a couple of comments about cost you know i disagree with the cost of it doesn't matter there are a lot of ways you can spend quarter million dollars half a million dollars a million dollars and so um you know there's been talk about the clearwater study yes saint peter is different than clearwater but it sure gives you a pretty good idea also if you know how much theirs cost based on the size of our city comparison to their city that should tell you about how much that's going to cost and so i'm i struggle with it but i'm gonna i'm gonna stick to what i said in committee because uh i i'm not gonna i'm not gonna let that i'm not gonna flip flop from that and so i'm gonna stick i'm gonna stick to what i said which is i would move this forward but i'm gonna be super critical if administration if and that's an if if administration decides to go out to rfp and what comes back both from cost and of scope because i would agree with both vice chair and council member harding that i would much rather have a robust discussion at a cal than go out to rfp because i think that is more helpful but again i'm going to stick to what i said in committee um so i'll just i'll leave it there okay any other council members wishing to speak i think we have a motion in a second clerk please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item h4a passes five to three with council members driscoll hanowitz and harding voting no council members fix sanders floyd gabbard girdus and gibbons voting yes okay council members we're going to recess as city council and convene as the cra and we're going to go into cra2 and we've got carly joining us welcome carly good afternoon chair and members of the community redevelopment agency and council um so i'm just going to give a little bit of information on the proposals that we received that we're discussing and then i'm going to go a little bit over the procedural requirements that we went over as well so the proposal is from bright community trust who is a florida non-profit that constructs affordable homes and they utilize a community land trust model that ensures perpetual affordability so the proposals that we received were for two lots at 974 23rd av south and 835 queensborough av south which are obviously in the cra the proposals were for two single family homes they're three bed two bath one car garage they're to be sold at 80 percent ami to qualified home buyers and they will receive a down payment assistance from the city of saint pete so the city plans to enter into a 24 month land lease agreement with bright community trust and this is very similar to what happens in the lot disposition program um and so it's very similar in nature the really the only difference is that it fits bright community trust model which is a community land trust um and then the property itself like i said will enter into that land trust and then the homes will be sold separately so the properties were acquired in 2010 through the neighborhood stabilization program um they were under bank owned foreclosure so we've had these properties for quite a bit of time um and they are in line with the cra plan and the properties were noticed for 30 days per florida law which triggered an open bid process so this goes into that florida law statute so we did receive two alternative proposals per property so they're both from habitat for humanity tampa bay gulf side um they were considered however bright's proposals are going to be for their homes are going to be placed in a community land trust which we felt was really really important for that perpetual affordability and the projects are going to utilize our home investment partnership chodo funds so community housing development organization funds and the city has a 15 percent set aside requirement each year to spend those funds on new construction of affordable housing bright community trust is one of our only chodo's in the community so it's really important that we get those funds out the door um and so they've been a great partner in creating affordable housing with us and utilizing our funds to create permanent affordable home ownership opportunities and then the property is being disposed of for less than fair market value so obviously we've had a public notice hearing that's going to be happening in just a few minutes um as well so if you have any questions i'm here and aaron fish from real estate is here as well okay thank you councilmember gabbert thank you chair very quickly um so you mentioned and i'm pretty familiar with the work that bright does i don't think they do quite enough in our city so i'm very glad to see this coming before us today and very much support uh land trust as a very important piece of affordable housing um but the question i had and it might be kind of premature is so next steps if this passes today um they haven't yet submitted any like site plan or anything like that no so they've submitted proposals to construct these homes okay all right so um if we approve this today then you would move forward with that process from there um would there be any subsequent city council votes that would need to happen or this would be it nope that will be it and we have timelines set aside in the lease agreement for that permitting process and then when they have to get co by so you know they have to follow a timeline that lease agreement is 24 months right yes for both homes all right very good um so yeah i'll go ahead and move approval thank you second we have a motion a second on cra2 seeing as no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item cra2 passes unanimously okay we are going to adjourn as the cra and reconvene as city council and we're going to move into j4 same item council members move approval we've got a motion and a second on j4 seeing as no council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item j4 passes unanimously okay we're going to move into j1 if you could please read the ordinance clerk ordinance number 613-h an ordinance providing for a for the sales service dispensing possession and or consumption of alcoholic beverages in the deuce corner park for an event to be held on november 1 20 25 and providing for an effective date and mr chair we do not have any cards on this move for approval second we've got a motion and a second on j1 seeing as no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item j1 passes unanimously okay we're going to go to j2 clerk please read the ordinance ordinance number 614-h an ordinance providing for the sales service dispensing possession and or consumption of alcoholic beverages in a portion of azalea park for an event to be held on march 7 2026 with a rain date of march 8 2026 and providing for an effective date and we do not have any cards on this move approval second we've got a motion and a second on j2 seeing as no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item j2 passes unanimously okay we are going to move into j3 clerk could you please read the ordinance ordinance 1173-v in orange approving the vacation of a street corner easement at the southeast corner of lot one block one city of st petersburg block 49 partial replant generally located at 800 2nd avenue south setting forth conditions for the vacation to become effective and providing for an effective date and mr chair we do not have any cards on approval second i was about to say council members this might be the smallest right hand on it yeah i'm not sure if both my feet would fit on it and i'm not that tall all right we've we've got a motion and a second on j3 seeing as no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item j3 passes unanimously okay we are going to go to j5 uh clerk could you or yeah could you please read the ordinance ordinance number 139-hl an ordinance of the city of st petersburg florida designating trinity evangelist evangelical like luther church located at 467 4th avenue south north as a local historic landmark and adding the property to the st petersburg register of historic places pursuant to section 16.30.070 city code and providing for an effective date and mr chair we do have cards on this okay could you please swear on the speaker absolutely okay we will move into presentations staff welcome thank you um chair and council members cindy kohannock historic preservationist for the city of st petersburg this project is for the review of a local landmark designation for trinity evangelical lutheran church located at 467 4th ab north also addressed at 401 5th street north this landmark designation application is owner initiated with support from preserve the berg the community planning and preservation commission recommended approval for this application after july 8th meeting trinity lutheran church is located in downtown and the property is contributing to the downtown national register historic district and is listed as a potentially eligible property the applicant is seeking designation for the main sanctuary portion of the building only excluding the additions to the north of the original building and the parking lot on the parcel trinity lutheran church was organized in 1911 trinity originally held services in other parts of the city the first church building built for specifically for trinity was located where the current ymca is now and that's at the corner of 2nd ave south and 5th street south by 1920 the chapel at this location was no longer large enough so the church purchased land at its current location of 4th ave north and 5th street north construction for trinity's original building on its current site started in 1922 but was not completed until the spring of 1924 services were held in the new building as early as january 1923 the gothic revival style sanctuary was designed by er fros with the firm of honer baum and fros out of st louis construction was supervised by victor a boke who is a church member the main sanctuary building is a three-story masonry building in an irregular form the red terracotta tile roof is a more unique feature for this style the building has a first floor that sits three feet below street level and towers are present on the southwest and southeast corners the building still retains most of the original wood wood doors and original windows the stained glass designed by emil frey art glass company out of st louis was built in munich and was installed in september 1925 alterations to trinity's main sanctuary building have for the most part been minor the most obvious and notable change happened in 1951 when the educational building was added to the north side of the sanctuary the educational building shown in the foreground on the right side image was designed by leslie n iridell and constructed in the gothic style to match the original structure when in 19 when the 1951 edition was attached to the original building a significant portion of that north wall of the original sanctuary was actually left intact a small two-story brick section on the north side of the original building was modified when the addition took place changes on this wall shown on the left side image here include addition of windows and changes to the roof in 1966 another edition was added for an elevator which was designed in the international style by howard allender when the applicant is uh while the applicant is not seeking to designate the entire parcel both the 1951 and 1966 editions would be considered contributing at this point due to their age the 1951 edition was designed to be compatible with the original sanctuary while still being an obvious product of its time which complies with both the saints saint pete design guidelines as well as state and federal guidelines the 1966 elevator edition is clearly a more more service oriented edition but is stepped back from the fifth street side of the building which follows the recommendation for additions to be placed on the rear or side of a main structure and located in a way that does not significantly impact its character the main sanctuary portion for trinity church meets four of the criteria for the eligibility listed here so you have a for cultural heritage d for association with an architect or builder contributing to the development of the city e for its quality of architecture and f for its representation of an architectural style the areas of significance for trinity lutheran include include community planning and development and architecture the subject building is an example of how many churches developed in the city while a smaller church might have been suitable for year-round residents a large a larger sanctuary was needed to accommodate the seasonal population which would dramatically increase the number of attendees during the winter months the downtown area of of course was the logical place for this to locate a church since early development centered here in fact trinity lutheran is among nine existing or former churches located in the downtown national register district the subject building is a high style architect design church building with many of the traits of the gothic were style gothic revival style in evidence including pointed arches intricate details and steeply pitched roofs in addition to significance the resource must demonstrate at least one factor of historic integrity to be considered for listing this proposed landmark meets all seven there are many character defining features present on the building this list contains some of the highlights including brick and stone buttresses a 60-foot tall bell tower with a crenellated parapet since the applicant is seeking designation for just the main sanctuary buildings staff recommended that the designation line be snapped at but not include the southern wall of the educational building with the remaining boundary following the property lines to the south east and west as shown here this includes the original portion of the building on fifth street that was modified when the 1951 edition was connected staff also recommended a fixed straight line of delineation rather than to have the line wind in and out around the various connections between the buildings this recommendation was made for clarity of the designation area in the future but does include some of those mid-century modifications around that open interior courtyard between the original building and the addition the cpbc accepted and approved this recommendation from staff and referred this item to city council that's all for my presentation and the owners representatives are all here okay we have an applicant presentation all right welcome you have 10 minutes my name is karen potts i live at 2836 7th avenue north st. petersburg um i have never done one of these so i hope that i do it right if it's anybody says click then click there you go oh there it is okay um i'm here to speak in support of the cppc unanimous vote to grant historic designated designation to trinity lutheran church um it's like she said on the potential eligible list for many years it's important to remember that with the church the council takes care of the business and the church is at the church's request of the owners which are the members it's our duty to uphold our constitution and our bylaws it's a process that ensures due diligence in making decisions that affect all members such as congregational votes one of those votes i'll switch it um was passing of designating on january 5th and then we also voted not to sell in october november of 2024 so now i just a lot of the history was already um covered but i want to just cover a few things that i didn't hear um like was said we purchased the lot at the two lots at fifth and second south which is the ymca building um and then we purchased the current location and the parsonage house which was moved next to the nelson apartment and is still occupied today um the mem the froze in 1925 froze and he was a prominent church architect from missouri um a lot of german population at that time and it became the the top center for stained glass in the united states much of trinity stained glass is made in missouri or munich germany um january 1923 it is a semi-gothic church with four large triple stained glass windows telling the life and works of jesus christ inside has a massive massive supporting beams and trusses exposed for all one of the quotes i found said windows will be unlike anything yet used in this city in 1945 one of our own members craig mauer who recently passed his family joined trinity lutheran church craig was baptized as a boy in trinity lutheran church he was married in trinity and he had 80 years of service and faith in this church his celebration of life was in on august 17th of this year craig is part of trinity's history as well in 1950 trinity was considered the mother church for lutheranism throughout the central florida and gulf coast coast region in 1959 they got ac in 1968 there was the dedication of the pipe organ with 24 ranks 1035 pipes and 25 chimes exposed pipes set in gothic casework hundreds of unexposed pipes are in the organ chambers adorning the gothic arches purposely placed for worshipers to see its beauty and lift our eyes toward the stained glass stories of christ in 1968 they renovated the sanctuary um pew words were pew woods were carefully chosen to remind us that god is is the designer of the trees the forest the universe the choir lofts ascend so the worshippers eyes point upward to christ red wall-to-wall carpet was installed to muffle the noise and symbolize be still and know i am here red symbolizing the christ blood shed for us um oops i forgot to click sorry y'all okay this is an example of um a church that recently has become an event space and 10th and 10th youth euclid methodist church known as euclid mansion is now providing wedding venues private events gala fundraisers and a market currently known as the treehouse sanctuary these are okay that's the these are when i was researching grants to help um fix things that were wrong with trinity like the roof and any leaks and things that were going wrong i ran across a lot of videos and articles and i want to just do a few or speak to a few um articles in a video that was done by scad this uh savannah college of arts and design it can't be shown but there are some things that were said in it i'm trying to stay away from how to fix or preserve old buildings and talk to why we should so i picked out the whys preservation makes us rethink on kinds of resources we do not throw away there's an economic and environmental cost to demolition existing buildings represent a huge investment of time energy and efforts and materials demolition is a loss of that many buildings have viable economic reuse that is significant historically culturally academically they serve a better function in being preserved than being demolished and my favorite one that i found in the scad video was historic preservation is the physical manifestation of history i thought that was interesting and then also it goes on to talk about other places in the united states where this is done frequently glencoe north carolina whole village was saved and resold 32 homes went from disparity to vibrant shops residents and tourism one resident said i saw what it could be i just didn't see how quickly they would sell and they expected in glencoe that their tax increase from going from having buildings with no taxable value to restore viable taxable structures that their tax base would increase by 15 to 20 million galveston um its charm is its buildings and architecture hurricane ike destroyed many historical buildings saving the smaller ones they said was showing important to tell different pieces of galveston's history and again in savannah preservation is not isolated to national historic landmark districts they lead the way in saving as many historic endangered buildings as possible there's also um a study that was done by the place economic study there's also a mirror lake article which you're probably all familiar with where they came in and they attached to an older home and then there's one by placed economic study to 24 reasons why preservation is good for a community i have all 24 but i won't read them but some of the main ones are jobs downtown revitalization heritage tourism property values small businesses walkability bike ability environmentally environmentally environmental responsibility housing affordability and tax generation are just a few i'd like to reiterate the reasons to support preservations for buildings like trinity lutheran church and these are some statements that came from the scad video as well our job as historic preservations is to ensure safe passage of these beautiful historic buildings for future generations they are not ours to own or control but to steward to the people who will come after us thank you for your consideration and support and preservation of trinity lutheran church and i would like to dedicate um my request for you to vote yes to craig mauer thank you okay do we have a registered opponent okay all right we'll move into public comment please the first two speakers is paul gibson and james tollen please go to either podium state your name address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council paul gibson 3826 salita del sol drive in ruskin 33573 as the pastor of trinity lutheran church and the appointed vice pastor of hope lutheran church a congregation that is in the process of merging with trinity i am asking you to delay making any decision about awarding a local landmark designation to trinity sanctuary the laws of our denomination say that a church's property is owned by the members of the congregation as a group minor operational decisions can be delegated to an elected panel called the congregation council but they should not be viewed as the congregation's board of directors in november of last year the members of both congregations passed resolutions that while deferring any decisions about the sale of either church property would begin an organized process of combining the members and assets of both congregations into one a few weeks later the members of trinity without including the members of hope called a special meeting of their voting members to hear a presentation from the city's office of urban planning and historic preservation and to vote on a resolution to apply for designation as a local landmark of the 77 voting members we had at that time only 40 chose to attend this meeting of those 40 26 voted in favor of applying for landmark status 14 voted against it in the past two weeks 32 voting members of trinity have signed a petition asking you to pause the awarding of landmark status as our application has made its way through the approval process members including some who voted in favor of the designation have collected data that suggests it will negatively affect our congregational vitality and our ability to conduct worship and do ministry when asked to try and slow or pause the process of the landmark designation a minority of the elected members of the congregation council have repeatedly refused to do so as a result members of both congregations are here today to share their opinions with you and to ask you to decide their future in light of the distress this process has caused to the people i serve i hope you will return decision making power to them and grant us time to decide if landmark status will truly help hinder or even destroy our future as a faith-based community in this city thank you james this is james so what do we need to do he can just uh come up here and that podium will go down there's a button on the side there yep and if not we can give him a microphone if he can't get close enough let's get him a microphone let's get him up let's get him up hold on just one second he can wave and just say whether he's for or against against okay thank you all right next two speakers please next is lynn tellen and uh gretchen frederick please go to either podium state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council my name is gretchen frederick 1600 30th street south saint petersburg 33701 good evening members as i understand the landmark status has been requested for the original sanctuary building not the entire trinity property um that is still my understanding based on the presentation we just saw it is the original building not the fellowship or additional building that was came at a later time my concern with the original building is that there is no street level entrance to this particular facility we have entrance through three exterior stairways um with 11 to 14 steps each additionally uh the bathrooms for this facility are located in the basement which is five to seven steps down there is one bathroom on ground level and it is part of a long-term lease with um the aa group and it's not available to us for general use since there is no street level entrance to the facility on its own it would make it appear to me that the sanctuary building as it would stand under this would be non-ada compliant other than the stairs it is only through use of our aging elevator in the adjacent building that an individual within disabilities can access the sanctuary space after an elevator outage a few years ago the trinity congregation tried to come up with ideas to remedy the situation the solutions involved costly construction and changes to the exterior of the sanctuary building which if landmarked could potentially prohibit both us and any potential owner in the future from making that space ada compliant i believe the landmark status at this particular time for this particular facility is premature we need more time to examine it and come up with other solutions and affordability and i request a postponement of a landmark status grant at this time thank you thank you go ahead hi i'm lynn town 6001 first avenue north st petersburg florida 33710 i feel that the decision being made today is hasty and not appropriate for the clientele that we serve i am a deacon here at trinity lutheran i deal with with homelessness and uh needs of the community the community is not being offered the services i as a deacon present because of lack of ability to get to people and to places that are in need we have a gamut of resources that are not accessible to us due to the construction at this time we cannot get people to church on sundays if the elevator if the elevator is not working we have a high degree of handicapped elderly people who cannot and will not be able to attend the house of the lord to worship because we are not able to access that worship i feel that this is not the appropriate time nor place nor way to bring god's message to the community and to those of the people that we are representing i vote that we do not put this landmark status in order at this time let the message of god be heard throughout the community not for the chosen few thank you the next two speakers is joe hainsworth and leah hank hansdick sir sir if you're going to speak you got to come to the mic and give us your name and address no you're okay thank you no rather than take up more time miss frederick brought up every address please sir oh my name is joe hainsworth my address is 5601 15th avenue south thank you okay and miss frederick brought up every point that i was going to bring up so rather than take your time thank you very much sorry to make you get up and down go ahead ma'am my name is leah heineke my address is 701 mirror lake drive north apartment 306 st petersburg i'm here to respectfully request that you delay approval of the landmark status for trinity lutheran church while the building absolutely qualifies for designation of landmark status that status carries with it long lasting consequences and i feel that our congregation requires more time to fully evaluate the impacts first landmark status brings restrictions that can significantly affect significantly affect how a property is used maintained and financed before approving this designation we should ensure that the congregation more fully understands the financial and opera operational implications are there landmark maintenance standards that will be required do we have the resources to comply with those how will landmark status affect our insurance rates i've heard that insurance rates often increase significantly significantly for buildings with landmark status i do not believe that we have fully explored these issues or if the issues have been explored by committee the congregation has not been kept informed approving too quickly could unintentionally create burdens that make it harder for our church to thrive and could close off options that we later wish were still open for exploration i believe that this decision deserves a broader discussion while the church body voted in january to proceed with the application for landmark status i believe that vote was rushed and that the majority of our voting members now realize that there are further repercussions that then were originally disclosed and they want time to examine those we should explore alternatives such as conserve conservation easements adaptive reuse strategies or partial protections that might safeguard the historic features without imposing the full weight of landmark status delaying approval allows time to gather input compare options and avoid a rushed outcome finally landmark status is not required for historic designation or preservation a short delay now ensures we are able to make an informed decision that balances preservation with the needs of our church i urge you not to approve this status today but instead to hold the application until we've had the chance to more fully study the consequences and alternatives thank you thank you thank you uh mr chair the next two speakers are helen mohrer and karen potts please go to an open podium state your name and address for the record and you'll have three minutes to address city council oh i'm sorry you're the you're the applicant so okay i can't no yeah sorry sorry yeah it's all right okay my name is helen mauer i reside at 4574 34th avenue north and saint pete 33713 i've been attending trinity for 48 years um i am in favor of the landmark designation i know that the city came out three times to talk to our congregation about the impacts of local designation and we did vote in january and 65 percent of the voting that the members that were there voted for that one thing i'm afraid is if we don't get local designation that the new membership with hope they will vote to sell the sanctuary and there will be no protection other than the building be sold and raised thank you thank you mr chair the next two speakers are john potts and claudia petty petty please go to an open podium state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes to address city council hi john potts i live at 2836 7th avenue north and i'm here to show my support for the local historic designation of the trinity lutheran church i'm a member of the congregation i feel the designation is an important part of preserving our historic heritage of the church as well as the heritage of the city and we know this process has been a long road for everyone involved it goes back a long ways there's been a bunch of meetings that have taken place and there's been ample time for everyone to discuss everything derek's been out so it has uh cindy and there's been a lot of questions asked some of them asked two and three times they were very patient with us preserve the berg has helped us a lot and i'd like to see this get passed just as it was recommended by the cppc and yes a vote was held no everyone didn't vote because everyone was notified that they could show up to church to vote sometimes people just don't show up you can't go back and rewrite an election just because you didn't like the result and that's what's happening here and i think we should just move forward with what we voted on what we've put work into and it's been a long process just to table it and say we're going to pick it up in the future that that just won't happen and i don't think it's appropriate to ask for that here so i'd like to thank derek kilbourne and cindy kochanik along with preserve the berg they not only helped us with the application but also the fee that went along with the application so on that note i'd like to hopefully we'll see that this gets approved today thank you thank you my name is claudia petty i'm sorry go ahead my name is claudia petty my address is 363 pinellis bayway south in terra verde florida 33715 i have followed along as i've worked with my friend karen and john potts in the research that they've done on looking for a way to get this historical register taken care of and followed through on it's been a very uh it's been a long and uh very creative journey that they've been on they've worked with the museum of natural history in saint petersburg with preserve the berg and they've done a lot of historical background data to have this taken care of saint petersburg has a lot of wonderful churches and god can really be worshipped anywhere that we are we know that but this church for some reason it has those the glass windows it has the sanctuary that's so beautiful and it really holds a great significance for so many people in saint petersburg i hope that you will vote to continue and put this on the hysteric his hysterical historical register thank you thank you the final two speakers are edward hunt and manny vado please go to an open podium state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes to address city council manny why don't you come over to this one yeah thanks manny i guess that means i have to go first time no no no he can oh well yeah you were called first uh my name is everard hunt 4127 45th avenue north saint petersburg 33714 i want to apologize to the council for us airing our dirty laundry out truth of the matter is um our church has more than enough time my knowledge has kicked this subject down the road for the last three years our church is also in a process of merging with hope our gracious pastor is pastoring for two churches at this time and the truth of the matter is once this merge takes place the plans are is to sell the property the voting members had had time to vote for this back in january hope was not at play at that time and we wish to keep our status or for you to vote yes on the status for sanctuary to be honest with you if you visit our church you would truly see a snapshot of history just in the stained glass windows by themselves it is a thing of beauty thank you for your time thank you my name is manny leto i'm at 2219 6th avenue south and i'm the executive director of preserve the burg i had some prepared comments here but in light of what is uh transpiring before you and i think out of respect for everybody here i'm gonna amend those and and turn it over to you more quickly you know usually these things are um uh joyous uh occasions when somebody uh elects to move forward with a designation um i will mention a couple of things the church again as you've heard you know it's in the downtown national register district it's a contributing structure to that district it's on the potentially eligible list which you know if i had to just be very direct you know we get asked um a lot what are we doing with properties on this list are we moving them through the designation process and so um here's an example of us moving it moving a property through uh that designation process it's also right across the street from the mirror lake district and adjacent to the historic uptown district and the north shore district so it really is kind of at the nexus of a very historic area i will say with all due respect i think you know there are some questions here regarding ada regarding property values that you know i would question i will just mention the bathrooms of this building are not ada compliant as an example um so i um i encourage you uh to move forward here um but you might may want to get some clarification from staff um regarding the proper representation of this application preserve the berg considers ourselves a co-applicant as we did help pay uh for the the uh this application and um so there are some questions clearly that need to be need to be answered here i'd encourage you to get some input from your preservation staff um and uh but ultimately this is a property that belongs on the local register and should be designated thank you thank you okay uh we're that's it for public comment okay so we'll go ahead and uh close public comment and we'll go into uh cross staff do you have any cross staff waves okay applicant do you have any cross examination for anybody that spoke or for staff you get to ask clarifying questions to anybody that oh i don't have questions i have a couple comments will be at the end we'll get we'll get there in just a second okay all right staff any closing staff has a few uh clarification okay great thanks um landmark designation does not regulate interiors nor does it regulate use so the property if sold in the future could be used we've seen churches in the preservation field be turned into housing turned into event spaces turned into multiple things um the proposed landmark designation does not regulate the current editions it literally chops a line right between the church and the the um 1951 edition um then other item is uh if the rear editions were moved or if they're not removed so no we're not going to regulate the rear edition so if things needed to happen there it to make things accessible not a problem um however if in the future because the line is snapped where it is if the editions came down um historic preservation is not looking to freeze this building and what it is and we are not looking to block um access or accessibility um ada access for a lot of buildings can happen just like where the elevator shaft is right now you add it to the back of the building or you can add a lift or you can add a ramp typically we're going to try to keep things off the street views where possible so typically you're probably looking at a rear side addition to address accessibility but we're not going to say no to that essentially um if it's attached to the current sanctuary the 1922 sanctuary it would go through the coa process staff would provide feedback it's not going to block that and then the other uh thing that was came come up about the insurance is the property is already national register listed it is contributing so if the insurance concern has already would i would assume would likely happen with just the national register status i'm not an insurance broker so i don't know for sure but um it's already national register listed so this is just a local landmark designation that's all i have okay thank you okay applicant you have five minutes for any closing remarks um i just wanted to bring up i took some notes um again just like yourself as a council we do work for the members who are the owners of the actual owners of the church and anything the owners want um they bring back to council and there's appropriate provisions of the time frame in which that gets addressed just like your councils x amount of weeks have to pass and then it goes before council and then it goes back to the congregation nobody ever said that we wouldn't hear any change of heart it just has to go through the proper constitutional provisions and it never did so we have a january vote of yes that we've just been going okay we'll stay on and and go from there um ada accessible she already addressed i i was thinking that as well and i'm really struggling with the word hasty that i heard because i can tell you for sure i came back from captiva island april of last year to talk about this and that and i'm new to the church so like our um friend here said it's been going on for years this conversation but i know for a fact that a a lot of conversations have taken place and a lot of questions and answers and let's consult the city let's consult you know i've provided so much information on what can be done with buildings that are repurposed and reused if that's the choice you end up with i've done so much research on if you sell and i've worked in real estate for 12 years um i've even given them my thoughts on if you choose to sell and the last thing i'd like to say is like our i think one of our friends said um we are merging congregations but when the vote took well i'm sorry when the vote was taken the congregations were not merged so you would not enter that other churches members as part of your decision we still have our constitution a trinity constitution we are currently making a new constitution of a merged congregation but none of that has finalized and it wasn't finalized in january of 25. thank you okay council members we are going to close quasi-judicial and move into executive uh session and we're going to go to vice chair hanowitz thank you well i figure i'd start the conversation because i will tell you um a lot came up today that was not in our documentation that we did not expect um as a council when we do these type of applications a lot of times we rely on the cppc and staff to kind of bring out these issues um and i looking at others in the room while this is happening i don't think i was the only person that was surprised not to speak for other people as to what we're hearing um and so obviously there's a timing issue as i understand it um because there has been a merger between between two congregations trinity and hope in terms of where people stand so you have you have two uh congregations that am i am i missing and somebody could clarify because i'm completely confused i feel like there was a vote and there are members of the new congregation or at least the merger part that may have not been part of it i would just say i i thought you and i could have heard you wrong indicated that the merger had happened oh no no no i'm sorry i i should have not said that there's a merger going on in progress in process i'm sorry and council member this issue that has come up today was not before cppc at cppc it was i believe every public comment was in support of the designation and it was only after that that staff became aware that there was an issue and i advised that again it was quasi judicial so we can't have conversations with council or present that beyond the scope of the application we just confirmed that the applicant as presented and the registered agent as presented had or had not changed and the response that we received was presentation decks and information for tuesday so that's what we presented to you and again for consideration it's a designation consideration pursuant to the criteria like normal based on the building and again it's not really the use of the building that's not what's being designated it's simply the criteria from the code again if there's an ownership as far as staff was the applicant has not changed as far as staff is aware at this time so it's owner initiated um right now there is a merger happening do we know when this is going to be finalized i think that's if the applicant or someone with knowledge that has spoken the pastor can provide this information to council as to when is this going to happen there is no definite answer uh my hope is that it could happen in the next three weeks because no one has raised objections to the merger of the congregations all of the fights are about property not about members okay so legal in our code in our ordinance there is a provision where we can have 60 days to defer a vote pending information and then i guess the new information for that would be whether or not it's still supported post-merger i i you can do that we can do that but it just has to be when we're deferring since we're already in the public it has to be to a date certain but again just for per the code a designation i'm sure some of you are familiar when we had this could be against owner objection we don't oh so it's not a criteria that must be so i i just want to make sure that was clear too i understand that but the code allows for a deferral i just so when everyone is thinking about this and what we're going to do i want to put it out there you have what has been presented to us we have information that was not presented to the cppc that may change within the next i don't know three weeks or whatever i may be complicating things but at least i want to have that conversation with city council whether wherever people fall on that that's a you know that pertains to every city council member but we've heard enough here that that is also a possibility a continuance by council today is an option to avoid re-noticing if if that's the past path you went per florida law you would need to establish the date of that public hearing okay so you couldn't just say we'll have it when additional information is provided or when someone is ready you need to set the date or um if no action was taken then that would be a different scenario i just want to throw that out there as a potential and and and hear from other council members but um i there was a lot of new information from for me today on this and i'm still pondering what i'm gonna do so i'll leave it there i just wanted to start the conversation thank you thank you council member driscoll thank you um for our legal team is there is there any um information that's been shared today that is new and is written as something that we should be taking into consideration this is about a building um not so much about the use not about the interior and not about the church's business the church's business is not the city's business is there anything that you would like to contribute to our discussion as far as how some things should be weighted because i i have i have some concerns here that i'll outline after you speak um regarding the criteria i do not believe the staff report for the recommendation has changed from what was presented to cppc the only thing that has been finalized since or amended since cppc as we got a more um database boundary description which i worked with cindy kohannock to measure that out but other than that it's the same staff report that was presented to cppc regarding the criteria and i'll just add to that i mean i think i could be wrong council member but i think where you're going and similar to council member hanowitz it's not so much about the designation criteria itself and the building meeting those it's more about is the applicant i mean obviously today the the applicant is what was on paper and that who is that's who was presented to you today your question i believe is is that the appropriate applicant at still at this point in time and should you be reacting to the applicant who was before you or consider these other factors about the church governance that have been presented by various people who provide a public comment thank you well what i'm i'm looking at what has been placed before us today which is this designation the process was followed per the per the city's um rules and it sounds like the church's governing process was followed as well the vote happened the vote took place majority voted yes i don't it doesn't sound like this was an impulsive thing where nobody knew about it in advance i'm um you can never say how i mean we all got elected and there were some voters who didn't vote that day guess what we're still here you know so i'm i'm not so i'm not so worried about that because it it sounds like you followed um the church followed the church's rules for a case like this the city followed the city's rules i appreciate that preserve the book stood up and and um offered to help this is a really really important church in not just in the neighborhood but for our city um it has been it has been loved and taken care of for over 100 years it makes me smile every time i go by it and it's not just because of how beautiful it is on the outside but because i know that the work that happens on the inside of the church goes far beyond sundays there's incredible incredible ministry that's happening from that church and um pastor paul has been there for a long time like he's the only one i think i've ever actually known um being there and um i think he's done a wonderful job and it really hurts to see that there that there's a disagreement here um about what's happening again uh we just heard a whole lot about what's going on with the congregation and and another one i don't really think that's any of our business as we take up this matter today the church meets the criteria we have an applicant they did not withdraw it's still on the table and it's still on our table to decide on as far as i mean i heard a couple of people talking about the elevator and things like that and you know staff brought up that this is about the building and not about the exterior not the interior it sounds like there were um plenty of ways that were outlined about how to um this is i think this is a staff question thanks you might want to just stay there for now um you had mentioned earlier about adding elevate can an elevator be repaired or upgraded or um adjusted in any way once this is once this is um designated absolutely and the current tower would not actually be um part of this designation so they could they could take it down they could take they could rebuild that tower they could fix what's there yeah so it sounds like the answer to that is fundraising yeah got it um and as far as um the claims about and we know we've heard this um somewhere before about negative impacts of a designation like this we review exterior changes so i guess one example that comes to mind is that red tile roof that's there that's been there for over 100 years and you can see it in the uh touched up photographs of postcards of the the building um it would go through coa review and if it was suggested to perhaps change that which would considerably alter the look of the building then there might be some issues getting that passed or approved point um we are going to review all the exterior changes but otherwise that doesn't do anything else thank you thank you that's a um a perfect answer and then i would love to hear if possible from preserve the berg on let's say that um there were some changes to the exterior or a repair to the exterior something that's really necessary to um you know preserve the to make sure that the building is is structurally sound or windows leaking you know those kinds of things doesn't preserve the berg really specialize in helping property owners with um ways that they can maintain ways that financing can be done um you know how to how to make it more affordable and while still keeping with the uh character sure and and there are i mean the venoy hotel is a is a designated landmark and i just went through a major renovation i'm sure all of you are there for ribbon cuttings and and uh and celebrations so uh the snell uh arcade is a designated local uh landmark and has been maintained and i'm sure it's had to have maintenance over its 100 year plus history so you know the cppc with uh staff you know reviews those those coas usually uh what happens with coas when when people run into roadblocks is when they move forward with in their renovation process without first talking with the city and so then a lot of times i mean i'm at most cppc meetings and what i hear is well i already bought all of my windows and i already did all of my things and i think our argument is well you should talk to the city first and they could have pointed you in the right direction and i'm sorry that you've made this this investment without doing your due diligence but that's not really a fault of historic preservation it's a fault of sort of not following your your orders of operation and further if the church were to become locally designated they'd be eligible for a transfer of development rights credits which they could sell so they could sell the air rights over their building that designated portion they would do an far calculation that i'm not smart enough to figure out but derek is pretty sharp and so they can tell you how many tdrs you end up with and so it could actually end up being uh quite a um quite a windfall for a historic property and dc too yeah i mean a good example would be um the the florida leon apartments that sold their transfer development rights and they put that money into an endowment or a trust and it helps fund their building repairs and as a result and i know this i'm maybe uh trending into hearsay but i welcome you to to talk to that um their hoa council because they've been able to actually keep their hoa fees consistent and not have to raise them because of the money they got from selling their transfer of development rights credits and so that just helps them fund the repairs keeping the costs down for the owner so there are benefits you know there are um uh grant opportunities and that's kind of what part of what we do at least pointing people in the right direction and helping them out yes thank you so really the point is you know you've you've helped with this process to this point but it's not like you disappear tomorrow preserve the berg remains a resource correct we've been here since 1977 and uh we're not going anywhere and you just gave some great examples of how you can you can help folks when they um when they need to now we are a community resource yes thank you thank you so much so you know people like me well organizations like preserve the berg give me a lot of confidence that um you know once a landmark like this is you know most churches don't have a ton of money so that can be um a hefty consideration but you know all of that is done when you're you know thinking about making this application and the benefits far outweigh um that part so i believe we should move forward with this today because um the facts the the information that was shared and the remarks that were made towards others doesn't change the original reason that this was brought before us today and i would be supportive of that um of moving forward with this and supporting this designation thank you thank you council member gabbert thank you chair and uh you know we sit through a lot of interesting uh quasi-judicial proceedings i think when we came in today today it looked like it was pretty cut and dry right like you read the backup material and you go everybody's in support great that's fantastic and then you sit here and you hear that it seems to be what i would almost call a marital dispute in some ways um you know i almost look at it like you know what if what if you currently own your property and you want to bring your property forward and you want to have it historically designated but you have a potential new buyer that maybe is now coming and saying no no no don't just you know don't go ahead and move forward with this well you're the current owner and so it's your decision what you want to do with that property and i just don't think it's any of council's business what is happening in the inner workings of the relationship within the membership it is truly about the building that's what we're here for today and so for me i have to kind of cut through all of that and just very clearly look at what's before us what our task is and it clearly meets four of the criteria um and i have to agree with staff and um you know agree with you know the cppc that this this meets everything that we really want in historic uh preservation and in historic designation and it was brought forward by the applicant which for me because i'm not a fan of third party for me this is what historic preservation is for and so i am in support of what is before us today and hope that you all can work out your personal differences for the betterment of not only the congregation but this building and making sure that we preserve this historic legacy in our community that we're all so proud of and such a beautiful uh place that st petersburg wants to continue to maintain so i am in support today chair thank you thank you councilmember floyd thank you um i you know there's been a lot to digest uh as other people have said i really just put myself on here to let people know where i was at i mean um i do struggle i i initially was with councilmember hanowitz thinking um you know maybe give time to get clarity but i think actually after hearing from some of my colleagues like our decision is on the historic value of the building we have an application before us that does feel more appropriate based off the kinds of decisions that we've made in the past and the way that we're supposed to make decisions um so that's where i'm trending towards right now and i think that it does meet the uh guidelines that have been put before us but i also just want to say that i'm uh grew up a member of a trinity uh lutheran church uh in fort walton beach florida is the elca church as well and my mom is on the council there and she calls me and tells me about all the issues that they have the interpersonal issues as well so i'm understanding and sympathetic uh and uh i do think and i want to say this so that it's not um to leave people here with whichever either side of the issue you're on i i think that uh things will be okay uh no matter what happens here today and that it will be able to be worked out uh and the and i'm really happy to see so many members of the congregation here like uh standing up for their church no matter which side they're on so i just wanted to add the personal perspective as well thank you chair thank you um okay i i tend to agree with uh council member what uh council member driscoll council member gabbard i do have a couple of clarifying questions though and i i wanted to start with that opening comment because it goes into what vice chair hannon hanowitz was talking about but frankly it's just for a little bit of perspective for me so uh pastor gibson this question is for you i think and it's probably two in a row thank you and thanks for being here um when when did the the talk of merger begin talk of merger began oh or i guess like the actual uh like process of it like when it in january first step of whatever the process in january of 2025 am i under oath because i might miss my dates i believe in january in january of 2025 both congregations voted to form a merger task force to look at property issues to look at ministry issues to to build relationship between the two congregations okay great all right and then um before i ask another question i just want to thank staff for including the cppc minutes in the backup report because what i'm about to ask i would not have known had they weren't included and so i guess and this is mostly curiosity so between uh july 8th and today because you were the applicant at cppc what changed i don't know that i've ever been the applicant in fact i was told i had no rights as the applicant which is why i've you didn't you didn't speak as the applicant in uh or in favor of this in july 8th again knowing i was speaking under oath i was very careful in crafting my comments um okay and i spoke in favor of honoring the legacy of the ministries i said i hoped that this designation would help those ministries to continue in the future did i believe what i said was true i feared it wasn't i feared landmark designation would destroy this congregation and take it away from the city okay um thank you very much pastor gibson um we'll go to vice chair hanowitz thank you look i have no doubt that this meets whatever our requirements are for landmark designation my concern is deeper than that and i know that some council members don't believe that we should go into those issues but they are important for these congregations i know that this is the type of stuff that so to me that's why i was kind of leaning to allow you all some time to do what needs to be done and come back i didn't see the harm in that i don't think it changes the factors or anything i understand people want closure today and that's fine i was thinking more about the congregations i that's where i'm at and i was thinking about all of you whether you're for it or against it and so in my heart of hearts i i can't support it because that's where that's where my concern really lies and it's not a legal issue it's more of a we have an applicant and there is some division there's something going on right now and what is the harm at the end of the day to give x amount of time and wherever it ends up that time then it ends up there so i'm a no on those reasons thank you council member fix sanders thank you um i have a question about process so if we halted paused it now to talk i'm going to vote for it but this is the question if we pause it now to come back with clarity would it not have to go through cppc again because i i rely so much on their recommendation and if they didn't have this information why are we judging on information they didn't have we're looking at what they recommended so it's kind of it's not being it's not apples to oranges so it wouldn't have to go through cppc again right no ma'am okay uh council members cppc's recommendation that they provide you is solely based on the criteria that's presented in the ordinance and was presented in staff so those are the only things and as i mentioned that that aspect hasn't changed um but also if you voted to defer or to continue this public hearing that's just a con like exactly what it says a continuation of this public hearing so it's just a pause for you it doesn't restart the process however if in the me if a if the applicant chose to rescind the application in that time period then they would have to go restart and go back to cppc thank you and the reason why i asked that question is i concur with my other colleagues that said we're here to vote on what was presented with the building the applicant made it very clear that those that voted were members of the this church and i i find it very difficult to know that the church that's merging into it did not know this was happening so i didn't i didn't see this being that difficult i really didn't um but i understand it i understand everybody's allegiance um and their commitment to their church but i think as a council we are getting information that we did not have after the fact and we are here to to vote on what we were presented um in regards to the legality of the designation so i don't know if this has been moved approval or not um but um where we are with it i think we need to move forward with this and allow the churches and their merger to work it out amongst themselves thank you is that a motion i mean i made one i i was asking no one had made no one had made it okay well i make a motion that we um accept j fine second okay uh just quickly councilman or hanowitz or vice chair hanowitz i i i totally understand where you're coming from here's how here's how i kind of look at that because i i think perspective is important i i try to take it and put it in a more simpler term you know me so if i own if i owned a business building and i wanted to make it a landmark and at the same time sell the building but the buyer then became unwilling to buy it because of the landmark i don't i wouldn't take that into account i'd just go find a new buyer is is kind of how i look at it and i just wanted to share that because i do understand because it gets money and i think it gets to be honest with you from my perspective it gets money because it's a church and so you know congregations and your your faith leaders you've got a shared faith leader like i get that my director at my church is also the rector at another church and i would be hard pressed if uh a vote that happened at my church then the other church didn't like it and they got to precede it i would struggle with that and that's kind of where i'm at i just wanted to share that perspective but i i totally get it because it was this was new there there was some different perspective so i and again i just i i wanted to share that vice chair henwens i look i i understand all that look as being part of neighborhood association when i led it and we used to have big votes on issues and um you can have a divided neighborhood on issues and sometimes the board make a decision sometimes timing mattered i understand that these are organizations that own assets and they have made their vote but it seems like they were they both want this to happen and i was just giving some more leeway to make everyone happy and i didn't think i i just don't frankly i don't think it's a high cost and so i understand that i'd probably be the only no vote but um that's where i feel today so i agree that it's as far as i'm concerned it meets all the criteria for landmark designation i just wanted to give you all some time to hash out issues and hopefully um things go well for everyone concerned and i don't know what the financial situation is for both congregations how important it is and what it means to like the survivability so having said that that's where i'm i'm at okay thank you yeah thank you okay we've got a motion in a second seeing as no other council members wishing to speak on j5 clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item j5 passes seven to one with council members driscoll fix sanders floyd gabbard girdus gibbons and harding voting yes and council member hannowitz voting no okay thank you all right we are going to move into j6 and uh let's let's go ahead and swear everybody in again just in case we had some anybody else walk in yeah please go ahead okay and let's please read the ordinance clerk proposed ordinance number 140-hl an ordinance of the city of st petersburg florida amending the designation boundary of the 10th street church of god located at 207 10th street north a local historic landmark listed in the st petersburg register of historic places pursuant to section 16.30.070 city code and provided for an effective date and we do have one okay great all right kelly welcome all right good evening kelly parkins historic preservationist with the city of st petersburg um as stated we are here for a designation boundary amendment for the 10th street church of god this is already a designated local historic landmark it was designated in 2001 it was built circa 1901 in a carpenter gothic revival style which is a very unusual and rare style in st petersburg it was originally built for the first presbyterian congregation it was located on third street north and near fourth avenue north um in 1913 that congregation outgrew this sanctuary and so they sold the property sold the building of the property to a recently formed church of god congregation which was operating in methodist town serving the african-american community so this structure was relocated around 1913 in 1969 there was this one story masonry addition that was added when the property was designated that addition was considered non-contributing so today the staff report you received and all the package includes a lot about a certificate of appropriateness that was approved by the community planning and preservation commission that approved some exterior alterations the reconstruction of stained glass windows as well as the demolition of that masonry structure so the applicant today is proposing to reduce the designation boundary to only cover the sanctuary building that portion of the church and so here's a more detailed kind of proposal there is a five foot kind of buffer zone to the interior side yard of the church the owner is proposing to convert this into a house and then we'll redevelop the rest of the property so when the property was located in its former location you can see in the top left in the 1908 sandboard map it was very much the street side facade was really the primary facade of the building facing the street and that interior side yard was really the rear when it was relocated in 1913 you can see in the sandboard map on the top right um it had that kind of similar orientation though more to the corner as you can see from the sandboard maps development around the property has been sort of inconsistent so there wasn't like a very clear set boundary line that staff could say this is where the line is drawn so instead we reviewed with the new proposed boundary does it still meet the criteria it was originally designated under and yes it was primarily designated under criteria e and f which are related to its architectural style it still will meet it meets five of seven factors of integrity association is setting obviously with the significant redevelopment in methodist town the surrounding community has changed significantly over the years and it does not have any association but it still meets location design materials workmanship so when this went to cppc there are only five commissioners in attendance and you need a vote of four to make a recommendation for approval three commissioners voted yes two commissioners voted against so they technically are recommending a denial of this staff is still recommending approval of the proposed designation boundary with the conditions below that the designation boundary will take effect once the demolition of the addition has been completed so we don't have an arbitrary line drawn through the middle of the building and then making sure the applicant complies with all other requirements regarding all the lot line adjustments replied whatever is required and that is the end of my presentation and the owner is here to present as well thank you okay all right we'll go to owner applicant hello council my my name is uh bill rain i'm the owner of the the structure um i've been following this this building for about three years now another developer had it under contract and uh i was aware of it and i just saw the continued deterioration of the building so i was able to step in and work a deal with the existing developer that had it and also with the church and carl mobley it's a pastor he's here today to speak also about this one of the things in the cppc meeting that we were trying to do the demolition earlier and i think that was one of the reasons why there was the objection uh we wanted to do that before it came for the lot split and you know since then um like i said the staff is is approving this and uh you know so we you want to have your support with this also you know when i first started looking at this as a project i am a developer um i've done over two million square feet of historic buildings of over six million square feet of projects um this is going to be it's sort of i'm looking at it more as a labor of love this is going to be my personal residence that we are going to turn it into a house and it's really it's a really interesting building from the exterior the interior is as interesting as the exterior you know i've been looking at this more as a hybrid development concept we want to preserve the contributing structure while demoing the non-contributing block building and using the excess land to help underwrite the cost of of the renovation you're removing the designation from the excess land will allow greater highest and best use and flexibility with the new use of the land this will further help underwrite the renovation of the church structure itself you know creatively reuse as i said we're going creatively reuse the historic church structure as a residential home and it will be my primary residence this project ensures long-term feasibility and maintenance of this historic building while adding to the city of st petersburg's tax rolls one of the biggest problems i think these these kind of buildings have especially for churches when uh when the congregation put it on the landmark it was interesting hearing the discussion before this um you know i think they were thinking that being historic was going to allow grants and other funding sources when we took this over 11 of the 19 windows were actually blown out and this was really in bad shape as far as you know water is the biggest killer of old buildings and you know and when i met with derek and kelly was my first thing was we got to get this thing dried in and that that's been the priority we just got a new roof on it and we had the windows we had six carpenters in there basically replacing not replacing but repairing the existing windows that were there and we used old growth wood to do that um so it was one of those things when if we got into it and there was more rot they basically replace the frame if they got into it and the siding was bad we did that so pretty much right now i mean the whole uh east or west face we've repaired a lot of the wood and all the windows are operable um and uh so on on the north side we have in the south side the wood has been repaired also um so with that i don't have any other things uh we hope for your support today and like i said we want to help hopefully you vote that it'll help preserve this beautiful structure thank you okay thank you all right let's go into public comment please manny lato uh please go to either podium state your name and address for the record and you'll have three minutes to address city council uh good evening council my name is manny lato i'm at 2219 6th avenue south and i did submit a card i have a little bit of a nuanced position uh here before you that i just uh want you to consider and maybe encourage you to get some clarity from from from staff so it's it's not really a no we love we love what's happening here and the resolution of this and uh so for a lot of years we have encouraged the reuse of this property and uh way back in 2021 or 2022 we even supported the demolition of the annex structure so i think what uh the new owner is proposing is fantastic um these old buildings need to be used and remain in use to survive and so we're excited to see that and again in 2021 we were looking at a d designation and a possible demolition of this property and so now we're turning from that to an adaptive reuse that's a win so um thank you for that um we do want to just ask uh at this public forum about the boundary change and how that might affect future redevelopment on the site there really have been no plans or coa submitted so we don't really know what uh is going to happen on the property and whether or not uh that new develop may or may not require um a review of the impact a potential impact on the historic structure um so the reduction is of the boundary is to five feet um you know i don't know is that enough is it not enough uh i think it's just a question that that should be asked i think ultimately the important thing here is to see this building uh reused but i i think we should have some clarity on what kind of review may be uh appropriate for something that is being built next to uh the this this property some more of a question but i want to commend the owner and excited to see it move forward any other public comment okay we'll move into cross-examination staff city waves thank you uh owner applicant any cross-examination okay um can we go back to was the card not submitted you shouldn't sorry about that he could he could he could talk to her in the closing rebuttal they wanted to okay applicant wants him to say if you you you'll have five minutes in closing here in a second if you want to let him use some of your time if you're not using it or you don't use all of it he was at the beginning um thank you okay so no cross you can ask questions of anything that was said yep the five feet came from a negotiation with staff when we first came in it was going to be three feet and kelly sort of said that's too close one you're going to ask a question sorry are you going to ask a question um that was more of a clarification okay so you can do that during closing okay yeah sorry just trying to keep it clean so i don't get yelled at all right any closing remarks for staff no but i'm here for questions okay thank you very much kelly all right now you're up man as we said and one of the things we had our pre-app last week for the uh the renovation of the interior and meeting with the the zoning folks and everything too the development of the excess what i'm calling the excess land we're still going through what that's going to look like um as i said this is sort of a labor of love i don't want to have to get into a full-blown development and sort of all the new uh growth management land use rules are for big projects so if i take it with the what we had shown with the four or the five lots total i have to now bring in retention and a lot of other things and we're not sure if we want to go to that expense to be a legal lot in cc2 ccs2 i have to be 4500 square feet which means on the front edge i have to be 37 and a half feet by 120. right now that takes me to three feet i think the way that this is worded though it talks about a buffer i think we can still go to the the three feet but then we'll do an easement for the two feet to get to the five foot buffer so i think that's going to be real important as we're looking at this it just gives more flexibility so we could put two single family homes next to this and that's sort of a path at least resistance i don't need retention i don't need these other things so okay thank you did you uh did your guest want to also speak during and carl mobley's the pastor we that we okay carl do you want to say anything or say well that's that's totally up to you just give us your name and address please uh pastor carl mobley uh 4137 i broke away south thank you pastor uh i've been at that church for about 30 years and uh due to the kobe and uh the pandemic and the hurricanes we was like climbing a rock with no legs and no hands we had no funds to do anything and i was told all the time that it was funds and i went to tallahassee wasn't no funds to help us so bill came along and i met bill he met my brother and they talked and i got to meet bill um i just say it wouldn't be for him that we wouldn't have a church today we are relocated and we're moving on um i just feel if anything that can be done for him and what he's doing for that project uh save the bird or the city whatever y'all want to do with it he's a man that took on the task i just feel that he needs to be worked with and he needs to be appreciated because every time i came down here everything was always we want to save the building he's saving the building uh he's a good man god put him in the midst of my life and uh everybody else gave me all kind of talk but he walked with it so uh if anything i can do for him i told him i'm here to do it uh we would not have a congregation we would not we we have a lovely building now uh two million dollar building and he plays a very important role in it so uh i don't know what's behind the doors i don't know what y'all trying to do i don't know what y'all want to do but he helped us and i didn't get no help from the city and i know no help but i'm not i'm a pastor i'm not holding no grudge i'm moving on okay i wish y'all all the blessing and everything but you got a man that's one he's saving the property is that what y'all want to do so work with him yeah thank you pastor all right we are going to close quasi-judicial and move into executive session by shir hanowitz thank you and i'm so happy to hear where we're at because i remember when the conversation was being had regarding demolition and manny you start i mean you brought it all up and i'm glad you did because it is important to know that 2020 it was designated historic and by was it 20 or maybe it was earlier 2019 or something it was 2001 it's been designated for 25 years there was an application to de-designate that's what it was that's exactly what it was which was to take it away you're right i did not include all that because i this is just the designation but no i understand but it is important to know like where it was to where we are today and for those that may not know this is like really good work and so i commend all of you for the work you've done um to get it there kelly the only one i want to ask i know the developer mentioned like the scenario that they have in terms of building and and the three feet to five feet i just for the record obviously staff was supports that and that was the best way to go forward on this i mean we put a recommendation for five feet because it allows act it allows the ability to maintain that um interior side yard wall um we also you know when you review it that is really the least publicly visible elevation it has the least amount of architectural ornamentation so it felt like kind of a balance to make to allow preservation of this church while allowing development okay i was not in that meeting last week it was scheduled during cppc so we were not there to hear what what issues there were or anything but um we'll work with the applicant moving forward okay well great work everyone and i'm i'm very happy that everyone's happy in this sorry i didn't move my hands and i hit this everyone's happy in this in this application so thank you thank you council member gibbons thank you so much chair uh this is a good example of an increased uh reuse of the land um i'm so excited to see what's happening with historic churches all across the city um they're repurposing these churches uh whether it be for housing event venues or whatever but i'm you know had this conversation with manny a few weeks ago in my office a huge preservationist and we spoke specifically about this church so pastor mobley i am so happy to see that we have come uh to an agreement with the developer who's willing to save the church uh because i remember years ago uh speaking with senator ruson about getting state dollars to try to help uh and you said it yourself it's been you know a labor of love and so i'm happy to see that there was an amicable agreement that you all were able to come to that really preserves and protects uh the historic heritage and culture of saint pete uh my family worshiped there when it was a sanctified church in the 1950s uh so this is special to me it's personal to me i'm so happy to see that we will be preserved preserving this so uh bill thank you so much for being that ram in the bush and for stepping up and for saving this historic venue and i look forward to coming and visiting the site whenever you have the ribbon cutting so thank you so much chair thank you move approval second we have a motion and a second seeing as no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please sally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item j6 passes unanimously thank you everybody okay we are going to uh move into open forum do we have any speakers okay we will close open forum and move into announcements council members any announcements council member floyd thank you uh just a couple of things first um thank you to my colleagues for a really a good day of intellectual conversation second i wanted to acknowledge the passing of rob lori uh very important um to me when i first moved here uh listening to him i think was on wmf back then uh was very sad to see him passing so i just wanted to make sure we acknowledge that today uh and then last thing a little lighter note is that uh college football's back saturday so go knights thank you more importantly college game day at 9 a.m uh council member gabbard thank you chair and uh unfortunately um some more sad news to share i received an email while we've been sitting here today that uh jamie ross passed away um if those of you who did not know her she was the florida housing coalition president for oh my gosh she worked with the housing coalition for 40 years um she retired a couple of years ago and the announcement was made this afternoon and this evening that she had passed away um she was a resident of st pete beach and she was a pioneer and a trailblazer in the affordable housing space she took bold stances um in my early work even before being on city council i really looked at her as a role model and a guiding force in that work and so i just wanted to say to her family we're very sorry for her loss or for their loss and she will be greatly missed so thank you thank you for sharing council member council member gibbons thank you very much chair uh recognizing these trailblazers who we've lost this week uh i'd be remiss if i didn't speak the name of the late mr mordecai walker uh who passed away this week a long time gas plant resident he was 101 years old uh he passed away and so i want to make sure we speak his name and in some sort of way hopefully in the future we can find a way to honor his legacy uh but his funeral will be on september 6th that saturday so thank you chair thank you thank you very much councilmember gibbons okay uh a couple of things just from me um first of all just uh wanted to thank my colleagues and staff as i i wasn't able to be here last week and so just um i know you were in very capable hands with uh vice chair hanowitz and i listened to the meeting and just uh very much appreciate the grace and the patience um on a on a more happy note on tuesday it was chan's birthday and so uh before i talk doge for two minutes we're gonna sing happy birthday to chan happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday dear chan happy birthday to you we're getting good at that yeah we are getting good we're gonna have a harmony soon i think uh we're gonna make councilmember gibbons sing the high part though um yeah and so uh just quickly uh councilmember gabbert had asked me a couple weeks ago to uh give an update on uh just kind of things doge um from flc and so um i just thought i would provide just a quick update really i i thought the two big takeaways i there's some stuff in between but we've been here for a really long day so i'm going to focus on two things the the why that was presented and uh what they're looking for i thought were the two biggest things to spend some time on and so the why were poorly done projects they used a couple of different projects that had like started gotten halfway through municipalities didn't have the money to to finish them and so uh that's one of the things that they're looking for increased permitting fees was talked about often um the very thankful we did the opposite uh and then they called it like gaslighting censorship uh they gave a couple of examples to be very honest with you um i none of them rang to what the city of saint pete uh does and so i i didn't even write them down but i at least wanted to those were the big three that they talked about um so what are what were they looking for this was a more extensive list i'm going to run through this and then uh give a couple of examples a few of them rapid spending growth contracting activities anti-scientific ideologies what they called trendy or low ro roi projects uh funds to ngos and really they went on they didn't say this during the presentation but they got asked a clarifying question essentially ngos they meant non-profits so uh funding non-profits um subsidized competition to the private sector uh performance metrics and then uh actually one of the things uh oh and let me finish real quick before i go into that sorry and then um they they redid a scientific data around climate change and so i just want to touch on a couple very quickly um that when they talked about trendy low roi they gave uh and i didn't even write it down because it wasn't worth writing down um they gave a new definition to dei that was interesting um they used subsidized competition to the private sector they used the municipality that owned a hotel and that owned a bar and grill so those were their examples there and then uh one of the big things that they talked about they had an entire slide about it was climate change science they used the tampa airport as their example from two weeks ago when they hit 101 and they said that the thermometer that we had been using for the last 50 years at the tampa airport was too close to a runway so it didn't count and so i thought that was pretty interesting i'll give you my overall take and then i will be quiet i i again i know we've been here for a few minutes and i'm happy to answer any clarifying questions or frankly we can have a committee meeting about it had i seen blaze's comments from city hall and this presentation my comments uh last week would have been very different uh about doge and um how it's operating essentially what they did was they took all of what is coming out of the federal government and they used that as the reasoning uh to come to different municipalities and essentially anybody that made a resolution in favor of doge or invited them got to opt out and that's the words he used was opt out so i thought it was a very uh interesting presentation i'll call it that um they wanted themselves to be lean that was interesting because the economist that they hired was from washington dc and they moved him here so um um so anyway it was it was a very interesting experience i'll call it that and uh just wanted to provide you that update without getting too fired up so um i hate leaving it at that but uh i love you all equally how's that we love st pete that's right okay august 21st city council is adjourned thank you everybody thank you