City Council - Aug 27, 2026

Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1, Hopley Gerdes, District 2, Brandi Gabbard, District 3, Mike Harding, District 4, and Council Chair, Lisette Hanowitz, District 5, Deborah Figg Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, Corey Gibbons Jr., and District 8 and Council Vice Chair, Ritchie Floyd. August 27, 2026, City Council Meeting. Clerk, if we can have a roll call, please. Floyd? Here. Gerdes? Here. Gabbard? Here. Harding? Here. Hanowitz? Here. Vic Sanders? Here. Driscoll? Here. Gibbons? Here. Today we're going to have our invocation given by Sepidei Eskandari of the Baha'i Faith St. Petersburg Center. If you can stand and then please remain standing for our Pledge of Allegiance. Good afternoon. O thou kind Lord, these are thy servants who have gathered in this meeting, have turned unto thy kingdom, and are in need of thy bestowal and blessing. O thou God, manifest and make evident the signs of thy oneness, which have been deposited in all the realities of life. Reveal and unfold the virtues which thou hast made latent and concealed in these human realities. O God, we are as plants, and thy bounty is as the rain. Refresh and cause these plants to grow through thy bestowal. We are thy servants. Free us from the fetters of material existence. We are ignorant. Make us wise. We are dead. Make us alive. We are material. Endow us with spirit. We are deprived. Make us the intimates of thy mysteries. We are needy. Enrich and bless us from thy boundless treasury. O God, resuscitate us. Give us sight. Give us hearing. Familiarize us with the mysteries of life, so that the secrets of thy kingdom may become revealed to us in this world of existence, and we may confess thy oneness. Every bestowal emanates from thee. Every benediction is thine. Thou art mighty. Thou art powerful. Thou art the giver, and thou art the ever-bounteous of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. May all be seated. Thank you so much for that beautiful invocation. Council members, we have an agenda before us with the addition of I-1, the continued discussion of ballot order for municipal referendum. And with that addition, I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting, council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, clerk, please tell and ask to vote. Madam Chair, the motion to approve the agenda passes unanimously. Thank you. We have a consent agenda before us. Clerk, do we have any cards? We do not, Madam Chair. Okay. And council member Driscoll. Thank you. I didn't want to pull this. I just wanted to make a couple of comments on items CB7 and 8. Both of these items are regarding the deaccession of two pieces of artwork from the city's public art collection. It was interesting to read through this and to get a refresher on the city's procedure regarding deaccession of art. And I don't have any objections to what we're doing with these. But if you look at what, if you look at the process and, you know, it starts with the public arts commission or staff, you know, just discussing in a public arts commission meeting the potential to start that process for deaccession, which includes an evaluation, of course. And in looking at the criteria for deaccession, evaluation, some of the items include the condition or security of the artwork cannot be reasonably guaranteed. The artwork has been damaged or has deteriorated and repair is impractical or infeasible. The artwork has major defaults of designer workmanship and is outside the warranty period, endangers public safety. The list goes on. And I can't help, I couldn't help but think about Janet Eccleman's Bending Art sculpture and the challenges that we have with coming to a solution with the various parties to, you know, move forward with the repair and reinstallation of that sculpture. I certainly hope that things don't go downhill to the point where something like deaccession has to be considered for that project. And so I want to encourage all of the parties involved to work harder towards a solution sooner. The last update I got was not a great situation. And I know that this is something that Janet Eccleman was proud of. I know that it's something that the city was proud of. I know that many residents want to see it back in place. And I hope that there will be some inspiration to guide those conversations forward in a positive way. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. And before we go into the consent agenda, council members, for item CB16, there is a Scrivener's error in one of the commissioners' names that will be corrected by legal in the corresponding resolution. So they wanted to make sure that you all were aware of that Scrivener's error before a motion. Move approval. Second. I have a motion and a second on the consent agenda. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, clerk, please tell an announced vote. Madam Chair, the motion to approve the consent agenda passes unanimously. Thank you. Next up, we move to open forum. Clerk, are there any speakers for open forum? I'm going to read the forum. Yeah, if you're speakers, can you read the rules? Thank you. If you wish to address city council on subjects other than public hearing or quasi-judicial items listed on the agenda, please sign up with the clerk. Only the individual wishing to speak may sign the open 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 are 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. Applause is not permitted except in connection with awards and presentations. 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 violation of the rules of decorum, the chair is authorized to accept public comments by alternate means, including by email only. And, Madam Chair, we do have some speakers. And do we have anybody in Zoom? No speakers. When I call your name, please go to an open podium. State your name, address, or cross street. For the record, you'll have three minutes to address City Council, Goliath Davis and Deborah Deacon and Carl Gunn. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Greetings. Goliath Davis, 1800, 63rd Terrace South. I come today to request recognition for one Henry L. Ashwood. On June 29, 2026, the city held a pioneer ceremony for the black firefighters who integrated the St. Petersburg Fire Department. They were recruited by Mr. Ashwood, and they have been dubbed the Legacy Six. They and their families occupy a special place in St. Petersburg history. The city is to be commended for this special recognition. However, the history and the story is not complete. It is recommended that a photo of Mr. Henry Hale and Ashwood be displayed in proximity to the commemorative plaque hung in honor of Legacy Six Pioneers. Mr. Ashwood served as a firefighter in the United States Air Force, retiring as a sergeant. He joined the city of St. Pete as a personnel coordinator, and he led the drive to integrate the fire department. He recruited, mentored, and fought the forces that tried to separate the fire recruits from employment. He was their support system and an integral part of the movement that transformed St. Pete Fire and Rescue. A photo and his brief description of his contribution is requested to be hung in proximity to theirs. This request was originally submitted on July 12th. The mayor's office responded, indicating that the chief of fire would reply. And on July 17th, the request was denied by Chief Watts. I got no response from council, even though it was submitted to the mayor, council, and the fire chief. I stand today to request and ask you to support this recognition. We are not asking for a handout of special consideration. Rather, we ask that the story be completed by hanging the photo and by bestowing upon Mr. Ashwood only what he deserves, recognition for integrating the St. Pete Fire and Rescue. And we ask that his photo be hung in proximity to the recruits that he brought in to do that. I thank you in advance for your consideration. And I come alone because we want this to be a request, not adversarial. And I think it's a harmless request. And we expect that at some point you guys will grant that request. I will answer any questions if you have any. This is just public comment. Go ahead. My name is Carl Gunn. This is Debbie Shruti Deacon. And I'll be speaking on the flat cameras. And Debra is going to speak for me because I have a disability in that area. You can give your address, please. Address. 4561 Cobia Drive, Southeast St. Pete 33705. And mine's the same. Go ahead. So far. Liberty, freedom, and justice are not just words written in our Constitution. They are principles that define what it means to live in a free country. We want our communities to be safe, and we want law enforcement to have the tools necessary to protect us. The question is, how much of our freedom are we willing to give up for safety? That question becomes especially important with the growing use of flock cameras. In St. Petersburg, these cameras have sparked growing concerns about privacy and government surveillance. The Fourth Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable search and seizure. One officer seeing your car driving down a public street is very different from a system that can record millions of vehicles and have them stored. The government cannot necessarily avoid the Fourth Amendment because information is collected by a third party. The court has emphasized that detailed long-term records of a person's movements can reveal the privacies of life, as was recognized by the Supreme Court in Carpenter v. United States. The Fifth Amendment also represents an important principle. The government cannot deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The use of flock cameras raise an important question about due process and accountability. Who can access this information, why are they searching it, and how long can it be kept? We were told that they were going to be deleted after 30 days. Now the CEO of Flock Safety has changed it to seven days. However, just deleting these records will not permanently remove them. They have to be incinerated. Justice requires us to recognize both sides. Cameras can help solve crimes. However, the Constitution was not written to protect us, only when the government has good intentions. It was written to protect us from excessive government power. So this isn't necessarily a question of pro-police. Next two speakers. Next two speakers are Philip Hoffman and Dr. Perry G. Washington. Please go to an open podium. State your name, address, or cross street. For the record, you'll have three minutes to address city council. Afternoon. My name is Phil Hoffman. My cross streets are Pasadena Avenue and First Avenue North in St. Pete. Look, I'm a former attorney. I work for the DA's office in a different district jurisdiction, and I still maintain my attorney's standing. I just want to read from Chartres v. United States. It's pretty clear. It says, law enforcement conducts a Fourth Amendment search when it uses geofence warrant to obtain detailed cell phone location history from third-party tech company here, Google location history. Individuals, this is actually the opinion of the judge. Individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such records, even if the data covers only a limited time period and is held by a private company. The court emphasized that people have a constitutionally protected privacy interest in records of their movements generated by everyday cell phone use. Now, this is not directly on point with Flock because this is not cell phone use, but certainly it will be applied by the Supreme Court when the case does reach the Supreme Court, and it will inevitably in the next year or two. And you can check with your city attorney. I believe that when this does get found to be a violation of the Fourth, that all the evidence gathered by this to use for prosecutions will most likely be thrown out. So every case you prosecute utilizing this technology, that part of the evidence that was utilized, proven by a good defense attorney, will most likely be able to negate all of those prosecutions. So I do believe this violates it. It's pretty clear in the court's latest ruling. And I do want to state a little bit about how this was done. This was done back in 2022 by, I guess, a very simple vote from you guys. I can't remember the name of the vote. But it was no discussion, no public input. It was most likely, and I don't have the data and video, most likely presented by the sheriff, saying this is a good idea for the safety of our residents. You guys just passed a $730,000 budget to utilize these after, I guess, Flock gave you a free trial for 25, then you increased it to 50, passed it on a very simple vote. And I think that's an improper way to have done that kind of budget for my $11,000 in property tax that I pay every year. You know, I think I have a vested interest in where that money goes, and there should have been some kind of public ability to comment before this was put in place. I do believe these should be removed, and I think there's a lot of legal implications that you guys are going to face if they're not. Thank you. Speakers? There's somebody from right here. While you fix it, you want me to call the next person because they need an accommodation, maybe? You'll get the next person? Yeah. And then, well, that gets- The next person is Mary Petson. Please state your name, address, or crossroad. Please, for the record, please. You'll have three minutes. Good afternoon. My name is Mary Petson. I live on Mirror Lake Drive in St. Pete. I wanted to speak about the Flock cameras. I feel this is an enormous violation of privacy. I don't believe that America is a place for this kind of surveillance, and I think the amount of money being spent on this is horrendous. I believe we could hire more police officers, and that would be a much better use of these funds. That's really all I have to say. Appreciate your listening. Thank you. I believe we're ready for the- You ready? Testing. My name is Dr. Perry G. Washington. I'm working right now, 175, 50 North St. Petersburg, Florida. I'm here today, and I have two jackass awards. One, Gibberton, prior board chairman, threw me out this building. Handlers don't know my name. I bet you know my name now. And because you were not challenged for election, don't mean you safe. Corey Gibber, Gibbons, Jr., you gotta go. You gotta go. I told all jackass last year when they arrested me in my account, I'm a retired state broker. Two and a half years. Sir, when I'm told, I bet you can look at me now. Son, you gotta go. Just like that jackass is a go. The man, I even told you he was innocent, and told you the law, and told you to go. It's a law. One, one law. And you, you gotta go. I'm not gang. You got to go. Thank you, Dr. Washington. You're cutting me off. You're cutting me off. You're violating my civil rights. Now I'm going to federal court. Huh? It's negative. It's negative. It's negative. It's time. The next speaker. You're violating my civil rights, and now I'm going to federal court. I told you. I'm not gang. Next speaker. Next speaker is Amy Parsons. Thank you. Hello. Thank you for. Good afternoon. Your name and address, please. Oh, yes. My name is Amy Parsons. I've been a resident of the city for 36 years. I appreciate you having this conversation today, especially 166 21st Avenue Southeast St. Petersburg, Florida. Am I good? Thank you. I'm sorry. I didn't. I missed the intro. And if I could have a little bit of extra time. I'm a bit nervous after the last presentation. If you want us to pass you, we can come back to you. Would you want us to do that instead and go to the next speaker and then we can come back to you? Yeah, thank you. Yeah. We'll do that. There's one Zoom speaker. Okay, we'll take a Zoom speaker. Thank you. Okay, Jason S., I'm going to bring you into the meeting space. Please state your name and address for the record. Please unmute yourself also, and you'll have three minutes to address city council. Jason, can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you. Good afternoon. Jason Scott, 4636 Redfish Lane. I just want to thank council today for all your diligent work and having important conversations on the issues. I wanted to highlight something that's going on at the Public Service Commission on the state level. Right now, Duke Energy is pushing a petition on large load customers, which is data centers, which would not protect residents and customers from paying to build the infrastructure for those data centers. And then I also want to mention from the other speakers talking about FLOC, I do find it concerning that we are paying, what was it, $700,000 for these FLOC cameras. Meanwhile, we had a lot of pushback over a study for the feasibility, sorry, the feasibility study for $630,000. So I advise you to cancel that FLOC camera agreement. Thank you. Thank you. Amy Parsons, please go to an open podium. State your name, address, or cross-street. You'll have three minutes to address city council. All right. Thank you. My name is Amy Parsons. I live at 166 21st Avenue Southeast in St. Petersburg here in the great state of Florida. I'd like to address the FLOC cameras, and I appreciate that whoever brought that up, thank you, allowed us to speak about it today. I went to the engagement the other night at the library regarding AI and all that. So what I'd like to remind everyone, you probably already know, but it's a good reminder that all these things are connected. The FLOC cameras, if you're in here, if you can turn off your phones, please, and put them on silent. The FLOC cameras are, you know, data, and data centers love that, that FLOC camera data. It can be used for so much information and stored forever. You know, I mean, let's be real. This information isn't going to be deleted ever. Once they get it, they love it, and, you know, big money buys it. So things change. Things have a way of changing later on, so we're not voting for what's necessarily on the table right now. We're voting for what we have to understand is our future of privacy. And there's plenty of cameras all over the city, you know, private and commercial cameras are all over. Or we don't necessarily need more. And, you know, I recently had my health insurance changed, and I asked my health insurance company, could they delete all my data? Because I really don't think it needs to be with the old company, and I'm going with a new company, and I'd just like to delete it all. And they, what? It doesn't work that way, ma'am. It doesn't work that way, you know. Oh, wow. So I said I want to talk to somebody else. And, you know, I talked to somebody else, and they just said, we can't do that. So that's interesting that when you try to actually literally delete information, it just doesn't happen. And so I am not for funding a data center within the city or the county. So really the bigger picture are these data centers that are going to eat up a ton of energy. So, you know, the water is another question, but the energy itself is fascinating. And if you look, there's plenty of information online to see data centers that are so annoying within any area. I mean, small or large, they're very loud. They're like, you know, who wants that in their neighborhood all the time? I mean, give me a break. Who wants the disruption from the building of it? You know, it disrupts the water. We already have plenty of issues that we need to address infrastructure. And I very much appreciate the amount of time and effort that the city is putting into our water because it's something that you don't necessarily see, you take for granted. And I very much appreciate the job they've been doing with that. Thank you, Ms. Parson. Oh, thank you. We have no more speakers. We close open forum and we go to the next item on our agenda. It is I-1. Madam Chair, if you could take a report and come back to I-1. Oh, he's here. Chair, Vice Chair, members of Council, I am here to resume our discussion of the ballot design for the 2026 municipal general election. On Tuesday afternoon, I had a conversation with the supervisor of election and the supervisor's general counsel. And as discussed in the memo that I provided yesterday, the majority of the ballot design is set. The city's five referendum questions will be at the conclusion of the ballot following the candidate races and the three state constitutional amendments. As I understand it, the first city question will be the last question on the first card and the remaining four questions will be on the front of the second card. Additionally, the supervisor informed me that because the division has not yet issued an opinion to resolve the difference of interpretation between the supervisor and the city as to the ballot order for the municipal questions, the supervisor is open to using the city's original order. A copy of the email from the general counsel was attached to your packet. With that in mind, I've prepared a resolution that would revert back to the original order adopted by city council on July 23rd. If you would like to take that action, you can adopt the new resolution. Or if you'd like to stick with the alternate order adopted on August 6th, no action is needed. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you, sir. Your update basically is we have gone back to the default we wanted in the first place. The supervisor has agreed that in the absence of an opinion from the division, she is willing to use that order. Councilmember Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Brett, thank you for the update. And that being said, we had a discussion about this, and I think if the SOE is willing to go with the original proposal, that's certainly the one I'd rather see. I'd rather see the GOAT bond up there at the beginning. So I'll move approval on the proposed resolution presented. Second. I have a motion and a second. I don't see any other requests for speak. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Councilmembers, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present councilmembers voted, clerk, please, how we announce the vote. Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item I-1A passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Brett. Thank you, Brett, for your work and for being here on vacation. We don't see you're on vacation. You're welcome. Thank you for coming in for that. Next up, we have F3. It's a report. I pulled this real quick for good news. We've had a couple of residents that I've issued is getting hex blocks, and the reason I wanted to just pull it real quickly is because it affects certain residents, and I want to make sure we just put it out there as to what we're doing for the hex blocks. Yes, ma'am. So, Marshall Hampton, Stormwater Pavement Traffic Operations Director. So, we are putting it in an order for 5,000 square feet or 5,005 square feet of hexagon block pavers. It comes a little bit over $18,000 for us to sell back to people who need it. It's not really – we only have a few hundred in stock right now, which is the original ones. So, we're buying different pavers and having people pay for that with a markup of 25 percent, which is kind of administrative cost for us to handle it, bring it in. And the cost per paver would be between $5 to $10. And that's really because it – we'll count as – when they come in, we expect a little bit of loss because we have something brittle come in. We expect some loss. But per the blocks we get in, we'll divide it out by the money we put into it. I appreciate the work that you all have done on this because I know it's very difficult for people to get their pavers on their own for just, you know, a small amount. And this will take care of that issue for residents. So, Council Member Gurdas. Thank you, Madam Chair. Marshall, thanks for the quick presentation. Chair, thanks for pulling this. I do think – you know, listen, it's one of these things – we talked about this in a committee or Committee of the Whole, I think. And, you know, it was a pretty robust discussion. And so, you know, I appreciate the quick move to try to help residents. I will just repeat what I said in that committee meeting that I hope we get to a place where we're transitioning away from these and not to them. I want to make sure that the residents that have it, it's there and it's safe. But just from an ADA perspective, I mean, we've had this conversation. And I just wanted to say it out loud that I really think we should be moving from these. But I think this is a fix, and I appreciate you going and doing it quickly. And I know the team was ready to do it this morning when I saw them. So, very appreciative. Move approval. Second. I have a motion to second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council Members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present Council Members have voted, Clerk, please tally now to vote. Madam Chair, the motion to approve Agenda Item F3 passes unanimously with Council Member Floyd being absent. Thank you. Next up, we have F1. This is the St. Petersburg Police Department Quarterly Report. And we have Chief Holloway here. Good afternoon, Chief. Good afternoon, Chair and Council Members. I'm going to be presenting the second Quarterly Report for the year. So, this is going to be covering the month from April, May, and June. Overall, crime in the city is down by 3%. The five-year trend, crime is down by 15%. So, our homicides, I'm going to take a pause. I always say one is too many. But I'd like to make sure that Council and everybody out there is aware of it. In the past three years, our police department has closed out every homicide case with either an arrest or an exception. I can put that up against any city in the nation to say that every homicide, we have brought closure to our family. So, I just want to say that. And that's due to the leadership of Chief Kovacev and his detective in that bureau. So, during this period, we had five homicides. Of those five homicides, one was a domestic, two were argument, one was a robbery, and one was a robbery and drug-related. Our homicides for this quarter is equal to last year. But, again, we are down, five-year trend, we're down by 36%. Thanks to our partners with Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearm, we have that NIVA machine that we talked about. And when you see that number, 88, it doesn't mean we had 88 shootings in our city. That means we were able to connect shell casing to other crimes. It could have been two or three years ago. But thanks to having this machine in our city now, we're not waiting three or four months down the road. We're getting within sometime within a week, sometime within two weeks. So, we're able to say this gun was used at this shooting or these shell cases related to this shooting. So, we're being able to link these cases together much quicker than in the past. And we can see a trend that's out there. So, again, without our partnership with ATF, we would not be able to have this information this quickly. But, as Councilman McGovern wanted to make sure we keep track of this, we're doing better. This quarter, we're down 35 guns from vehicles, but that's still too many. We want to keep reminding everybody to please be responsible gun owners. Take your guns out of your car. We're not saying you can't have a weapon, but take it out of your car, please. And you see it's still citywide. Offense, what you're going to see for this quarter, you're going to see a slightly uptick in some categories. But we normally see that trend this time of the year. Kids are out of school, so we have to deal with that. So, you're going to see an uptick there. But then I'll go over our trends. So, for robberies, our last quarter, last quarter we reported was up by 18%. Now, it's down to 7%. Our five-year trend, robberies are down by 12%. Burgers were equal to last quarter. In a five-year trend, they're down by 24%. Auto theft continue to do a great job because people are locking their cars and taking their key fobs out of the car. Down by 7%. Five-year trend, down by 41%. Now, with that uptick in crime, you're also going to see an uptick in arrests because the men and women are out there making arrests to these cases due to the technology that we have and people working with us. Traffic stops, I can see, equal to last quarter, just about. But also, I want to make council be aware of it. We started this quarter with e-bikes enforcement. We're doing education, and we're also doing enforcement throughout the city. We're letting people be made aware of about e-bikes. We've gone to the schools. We've gone to different places throughout the city just to educate people and let them know these e-bikes are very dangerous. Our home team, as you can see, is a trend went down this quarter, so we're very happy about that. That means some of our kids are coming off of the program. Our PATH team continues to do a great job. As you can see, they're still making contact with several of our unhoused individuals in our city and getting them the assistance that they need. And again, Council Member Driscoll wanted to show where all these contacts are being taken place. And as you can see, they're taking place throughout the city, not just in downtown, but these PATH team officers will go out and make contact where the unhoused individuals are and try to get them the help that they need. Park, walk, and talk is training upward, which we like to see. Officers, for people not aware of what that means, it's one hour a week. We expect the officers to get out of their cars and meet the people in the community, not looking for an arrest, but introducing themselves to the community so they know the officers that are patrolling their neighborhoods. Our Eagle Eye program, it went up by 14%. It doesn't get all the people that were sighted up. They either have ring cameras or any type of cameras at their home or businesses. So when something happens in that area, we know we get a starting point. We can go knock on that door and say, hey, can we look at that video? Maybe the video at your home or your business captured the incident before it happened and during the time that it happened. Use of force, as you can see, went slightly up this quarter. But again, it's also related to the arrest. I'd like to thank Councilmember Deb Fick Sanders. We did a talk show, and people were amazed that we report this to City Council about our use of force. I said every quarter, City Council is made aware of it, and they can ask questions about the use of force that we use throughout the city. Our complaints, none of them are related to use of force. The one you see from a citizen is a contact with an officer that was unprofessional, so we looked into that. We did have one use of force this quarter, but that was through a sergeant. He looked at a video. He saw where he thought they also used too much force and went through the command staff. We had the command staff hearing yesterday. It was unfounded. The officer did use the right amount of force, but that just shows you the check and balance it again. The sergeant looked at it. It went up to chain of command. Then it went to the officer of professional standards for myself and the three assistant chiefs to look at it to make sure that we were in compliance with that use of force. Our call program is still, I would say, the best in the world because we do have agencies that are calling us and asking us about this. During this period of time, we're getting over 1,000 contacts. What I'd like to bring attention to when other law enforcement agencies contact us, 96% of these calls are without law enforcement. The triage is done by the 911 operators. I want to give them credit for that. They look at it. They figure out we don't need to send an officer in uniform, that we need to send one of our liaisons there. They go there, and they assist these people that are going through a mental crisis. And that last line is the most important line. Again, I want to thank the city council. Zero incidents. Zero. Our liaison are making the right contact and getting these people the right connection that they need. Forward Together, this program that's kind of started under Mayor Welch, voted on by the community, and we're still moving forward with this. So our first one is Suncoast. Those are the kids that are in foster care. We kind of forget about those kids. We still give those kids the connection that they need. It's working well. Golf Coast Jewish Family Services. This is a program, again, that we took it to the next level. When a kid commits a nonviolent felony, he or she then gives a coach, they call it. That coach will walk them through it. And if you look at that number, almost 64% of the kids that go through this program are not reoffending. That's what we want. We want to get these kids turned around. So this program is working and it is helping. Our Clearwater for Youth, some of our Clearwater for Youth is the old name. CFY is a great program. And what that is, a lot of parents can't afford things that are out there. So what CFY does is you need helmets, they get the helmets for the kids. Whatever equipment they need, they give it to them. And then the next program, not every kid wants to be an athlete, so we have the arts program. So we cover that, too. So this program really covers anything and everything that the kids out there need. And I also thank the council for voting on letting us, the police department, get this money. And the last thing is our PAL League. That's us. You know, they say police athletics. We kind of like change that now as police academic because we do a lot there because we want these kids to learn a lot. And the last thing that I want to be very proud of before me, before I came here, back in 1985, St. Petersburg Police Department started the national accreditation. We are the longest accredited municipal agency in the world now. So that means every cycle we go through and people come in from the outside to make sure we follow the policy and procedures that are set forth. We are also dual certified. What that means is we're not only nationally certified, but we're also state certified. And that says a lot about our men and women that work for us, and it says a lot about what we do. So with that, I'll open it up for any questions. Thank you, Chief. Council Member Gabbard. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Chief, for, well, first of all, just thank you, period. And that's really most of my comments today. So I first of all want to thank you, Chief Kvasik. I don't know if he's here. I can't see over on that side. There he is. For the swift action last Friday with the threat at Northeast High, as Council Member, representing residents who send their kids there, but also as a parent, to see the swift action, to see the follow-up, the responsiveness, I'm very, very grateful. And so I just wanted to say that publicly on behalf of parents from Northeast High. Very important to know that our kids are safe and how seriously you took that threat. So thank you for that. Also want to thank you for the e-bike safety campaign. So can you talk just a little bit more about, like, will we continue to do – I know that there was enforcement, again, Northeast High. I saw you all out there. Will you continue to do these enforcements around the schools? Because I think what we see a lot is kids using their e-bikes to get to school, but with so much congestion around the schools and they're, you know, zipping in and out and things like that, it is very dangerous. So can you talk a little bit about what that e-bike safety campaign will look like going forward? Sure. So thanks to our traffic team, they are going to do that, working with our SRO. They'll be picking a school probably once a month and going there. Again, just educating these kids and letting them know and letting the parents know. One mom thanks us because she told her son not to take his e-bike to school, and he took it to school. There you go. Yes. So we are going to continue to do that, but not only just at the schools, but throughout the communities because we want to continue to educate our parents and our kids that this is not a toy. Well, I can tell you as the mom of a teenager, the word is on the street that you all are out there. We are. And you're dealing with it. So I appreciate that. So thank you. And then the last thing, just a shout out to Major Patterson, I called on a Saturday night path, you know, needing some resources for someone, jumped right on it. It was late at night on a Saturday, and I just cannot say enough about the responsiveness of your team, the way that you all handle things, the way that you work together to make sure that we are delivering services to our residents wherever they may need them, and to keep our community safe. I just really appreciate you. So thank you, and thank you to the entire team. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you, and thank you, chief, for the report. It's always great to see the progress that you're making in some areas and the continued excellence in others. You really do make us proud. Thank you, ma'am. Regarding, I was wondering if you've noticed any differences, or if the police officers have noticed any differences over at St. Vincent de Paul in the last few weeks, since I spoke very clearly and passionately about the need for some changes over there. You, or maybe Chief Kvassef wants to talk about it, if there's been a difference in the cooperation or the conditions surrounding the facility. The conditions are getting better. Ms. Foster and her team have done a great job of cleaning up the area. We have done some operations in the area for what people have been complaining about. You're going to continue to see it. You're going to continue to see our downtown people patrol that area and the officers at night. We don't see as many people on the sidewalks anymore, so we are making that connection. But that's just going to be a day-to-day thing that each day we're going to get better at it. When we see some issues, then we'll be able to work with other divisions, other departments, and see how we can continue to make that area much better than what it is. And I know that Administrator Foster and her team have been talking with the folks there who are in leadership there. And I was wondering if PD has been talking to them as well, because I know there were some issues with clear communication. Yeah, Major Bush, who's in charge of that team, she is in communication with them. The SART is in charge of the PATH team. There's always ongoing communication. They stop by there, and we want to make sure we work together and we are working together. Good. That's good. And speaking of Major Bush, I can't say enough about her leadership. She takes on a lot as a major for downtown, for PATH, and for so much more. She's just an incredible asset to our city. And so I'm grateful for her and grateful to you for putting her in that leadership position. Thank you, ma'am. All right, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council Member Covins. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you so much, Chief, for being here today. I don't think you all get enough credit for the hard work that you put in. So on behalf of District 7, I just want to say thank you to all of our men and women in uniform. We see what you do, and your labor is not in vain. We appreciate it. I want to add on to what Council Member Gabbard said. I want to thank you for your quick response at Gibbs High last week. We know there was a situation that occurred over there, so likewise, St. Pete Police responded quickly, swiftly, and safely. So thank you so much for keeping our kids safe. And speaking of kids' safety, I saw the social media campaign with e-bike safety. I love it. You all are listening, and I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Can you talk a little bit, Chief, about e-bike enforcement, specifically along the Pinellas County Trail? I don't know if your traffic officers are out there enforcing that right now. If so, what does that look like? How has the response looked? And are we educating those bikers out there? I can say you have the traffic enforcement and the community service officers. They're doing the same thing. They're going to these spots that they're hearing about, and they're going out there and doing education first, and then we follow it with enforcement. So whether it's on a trail, whether it's throughout the city, is where these problems are, and what resources do we need to bring toward that? So I would tell you they are out there on the trail. If you need some numbers, I can find those numbers for you. But I know they've got a plan in place where they're going. Like I said, we've done the school first because that's our kids. We want to make sure we take care of our, as council members always say, take care of our babies. So we want to go out to them first, and then we're just going to go throughout the city and continue to address and educate these kids and the parents because they're not aware of how fast that motorcycle can go. I agree. They're powerful machines. You see them. They're causing real crashes, real injuries, and real lives are being lost. So I'm happy to hear that we are being proactive there, so I would love to see those numbers. And I'm specifically asking because I don't know there could be, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe there is. Is there signage along the trail enforcing speed limits for things like e-bikes? I don't know that, sir, so let me check with either the CSOs or community service officers or the traffic people, and I'll get you an answer before the end of the week. Thank you. I appreciate that. My motto is talk, teach, and protect. That's the best way to do it. So I appreciate you all. We mentioned safety and the creative solutions that the police department has implemented over the years to respond to some of the changing needs of our community, everything from call to path. We brought up in the past how we can respond to specifically the Dream Defenders' request for those community navigators, and I brought this up to you before, Chief, finding out how we can sort of tap into the young adult population specifically and utilize them when it comes to addressing to these nonviolent crimes that are occurring, using them to target specific demographics, specifically their peers. Have we had any further conversation about restructuring the department to include more community navigators, specifically our young people? And, again, I think the contract for call is coming up, or you already voted on it. So that's a conversation we would have to have with that group because we want to make sure we bring on people that know what they're doing because that's what we came about. Police officers, we do a lot, but those are the one thing that kind of like outside our scope, so we brought in experts to handle that so we can continue to have that conversation to see how we can bring in more navigators, that they can train, that they can talk to these youth, so we continue. As soon as they say youth, young adults, how do we continue to make them better? Well, that is encouraging, and I'm hopeful that we can continue this dialogue. Thank you so much, Chief. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Fix Sanders. Thank you. Well, Chief, you brought it up, but I want to, again, thank you for the report. But more importantly, I want to thank you for always being accessible between you and Assistant Chief Gavasa. I mean, you have always been there to answer the calls, to follow up, answer the text, so I concur with my colleagues in complimenting and commending you. I, so that my colleagues know where I'm going, we had a conversation called the police and the people. And I picked up the phone, and I contacted Chief Holloway, can you be there? And when I tell you that was one of the most fulfilling community conversations that we've participated in for a very long time, but what I walked away with from that conversation is that the city of St. Petersburg has been a game changer long before we knew we were a game changer. I mean, the opportunities that we provide, the programs that we have, the services from call, they talked about civilian police review board. We've been doing that for 20, 30 years. They talked about getting monies from some of the drug busts. We've been giving forfeiture grants, putting money back in the community for how many years? So that conversation alone was true testament as to how the city of St. Petersburg takes its public safety commitment very highly. And so, again, thank you for being there. It was myself, the interim police chief Owens from Tampa, I believe, and an attorney and a couple other organizations that were there. But if nothing else, that conversation showcased what we have here in the city of St. Petersburg. So I thank you for that. I thank you again for your leadership and your officers who are always on call. I mean, if they allow me to aggravate them, I can only understand what other seven other council members are doing when they pick up those calls. But I just wanted to publicly thank you for that and also your offer to continue those conversations to our other districts here in the city of St. Petersburg so that we can have that conversation moving beyond conversation to commitment to getting things done. So, again, thank you, chief. I appreciate you so much for offering that and also being available. And to our other officers that are listening, thank you so much for your service. Thank you, chair. Thank you. Councilmember Gerdes. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Councilmember Fix-Anders, you're the only one that bugs leadership at the police. Why bug them? The rest of us are perfect. I do. Chief, thank you so much for always coming in and sharing the update with us. I don't really have anything other than to say I was glad you brought up the e-bike social media campaign that your department has been doing. I just wanted to offer a suggestion, I guess. John's Hopkins All Children's has been doing their own e-bike campaign. And it would be interesting if there was some crossover with both, both on the education from a, here's what you should do before getting hurt. And then if you do get hurt, you know, helmets and things like that. Their ER has done some really good social media campaigns about the type of helmet you should be wearing, things like that. And so I just thought it could be good crossover because you're both attacking it, frankly, right now. And so I just thought I'd bring it up. But otherwise, thank you so much for the update. Thank you. Thank you to the team and everybody back at the department. Just very thankful for all of you. Thanks, Madam Chair. Thank you. Sir, I can tell you, Ms. Fernandez is in the audience behind me, and we are working with them. We're trying to figure out, like you say, show the kids what happens because it's serious when they get hurt. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Capri. Well, that actually just brought up something I meant to ask earlier and forgot. So the helmets. I mean, none of these kids wear helmets. I think, like, in our area, you know, north, northeast, there's really one kid out of all of these kids wearing helmets. It's a cultural thing, right? Like, the kids, they're too cool. They're too cool to wear helmets. Is it an actual, so, like, if you get them for speeding, is there another infraction for not wearing a helmet? Or, like, is that just a safety issue that, you know, we can't really police our way out of? I think it's probably going to be, you're going to have to legislate your way out of this. Yeah. If it was rated at, I think it's 25, I can't remember, there's a motorcycle, then, yeah, you have to try to figure it out. But right now, there's no requirement for them to have a helmet on. Okay. So, all right. That's something to kind of think about a little bit. You know, as Lair, we start to talk about, you know, priorities and working with our legislature on, you know, potentially putting bills forward. Maybe there's something that can be done there because, I mean, it is, you know, that's one of the things. Like, I publicly say I won't buy my teenager an e-bike because I know even if I bought him one and a helmet, as soon as he takes off, he's not going to put that helmet on, right? That's just unfortunate. But if there was a way that there was some sort of enforcement around it, it would be easier because regardless of what speed they're going, they should be wearing one. So, okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I believe there was a bill that was vetoed on e-bikes. Of course. This session. Of course. Yeah. So, Council Member Gerdes, it's funny you mentioned St. Anthony's. I think you could probably add the dentist on that list of the group of people that probably think people should be protecting not just their head, their face, their teeth, and everything because everybody I've talked to, the injuries are severe. Like, when they fall off, whether it's e-bikes or scooters or whatever, it's really severe. So, to all the Council Member comments on the campaign on e-bikes, great work. I was just at a neighborhood meeting, and the community service officer was there with other officers that were talking about the campaign, provided the literature, and going out there is a really pervasive problem. You just see them more and more everywhere. And I think a lot of people think, well, it is convenient for a lot of people to get their kid maybe to school on an e-bike, except that it is extremely dangerous, and I think the dangers with the e-bikes, I think, need to be covered more broadly. Yes, ma'am. Yeah. So, thank you very much, and I see no other requests to speak. We will move on to the next item. Thank you, Chief. F2, I believe, is it John or Claude is coming to present this item? Yes, thank you. I'm going to ask Tom Minke to join me. So, first – no, no, come on my side. You can go over there with him. You don't have to run from Claude. So, John normally would be here. Unfortunately, his mother-in-law passed away suddenly. Oh. So, you know, please keep him and his family in your prayers. So, I don't know as much about this as John did or as much as Tom does. Tom is really the one who has really put this program together. So, he has the information that he'll share with you. We believe this is a good news item, which is why, you know, we like it on report. And we believe this checks the box in a lot of areas in terms of security of our utilities, the resilience of our utilities. This is definitely a spar-related project. So, I'll let Tom explain what we're doing. Thank you, Tom. Thank you. Tom. Yeah, thank you. My name is Tom Minke. I'm a senior manager with Water Resources Department. And one of the divisions within that department is our SCADA department, which kind of I manage myself. So, I'm here to kind of give you the background for this report's agenda where we're seeking approval to enter a 20-year lease agreement between the city of St. Petersburg and Unity Fiber Incorporated. Shortly after approval of this agreement, the city will have an exclusive unmanaged access to a fiber optic communication loop that connects nine critical water resources facilities. And I'll explain to you here what having exclusive unmanaged access contains, right? So, the purpose of this fiber loop is so that we can run our SCADA network on these fibers. I'm not sure if some of you have not heard about SCADA before. It stands for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, which is the system that our department uses to monitor, control, automate water, wastewater, and pumping operations throughout the entire city. In practice, SCADA is the technology that lets our operators see what's happening at lift stations, treatment plants, pump stations, and other remote facilities in real time, and take action if needed. This is especially important for our SPAR objectives because, as part of our SPAR objectives, there's a plan in place to run our treatment plants as long as possible during storm events. And to accomplish this, we may need to evacuate these plants where all our personnel would have to leave the site, and we'd have the ability to operate these plants until the storm surges reach a certain level where we may have to have the decision to cut the electricity to the plants to save equipment for post-storm operations. So we built in the ability in the SCADA system to shut down these electricities and also monitor these plant operations through CCTV coverage, and we have moisture sensors in electrical buildings in place that all of these signals get transmitted through the SCADA network to our building at Water Resources. There's further benefit, right, because this lease agreement will provide long-term network reliability and stability. By looping this network, if any stretch of the network actually gets breached, because the system is looped, communications can reverse direction, and we can still communicate with a lot of our facilities. This has an improved cybersecurity benefit, which is a hot topic today because we've just received reports that there are bad actors that are actually trying to target these industrial networks. And by having our own managed network, it's very difficult to tap into these fiber optics. So, I mean, it's much beneficial to actually have control of our own network. We have access to high bandwidth. This lease agreement will give us interference-free communication, and I think I touched base on that as well. I will say one thing is by having control of our own network, we can control the speed of the communications that we can transmit through there, and the limitation is just in the equipment that we have. But in the future, this equipment and technology will just get better, and we'll have the ability to accommodate any additional bandwidth requirements. But the most important, well, I think one of the most important things is this lease will lock us into a 20-year agreement with a rate that stays stable for the entire 20-year term. And we also have provisions in the contract that if we make this decision, and after a few years we want to go with a different technology or of some sort, we will be able to terminate this agreement with Unity with certain provisions that are in the agreement. Other than that, I think one more item. The maintenance responsibilities would be clearly on Unity Fiber, and they have an agreement that if we actually lose these communications, they'll be out there repairing these in a short amount of time. So thank you for your consideration, and with the information that I just presented here, I feel that entering this long-term agreement is in the best interest for the city. Thank you, sir. I have Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I know just enough about this to probably make me a little bit dangerous, but not that much, so don't get too worried. So they're essentially building the backbone between the sites, and we're leasing the backbone back from them so we have the looped system throughout the sites. That is correct. Are our servers on-premise? We have servers on our, yeah. And then we have redundancy off-premise? I'm not gathering what that question is. So if, like, power goes down to where our server is, we have redundancy to a separate server that's off-premise? Well, if we have power there, then our network switches will go down, and we wouldn't be able to, yeah, transmit data from that site. Okay. We do have backup power. We have redundant backup power at all of our sites. At all sites. Okay. All right. That was my next question. Okay. And so, got it. And so, at the end of the 20-year lease, do we have the option to buy the backbone? That has not been discussed. Okay. We have unity here, but. My guess is they don't want to sell it to us. It's not in the agreement as we've got it written right now. Yes, sir. The vibrator. Okay. I love that it's a loop system, and there's a lot of really good things about this. I'll just leave it there before getting, I don't want people to think I'm a nerd. Move approval. Second. We'll have a motion and a second. Seeing no other requests to speak, clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, clerk, please tell and ask the vote. Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item F2 passes unanimously. Thank you, and thank you, sir. Next up, we move on to new business. First up is G1, and that is Vice Chair Floyd. Thank you. I'm respectfully requesting a referral to the Public Services and Infrastructure Committee or other relevant committee for a discussion on the city's contract with Flox. Safety and the use of Flock cameras in the city. You know, we haven't had a discussion about it in the past. I think it's a good thing for us to do in committee. That's the basis of this. I'll move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, clerk, please tell and ask the vote. Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item G1 passes unanimously. Next up, we have G2, referral to HLUT. Council member Givens. Thank you, Chair. Respectfully requesting a referral to the Housing, Land, Use, and Transportation Committee or other relevant committee for a discussion on regulating autonomous vehicle standards and safety oversight. This discussion should focus on comprehensive review and discussion regarding regulatory frameworks, road compatibility, and safety standards for automated driving systems. The discussion should also include measures law enforcement can implement to address specific concerns about autonomous vehicles. With that, I move to approval. Second. A motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, clerk, please tell and announce the vote. Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item G2 passes unanimously. Thank you. Next up is G3. That's mine. Respectfully requesting a referral to Budget, Finance, and Taxation Committee for an update on Federal Emergency Management Agency reimbursements, insurance proceeds, grants, and all other revenues received in connection with hurricane-related expenses. Move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Sorry. Council member Gerdes. I just quickly, with September's BFNT open, do you think administration could come? Is that enough time? It's funny, that actually was mentioned when we were talking about it at the Committee of the Whole, so they may be able to do it on September. If it's fine with you, hopefully. Perfectly fine with me, but I didn't want to surprise anybody. No, I appreciate it. We have the information. I think we can be prepared. Okay, so we'll go ahead and add that to next month's BFNT, Chair. Okay, sounds good. We'll have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted. Clerk, please tell and announce the vote. Madam Chair, the motion to approve. Approved agenda, item G3, passes unanimously. Next up, we have H1. That's by Sheriff Floyd. It's a HLUT action item. I am requestfully respect. I do this every once in a while. Easy for you to say. All the time, like, I go home and I say, I again said requestfully respect. I'm respectfully requesting City Council approval of a motion to move the referral item regarding potential changes to the City Code related to historic preservation and designation from the Housing, Land, Use, and Transportation Committee referral list to the Committee of the Whole referral list. I'll move approval. Second. We have a motion to second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, clerk, please tell and announce the vote. Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item H1A passes unanimously. Thank you. Next up, we have a public hearing item J1 that can be heard actually before 501, correct? That's correct. That's correct. Okay. This is an ordinance amending an alley vacation ordinance located at 1833 First Avenue South and 1850 Central Avenue to replace condition number five. Clerk? Proposed ordinance number 1179-V and ordinance amending ordinance 1172-V which approved the vacation of the western 120 feet of the 20 foot alley abutting lots five through eight in block 16 of Fuller's subdivision located at 1833 First Avenue South and 1850 Central Avenue replacing condition number five in section three and providing for an effective date. And we do not have any cards. Okay. Does anybody need the president? Move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second. Clerk, if you can open the machine for voting. Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, clerk, please tell and announce the vote. Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item J1 passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Well, we have gotten to the part of our agenda where the remaining items have to be heard at 5-0-1. So before we adjourn, I just want to let everyone know that Council Member Gertigge just notified me, Mr. Bill Edwards has passed away. So for those who know Mr. Edwards, it's a huge loss to our city. Thank you. I'll Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. If we, I was actually going to talk about it at the end of our meeting tonight, but if we could, if any, I'm going to say a few words at the end of the meeting and perhaps we could have a moment of silence at that time as well. Thank you. With that being said, we're in recess until 5-0-1. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. We're back in session. We are starting the public hearing and quasi-judicial proceedings. And the first item is J-2. This is the FY 2027, Utility Rates and Charges. Clerk, if you can go ahead and read the ordinances. Proposed Ordinance No. 644-H. An ordinance relating to sanitation rates and charges, amending Chapter 27, Section 27-557 of the St. Petersburg City Code, amending rates and charges for sanitation services, providing for severability provisions, providing an explanation of words struck through and underlined, establishing a date to begin calculating new rates for billing purposes, and providing for an effective date. Let me do it. Would you like, we're doing one public comment. We're reading all the ordinances. The next ordinance is Proposed Ordinance No. 646-H, an ordinance relating to utility rates, amending Section 27-405, subsections B-1 and B-2 of the St. Petersburg City Code, amending the stormwater utility fee, amending the tier rate structure fees for single-family residential parcels, providing for severability provisions, providing an explanation of words struck through and underlined, establishing a date to begin calculating new rates for billing purposes, and providing for an effective date. The next one is Proposed Ordinance No. 645-H, an ordinance relating to utility rates and charges, amending Chapter 27, Section 27-4, 27-109B, 27-109D, 27-113B, 27-141A, 27-141B, 27-142A, 27-142A, 27-143, 27-144, 27-146B, 27-146B, 27-146D, 27-177A, 27-177D, 27-250A, 27-283A, 27-284A, 27-284D, 27-335D, and 27-335D. 337 of the St. Petersburg City Code, amending liability for charges, amending charges for potable water connection, amending water relocation charge, amending charges for amending meter relocation charges, amending meter relocation charge, amending charges for potable meters, amending base and volume charges for water service, amending various service charges, amending wholesale water service charges for the City of Gulfport, removing references to combination fire service, amending fire service charges, amending rates and charges for irrigation only accounts, amending rates and charges for commercial water only accounts, amending rates and charges for reclaimed water service, amending sewer capacity fee, amending retail and wholesale wastewater service charges, removing grease discharge permit fee, amending grease management program fees, providing for severability of provisions, providing an explanation of words strut through and underline, establishing a date to begin calculating new charges for billing purposes and providing for an effective date and we do have speakers. Okay, thank you. Take the speakers first. I'm going to call two at a time. When I call your name, please go to an open podium, state your name, address, or cross street for the record and you'll have three minutes to address City Council. The first two speakers are Linda Anello and Jim Johnson. My name is Linda Anello. I live in Harbor Isle, 1401-74 Circle Northeast, St. Petersburg, Florida. And I'm here today to ask you, as my representative and a representative government, to please vote no on the proposed increase. I'd like to also ask you, what steps has the city taken to reduce expenses before asking residents to pay higher utility rates? A lot of us here look like we're on a fixed income and these rates are hurting us. And I know you don't represent to hurt people. I also would like to ask, why are the residents being asked to absorb increases in several different utilities at the same time? What is the projected total increase to the average homeowner's bill over the next five years? I know this increase doesn't sound like much, but over a five-year period, what would that increase be for your constituents? And also, are there any expenses in the utility budgets that could be postponed or eliminated to reduce the increase? And how, as I said, will these increases affect seniors and residents on a fixed income? And I thank you for hearing and listening. Thank you. Go ahead, sir. Good afternoon. Jim Johnson, 192 39th Street North, 33713. Is that all you need? Yes. Good afternoon, and I know I'm a little late to have an impact on these proposed increases in water and sewer rates since the decisions must be made today. But I will provide a short history of the past increases. I'll also be addressing the bond requests on the November ballot because they are intertwined for this conversation. The first item being utility rates, the second item being bond references on the November ballot. Utility rates, the water and sewer are services provided to every household in the city. The information I have been providing is a quick summary, but there is also a great deal more information and illustrations about the history on today's agenda. The evaluation period for six years from 2021 to 2026. My analysis is from February 2021, the water rate back in 2021 usage was $2.28 per 1,000 gallons. The TBW was $2.48 per 1,000 gallons, for a total of $4.76 per 1,000 gallons. The sewage rate was $8 per 1,000 gallons. Moving forward to February of 2026, the water usage rate is $4.19, the TBW is $2.64, or a total of $6.83. Sewage rate's $11. This illustrates a 43% increase in water sewage usage, illustrating an average annual increase of 8.6%, and a 38% increase in sewer, which is an average increase of 7.4%. This is in just six years. Now, for the year 27, there will be an increase in an average of 7% to add to these rates. There will continue to be rate increases each year, and possibly more than one in a year. This cannot continue. The rate increases are far beyond inflationary adjustments. The annual budgets for these services include money for capital improvement projects, and this will be irrelevant to my discussion on the bond issue. I have trouble accepting the cost of these services have increased at this rate over a short period of time. They are excessive and illustrate a failure of controlling cost containment for wages, insurance, maintenance, et cetera. These issues should be addressed within the respective departments. Current utility rates are out of control and cannot be continued at this pace. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Sorry. It was by quickly. Next two speakers are Matthew Freeman and Holly Noah. Please go to an open podium. State your name, address, or cross street for the record. You'll have three minutes to address the city council. You can rise. My name is Matt Freeman. I live at 1650 Robinson Drive North. Thank you, city council members, for this opportunity to speak on the proposed utility rates in agenda item J2C. I recognize additional revenue is needed to update and modernize infrastructure, but I would discourage increasing the potable water and wastewater base rates for residents. The city constantly references affordable housing, but there is more to that than just rent or mortgage. Increasing base rates adds to the monthly costs that are unavoidable by residents. A high fixed charge hits the low use and the low income customer, regardless of how carefully they can serve. Speaking for my monthly bill, I pay over $100 a month with zero water usage, which equates to over $1,200 a year. The state is already considering a proposed 7.5% increase to the variable water block rate and a proposed 6.5% increase to the wastewater variable rate. So I would recommend shifting the proposed increase of the base rate to that. I would further suggest that the proposed increase to the variable water block rate be reconsidered, so that the difference is not 7.5% across each of the four blocks, but an increasing or progressive percentage for each block of water usage. This is a matter of redesigning how the city proposes to collect the additional revenue. In doing so, the city will collect revenue where the cost primarily occurs, from water consumption, not merely from having a water connection. And further, if it encourages water conservation, that will only serve to extend the lifespan of infrastructure that the sea is looking to update and modernize. To summarize, I would ask that the sea consider an alternative rate schedule than the one currently proposed for water and wastewater. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead, ma'am. My name is Holly Noah, 811 Placido Way Northeast. I'm here to urge you to vote no on the proposed utility rate increases. In fiscal year 2025, St. Pete earned $218 million from water resources, $41 million from stormwater, and $65 million from sanitation, $324 million in revenue total. And that was before rates went up for the fifth year in a row. After expenses and including depreciation, those three utilities still generated more than $72 million in operating income. So why, pray tell, does the city need to raise rates again? The August 13th budget and finance packet cites rising costs for labor, material, infrastructure, regulatory compliance. But the city doesn't show us how those increased costs justify the increased rates. In fact, the same packet shows proposed operating expenses declining 0.4 in water resources and nearly 2% in stormwater. So why does the city need to raise rates again? My utility bill has increased nearly 24% since 2022, and that includes a 35% increase in reclaimed and nearly 60% increase in stormwater. The city's projections call for increases every year through 2031. 7% water resources, 8.5% stormwater, 6% sanitation, and nearly 10% in reclaimed. And that does not include the 10% city-imposed tax on water and reclaimed water. By 2031, my utility bill will increase another 45% to nearly $250 a month, nearly $3,000 a year, 900 of which for reclaimed water. Importantly, the city doesn't publish reclaimed water financials. I asked my council member for them. His office had to request them from staff, and I still don't have them. Yet, the city says reclaimed rates cover only 80% of costs and proposes nearly 10% annual increases for five years to maintain that level. Really? I'm sorry. Prove it. The city has benefited from significant increases in property tax revenues and utility rate hikes. Yet, according to Fiscal 25 Financials, more than $26 million was transferred out of water, stormwater, and sanitation to the general fund through payment in lieu of taxes. And now the city comes back to residence with an open hand asking for more. You need more money from the people, the people who cannot live without water. Prove it. Prove that what you're already collecting is not enough. And if and until you can prove it, you must vote no. Thank you. Next two speakers. Next two speakers are Rafael Torero and Patty Sedolts. Please go to an open podium. State your name, address, or cross street. For the record, you'll have three minutes to address city council. Go ahead, sir. Good evening. My name is Rafael Torero. I live at 6210 2nd Avenue North, St. Petersburg, 33710. My phone number is 786-374-6924. My email is rtorero41, just in case, 41, at yahoo.com. I sent an email this morning to all of you. I don't know if any of you read it. And I see some heads nodding, which is good. I've been in utility business for 55 years. I have never seen a continuous rate increase like this one here. I moved here as a retired guy, and I cannot see how people would survive this increase that you are proposing. It's crazy. What you have to do, what Mr. Given was saying, is 2% to 3%. Go back to the consultant. Run the numbers again. It will take 20 minutes to run it. No more than that. Get it with your staff and say, you have to cut these projects and get the discounts. And that's the way you do rate cases. You just don't go. And I don't know where your numbers came from. It's not really clear where they came from. If you give the consultant a number, he's going to come up with a rate. So go back to your staff. Tell them to look at the projects. Really look at the projects. What is in the wish list and what do you really need and go from there. Thank you. Have a nice evening. Thank you, sir. And if you have any questions, you've got my phone and my email. And everybody else does, too. Hi there. My name is Patty Sudoti, and I am a St. Pete resident living at 1619 Pennsylvania Avenue, northeast St. Pete. And crossroad is, I guess, 62nd Avenue. Good. Okay. So I'm a resident of St. Pete, and I bought my home in 2016. Since that time, my water bill has increased 180% over the past 20 years, from 2006 to 2026. So we all need water, and we can't live without it. That's why we need to be good stewards of this essential resource and service. The reason I'm here is to ask for transparency how St. Pete is calculating the water resource rate increase in 2027. There are two important questions. What is planned for 2027? The city's recent annual utility rate financial study projected a 7% increase in the retail water rate for 2027. That same study projects, of course, we all know, the water increasing 7%, wastewater 7%, plus reclaimed water, plus 9.75%, the storm water, 15%. These increases are scheduled to take place, obviously, in October 1st. Why is the city increasing the rates? The rates, the increase, aren't simply because the city expects to use more water. The city utility system needs additional revenue to cover aging water and wastewater infrastructure, capital improvement projects, debt service, operating costs, such as the labor services and materials, maintenance adjustments, reserves. My distinct question, then, is why can't the city enumerate rising costs for 2027 water rate increase by providing a clean line-by-line accounting of what is driving the increase? The St. Pete Water Reserves Operating Fund experience a projected or projected to go down, is projected to go down 4%. So why are we going up? Why are our rates increasing? The city needs to go back to the finance department and ask them to show you how to explain to its residents, line-by-line, the map on why the city is proposing an increase in the water rates. I vote, of course, no for an increase in the rate. Thank you. Thank you. Next two speakers are Bruce Nibbins and Carla Kemp. Please go to an open podium. State your name, address, or cross-street. For the record, you'll have three minutes to address city council. You're good. You can go ahead, sir. Okay. Hello. My name is Bruce Nibbins. I live at 5136 28th Avenue North. I'm cross-street as York. I'm here as a single-family home renter. My rent has gone up every year for the last six years that I've been renting. Before that, I owned a house in Yacht Club Estates for 20 years. And, of course, costs were going up like crazy over there. But I'm not quite sure why every year we continue to have utility rate increases when I don't see any different service or better service. Is it just labor costs? Is it, as has been mentioned, infrastructure replacement? Again, everybody's saying be clear about this and be transparent about it. None of that seems to happen. You have a way of doing this where you have a reading of the ordinance, supposedly, and then you have a public hearing. And then immediately after we talk to you, you're going to vote on this. That doesn't make any sense. How can you understand what we've asked you about? How can you do anything about what we've asked you about? Why can't you be at least respectful of the citizens in dealing with them in a very transparent manner? Thank you. Thank you. My name's Carla Kemp. My address is 4019 42nd Avenue, North St. Petersburg, Florida, 33714. Sadly, I am a block and a half outside the city limits. So everything that you're talking about, you can add an extra 25% to me. Richie Floyd would be my guy. I do have St. Pete water, so I am here to talk about that. I'm also a candidate for Senate here. What I'm hearing is people coming to you with numbers, which I'm very impressed with, that they've done the research, and I'm wondering why that hasn't been done internally. What I would like to say, as someone who had their entire road throughout the city ripped up in a city-county event together, where they replaced the water twice ever since we've had problems with water meters, there are thousands of complaints about the water meters not being right, about people getting charged thousands of dollars for water they've never consumed in houses that are empty. There are just as many complaints that say the mayor's office has been talked to repeatedly, you guys have been talked to repeatedly, and no one has done anything. My next-door neighbor said to me two months ago, hey, did your water bill go weird? Theirs, out of the blue, with zero leaks, they did have it professionally checked, was over $200. That's outrageous. I've had this multiple times this year alone. This is the second time I've come here this year alone with the same issues they've never gotten help. So I, for one, would appreciate you guys not making this go up until we have it under control. We need to figure out if this is a software issue, if people have bad meters, whether it's new meters that are bad. I don't know these other facilities, but the person who was at my house today flat out told me that I have an old meter despite the fact that they replaced it twice just two years ago. So someone's not doing records right, someone doesn't know how to calculate things right, something to some effect is highly inaccurate. So I don't understand why you guys, where you're getting the basis for it, even raise the funding when you don't know what's really happening with our water system here. These guys have had very impressive numbers. Clearly there's a discrepancy, and I did study accounting, so let me tell you, that's a huge discrepancy. I hope to take that forward with me, but I would encourage you to dig in further and get some actual numbers and have people actually figure out what's going on with our water system before you start charging people more money when it's already to a point that people can't afford to live. That is most certainly, as someone else said, an affordability issue. Thank you. Thank you. Final two speakers are Jean Coffin and Nathan Yang. Please go to an open podium, state your name, address, or cross street. For the record, you'll have three minutes to address city council. Hi, my name is Jeanie Coffin. My address is 4820 4th Avenue North, St. Petersburg, Florida. And I didn't even know about this because I've been living in Citrus County because in Citrus County I have spring well water, and so I do not have a water bill. But my husband has a small business owner here, so he still lives in our house. So it's just him. I come home on the weekends or unless I have a doctor's appointment because I am and have some critical health problems. But we got our water bill three months ago, and it was $2,352.91. And that's just him and maybe me three times a month. And so I said, well, that's a mistake. I'll just go down there, and, you know, there should be no problem. He was like, ah. So I went down there, and I couldn't even talk to anybody. And they told me that, oh, you have to have somebody, you have to hire a company to make sure you're not a leak because this large amount, it's something major going on. So I hired a company, and they came out, and they did a leak thing, and they said, there's no leak here. So my son, he is very handyman type, and so he took videos with the time and the date of a video with the meter, and it wasn't running. So anyway, I took all this stuff back, and they said, oh, well, we'll give it to the supervisor, and we'll correct it. So today I went down there because it came back that I still owe this money. And so she wouldn't let me talk to a supervisor and was kind of, you know, oh, well, that's how it is. And I said, well, you told me I had to do this, and I did that. And I said, oh, well, so she says, if you want, you can write out something, and they will take it back to the supervisor. So I wrote that, but I noticed that the address that that was going to be sent to was here, and I had no idea this was City Hall. So I Googled how to get to this place, and it happened to be you all were in the meeting this morning down there. And I said, oh, God is putting me here for a reason, and I am in the middle of having an attack, and so I really shouldn't even be here. But I felt that I need to come and say that this is not right. And the budgets, I was a single mom, and I owned my own small business, and I had to budget everything. And I feel like maybe the budgeting isn't right here because of the high price that you want to add. But I think that the computer system is wrong. Thank you. Someone from administration will talk to you about your issue. Go ahead, sir. Hello, counsel. My name is Nathan Yang. I live at 2109 Bonita Way South, Lakewood States. And I just want to acknowledge a couple things I think are hopeful for the situation as well. I've also been a citizen who's had a water heater leak or something and got like a $1,200 bill and been like, oh, my gosh, what's this from? And paid the price, but I did see a recent deal with Census Analytics to do automated metering infrastructure, which brings a lot of hope to the situation in terms of visibility on usage and future read studies that have been suggested. I also noticed there was like a $400 million contract with the asset management company, which should bring a lot of visibility into the capital budget and capex expenditures coming up, especially when that data is used to justify rates. So I think there's some really good things coming that have been moved on. And I'd also just like to, you know, given all the input today, advise maybe contacting the Florida Rural Water Association. St. Petersburg, not necessarily that rural community, but I do have an asset management team that does fiscal sustainability studies associated with the requirements of obtaining and meeting the state revolving fund requirements. Those are generally adopted by councils like yourself across the state and may support in the requests from the community. So it's a free resource. The folks there are great and I think it would bring some additional support in addition to the consultant support you're getting. A third party that has years of experience imputably doing that and could help in the situation. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Any more speakers? Any more speakers. Okay. All right. Hi. Good afternoon. Good evening, Lance. Hello. Good evening, Council Chair, members of Council. I do have a presentation. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Perfect. Good evening, Council Chair, members of Council. Lance Stanford, Public Works Services Manager. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to bring forward the FY27 Utility Rate Study Program. Throughout the program, the mayor's vision and the principles for accountable and responsible government were our guiding principles throughout this whole process. The rate study program and objectives throughout this process, we wanted to look at balancing affordability with long-term sustainability, ensuring revenue sufficiency and financial stability, while funding the infrastructure replacement and resiliency improvements system-wide, maintaining a strong pay-as-you-go funding strategy, and evaluate programs and consider proportional and equitable cost recovery. You'll see in our rate study schedule, we started back in January with City Council one-on-ones, went through rate study workshops, council budget workshops, and you're meeting almost the culmination of the rate study program with the public hearings. Throughout that process, we've worked with marketing and administration, has worked on a communications campaign to include billing inserts, social media posts, website updates, advertisements for the first reading and public hearing throughout the process to try to help pass forward the whole rate study program and the reasons behind the rate study increases. Various rate study, various different utility rates would like to highlight some program utility highlights. This here, we'd like to, for the sanitation utility program, highlight the continued investment in the truck, the fleet, for the sanitation utility program, and also highlight an ever-increasing expense, which is the 8% annual rate increase for the county tipping costs, which significantly impact the sanitation utility budget. The stormwater utility program highlights, operationally, they've increased the number of miles of stormwater pipes, culverts inspected and maintained to the FDEP reporting cycle, due to the ability to hire more people and procure more equipment. Since October of 2025, we've replaced hundreds of feet of stormwater pipes at the end of their service life with longer-lasting material types. In the capital program, we'd like to highlight the stormwater backflow prevention program, the Bartlett Lake Restoration Project, the citywide stormwater conveyance restoration program, and major stormwater pump station initiatives. In the water resources utility, we'd like to highlight the Northwest Water Reclamation Improvements Project, which included new influent pump station and reclaimed storage tanks, the flood protection projects at lift station 85, Northeast Water Reclamation Facility, Southwest Water Reclamation Facility, and other lift stations. We broke ground on the new Category 5 hurricane-resistant operations and maintenance building at the Southwest Reclamation Facility, and provided much-needed repairs at the Cosume Water Retreatment Plant. The next few slides here highlight some of the proposed FY27 utility rate adjustments and potential impacts on typical usage and low usage and high usage bills. On this slide here, you'll see that the proposed utility rate adjustments for potable water is 7.5%, wastewater at 6.5%, stormwater 8.5%, and sanitation with recycling at 6.0%, with reclaimed water at 9.75%. The typical low usage monthly utility bill with a Tier 1 stormwater charge will see approximately 6.74% increase without reclaimed water and about a 7.5% increase with reclaimed water. The next typical usage example here we have was a Tier 2 stormwater charge, where the typical bill would see a 6.88% increase without reclaimed water or a 7.48% increase with reclaimed water. This year's rates, you'll see, are slightly lower than the last year's projections of the stormwater and water resources and sanitation rates, where last year the total bill excluding reclaimed water was about 8.15%, and the total including reclaimed water was about 8.48%. On the high usage monthly bill with the Tier 3 stormwater charge, the typical bill will see a 7% increase for fiscal year 27 without reclaimed water, and with reclaimed water, the typical bill would see a 7.47% increase as compared to the rate study last year, where the typical bill would have seen an 8.42% increase without reclaimed water and an 8.65% increase with reclaimed water. Finally, the higher usage bill and a Tier 4 stormwater charge. The typical bill excluding reclaimed water will see a 7.10% increase, and with reclaimed water, a 7.48% increase as compared to the prior year's projection at an 8.72% increase and an 8.87% increase. With that, I'd like to hand it off to Andy Burnham, our partner with Stantec Consulting, to dive a little bit more into the details for you. Thank you. Good evening, Andy. Thank you, Lance. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of Council. Happy to fill in some of the details that I think might be, again, a refresher for many of you that have participated in the process that Lance described throughout, but maybe beneficial for the public to help understand some of the context of why we're looking at utility rate adjustments for the various systems. So first, starting with the sanitation system, the city's annual practice is to look at their financials each year as part of the budget process for these utilities, to measure the adequacy of revenues to meet expenses, and as part of that, we're able to reconcile what's changed from one year to the next. These processes allow us to not only evaluate the rates for the current year, but to develop forecasts for future years, and so I'll touch on some of the variances in relation to last year's forecast of expenses that we're seeing in this current year and in this rate evaluation. Overall, for sanitation, operational spending, we're seeing some of the benefits in the investment of the new facility that we recently financed with debt. We actually have some savings on our operating expenses relative to demolition of structures, engineering, and facility repairs and renovations. We're seeing a return on that investment. However, as Lance mentioned, with sanitation, we do have to take our solid waste to the county landfill for disposal, for proper disposal. That's not something that we have control over in terms of the cost that we're charged from Pinellas County for that disposal rate. They have approved increases of 8% per year for the next couple of years and have given guidance to expect similar levels of increases going forward for our disposal costs. This is a pretty significant part of our expenses for these disposal costs, for these tipping fees. That's really not within our control. The other major cost consideration that we have for sanitation is relative to capital expenses. And for sanitation, that really means replacement of containers for residences and for businesses, the dumpsters, but then also vehicle replacements. That's the fleet that goes out and collects all of the garbage and recycling within the community. Those expenses are comparable to what we were looking at last year on an annualized basis in total, but they're still a very significant component of what we have to plan for for the utility going forward. And specifically on the fleet, it's probably one of the most important assumptions and replacement considerations that we have to make for sanitation is to make sure we have adequate funding to replace our extensive fleet of vehicles, 123 trucks, each of which has different useful lives based upon their purpose. And there's good industry guidance about when those types of infrastructures can and should be replaced. However, that has to be customized to reflect our environment. And kudos to the sanitation team for really adapting a proactive approach to try to stay on life cycles for this equipment in an urban environment where these vehicles take on a lot more wear and tear, particularly the front and side loaders. So we have a more frequent replacement schedule than you may see across a national average, but we are in an urban environment, and that's to be expected. But this is about $30.5 million of investment in our fleet that we need to do to make sure that we can collect the garbage and recycling within the community for residents and businesses alike. So the financial plan that we look at, as I mentioned prior year study last year, the forecast was 7% a year for three years, followed by 4.75% per year. However, with some of our recent positive performance, it creates an opportunity to smooth those increases a bit and levelize the rate plan to 6% per year. And I think this is part of the conversation and context that's beneficial for all to appreciate is that the city has long taken an approach of trying to do smaller, more frequent rate adjustments as opposed to going multiple years without rate increases and then doing very large adjustments. That's been a recent practice that's tried to follow that principle of, you know, smaller and slower and steady wins the race to be consistent with our planning process for investments in our infrastructure. And so the plan now is a little bit more modest than what it was looking at last year for this year as well as for the next couple of years as things are tracking pretty well and we're seeing slightly better performance. And what this means on a typical bill for the garbage component is about $2, a little less than that. And for the recycling component of the bill, it's about 25 cents on that typical residential bill. However, the practice that I mentioned has not always been in place for the sanitation system. So if you look back through history and there's been some history referenced here today, there were extended periods of times from 1988 to 2005 where there were no adjustments in rates. Actually, there was a small decrease. And then again from 2010 to 2018 where there were no adjustments on sanitation rates. So if you look at this approximately 36-year history or 38-year history, there were 27 years where sanitation rates weren't adjusted. So keeping that in mind, we're trying to follow approach consistent with the recent years where we stay on top of our expenses, cover inflation, which has hit vehicles, stay current with tipping tree increases that are coming from the county. We're really trying to make sure that we're having revenues match expenses each year for the system, no more, no less. Relative to the stormwater program, some of the changes in key drivers that we're seeing this year, operations and maintenance spending is very much in line with past projections. In fact, it's just only $100,000 larger than last year. So it's well within projections. But the capital program continues to be the topic of conversation for stormwater. So this fund historically only funded about a million to $2 million a year of capital. And with the recent master plan that was completed, it indicated we should be spending more along the lines of about $50 million a year on capital. So we're on track to hit that goal by 2031. Presently, we're in that approximately $30 million range of spending, so we've made good progress. But this is part of the reason why we're talking about a program of continued adjustments for stormwaters to really address proper investment needs for the infrastructure that we have for the stormwater system. So as we take a look at the forecast, this is where with those needs in mind, considerations were given to how we finance those projects and how we fund them. And so considering that the prior rate study, the forecast was a 15% followed by 4% increases. This year, given affordability considerations, an alternative approach to funding infrastructure was looked at for a period of time where we would fund more with debt. That means we will pay more interest in the long run, about $20 million more of interest is the approximation of that based on the current capital plan. But funding more with debt now allows us to have a more stable and smoothed out rate plan than it otherwise would if we didn't. We would have to have the higher rate plan as shown previously with a 15% increase as shown for 27. So this is an approach that was evaluated and recommended and considered really how do we pay for our infrastructure. It contemplates and recognizes that some of the infrastructure may even extend beyond the term of which we can finance it. So taking on a little bit more debt for stormwater feels a little bit more comfortable with knowing that in mind that we're not outpacing our assets with debt financing. And it's a way to also address affordability and to moderate the rate increases to an extent without compromising the needed investment in the system that we have to have. The stormwater history has a bit of a checkered past similar to sanitation to a degree. I think when the fee was first adopted in circa 1990, it wasn't adjusted for the first 10 or 11 years. And then there was also a period from 2010 to 2016 in which it was also, again, not adjusted. However, with the storms and things that happened in the 2017 time period, it's been on a plan of trying to address that capital needs and really move it from funding, again, a very nominal amount of capital to more along the lines of what's the needed reinvestment rates for the magnitude of stormwater infrastructure that we have. And so we're making good progress on that journey, but there's still more steps to be done. It hasn't been done all at once. It's been trying to be phased in over a reasonable manner, balancing affordability considerations. And lastly, relative to water resources, this particular fund, the key drivers, we did see increases in personnel services costs, salaries and wages, but they're within expectations from last year. We did see flat operations and maintenance expenses, which is actually very helpful in this context. Similarly, the capital spending plan, water and sewer systems by nature are incredibly infrastructure intensive. So the five-year capital plan for this fund is on the order of magnitude of almost $700 million. So we were at $686 last year. Now it's $696. It's very comparable. We are seeing a little bit of a dip in rate revenues compared to last year's forecast. That will be something to look into this next year to make sure that we have a lot of the issues that you might be hearing about now fully addressed and that we have good billing procedures in place and capture that in future forecasts. But within the water financial plan, there were a number of things that were looked at and I think this speaks to some of the questions too about what did you look at as part of the process that you could do to try to optimize the system. So one of the things that staff was famously successful for was securing a state revolving fund loan program that included 50% principal forgiveness. So that means it's basically a grant for half of that $40.7 million. And the remaining 50%, we received a financing of 0% interest rate. So it's basically one of the most advantageous programs you could possibly find and we secured that for over $40 million of infrastructure, which is fantastic. We haven't factored into any of these financial plans, any of the St. Pete Agile Resilience Program costs. That's a decision that's to be made at the ballots coming here in November. But we did look at other various programs as part of this to try to find ways to make the system more efficient, such as with fat oils and grease programs to look at how we could deploy our inspectors to actually enhance service to customers as opposed to having procedures that were challenging and trying to chase down fees that were hard to collect and allowing the program to actually spread to a wider benefit for the benefit of all customers. We also looked at things like dedicated fire service lines for properties that have dedicated sprinkler systems to make sure that those standby rates were set fairly for that additional capacity that some businesses and multifamily structures require. We also looked at updating the wastewater capacity fee. This is the fee that's applied to new development to make sure that it was fully reflecting the unit cost of capacity to serve new development. So that doesn't affect all customers. This is for when we have growth or redevelopment that requires additional demands. They pay a higher fee because that capacity has a cost. And so they're contributing their fair share through this type of a process. So we've looked at a number of mechanisms, included the continued use of Penny for Pinellas funding for part of the infrastructure. This is all part of a multifaceted approach and financial plan that's trying to really make sure we fund the infrastructure needs that have been defined for the system, but do so in the fairest way possible and leverages all possible funding sources that we can when we know we have them. And so as we look at the water system financial plan, this is very comparable to the prior year forecast from last year in terms of the overall increase. Each year as we go through the process, it's in depth to make sure that we fairly apportion the increase for water resources between water, sewer, and reclaimed. So while this year the distribution of increases reflects the different increase for reclaimed at 9.75%, future years, these assumptions are applied across the board to all three services for water, sewer, and reclaimed. But again, you can see the general impact on the utility bill here and Lance went through it more specifically with some different usage types and bill examples to help really try to make it evaluated from a wallet and a pocket perspective in terms of what is this dollar impact really on a monthly basis. Just want to touch on two of these points a little bit further with the wastewater capacity fee. Just as a reminder, this is a fee that's applied to new development or redevelopment only, not existing customers. And this had a history of being looked at in 24 for the first time in a number of years and it had a phase-in plan that was developed and that's been revisited to kind of accelerate the implementation of this fee to full cost recovery. And consistent with conversations last year, we re-evaluated that this year to make sure it's reflecting our current cost of capital which continues to rise. And so the recommendation this year is to move the fee from the $1,000 to the $1,700 to be based on the current cost of capacity as we've calculated it this year. And the other one I touched on earlier was the fire service protection charges. These are again fees that are to about 1,200 different commercial multifamily customers that have these on-site fire suppression systems and have these dedicated lines that provide water when it's needed for those systems. And so we've updated the fee schedule to be consistent with others in terms of how it's generally applied. Usually you'll see these fees for four-inch lines and smaller or six-inch lines and smaller and then scale up from there. So we've updated the unit cost and recommended that modification to the approach to these monthly charges and just included some comparison information. So you can see the updated charges are very comparable to what other local agencies have for the same service. The other item that we've touched on in the analysis and some of the comments address it is relative to affordability. We had an extensive conversation on this through the budget, finance, and taxation committee meeting process that was highlighted earlier by Lance. We've looked at a number of measures, whether they come from regulatory agencies for compliance considerations with regulatory standards, whether they come from academia in ways to try to look at and measure household affordability through different means such as hours of minimum wage work required to pay a bill. We also looked at it from the regulatory, or excuse me, the rating agency lenses, how they evaluate affordability as part of evaluating overall financial health and credit worthiness of communities that issue debt. And many of the indicators were in the medium burden or low burden range. And I've kind of put up here descriptions of how the Environmental Protection Agency defines medium and low burden. And some of our low burden indicators are low, but they're getting close to medium burden. So I think that medium burden description is pretty true, and I think you're hearing it today. There are concerns about affordability throughout the service area. We do have highly infrastructure-intensive systems that we have to maintain and replace in an inflationary environment, with increasing regulatory requirements, meaning we may not see some of these differences at our homes to maintain these systems because costs are rising or because our regulations are changing. Not regulations that we're changing, but the state and federal agencies are imposing on us in terms of how we provide clean drinking water, safe drinking water, and obviously properly dispose of the wastewater. So all this is to say that this is an important part of the process, and there's a lot of analysis that goes into affordability to try to consider it and to try to understand it as part of this process each year. So I know all of you are familiar with that, but I also just want to make sure for those that are here and those that are watching, it's a very front and center consideration as we go through the rate-setting process with you each year and is very much considered when recommendations are being developed. But there are opportunities in the future as well that we can maybe mitigate some of these future increases, and so I want to turn it over to Lance to just talk about additional measures staff is taking to try to contain cost and find ways to pay for some of these things. Thank you, Andy. I appreciate you taking a little bit of a deeper dive into the methodology and the metrics behind what's driving the FY27 rate study program. As Andy said, there are opportunities in which administration with close collaboration with you all on council are looking at to help mitigate the risk or mitigate the impact to the rate payers throughout this process. Currently, we can point to the state revolving fund loans that we were able to secure, and we're currently working with the state at going through the application process for these programs. We have been awarded and going through the preliminary process for the hazard mitigation grants program for Debbie, Helene, and Milton, and we're looking at a potential hearing back from the state and the federal government in the fall for the programs and the projects in which we applied for under the HMGP program. Also, we have the community development block grant disaster recovery and the $25 million that was awarded to the stormwater utility program that is also going to be utilized to help mitigate the impact to the rate payers. Looking forward for some other potential revenues that the utilities could take advantage of in the future. There's the Resilient Florida program. This is a competitive grant program administered by the FDEP, and the city is diligently looking at the opportunities for the funding through Resilient Florida for various different projects in the Water Resources Department. Future congressional community project funding opportunities, state appropriations requests, and the BRIC opportunities as well, which is ran by the federal government in close collaborations or close alignment with like the HMGP program. But the BRIC program is kind of pre-disaster versus HMGP, which is post-disaster. And with that, it would bring the end of the presentation. And we'd like to thank you for your time, your consideration, and look forward to the following discussion. Thank you. And I think Andy may be best that I want to kind of cover a little bit because I know there are concerns that this decision or decision on Rachel just made in this meeting. If we can cover, number one, the process, because as soon as this ends, it starts again. Every year with budget, every year with everything we do, it literally never ends, right, in terms of a process of examining where costs are. Yeah, it's very much a continuous process. So as we conclude this process, we start defining what are the initiatives that we want to look at in next calendar year, so we start identifying programs such as maybe updating certain fees or looking at evaluating the rate structure. We tee up what those initiatives are to develop ultimately and frame the conversations that then start in January where we start to then also solicit input from each of you relative to key issues, considerations, reminders of where we left off last year, talking about the things that we're looking to endeavor upon this year in terms of new initiatives. And then from that process, we then fall in line with your processes relative to establishing and setting operating budgets and capital budgets. And so those become inputs into the process so that we can make sure that as you're making decisions relative to operations and capital, we're pulling those into the rate evaluation process to then measure the adequacy of your rates and revenues to meet those budgetary requirements. And that's where we get into scenario analysis during the summer months where we look at options, consider alternatives to paying for the infrastructure, different rate scenarios, work through that over the summer months that ultimately culminate in a final recommendation for utility rates that are appropriate to meet the needs of the system that reflect all the different considerations going into it, not just the immediate term, but future considerations so we don't set ourselves up for future rate spikes, near-term affordability concerns, and based upon those, we may exercise different scenarios such as this year where we exercise different approaches relative to how we pay for capital to try to mitigate some of the impacts. But that's kind of how the process ultimately unfolds and then we get to this point, have these conversations, and then it, again, will carry forward. In terms of when these studies happen, do you look at other municipalities and what they're looking at, what their needs are? I know that a lot of times people are comparing what this is happening here and this is what the rate is in this county or in this city or wherever they're looking at. If you can talk a little bit about what happens in terms of rates in different areas based on what plans or where they are in the process, so on and so forth, and how much they're investing in the system. Yeah, I think every utility system is at a little bit different status relative to where they are in their capital planning and investment strategies, but generally, each year, utilities and communities have to have these same conversations. So I have the opportunity to work with over 100 communities in Florida having these conversations and a few hundred across North America. And so if you think locally, what we're seeing is a lot of challenging conversations about how we pay for infrastructure, for water resources, and for stormwater. And then on the sanitation side, everyone in Pinellas County, all the municipalities are struggling with the same challenge on the disposal costs. So Gulfport's looking at an 8% increase next year. Clearwater's looking at, I think, about a 4.5% increase. If you look at stormwater systems, that's where we're seeing a lot of rate pressure right now. Dunedin's looking at a 19% increase in stormwater rates next year. And on top of that, a 15% increase in water and sewer rates. Clearwater's looking at 8% increases on water and sewer and stormwater for the next couple of years. I mean, it's just we're seeing a lot of similar challenges going through a process that's similar, maybe not exactly the same as what we do here, but a similar process of evaluating our utility rates to fund our needs. And do we have enough? In the needs, we're seeing the similar common drivers of regulatory requirements, increases in capital costs, and inflation that's driving a lot of similar levels of increases in communities here in the area. And generally, it'll vary throughout different parts of the country. When we're looking at these systems, and we talk about stormwater, and we talk about our potable water in these different systems, we do a study, and we do planning documents, not just for five years. I mean, we do long-term studies. And I just want to touch a little bit upon what we're looking at in terms of looking at these systems and the needs of these systems and how that kind of changes based on time and the age of a system. Yeah, it's a good point. So for each of the different utility systems, there's capital plans and programs that go out, you know, 10 to 20 years. And so we're including that in the financial forecasting model. And with that information in mind, it does influence current decisions. If we know, for instance, with stormwater that we need to ramp up our capital spending from $30 million to $50 million a year, you know, we want to start considering that now and figuring out how can we do that in a way that's reasonable and doesn't necessarily require significant rate increases overnight to do that. So that future planning for infrastructure is layered into this process so that we can not only just focus on what's in front of us for next year for fiscal 27, but do a little bit of advanced planning for what's coming in the future years based upon those infrastructure plans. So when you look at these studies, whether it's stormwater or portable water, figuring out the rates, you come up with a rate study, a feasibility and rate study report, right? And part of that report covers operational costs and the system itself and what the cost is and the other part of that is based on the capital system, right? What you need for capital improvement which is based on these plans. So there's flooding in whatever neighborhood, people, there's flooding here, you need to fix it. That goes into that plan, the engineers and everyone does it, write their analysis and they come up with a plan in terms of addressing all these different issues that are stormwater related throughout the city that leads to flooding in different areas, whatever neighborhood you're in. I think conceptually that's a fair description. Obviously I know that there's a lot of folks that spend a lot of time There's a lot more that goes into that. That's just very rough. Yes. Conceptually, yes. That's how you build your project list is based upon some of that input. Data observations about system failures and where you have to continue to occur. There's a lot of inputs into that process. Right. So that's just the stormwater system and then when it comes to the portable water system, if you look at our system, the water doesn't come from below the ground, it comes all the way from up north and then you have all the pipes in our system, right? And then that gets inputted into our capital improvements and we figure out which are the pipes. I mean, you know, X amount of pipes in downtown, I'll tell you, are over 75 to 100 years are going to need replacement by X year. You know, some of them are 50 to whatever years and we know that they're in critical condition and they have to be replaced and then you figure out what those costs are and then you try to come up with a system to pay for this. You try, but then it gets challenging because there's only so many things that we could really tackle at once when you consider some of the limiting conditions like affordability. So, for instance, the water distribution system is one that because of the storms, the consent orders, we focused a lot, right, on wastewater and stormwater. We need to shift our focus to the water system to really get that underground infrastructure back on a good replacement schedule and cycle. So that's kind of ramping up over our CIP while other components are maybe held flat now. So there's some things that have to shift from a prioritization standpoint because we just, I think it's a challenge to do it all at once and that's been a thoughtful part of the process is to weigh those competing priorities. You mentioned consent orders. Could you explain to the public because that's not something you normally hear, what happened here in the city back then and what we had to do? Well, generally speaking, you have a consent order situation when you've had an event at your wastewater plants, for instance, where you've had to discharge partially or even not fully treated wastewater. And so we had that circumstance occur. If it occurs frequent enough or to a significant degree, the Environmental Protection Agency and state agencies will become involved and say, okay, we need you to become in compliance because we have standards that really guard against doing that unless it's extreme situations. And even then, there still may be limitations. So then once the EPA and the state regulators have gotten involved, they'll work with you to say, here's all the things that you were not in compliance with and let's develop a schedule of all the things you need to do to become in compliance and you have to fund those things and you have to do it by a certain time. Otherwise, there's going to be penalties involved. So that's a process that all utilities face in terms of having to comply with regulations and that compliance really means we have to maintain our systems in a good state of repair and working condition and that requires the two things you mentioned, good operations and maintenance for repairs and then good capital replacement cycles so that the infrastructure is less likely to fail. Because if you don't invest, and just to be clear, the money that comes for that in terms of the system itself, right, it's an enterprise system, it's a utility system, right, you have only so many sources you get money from, right, so it's from the utility fees, right, some of it comes from penny funds, and then we have some that come from grants. Am I missing anything? Those are the primary sources. We have miscellaneous fees that we try to maximize like the wastewater capacity fee and other various fees and charges, so we try to optimize fees for specific services where we can to offset how much has to come from rates. So when we use grant monies and other, you know, state monies that are available or let's say federal monies that are available and sometimes depending on the environment you have less federal and state monies that are available, but on average, what are we looking in terms of how that impacts the system or how much does that contribute versus let's say your utility fees? Well, I'll give stormwater as an example for this one because that's probably the easiest. If you'll recall, there was a couple of years ago we were looking at about a 15% increase in stormwater, but because we received a major grant we were able to lower that to 8.5%. In the forecast for now for stormwater, we only have about $1 to $2 million a year of grants built into it because of the conditions you mentioned. Like these things fluctuate. They're competitive in some instances as Lance pointed out, but what we do is as soon as we get those, they become factored into the process. So once we know they've been awarded, we then factor them in. So we've been intentionally conservative right now. So right now there's not reliance grants built into these forecasts, but there's every intent and effort being made to secure as many grants as we possibly can so that they can come in as a funding source like it did a couple years ago to lower rate increases. So you try to go for the maximum, obviously grant opportunities are available, but there's never a set amount that you're going to collect. It could be 4%, it could be 15%, whatever it is based on what's available. That's right. And that's going to affect what we have. Yeah, we have a very minimal assumption just for kind of bare bones grants that we feel comfortable with. In terms of stormwater and because it's a simple, it was mentioned here what we spend on the stormwater system and what we need and I don't think it's been covered in this meeting, but we've covered it in other meetings or stormwater master plan. And I don't know if you're going to talk about our stormwater master plan or someone else is going to talk about stormwater master plan, but a stormwater master plan when we talk about the needs of $50 million a year on average, I think that number is coming from our stormwater master plan. It is and I'd be happy to invite Mr. Tankersley to elaborate a little bit around the capital plan. Okay, so Claude, why don't we talk a little bit because that has seen a huge increase in terms of the rates. There was a long time that there was no investment in stormwater. We know for a fact that with hurricanes, with different rain events that we've had in the city in the last five years that we all can remember in terms of flooding in different neighborhoods, places, you name it. Could you put the pieces together of A, where were we in terms of funding these stormwater projects, you know, I think it was 2019 or 2020 versus now. What is needed through the plan? What are these plans covering? And to put a little bit of context of why some of these increases have happened in terms of stormwater. So 10 years ago in 2016, our capital improvement for stormwater was roughly $1.5 million. For the whole city? For the whole city. So $1.5 million for the whole city and what is stormwater? Just for the average person out there who doesn't know what a stormwater system is. So stormwater when it rains and some of the water is absorbed into the ground, great. Any water that's not absorbed into the ground goes into, becomes what we call runoff. That's what we call stormwater and then that's usually directed through our roads and streets into a collection system that'll eventually take it out to water bodies like canals and bays. Okay. So we've invested a million dollars a year in 20-whatever. 2016, yes. 10 years ago. What has our stormwater master plan showed that we need to invest in the system in terms of projects for the needs of our city? It's over a billion dollars. Over a billion? Over a billion dollars from the stormwater master plan. In addition to the stormwater master plan, we've done some separate studies like the basin C study we've talked a lot about that we're doing some projects on right now. And so we're talking at least a billion if not closer to $2 billion over the next 25 years that we need to do on our stormwater system. And what are we currently investing? Close to about $30 million. We're now up to $37 million. What we're proposing for fiscal year 27 would be $37 million which is not where we need to be. We need to be at roughly $50 million a year but it is a significant increase in the last 10 years. Yeah, nobody's saying that you're going to increase that immediately but it's to just give context to what is being paid for and what the reality of the needs of the system is because it's not clear sometimes and I've had a large learning curve for some of this in terms of figuring out what the needs are for the city and what we're actually paying and what's not getting done. And so that gives a little context. We're paying for about half of what is really necessary for a stormwater system based on the rates right now. Correct. In terms of our potable water which is the water that we drink right? We talked about the city's water plan and all that. What are our needs for our water system? That means and I'm thinking pipes obviously and all that that you need to make sure that people have safe drinking water. So we have approximately 1,500 miles of pipes underground for our water system our drinking water system. A lot of these pipes were put in decades ago some of them 7,500 years ago and many of them have reached the end of their useful life. And so over time we need to go ahead and try to find a way to replace them. The challenge with drinking water versus waste water or storm water is that with both waste water and storm water our pipes tend to be bigger. They tend to be much larger in diameter and which allows us the opportunity to do what we call lining the pipe. So rather than having to dig it up and replace the entire pipe we can put a new liner in the pipe and it gives us more life into that pipe. The drinking water pipes are pressurized and so therefore they're smaller anywhere 6, 8 inches in diameter and they're pressurized and so we don't really have a good opportunity to do a lot of lining for those smaller diameter pipes because then you start losing a lot of the internal area. And so for those pipes usually we end up having to actually put in new pipes to replace the old ones and with 1,500 miles of pipes that need to be replaced many of them much older than me they are at the end of their useful life. So when we just had a meeting it was a committee the whole not that long ago and we saw a map of the city and you saw all the yellow you saw green, yellow and red throughout the city of a pipe system. You can't even see the city you just see the colors because there are that many pipes in the city right? Yes. You had yellow and you had red talk a little bit about condition and pipes in terms of when you see that and risk. And so we had a consultant come in and do a condition analysis of all of our pipes basically to give all the pipes a score so that we can know which pipes are more critical or at risk than others and that's how we came up with that map you saw the pipes that were shown in red were the most critical where we're going to be putting our efforts in in the beginning the pipes that are yellow can maybe last a little bit longer pipes that are green are okay for now and what we didn't then do is prioritize the replacement of those pipes. There's several things that would make a pipe necessary for priority for replacement. One would be the age obviously. One would be the material that was made out of. A lot of the older pipes were made out of what we call cast iron. Cast iron is very brittle. It gets old quickly. It gets very corrosive both on the inside and the outside. Also where the pipe is located. If a pipe is located in an area where it's constantly under groundwater particularly if it's constantly under salty groundwater like it is along our coastal communities like Riviera Bay, Shore Acres, Coquina Key, those pipes actually don't last as long as the pipes that are in the interior part of the city because they're constantly exposed to this corrosive saltwater environment. And so by having the consultants do this analysis for us and give us a score for all our pipes that allows us to know where to prioritize them. Well thank you for that. I know I asked a lot of questions but it is a lot of information and every time we're going through this I think it is important because I'm always learning about our system and learning about stormwater and everything and giving it context is important based on these conversations because it is critical for our city for everyone to understand what we're investing in, why we're investing in it and what you're paying for. And so this is part of the conversation we're having because there are lots of good questions that were asked here today by residents and so I think that gives at least a little bit more context and now I've seen even more council members want to speak after I've spoken. So with that I'll pass it over council member Driscoll is not here right now so I'll pass it over to vice chair Floyd. Oh okay. I don't know what happened. People started moving around. Okay I can go right now. Thank you for all of that information. I really just put myself on here to say a couple of things. First I think as has been demonstrated by Chair Hanowitz that there's a lot of investment needed in the system that's gone undone for a while and I also want to point out that it used to be I believe I don't know 40, 50 years ago there was a lot more investment in the system from other sources like federal government and what not and I think it's swapped from something like after the Clean Water Act passed 90% of investment from the feds and now it's swapped to only 10% investment so that's frustrating that we get put in that position so I definitely see the need for us to invest but my points that I've made specifically around our water system have been about how we do that investment and how it eases the burden and so today I really just wanted to say like that I look forward to over the next year having discussions about the kind of things that I think a couple of speakers touched on so the base rates which we did lower in the past and I was very grateful for but I you know I want to have further discussions about you know seeing if we put them at the right level or if we can lower them more and then the potential of transferring the payment in lieu of taxes and the payment in lieu of fees back into the fund I recognize that has a impact on the city's budget so maybe it's something that we phase in over years but those are the things that I am going to continue to advocate for and I think you know I got bumped up on the list so I didn't have the rest of my thoughts gathered quite yet but that's all I wanted to indicate and that I think that we can do a better job as to how we pay for these things in the future because I think that there are ways to you know lessen the impact and that's what I'll continue to push for but I recognize the need for investment if I may if I can add a comment to that so thank you vice chair I thank you for bringing up the federal grants when I started my career back in the 1980s it was still relatively soon after the clean water acts came out in the 1970s and the federal government was pouring billions of dollars into infrastructure water drinking water and sewer infrastructure I remember in the beginning of my career I worked with communities that were getting 50, 60 one community 90 percent 90 percent of their infrastructure work was being funded through federal grants because of the clean and drinking water acts back in the 1980s and 70s that is not the case anymore as you said that is not the case anymore now we're really lucky we're really grateful if we get anywhere from 5 to 10 percent in one year or between 1 and 5 percent over a 10 year period so it's really flipped the script has flipped significantly and that's another one of the reasons why we're seeing these costs now I appreciate that yeah and I brought that up because I don't want to discredit like the pain that people feel like I feel it as well when I have to budget for my household but you know we acknowledge why things like this go on but I definitely still like think that we can come together over the next few years and figure out a more equitable way to do this but I when I do that advocacy I want to also make clear that I understand the need for the investment and that's why I brought the two together at the same time thank you chair thank you council member Driscoll thank you I keep moving around on the board so I got confused yeah I know I'm very sorry about that you're fine so thank you and thank you for the presentations and for all of the work that you did starting a year ago to get us to that point a lot has changed over the last year and I'm not in the same place where I was a year ago with our utility rates Vice Chair Floyd I really appreciate the advocacy and the points that have been brought up about making changes and working together to make this more equitable make things more affordable put the money in its proper place you can only say let's start next year so many times and right now we know how much people are being squeezed this city is having to tighten its belt unfortunately a lot of our residents don't see where that's happening and so they see a higher bill coming or see this potential for the rates to increase and they don't see any sign that the administration is trying to cut expenses or scale back on what can be scaled back on before increasing rates it's just going straight to the increase and I think people are tired of it and I think that's what we're hearing right now you know our costs go up everyone understands that but the costs are going up for our residents too and I think they're at a breaking point now another thing I'm thinking about is that we're working on hitting residents from three sides on money right now so we've got utility rates we have no reduction of the millage rate which means everyone's going to be paying a little bit more on their taxes and then in November we're going to ask them for permission to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars for improvements such as the ones that are in the presentation I'm not saying that these things aren't needed it's just that when you're getting charged more or you're having to write a bigger check to the local government potentially in three different ways it's no surprise that there is some opposition to that if we were if we had a more modest increase this year just to give people a little bit of a break if we were reducing the millage rate just a little bit to give people a little bit of a break I would feel much better about this but as it stands right now I think it looks too much like we're asking for more but we're not showing the extent to which we could be more responsible with the money that we do receive from our residents I know you guys refer to them as ratepayers but these are people and I want to make sure that we remember that and they're people who could be on a fixed income who just welcomed a new baby into the house trying to figure that out kids going to college these regular people problems are everybody's problems and there's not enough money to go around I think it would be tough for us but fair and helpful if we could just skip one year we've also got amendment three on the ballot we don't know what that's going to look like we don't know what these rates are going to look like next year because of that but gosh we got to give people a break somewhere the timing is terrible right so today I'm going to vote no on this and I might be the only one but I want to make sure that people know that they've been heard that I hear them and that I really understand as a resident myself how difficult this is when you're looking at bigger bills coming from the government and not a whole lot to show for it so that's where I stand on this thank you madam chair thank you council member girdus thank you chair thank you for the presentation and thanks for everybody coming out this evening so I want to piggyback a little bit on chairs comments and so is it and this might be for Claude or I think anybody could probably answer this question is it a fair statement that operationally in the operations budget over the last we'll just use the last three because it's the quickest ones I could look up the operation budget has stayed relatively flat inside of water resources and storm water over the last three years and maybe even decreased a little bit I think in storm water I think it's generally true without having the numbers right in front of me council member but I think it's a fair statement so I only have the numbers in front of me from last year of those budgets we went I think for water resources from 47 million to just around 49 million relatively flat it is a 6% increase but it's relatively flat overall operation like a 3% yeah and we we're not adding staff this is just the cost of doing the business with the staff we have okay and so again fair to say that the increases that we're absorbing in the proposed utility rate is because of investments in capital expenditures and not operations the heavy portion of it for water resources and storm water they are very largely capital driven the only caveat with sanitation is the tipping fee increases right yeah yeah yep and so in 2027 we're proposing 111 million dollars in capital expenditure inside of water resources and 44 million dollars inside of storm water correct okay and so based on the plan that we were just talking about during chair's comments st. pete water plan how much should we be spending to keep the our level of service essentially the same on an annual basis for water resources and storm water well based on what i've got in front of me i'm going to say it's about round numbers 150 million a year for water resources and about 50 million a year for storm water so we're 50 let's call it 40 to 45 percent underneath the water resources number and approximately 11 percent short on the storm water just call it 10 yeah well that's fair from the target from the target and so you know listen i said this earlier today nobody wants to raise rates i don't want to do it i don't want to do it to people selfishly i don't want to do it to me it's not fun this is not a fun thing but when you see stats of 27 years of no increases 18 years of no increases unfortunately we're the ones that signed up to make the hard decisions of what do you do do you let the system continue to get worse or do you try to move the needle to try to make it better and that and i don't i don't like upsetting people that i don't go home happy about this but i think at the end of the day what i'm not going to be happy about is if we continue to drag because what i don't want to happen is 2016 again what i don't want to happen is our water system fails that that's the worst case scenario that i'm just not willing our vice sheriff lloyd i'm looking forward to having those conversations to try to figure that out and and i think your comments were right on but at the same time you see the need right and so that that's where i'm at at this point and and you know i also just the only thing that we haven't really talked about at this point is listen i i think all of us appreciate everybody that shows up and the emails we get yes if you're still here we have your email your phone number we have we got all that today and so you know but at the end of the day we have to make sure that it continues to work and if we continue to under fund it there will be a point where it will stop working and that is the worst case scenario and so you know again i it's i'll say it's not it's not fun but at the end of the day we have had uh how many committee of the whole or uh how many bfnts three and two committee of the holes so three three committee meetings inside of budget finance and taxation two committee of the holes and now and i think we got an update at council and a first reading and now a second reading and so to chair's point this is a conversation we're having pretty much at all times it's it standing takes up three months in bfnt out of the 12 months and so it's not a conversation that just appears either and i and i and i say that and committees are tough because there is no public input other than emails or phone calls or neighborhood meetings that we're at so i understand that part but i also just want it to be said that it's we we are continuously talking about it and it takes a year for us to get here and frankly it takes more than that because we're looking at a what this year we looked at a five-year range of of what the future rates are right so we're we're already looking at 31 right now it's not like we're just looking at 27 and 28 so anyway um it's it's not fun but if if if we don't do it it's not going to get done and then we put it at risk of failing thank you chair thank you council member harding thank you chair um i i greatly appreciate the input of uh of my colleagues um i will echo um after i try to build on uh i'll echo before what what council member girdus said i have no interest in um in raising rates um and that starts with the conversation that i had this morning with my wife uh over coffee about what we were talking about today um in addition to um the the folks that we hear from in the community and and my daughter who is now a school teacher um who can't afford to have rates raised i i i my point is i i echo um what everyone up here has said had no interest in raising rates um council member girdus put this in um painted a a financial picture and i and i would like to give it three-dimensional texture um um from what i understand um the the very directed questions that council member girdus asked and almost answered himself um that the the the money that we collect goes to two different goes goes to two different buckets one is operations and one is cip one is is we have to rebuild the system one one is uh one is my rent and one is the fact that i stopped to paint my house and and fix it and put a new roof on it and um and from what i understand cip era the operations part we held we've held costs pretty flat but it's the cip part which is which unfortunately comes from several different areas one is we didn't fund it um properly over the the past uh 20 years one is the increased cost of and um and there's one other that i was thinking of that i that i'll recall while i'm talking and um and so my my point is this uh and everything that that that you all talked about that the the um shore acres shore acres is the lowest neighborhood in in st pete um followed immediately by revere bay i'm with you there um and the same issues in revere bay and what i'm going to talk about you're going to be jealous of um oh and so we're oh i just mean we're putting in pump stations oh there you go so uh so uh so uh so we're we're building the first major pump station in shore acres and if i remember right claude the total cost of that project is about 33 million dollars and essentially what it does is it gets rid of this this this way that mother nature has changed what she wants to do and and we now have this this issue that we refer to as daytime flooding in in shore acres and so um and and so we we put people at risk we have water in in the roads in the middle of the day um that we we degrade our own uh our own infrastructure we we deplete the the the real shelf life of the roadways um and nothing is good about it and we hear about it all the time and and to put real context to that um i was on the text chain for my kids elementary school because they changed the hours of operation of the school based on the tides um and at king tide the school ended at three but when king tide was there we we picked up our kids at 1230 because you wouldn't get them if you didn't so my point is that this is something that needs to be addressed at 33 million dollars um and that's in addition to fixing the system this is additional to it in talking with uh with with claude um from what i understand you you would like to see eight possibly more pump stations throughout the city to alleviate the rest of this daytime flooding yes two more in sure acres which i assume comes second and third but is that correct yes yes sir so so okay now now we're at a quarter of a billion dollars in just pump stations that that is that is additional to this system that that those are projects that alleviate um that alleviate real problems that happened today when it didn't rain and so back to the point that uh that councilmember girdus made um very succinctly about the money part of this the money part of this comes to the quality of life of the people because i can't live in a flooded neighborhood all the time i have no interest in raising rates not zero um i would i would venture to say that i am i am maybe a little bit further than councilmember girdus um but back to the point um of of of this that there are things that are just too critical not to address i i intend to to to vote for this it's not what i want to do but i think it's what the city needs to do and i appreciate um the fact that the three of you with a huge team behind you uh we're able to to uh to to to create this this picture um and give us a chance to visualize what it is because this decision sucks um but but with without without the the the without the without the way that you were able to present it to us um i would have voted no um i don't want to do this but when you're able to contextualize it this way my point is thank you very much um for giving me at least the opportunity um to to see this problem for exactly what it is in in pedestrian terms i i am sorry for the way that that i am that this is going to go for me um but i appreciate the effort that you all put into it thank you very much chair thank you vice your floor thanks i just had one thing i didn't mention before um just wanted to say thank you to staff and everyone all my colleagues for uh us getting to full cost recovery of the stormwater capacity fee uh you know residents are have a seven percent increase put forward but developers connecting to the city system have a 70 percent increase being put forward and i think that's uh much more equitable and uh i we hadn't acknowledged that so i'm grateful and i just want to say thank you thank you councilmember kivins thank you chair um thanks to each of you for all your hard work um as chairs mentioned this isn't just something we do today it doesn't happen overnight it's not microwave politics this is an ongoing conversation uh that takes months of effort and i really appreciate you all um this is a delicate matter uh it's a delicate matter and a delicate balance because you have to consider the financial strain that has been imposed on residents primarily due to things beyond their control uh two hurricanes if not four the rising cost of inflation and various other factors beyond their control so with all that we have to consider consider i think the primary thing on the table today which is affordability and i think we all struggle with affordability um it's a struggle on the city's part uh trying to find a comfortable number that would not impose too much burden on the rate payers as you put it or our residents but it's also um tough because we we we've been kicking the can down the road for so long we're talking almost 30 years here and i don't think it's fair that we impose such a burden on just one generation uh this is something that i think we uh should look at spreading the cost over time uh i certainly think it's fair to have conversations about a minimal increase however six to seven percent doesn't seem like we're being good financial stewards of taxpayer funds uh i understand that there are needs i get that those needs don't change over time however our needs do uh just because the city has to fix its crumbling infrastructure doesn't mean that my family stops eating doesn't mean that the lights stay on we still have to find ways like you said to comply with regulations but we also got to find ways to stay alive you can only squeeze so much juice out of the same lemon and i i really think we have squeezed this lemon one too many times and i get it it's we're we're playing catch up but we have to be able to explain where this increase is going and no fault on any one person but i don't think we've done a justified uh we we've provided any justified decisions on this we we haven't been able to clearly explain why we've come to this number and and i get it there are needs operational expenses have increased however i i have to wonder you know i get it an eight percent tipping fee increase we cannot control but is it necessary for us to purchase 123 trucks right now you know i i just i just have to wonder and and then i also have to look at how we're we're taxing our our rate payers you know is it fair to make them bear so much of a burden when developers can be doing more um i i want to ask this question because i brought it up last year i'm sorry there's no clapping in the meeting it's it's part it's fine some of you weren't here in the original part of the meeting so i understand that people feel passionate about it but we just keep the quorum in the meeting so i appreciate that thank you thank you chair um i brought it up last year um i think it was mentioned by you andy optimizing some of these miscellaneous fees um i mentioned it to legal brought it up to administration the conversation about imposing some additional impact fees uh we we mentioned what other municipalities are doing while other municipalities are dealing with the same issues we are as a coastal community however they have found other solutions beyond just raising rates on consumers and so what i want to know is legally what options has administration explored when it comes to alternative impact fees whether it be sewer sanitation transportation uh i don't know who who would answer this question but i i i certainly want to know where we stand with impact fees i'm i'm happy that we have impact excuse me increased this water capacity fee by 700 but that's not enough i'll maybe get get the conversation started a bit and others will probably want to chime in but you know to the extent that you know you can adjust a fee that's in place today that's you know kind of what's in front of us today but i think there may be some potential things to work through relative the implementation of new fees around some existing state legislation that you know may provide challenges on doing that until sometime next year so i think you know the the team stands ready to evaluate those fees and do numeric calculations but i think there are some timing considerations from a legal perspective that we're going to have to reflect on because of the state bills that have been passed i appreciate that um i understand big brother hinders little little brother a lot um but this is something that i think is just too important uh and i i really would like to look at legally what are what is permissible what can we explore imposing at this point uh i know we have to justify it through a study what does that next step look like how do we get to that study i don't want to just again keep delaying delaying delaying and then we hope that we can pass that burden down to our residents it's it's again just to me i think it's it's backwards map and the map doesn't map up to me um i want to talk for a moment about uh to stantec for a moment about uh just some some lack of of transparency here um i want some clarity on these erratically inflated bills um have we resolved that problem because as we heard today there's still some people who are still having issues i have we where we stand with swapping out these old meters and replacing them um you know if tyler's still malfunctioning again maybe this isn't the right time for us to be having this conversation with all respect council member i think that's probably a staff question sure sure thank you good evening council tom green and and council member forgive me but you you had a lot of questions in there so maybe i'll start with and kind of chip all chip away at some of those um so um absolutely we we have normalized um over time the the the number of bills that come um that that that we're hearing about that have been um inflated um you might recall that or i should say on a monthly basis we have bills that are two times maybe even four times the previous three months average that happens every day we work through those with customers on a daily basis but we we are not seeing the same level of like right after the storms we had a big spike it has normalized over time so are we oh go ahead tom and then you asked about tyler we're still in the process of implementing that software we anticipate early 2027 for it to go live so you're saying these these peak bills have normalized it it sounds again like there there may still be some folks who are kind of stuck in in this revolving door and and i'm just wondering again you know is this a situation that we we really have addressed these over bills seem to still be occurring and we're talking two years post arm so it is it is challenging to answer that question directly because there's so many different variables with each individual customer's bill you know there could be a leak there could be a leak on the on the private property side there could be a leak on the city side so they each of them have to be treated individually and addressed individually it's hard to make a blanket statement about any specific bill fair enough and and i get it it's an individual triage matter and and it's just i don't think it's fair to keep using the excuse that it's a leak you you know i'm not saying it's the city but whoever is is saying that is the issue it's not always the fact so i i just again i want to make sure that we're exerting our efforts on trying to come to a solution um to the problem and i just don't believe right now raising rates is that solution uh there are some bigger issues we got bigger fish to fry and and i really feel like we've we've got to get down to the bottom of it um can we talk a little bit about um the utility rate increase versus the geo bond um amendment excuse me the geo bond initiative that is on the ballot as well as the amendment those are like three different issues but they all impact each other can we hit on that briefly absolutely the difference between the two i think is important it's it's important to medic to mention that understood they are inner inner intertwined but three separate issues um you know the the rates we're discussing this evening are for kind of ongoing operating of the utilities and to support our ongoing capital needs um so that's kind of the discussion this evening what we're asking the voters to address in november would be do we want to um accelerate some of those water and stormwater improvements that we know we need to do from our master planning do we want to accelerate those through a different revenue source in the form of an ad valorem tax so they're those two are kind of separate and then are are are connected but separate discussions and separate decisions that voters will make one decision and council will make the decision on on the rates and then the third part was what the oh the homestead exemption discussion and decision you know that is clearly going to be up to the voters in florida whether or not that passes but that really doesn't impact the discussion today with respect to the utility and and the geobond i appreciate that clarity thank you tom and then um my last point here again i i really feel like what we should be doing is redesigning how we collect revenue uh for for these bills i think right now it doesn't really encourage conservation and i think that's what we should be doing educating uh folks and motivating them to conserve their water and let's incentivize it for those who do by lowering their rates and those who waste water raise their rates uh it's possible it's called penalty rates and and i definitely think that that is something that we should explore i also think we should consider lifeline rates um for those residents who are income qualified there is opportunities for them to have certain fees um i i again i i just think again this conversation today about a six or seven percent increase uh it's just not the right time when stroke when folks are already struggling and hurting thank you chair thank you so first i want to thank everyone that's here it's almost seven o'clock at night so obviously you're here because you care about your city you care about what you're paying your rates and you care enough to actually show up so that doesn't go unnoticed and it's important um i also want to thank everyone here that you see in the room that has talked about this one way or another is an expert in their field and so they do spend a lot of time going through doing the work trying to give us the information so we can make decisions based on the information that they provide us whether it's the engineers that are working on the different storm water projects or portable water projects or whatever other projects throughout the city that residents tell us they need because they do versus you know all the other needs that we have in the city so i just want to make sure that i thank you all because i know that it is tough work and frankly it's it's sometimes the work that you don't get thanked for because it is you know when people have flooding in their neighborhood guess what they're never happy and they're screaming at these folks here whether it's the flooding in the neighborhood whether it's the storm water drain that's clogged whether it's the pothole whether whatever it is the one expectation is you just have to get it fixed and i will tell you i constantly and i'm not the only city council person that's getting requests from citizens and for residents but i am constantly getting emails about issues in the neighborhood that people expect us to fix period the problem is it costs money and sometimes those two things just don't mesh up i mean that's the reality we have for all i mean whether it's you're planning your your your home budget or any other budget the reality is even a city as much as you see the big budget guess what the needs in our city are much bigger than our budget allows and so that is a challenge that we have to deal with all the time and yes you'll hear about government waste and all these things and fine and people could disagree on what is necessary versus what is not necessary that's all fair game but when we're talking about a utility system which is what our water system is the storm water and all that that's very different the money in those systems go towards those systems your water rates go to take care of that your storm water rates go to take care of that your sewage rates go to take care of that it it costs to operate the system what's the cost of that there are capital improvement needs what are costs of that and then you determine how you pay for it that's that's pretty much in in the simplest way of putting it it's you may find some money from federal grants somewhere here there but the reality is the majority of the money is coming you know from who not just from you from all of us from everybody that lives in the city because we all pay the same rates so this challenge we have every year the lack of investment in the system frankly we are absorbing some of it but it won't just be us it's people five years from now it's people 10 years from now 15 20 25 30 because these plans are not five-year plans they're not one-year plans you're not absorbing the whole cost you're not it would be impossible it's a 30-year plan and we're not investing in the 30-year plan enough which means everybody in that system when i'm long gone we're still paying for it and guess what we're probably not going to be investing enough in it that's just the reality and that's what we have to deal with so it is nothing like some other council members have expressed i don't like it i don't like any of this i wish i could tell people i'm giving you money back here's your refund check it'd be great i i it would be an ideal world where we wouldn't have to pay any taxes and we get all the services for free once whatever happens on the ballot box at the state of florida and people get rid of property taxes and how we'll see how that turns out and then we'll figure out okay do you get services do you not get services how it turns out and we'll deal with it because that it'll be a reality but as we look at a budget and we look at how we use our real estate property taxes the majority of that money goes to public service to to our to our police and fire that's the reality of what we're looking at and so if people expect those services and you're cutting money from going into that then we have to take from somewhere else and that is always the challenge of where the money's coming from for those services with a service like utilities and all that you have that money and maybe we can find another way of taking out monies of not taking out monies and then they don't go in the general fund and we'll have that conversation but that will affect something else if you don't have the payment in lieu of taxes it will affect something else which means money won't go for something else and we'll have that conversation but it's not like the money sitting there to pay for everything and there's always a give and take that we're dealing with and so you don't raise rates guess what happens deferred maintenance something is paid for it may not be with dollars but it may be with deferred maintenance it may be more flooding in an area it may be other things that are getting done and so those are the tough decisions that we deal with i don't live in shore acres that's not my district neither is riviera bay but i understand they have flooding there but guess what i have flooding in my district and i'm higher ground why from rainfall in different areas and so there are projects in the stormwater plan that actually go to areas in the city that are not shore acres that are not riviera bay because i know you sometimes we hear that and we think well it's just an area that's flooding and they bought in that area and why should we be paying for that i hear that from people in my district and the reality is when you look at our stormwater master plan there's areas that flood throughout the city that we're trying to address it's not one neighborhood here the downtown water main we did a study of our downtown pipes that i reviewed and you can all look up you can absolutely look up the plan for the downtown water mains and claude because i don't know the numbers off the top of my head but from what i recalled in downtown that this this serves hospitals it serves some of our most critical facilities and you can find it in the report if any of you would want to reach out to me i'll be happy to send you the report and this is just one part of our city how in that plan that we have we put x amount of money into capital improvements and from what i recall we're only covering about 20 something percent of the actual need of the water pipes in downtown is that correct that's correct okay and so when you look at that map you're talking about pipes that are found to be critical not in the yellow in the red and that is the reality that we have to deal with and that is one part and those are critical facilities that are served and we're not even able to pay all the costs of that so it would be great if i had an answer for everyone in terms of how we pay for this and if someone has a solution but at the end of the day it's gonna it costs money one way or the other or things don't get done and then we're blamed for a sewage spill or we're blamed for the pipes or you're not getting water that's safe and that's the challenge that i have i wish i could say look we just won't do it we try to balance the needs and try to look at the rates and raise them enough to where we can get some of these projects done but not to the point where it's too much and that's what we're trying to do here if it's six percent seven percent eight percent we're not we're always looking at how can we do it so you can get these projects how can you save money on these projects how can you make these projects more cost effective if you're digging a hole here and you have to fix this can we fix two or three things at the same time so that capital improvement project doesn't cost us more that's what the engineers are doing constantly because we understand the challenge we feel it we hear it from you all we feel it ourselves and it's because everyone here that's sitting here cares about our city we wouldn't be here if we didn't care about our city we don't want to take money from people that we don't need to fix projects that we don't need that would be crazy but the challenge i have and i have these tough conversations at neighborhood associations is okay you want these projects done and how do we pay for them and how do we how do we do it responsibly as as stewards and not lie to people about the actual needs because we actually have actual needs and i can't pretend they don't exist and it does scare me when i look at a report and i see so many pipes that are in critical need that aren't fixed that does scare me it really does so i have to vote for some of these and i know it doesn't cover everything and i'm always happy to have a conversation with anyone about our infrastructure needs and what we're doing what we can it's very easy sometimes to say you know what we're going to get rid of x y z and and people what people don't know is what the actual cost is and it's not a dollars and cents a lot of times it's deferred maintenance it's not really knowing what the true cost is we don't even have a plan for seawalls yet and what that cost is going to be that's going to be a billion that's not factored into to what we can pay those are our seawalls and we can have a separate discussion about seawalls i can tell you if i would go through all the different things that we need in a city it would blow your mind so are we doing everything no we're not but we're trying our best with what we can and trying to maintain rates to a point where we can do some of these projects especially after the hurricanes especially after all the issues that happened after the storms we had pipe breaks throughout the city after the storm after the hurricanes throughout people without water that's what you're talking about and if administration or someone else that's an expert if i've said anything that's incorrect please correct me please because i i want to make sure what i am telling the public is true i won't take offense to it but i want to make sure i'm being accurate of what i'm saying the the biggest challenge we have is the age of our system that is the biggest challenge we have right and we i feel that we've done a good job of getting as much life out of our system as we can we're talking about pipes that are 100 years old 75 years old i'm 61 years old and i'm feeling my age so i can imagine what a 75 year old pipe that's been buried underground in corrosive conditions might feel like and so we we have to really get to the point where we are replacing these or we're going to see a lot more failures more often moving into the future so it's just worthwhile and i love the fact that everyone right now wants to look in our utility and figure it out i think that's great because i think the more people know the poor the more people understand the needs of our system and what we're paying for and what we can and what we can't do i think it's absolutely better i love it i love the conversations of having okay how do we do this how do we fix this what do you what do you expect in service what is the level of service you expect and what are the needs in our city and those are great conversations and citizens should be engaged citizens should be engaged in figuring out if we get rid of the property taxes what's going to happen i think that's great don't take what don't take my word for it don't take other politicians word for it do the research do the research and figure it out because i do think it's important and these are absolutely critical issues but with that being said i just don't find based on the information i have that we can right now cut rates the rates we've tried to work as much as we can we've increased the water fee any new development in terms of what the impact is in our system we do what we legally can because there are legal restrictions into how much we can charge for new for new additions into our system and we try to do that and we're trying to find ways to minimize the cost and so if anyone here in this room i don't care if you're in my district or not wants to have those conversations call up my my legislative aide and we can sit down and we can talk about all these things i welcome you to and i will make sure that anyone that we have we have someone from our water department or someone to be there to answer anything to make sure that you get the information that you need and if there are questions that you have asked here today that are not answered we can have those conversations and i'll be happy to do that okay so with that being said approval j2a we have a motion and a second clerk if you can open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes i'm sorry j just one moment i just have to change the title yeah it's j2a madam chair the motion to approve agenda item j2a passes six to two with council members vick sanders floyd gabbard girdus hanowitz and harding voting yes and council members driscoll and givens voting no okay move approval j2b second we have a motion a second of j2b clerk if you can open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing that all present council members have voted clerk please tally announce the vote madam chair the motion to approve agenda item j2b passes six to two with council members vick sanders floyd gabbard girdus hanowitz and harding voting yes and council members driscoll and givens voting no move approval j2c we have a motion a second on j2c clerk if you can open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing that all present council members have voted clerk please tally announce the vote madam chair the motion to approve agenda item j2c passes five to three with council members vick sanders gabbard girdus hanowitz and harding voting yes and council members driscoll floyd and givens voting no thank you i'm sorry okay um okay thank you thank you everyone for being here on this item we actually have gotten to seven o'clock we're going to have to take a 10 minute recess um but i really appreciate everyone that's here today and for now at this point we'll take a recess thank you back in session we're going to take up j3 which has to do with the arts funding development bonus uh council member driscoll this was your item originally so if you want to start us off on it thank you um and thanks to everyone who from city staff who's worked on it from derek to um heather judd to celeste davis everyone who has been involved with making this happen is um just greatly appreciated this is something that um you know was uh brought to me originally as a as an idea from the warehouse arts district folks and they um had an idea to create this fund and then some folks from the arts alliance came forward and presented me with an option for a funding mechanism and we started putting everything together and now here we are today so there were a lot of people involved in this um i do hope that today is not the end but just simply the first big step towards creating a new opportunity for our local artists after today if this should pass today um then the next step would be to have that um actual grant program established and start getting the money out to the artist as it comes in so um i just really appreciate all of the attention that has been given to this and i'm looking forward to seeing uh where we go from here with that um derek i'd love for you to introduce the item madam chair you have to read the title yep thank you oh sorry purport proposed ordinance number 643-h in orange amending the saint petersburg city code section 16.20.120.6.2 16.20.130.5.2 and 16.20.150.5.2 regulating for bonuses by replacing the far bonus table thereby adding an arts funding development bonus adding a subheading for each existing bonus and reorganizing the table in alphabetical order amending section 16.30.060.3.1.d.1 and 16.30.050.5.1 regulating far bonuses by adding an arts funding development bonus providing for severability and providing we do have a call okay speaker paul carter please go to either podium an open podium state your name address or cross street for the record you'll have three minutes to address city council good thank you paul carter live at 341 5th street south in downtown st pete and i guess i'm here to support the arts density bonus proposal probably not a surprise to many of you you know the holy grail for the arts community in st pete has been to find a sustainable funding source to support the arts and i think with this initiative we're taking i hope you take a giant step forward towards accomplishing that two other quick points number one i hope that as the implementation plans develop that the arts advisory committee and the st pete arts alliance are active and substantial members of whatever group is uh finally determined to administer uh what i hope be substantial grants over the years and then the third point um this i've been involved with this for pretty close to the beginning and as council member driscoll said there have been a ton of folks here but i want to particularly point to the council and the staff and derek and his group um this was not an easy thing to figure out and uh the persistence and the uh i guess i'm sure late hours going into this to finally result in this conclusion um as a resident and as a taxpayer i really do appreciate the work that you guys and the staff did on this it'll ultimately be a great benefit to the entire community certainly to the arts community and i hope i don't have to urge you to vote yes i hope that happens but i will urge you in any event to vote yes on this thank you thank you eric good evening thank you i heard in the introduction a reference to the arts alliance i know that they had a representative here earlier that i don't see in the room now what i do want to do is just maybe walk through quickly instead of giving you the full presentation just highlight some of the things that have changed in response to what we heard before so just going back on the calendar you can see here these were the earlier meetings where we walked through some of the different issues related to this proposal specifically these were the areas that we needed to work through with the council and the committee one of the things that we spent a lot of time on with the help of the city attorney's office was identifying a nexus to the land development impact that was a critical threshold for us to get through and then working specifically from our position on any proposed land development regulations which is the bonus itself in this particular official process the one thing that happens with every text amendment is it goes to the city's development review commission they have to make a finding of consistency with the city's comprehensive plan and then recommend to the city council which which they did in july with a unanimous 7-0 vote now the last time that we presented this in committee one of the things that came up was a request for us to consider other areas not downtown center so when we prepared the application to bring to the development review commission we added in addition to the downtown center the employment center 2 category which is one of the categories where we have a bonus system this is essentially the hospital college campus south of downtown also rc3 which is carillon town center there is a bonus system there and adding the arts funding bonus also worked in that table and then in addition to these two what's not included in the presentation but is included in the ordinance itself is adding the same bonus to the sunrunner brt overlay which you recently adopted and also the 22nd street target employment center local overlay which is very obviously arts oriented along with employment and industrial so we can pull the slides back up if you need to see the language but otherwise uh staff of course is recommending approval of this proposed tax amendment along with the drc finding of consistency with the comp plan we have a motion a second council member driscoll thanks just before we vote um i was wondering maybe rob this is would be more for you i'd love to get an update for us on the actual grant program i know that um you know celeste's office that's like in their hands so i was wondering where we're at with that celeste is here this evening oh she is hi sorry i can't see over there um the plan is to reach out and to meet with um those in the arts community that were impacted by the nexus to figure out what would be the best outcome should council approve so it is it does have to have that connection and i wanted to reach out to st pete arts alliance which i've done already leslie curran who was very impactful on the history and research and the arts advisory committee excellent thank you um hopefully you can um provide an update um down the road just a little bit as you're putting this together in the economic and workforce development committee um and you know a meeting so i'll be in touch to see when you think that might be a good idea to put that on the agenda will do i just wanted to get the impact from or information from those entities that are really directly impacted yes all right thank you so much all right thank you chair thank you councilmember gibbons thank you very much and i appreciate you um councilman driscoll for bringing this forward i really think this kind of lays the groundwork uh for future bonuses that could come whether it be for educators first responders you name it health care workers um so thank you for that uh and just since we're in the sunshine i wanted to let you and other council members know this is such a timely comfort conversation and how apropos because next week on september 2nd i'll be having a conversation with some of the artists and gallery owners and studios um specifically around this topic so i'm so happy to see this um coming forward and i'm sure hope it passes because i think it's a timely matter and a timely conversation so thank you so much thank you thank you chair thank you and uh thank you councilmember drissel great job on this um i will say i'm part of the arts advisory committee right now um i know that that committee is interested to learn more about this and paul serves with me so i hope that at some point maybe derek you can come to the committee and kind of share this and then i know celeste will keep us updated on it and see how kind of you develop the fund and all that because i think there are parts of it that still haven't been figured out and how that's going to be administered okay great thank you we have a motion a second clerk if you can open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing that all present council members have voted clerk please tally announce the vote madam chair the motion to approve agenda item j3 passes unanimously okay great thank you next up we have j4 um if you could clerk if you can read the ordinance propose orders number 636-h an ordinance of the city of st petersburg florida amending its comprehensive plan amending chapter three future future land use element issue natural resources and objective lu6 and policy lu6.1 to remove marina development restrictions in the north and north yacht basin providing for severability and providing for an effective date and we do not have any cards of approval thank you we have a motion and a second heather heather i believe you actually want to say something first yes just for clarity's sake if we could please amend section one the injury introductory sentence to read chapter three future land use element of the comprehensive plan is hereby amended to remove the following issues objectives and policies i would appreciate it we have an amended motion i'm happy to amend the motion proposed language thank you we have a motion and a second as amended j4 clerk if you can open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing that all present council members have voted clerk please tally announce the vote adam chair the motion to approve agenda item j4 as amended passes unanimously thank you next up we have j5 this is quasi-judicial so i am going to be reading from a script okay so let me do my my talking points as i'm supposed to so i don't get in trouble we'll now move on to item j5 which contains two ordinances amending the zoning and future land use maps for a 3.89 acre parcel located at 30 10 58th avenue south this item is quasi-judicial anyone wishing to speak on this item must fill out a yellow card and provide it to the city clerk and all speakers must be sworn in before presenting testimony the procedures for quasi-judicial proceedings can be found on the yellow sheet attached to the printed agendas or if viewing digitally pages 13 and 14 of the council agenda clerk please swear in all parties and speakers including city staff clerk if you can read the ordinance titles both of them please propose ordinance number 765-l and orange amending the future land use map of the comprehensive plan for the city of st petersburg florida by changing the future land use map a 3.89 acre parcel located at 3010 58th avenue south from residential urban ru to residential medium rm providing for repeal of conflicting ordinances and provisions thereof and providing for an effective date proposed ordinance number 800-z and orange amending the official zoning map of the city of st petersburg florida by changing the zoning of a 3.89 acre parcel located at 3010 58th avenue south from neighborhood suburban dash one ns dash one to neighborhood suburban multi-family dash one nsm dash one providing for repeal of conflicting ordinances and provisions thereof and providing for an effective date and we did not have any cards thank you we'll now move on to presentations each party will have 10 minutes for their presentation and we will begin with the city staff's presentation good evening madam chair fellow council members britain wilson city planner presenting an amendment to the future land use map with a concurrent rezoning initiated by the property owners of maximo apartments which sits on a 3.89 acre site and the purpose of the proposed amendments is to bring the existing development into conformance with the assigned land use and construction zoning designations as they are currently non-conforming maximo apartments is a 20-unit single story development built out at five units per acre that was constructed in 1985 and sits on the southeast corner of 58th avenue south and 31st street south and the surrounding uses starting at the top right is the arbor grove condos which is built out at about 9.8 units per acre there is a carve out on the north side of maximo apartments which sits a single-family home directly south and east are single-family homes and to the west across from 34 street south is church property and then more apartments followed by a medical facility this is a future land use map showing the subject site as designated residential urban or ru where residential medium or rm is being proposed to be consistent with the property to the north and northwest this is the lane use map again but with the coastal high hazard area or chha boundary shown in hatch that is completely covering the subject site this is a zoning map showing the subject site is designated neighborhood suburban one or ns1 which is a single-family district where the proposed change is to neighborhood suburban multi-family or nsm1 so as to be in conformance with the existing apartments and with the nsm zoning will also match and be consistent with the property to the north and northwest this slide addresses the change in development potential that would result from the map amendments and the associated restrictive covenant that has been proffered due to the site's location and the chha the existing density under the ru land use is seven and a half dwelling units per acre the proposed rm land use would allow for 15 dwelling units per acre but the restrictive covenant will lock in the existing density of seven and a half dwelling units per acre so the permitted you your unit density does not change only the allowed building form of the units changes from single family to multi-family and this slide demonstrates that currently as built the site has 20 existing units and an additional nine units could be constructed for a total of 29 dwelling units on site as noted in the staff report the proposed amendments are consistent with many policies of the comprehensive plan and to highlight these few the proposal furthers these policies as it meets the chha requirements of not increasing density or intensity through the restrictive covenant and the proposed amendments are consistent with the existing site development and the surrounding area that is multifamily to the north and is located on a major roadway and with that staff recommends a finding of consistency with a comprehensive plan and approval of the proposed land use amendment and rezoning with restrictive covenant as it meets the chha policies and is consistent with the surrounding neighborhood that concludes my presentation and the applicant has a presentation as well thank you applicant do you have your presentation good evening good evening craig taraski 360 central avenue suite 500 i have been sworn for the applicant i'll make it real quick britain did a great job in the staff report so i think we already have enough in the record to support approval but just to tell kind of the a little bit more of the detail of the story they came to me because they um every time they go to reinvest in this property to get some financing the non-conforming use flags it gets flagged so when it's going through underwriting it affects its score so we were actually here in uh in december of last year to vacate that little vestige of a right-of-way so that was kind of the first step in all this and this is the rezoning following it that's that little vestige of right away that we vacated in december 2025. this is a survey of the property showing the 20 units this is the 1985 plat the condo plat you can see the uh the east side of the property they never finished it there were seven units that were in the condo declaration presumably a site plan and just never constructed this exist this rezoning to open up the allowable use will allow them to add nine units to this property either they could build out the way it was or they could redevelop it but the the main thing here was just to clean up the non-conforming use and we are because it's in the chha we are uh including a development agreement with a restriction on density intensity so that doesn't change and you've already seen these maps and the traffic consideration from the the uh staff report showing that's a minimal additional trips for those nine additional dwelling units so that's it thanks thank you is there a registered opponent i don't see any staff no registered opponent okay um is there any public comment no public comments we have no public comments this concludes our public comment section of the evening on this item now we'll move on to cross-examination each party will have five minutes for cross-examination staff would you like to cross-examine staff waves thank you you wave okay now we move on to closing arguments or rebuttal you have each five minutes to provide a closing argument or rebuttal staff staff waves get waves okay well thank you very much this quasi-judicial proceeding is now closed and we will move on into executive session approval j5 we have a motion and a second clerk if you can open the machine for voting is that for j5a and b or just that's for i'm sorry j5a and b do them together yes we can a j5a and b second thank you clerk seeing that all present council members have voted clerk please tally announce the vote madam chair the motion to approve agenda items j5a and j5a 5b passes unanimously thank you and thank you for waiting so patiently throughout the evening thanks for being with us yes we do okay next up we have open forum clerk do we have any speakers for open forum madam chair we do not and we then we close open forum we go to announcements announcements council member driscoll thank you as you had um shared with everyone earlier madam chair uh we unfortunately learned of the passing of bill edwards earlier today um i've known bill for a long time i was i was heartbroken by this news um over the years i um watched and admired a great businessman and a great lover of our city as he did everything from um put uh beautiful markers up to welcome people to st petersburg to buying the rowdies and i'll never forget he said the first time he ever saw a soccer game was when he owned the team um that's the kind of person he was he remade sundial and um and really helped us help the city um to erase the standards at the mahaffee at a time when it really needed it i certainly didn't agree with bill on everything and we um did have occasion to lock horns but i always respected him and um my prayers today are with his family and his loved ones um as they um mourn and um you know reflect and i hope we all do um some reflection on someone who was passionate passionate about st petersburg and um i would love for us to just have a moment of silence to remember him thank you thank you council member girdus thank you madam chair uh council member driscoll thank you for your very nice words um i was certainly saddened to hear uh the loss of bill so um just quickly i wanted to just publicly thank um i i got to spend a little bit of time early this morning as they were mustering the storm water uh traffic and pavement ops crew um that just go out on a daily basis and just bust their chops and especially you know days of 109 heat and then four hours later it's four inches of rain and so um and i you know i was in this room and you know it's probably 100 people or so and uh you know they're all wearing their bright green scpo uh you know protective gear but also that's kind of the the colors and you realize that they they are probably some of the most seen people across the city because frankly they're just bright and they're hard to miss and so um i just the work that they do i'm just so thankful and i just wanted to say it out loud one more time just thankful for all the work all of our employees but i got to spend a little bit of time with them and it was very nice and very appreciative for everything they do on a daily basis um last a lot last but not least we have a couple of birthdays uh it was the mayor's birthday last week it was rita's birthday last week i believe and then it's rob's birthday next week and so you don't get out of it rob and so uh we'll sing happy birthday to the mayor rita and rob happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday to you thank you very much madam chair thank you and thank you for letting us know about uh bill edwards earlier um as council member driscoll mentioned first of all bill was bigger than life i think we all dealt with bill one way or the other whether we liked it or not and locking horns is probably putting it mildly sometimes um but he was a staunch supporter of the city and of the arts and of our community and he gave everything he had um for the love of the city if he could and um i think no matter whether we agreed or disagreed i don't think anyone here questioned how much he loved this city um and he would make some of the you know some of the decisions and and negotiations difficult for whoever was in the room and i'm sure and i'm sure uh i'm sure the attorneys can appreciate that um but but you know that was how bill was and he you know he fought tooth and nail for what he believed in and that was just his personality so he will be greatly missed and our condolences go to his family and friends so thank you all for the good work today it's been a very long day there's very tired faces in this room so i am gonna right now close this meeting thank you