City Council - Dec 05, 2024

Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1 and Council Vice Chair, Hopley Gerdes, District 2, Brandi Gabbard, District 4, Lisette Hanowitz, District 5 and Council Chair, Deborah Fig Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, John Muhammad, and District 8, Richie Floyd. Good afternoon, everyone. We will now call to order our December 5th, 2024 City Council Meeting, beginning with the roll call, please. Hanowitz? Here. Rick Sanders? Here. Driscoll? Here. Muhammad? Here. Lloyd? Gerdes? Here. Gabbard? Here. Thank you. We will have our invocation given today by Imam Askiya Muhammad Akil, and we will also be followed with a moment of silence to honor our fallen first responders. And please remain standing when we were followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Will everyone please join me in standing? Good morning. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. With the name of the gracious, the compassionate, the merciful benefactor, merciful redeemer, to the honorable chair, other officers, and members of our City Council, to our honorable mayor, his team members, and all city employees, and to everyone under the sound of my voice, I greet you this morning in the greetings of peace. Shalom Aleykum. Pex vobiskum. Namaste. As-salamu alaykum. Now, please unite your hearts with mine, attune your ear to my voice, and receive the intent of my words as I invoke the presence of God, our creator, on this occasion, without offending anyone's sensitivities or beliefs. O creator of all and everything, called upon by many names and worshipped in many ways, you who endowed us all with certain inalienable rights, we call on you now to send down your divine presence to watch over the deliberations of this august body as they sober-mindedly address the issues that confront them. Give them, O Lord, the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job, and the compassion of Christ Jesus. We believe in you, rely and depend upon you, trust and have faith in you, you who created the sun that warms us all, the air that surrounds and sustains us all, the water that refreshes and purifies us all, the food that nourishes us all. For all this and more, we are eternally grateful and can never give you enough thanks. We ask this morning that you will give the members of this governing body, individually and collectively, the strength to always recognize your presence amongst them and your ever-flowing graces into their lives. Give them the strength to acknowledge truth wherever it is manifested before them. Give them the strength to pursue truth, liberty, justice, equity, fairness, and common good, always respecting the rights and dignity of others. Our Lord, help them to lower the wing of humility, to not be seduced by power nor corrupted by greed, nor puffed up with pride and arrogance. Help them to be better listeners than talkers, to argue in the best and most respectful manner. Our Lord, help them and us to restrain anger and to be quick to forgive. Help us to be excellent human beings and even better citizens, residents, and neighbors. Help each and every one of us to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, especially when we disagree. Our Lord, help us to remember that our journey, our constant challenge, is to be and become one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Remind us, O creator of us all, of our shared responsibility within these borders to always strive toward forming a more perfect union, toward establishing justice and promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty, not just for ourselves, but for our posterity, for our future generations. And now, during these times of challenges, brought on by tragic deaths, unforecasted destruction, suffering, economic and social disruption, and hyper-partisan rivalry, show us the path forward to the brighter days of hope ahead, our Lord we ask. Make St. Petersburg a city of happiness, kindness, safety and security, justice, compassion, prosperity, hope, and success for all. Grant it all, we pray in your name and humbly ask, and say, amen, amen. Please join me in a moment of silence as we honor our fallen first responders. Chief of Police, James J. Mitchell, end of watch, December 25th, 1905. Police Officer, James J. Goodson, end of watch, December 25th, 1947. Firefighter, George W. Ludwig, last alarm, December 19th, 1966. Thank you. Agents to the Black, of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Please be seated. Thank you, Yvonne, for that implication. I appreciate it. Council members, we have an agenda before us today with a request to add items F6 and CRA4. With those changes, I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. Second. Okay. Council Member Hanowins. I just wanted to bring up the issue of that we're adding the bonds for the historic gas plant and the amended and restated interlocal agreement. We discussed this a couple of weeks ago. The public only received notice, a day's notice. And this is probably the biggest deal in the city's history that we're going to be approving for bonds. I think it's important for the public to have more notice. I understand that this can be done. It's not an issue of whether it can be done, it's whether we should do it. And the reality is that a lot of people are interested in this issue and should have the opportunity to come here and speak to Council and tell them what they think about the deal and whether or not we should approve the bonds. And one day's notice is not sufficient. Thank you. We have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as amended. Mr. Clerk, can you go ahead and open the machine for voting? Council Members, please cast your votes. Seeing that all present Council Members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve the agenda passes 4-3. With Council Members Floyd, Hanois, and Mohamed voting no. Council Members Driscoll, Fick, Sanders, Gabbard, and Gerdes voting yes. Thank you. Council Members, we have a consent agenda before us. Do we have any cards on the consent agenda? We do not, Madam Chair. Okay, and with that, I entertain a motion for approval of our consent agenda. Second. It's been seconded. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council Members, please cast your votes. Seeing that all present Council Members have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, motion to approve the consent agenda passes unanimously. Thank you. Now we'll go ahead and move into open forum. Clerk, can you please read the rules? If you wish to address City Council on subjects other than public hearing or quasi-judicial items listed in the agenda, please sign up with the clerk. Only the individuals wishing to speak may sign the open forum sheet. Only City residents, owners of property, business owners in the city, or their employees may speak. All issues discussed under open forum must be limited to issues related to the City of St. Petersburg government. If you 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. 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 comments is disrupted by violations of the rules of decorum, the chair is authorized to accept public comments by alternate means, including by email only. And, Madam Chair, we do have some speakers. Can you please call the first two speakers? The first two speakers, I believe it's Peter Kent and Mark Ferguson. Please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. You will have three minutes to address Council. Good afternoon, Council members. My name is Peter Kent. I live at 8 Academy Way. I'm a retired commissioner of public works and city engineer. Florida Statute 120.525 requires all public agencies to publish notice of meetings on their website at least seven days before the event, including a general description of the topics to be discussed. This seven-day requirement was violated yesterday when items F6A and B were added to the agenda to approve over a quarter billion dollars in city CRA bonds. Discussion should be tabled until statutory notice is given. Emergency privilege does not count. The mayor and others are rushing, pushing to rush the vote before the new council members are sworn in. One of their claims is the city doesn't approve, if the city doesn't approve these bonds, the rates of Heinsteins get control of 65 acres of prime city land worth about a billion dollars, along with $142 million of city-paid infrastructure improvements, without anything down, possibly paying $105 million over 30 years. Section 3.6 of the development funding agreement between the city, county, and Rays outlined six events that result in automatic termination. In that section, 3.6, double I, was triggered by the Rays' delivering notice to the county of Stadco, intent to abandon the development when they wrote, we suspended work on the entire project, both the ballpark and the historic gas plant, end quote. The second termination event, 3.6, triple I, was triggered when they wrote, quote, to a 1,029 ballpark delivery would result in substantially higher costs that we are not able to absorb alone, end quote, which states that they cannot absorb the cost overruns as contractually required. The third termination event, 3.6, single I, required Stadco to provide a fully executed credit agreement and was triggered when the Rays wrote, quote, costs that we are not able to absorb alone, end quote. The Rays have told you in writing the deal is dead three different ways in their November 19th letter. Passing the bond issue today would be irresponsible. Yesterday, I proposed a deal restoration in the Catalyst comments. It outlined how the city, county, and Rays can work together to renovate the existing statement with a pyramid-shitting roof over a window ring wall, very similar to the proposed new stadium, and save the taxpayers over $2 billion. These savings can be used to reduce the city's flooding caused by the city's inadequate infrastructure before the next big hurricane passes nearby and to help build affordable housing citywide. Thank you for your time. I'm happy to answer you. Hello, Mark Ferguson, 7937 9th Avenue South, St. Pete, Florida. I'm here to encourage you to pass the bonds for the stadium. I was so proud 30-some years ago when the city council decided to build the stadium. We had nothing going on in St. Pete. It got built. In the beginning, we had the Tampa Bay Storm playing there. We had some concerts. We were really nowhere. And then, luckily, we got the Tampa Bay Lightning for three and a half years. That really saved my business and other businesses around us. After that, we got the Tampa Bay Rays to move in, which now we're a major league city. We have come so far in the last 30 years to be at this point where now we're looking at something totally different. You pass the bonds today. The county passes the bonds on the 17th. And we're back on track to make this 86 acres. Think about this. 86 acres the last 30-some years. There's been no property tax, a lot of property not being used. Now they're going to take over, build a stadium, and also build an entertainment center, offices, affordable housing, everything we need. Create jobs. And the tax re-invocations are unbelievable with property tax and also sales tax. So it's really a no-brainer. We just have to keep going forward. I appreciate everything you do for us. Thank you. The next two speakers is Paul Cardner and Chimeringa, ladies, Waller. Please go to either podium. State your name on the roster. Good afternoon. My name is Paul Cardner. I live at 341 Fifth Street South in St. Pete. I'll apologize for my voice. Mark was a contributor to the Michigan-Ohio State game on Saturday, and I'm still trying to recover from that. We won, however. I've stood at this podium several times in the past to support many issues, but in particular, the Rays-Hines agreement. And I'm here today to once more support another part of that agreement. That's the issuing of the bonds of support for the bonding to finance the city's portion. We've been at this for a long, long time. I think it's about 17 years. I know we moved here in 2007. In 2008, I believe, the Waterfront Stadium was proposed. I was an advocate for that and have been a supporter ever since. So I'm here again today to support this particular issue in the long, long history of these discussions. I'm not going to make any arguments either for or against at this point. After those 17 years, I think those arguments are pretty clear. They're pretty well understood on both sides of the question. So all I am here today to do is to urge you to support the bonding, to get this project underway, and to do all the stuff that this will contribute to the city of St. Petersburg. I think as a council, you have the opportunity to really leave quite a substantial legacy, and voting yesterday, I think, will contribute to that. So thank you. Thank you. My name is Chimeringa Waller, 1917, 15th Avenue South in St. Petersburg. So what I want to do is just remind the city council of the crime that was committed against black people. When 86 acres were taken from black people, 300 businesses, 800 families removed from that area, that happened to black people. That stadium was built on a black community, and now nobody's even discussing the impact on black people that this whole thing is going to take. It's about bonds and all that, and I say it's about reparations to black people. That's 86 acres that could be used as reparations to the black community, and the conditions of the black community can be transformed through development and using a reparations development agency that would actually decide what would go there. But we don't need more stadiums. The Tampa Bay Rays don't even want to be here, and I agree with them. I don't want them here either. And I think the best thing to do is not to spend one cent on a stadium or anything like that, but now start talking about reparations to the black community. Thank you. The next two speakers is Ash Alonzo and Andrew Hernandez. Please go to either podium. State your name, address for the record. You'll have three minutes to address council. Ash Alonzo, I reside at 2434 10th Avenue North, and I have lived in Tampa Bay for a quarter of a century. St. Petersburg gets hit by back-to-back hurricanes. FEMA and insurance companies deny our claims, and all the city does to support small businesses and homeowners is ask for donations. Meanwhile, a billion-dollar company with no allegiance to St. Pete gets millions to fix its private stadium. Federally and locally, our government has failed us. To paraphrase Councilwoman Driscoll, the only bucket people care about is the one we have to piss in when the storm comes. Citizens are doing our job to fill the city's buckets with our hard-earned tax dollars. It is City Council and Mayor Welch's job to balance them in the best interests of our most vulnerable community members, not the wealthiest out-of-towners. Personally, if I was worth $800 million, I could not imagine holding public land ransom and demanding a handout from a city that will be recovering for years to come. But that's just good business, right? In 2023, Stu Sternberg said Major League Baseball is here to stay. Now the Rays refuse to even confirm they'll build the new stadium. So why would y'all vote to borrow $425 million today? That's like paying for a wedding when the Rays won't even say they want to get married. We've all stayed in relationships longer than we should have. I actually got dumped this year, and I should have seen it coming. It's always obvious, in hindsight, when someone isn't as committed as you are to moving forward together. My family moved here when I was four years old. Growing up, this was just a place old people came to retire, and young people could not wait to get out of. But in 2024, St. Pete is ranked as one of the top cities to live in, find a job, and start a business. St. Pete isn't great because of the Rays. The Rays franchise became successful because of our generous investment. But nine times out of ten, people will choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven. Because breakups are scary, but I learned that when someone or some company isn't willing to define the relationship, there is no real relationship. Just because something is good doesn't mean it's the best thing out there. We outgrow people and partnerships. St. Pete is a catch, and we need to start acting like it. In short, don't make our city go broke for a boy who won't even text us back. Thank you, and happy holidays to everyone except Stu Sternberg. Yes, sir. Hello, my name is Andrew Hernandez. I live at 1618 Burlington Avenue North, and I'm against this. Simply saying, we shouldn't commit to this until the Rays commit to us, and there's a better allotment of our tax dollars. And I support everything this young man just said earlier. You all have a good day. Thank you. Thank you. The next two speakers are Chris Steinaucher and Natalie Stockard. Please go to either podium. State your name for the record, please. All right. Good afternoon. I'm Chris Steinaucher, president and CEO of the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce at 102nd Avenue North. I'm here in support of the bond issuing. Our board met with the mayor and the Rays in this last week. And while we certainly don't have all the information, we do feel like it is a puzzle that is missing some pieces. We do believe the next piece is what you guys do today. The leadership this city council has shown for over 35 years about baseball will need to be on display today, whereas we are leading. What I see as a city administration understands how to keep business at the table throughout a process of negotiation. I do believe we have to make our commitments so that others will make their commitments. I do believe if our commitments go first, our county commitments and our Rays' commitments become clearer for them. Please honor all the work that our city councils have done over the last 35 years and understand that this is one piece of a puzzle that still needs to be defined. We don't all know the answers right now. But as we navigate businesses, we've navigated over 200 businesses that are going through issues throughout our community. No business has the answers right now. It's hard to determine how to rebuild. Our Chamber of Commerce got flooded over 60 days ago, and I'm still not rebuilding yet. This is hard work, people. That takes a lot of patience and care. I do want to remind you, though, we don't want to run businesses out of the community until they say they want to go. I have not heard the Rays say they want to go. I have said the Rays have said we've got to figure this out, and all I want is everybody at the table to say let's figure this out. I think the way they figure this out is by seeing your commitment first and understand that we are honoring the deals that we have made here, and our city is that way. Our Rays mean a lot to our community, not just for the magic of baseball, but every not-for-profit in our community receives resources from them. Every employee that's come here that works for our Rays is now wondering what happens next. This is not just about baseball. It is about our economy. We ask you to continue moving our economy forward. Thank you. Hi. I'm Natalie Stockard. I live at 201 4th Street South, and I'm here to speak against bonds for the Rays. If the Rays and Heinz development truly believe that this development was a financial winner, they would be willing to pay for it themselves. And I believe it's unfair to ask city residents to bear this cost when so few will get any advantages from it. At the same time, I'd like to take a moment to remind the mayor, wherever he is, and the city council of the responses to the community meetings that were held two years ago about this gas plant district. I can only speak for the one I was at, but I think you will have heard from others where our decision, what we wanted, was a walkable, affordable, mixed-use neighborhood, not just to let a couple of billionaires play a game. Thank you. The next two speakers is Mike Sweezy and Walt Driggers. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes to address council. Good afternoon. Mike Sweezy, 235 3rd Avenue North. Thank you for your service. I like to start out with that every time because you guys do a lot of work here. I'm in support of the bond sale. I'm representing the Economic Development Corporation. I submitted a letter yesterday, and I'll just read the letter to you. As recovery efforts continue, it is important to honor commitments to our community's continued success. Retaining existing jobs and national visibility created by the Rays is key to our city and our business recruitment efforts. St. Petersburg residents will benefit from thousands of new jobs created by redevelopment of the historic gas plant district. These jobs both in construction and then in the businesses housed in the new neighborhood, along with the investment of more than $6 billion into our community. We ask that the council approve the bond financing for both stadium project and historic gas plant infrastructure project to ensure that these jobs are not yet another casualty of the storms. We hope you will stay committed to retaining the Rays, creating new jobs for decades to come by supporting this once-in-a-generation opportunity for new office space, housing, equity, and opportunity. Thank you. My name is Walt Driggers. Address is 1 Beach Drive Southeast, St. Petersburg, Florida 33701. I'm here today with the Airport Advisory Committee, which is going to be a change-up of your subject matter you've had in the past few minutes. Jack Tunzels does send his best wishes to all of you, but I won't be using his words exactly. We do want to thank you for your service during these action-packed and holiday times. I look at your agenda, and it feels overwhelming to me. I'm glad that you're doing it, not me. We do have a couple of observations and a few comments, but I will respect your time today. As you know, Albert Woodard Airport was damaged from the hurricanes. There were 32 hangars, T-hangers lost. There were eight of them damaged, so 40 of them are not generating revenue now out of the 85 T-hangers. Now, that affects a lot of people, not only to the sad stories that there are with the people who had their airplanes in the hangars, but there's a lot of sad stories all across the city right now from the damage from these hurricanes. Do understand that Shelter and the city get the revenue from those hangars, so we'd like to see if we can get those cleaned up and back working and rebuilt as fast as we can. I looked at the funding from the hurricane damaged and your consent agenda. There's a lot of it in there. I didn't see any for the airport. We're hoping that you can find the money to get that started for the airport, and I'd like assurances that the insurance that the city collects from the hangars down there will end up back on the airport. Just remember, there's more than just the airport there. The downtown waterfront, including Albert Whitted, is highlighted on TV globally during the St. Pete Grand Prix, which is coming very quickly in early March, so we need to show our best. We need to show our resilience, not just talk about our resilience. And other than that, on the consent agenda, I see that the capital improvements are several for the airport and the years to come with the FAA grants. We continue to thank you for your improvement at Albert Whitted Airport. Thank you so much. Thank you. And the last speaker is John Cinnabaldi. Cinnabaldi. Cinnabaldi. Did you want to speak, sir, under open form or under the item? I'll speak here. It's fine. Okay. My name is John Cinnabaldi. I'm at 3212 30th Street North. First of all, I want to say that Ms. Hanowitz has a correct, absolutely no notice for this. If I didn't know Ron Diner, I wouldn't even notice what's going on right now for the bond vote. At the very least, you should postpone it until the rest of the city has a chance to know that it's going on and has a chance to come here and voice their stuff. A couple things really quickly. One is just related. I won't say good, bad, or otherwise. The decision to reduce from $100 million to $25 million the insurance on the stadium that's worth the half a billion dollars you were going to use for two or three more years was wise or not wise. But whoever was advising you on that should be horse whipped. Seriously. I spent 30 years in insurance, and that was a horrible, horrible decision that's going to cost the city now one way or the other. A couple other things real quick. Unforecast was the gentleman who did the invocation for the two storms. They were unforecast perhaps, but they were not unforeseen, and it's going to get worse in the future. What I want to talk about primarily is what's not getting spent money on right now, which is the decades-long saga of sewer plants that don't function during storms. Two of them shut down because of surge issues, sewage backed up. This is not something that you have done. Councils before you and councils before that and mayors going back four or five mayors ago have kicked a can down the road. But spending $300 million or $400 million for a stadium when we continue to suffer from the infrastructure that's not getting fixed in St. Pete is not the right move either. So I am not for spending that money right now. So, again, like somebody said, a couple of billionaire owners, multiple millionaire ballplayers, and some fairly well-off people who can still afford to go to a game get that opportunity when so much more needs to be done in the city. A couple quick questions for the council. Does anybody here know how many miles of sanitary sewer we have in the city? Any council members? 880 miles of sanitary sewer. We have how many lift stations? 81. Does anybody here know how many of them have backup generators right now? Because that was a big issue during the last two storms. I don't know, but I know it's not 81 of them. There are three major treatment plants. Two of them went down during the storm. What are we going to do to make sure that doesn't happen again? Because this storm is not the last time this is going to come through. We have 585 miles of stormwater drainage, and we have four pumping stations for those. I don't know if any of that stuff is going to hold up when the next Helene comes through. Again, I just would like the city council to look very seriously at, A, postpone the vote until everybody gets a chance to hear about it, and, B, let's focus on infrastructure so that all the citizens of St. Pete can benefit from better, safer facilities for the future. Thank you. Madam Chair, we don't have any more cards and no one in Zoom. Okay, thank you. So now we'll close open forum and we'll move to the legal item, I-1. And joining us is the Assistant City Attorney Ken McCollum. You're not, Ken. I am not. I am not. Good afternoon, Council. I'm Martin Musici with the City Attorney's Office. I'm here in Mr. McCollum's stead. I'm here for approval to settle the lawsuit of Lisa Fountain versus the City of St. Petersburg. This case arises out of a motor vehicle collision in March of 2022 involving a St. Petersburg police vehicle and plaintiff's Toyota Prius on the intersection of Highland and Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street. The case is currently set for trial in early 2025. We had a non-binding arbitration in which the arbitrator awarded the plaintiff's damages in excess of the sovereign immunity caps. However, Mr. McCollum was able to negotiate that down to $145,000 pending, of course, this Council's approval, which we think is a good deal for the City considering plaintiff's past and current medicals. Move approval. Second. Seeing no request to speak, we've been motioned and properly seconded. Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please cast your votes. Seeing that all present Council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, a motion to approve agenda item I-1 passes unanimously. Thank you, and thank you so much for that. Thank you. Now we're going to go ahead and take up our new ordinances beginning with item E-1, an ordinance modifying the capital improvements element of the City's comprehensive plan, and joining us for that particular item is Urban Planning and Historic Preservation Planner 2, Britton Wilson. Did I say that correctly? Madam Chair, would you like me to read the ordinance first? Please do. Thank you. I have it right here to myself and still didn't say it. Ordinance number 603-H, an ordinance modifying the capital improvement element of the comprehensive plan of the City of St. Petersburg, Florida, by updating the five-year capital improvement schedule and replacing all previously adopted capital improvement schedules, adopting fund summaries for the general capital improvement fund 3001, bicycle slash pedestrian safety improvements fund 3004, citywide infrastructure fund 3027, recreation and culture capital fund 3029, multimodal impact fees, capital improvement fund 3071, downtown parking improvement fund 3073, water resources, water resources capital capital projects fund 4003, stormwater drainage capital fund 4013, airport capital projects fund 4033, marina capital improvement fund 4043, and port capital improvement fund 4093, for the fiscal years 2025-2029, adopting the FDOT district 7th adopted five-year work program for the fiscal years 2024-25 to 2028-29, providing for severability and providing for an effective date. And the public hearing for this item is December the 12th, and we do not have any cards. Thank you. Ms. Wilson? Yes, Madam Chair, Council members, this is the first reading. The public hearing is scheduled for December 12th. But if you like, I can present instead. I would like a presentation. Okay, thank you. We would love the presentation. Sure. So, again, Britton Wilson, City Planner for the Record, presenting the annual update to the comprehensive plan of the capital improvements element, or CIE, for fiscal years 2025-2029. And similar to last year, I prepared a quick presentation on the purpose and process of the update. So, every year in the fall following Council's adoption of the budget and the five-year capital improvements program, or CIP, staff completes the annual update to the CIE, which is a long-range planning tool used to demonstrate that the City's facilities are operating within their adopted-level service standards, or LOS. And staff will use this data through the upcoming year to support proposed land use amendments that come before this board. And I like to think of the CIE as just a reporting on a subset of the recently adopted capital improvements program, and that it only looks at projects' schedules for facilities that have an adopted LOS in the comprehensive plan. Sorry, I haven't been moving forward. Of which, the City has an adopted LOS standard for water, sewer, solid waste, stormwater, recreation, and transportation. And planners refer to these as concurrency-related facilities, as their LOS standards are required to be in place at the time of or concurrent with proposed development. And this annual update is a citywide or multi-department effort where the planning staff only collects the data from these respective departments and then calculates the level of service using functional population numbers. So as demonstrated in the staff report, the City facilities are all operating well within their adopted level of service standard. And the draft ordinance contained in your agenda packet lists the recently adopted capital improvement project schedules, demonstrating that the City has a plan in place and the fiscal ability to continue to maintain the adopted level of service moving forward through the next five-year planning period. And with that, staff is requesting a finite amount of consistency with the comprehensive plan and to schedule the public hearing for this on December 12th. Thank you. Council Member Hanowitz. Thank you. So I have a question on the drainage and stormwater portion of this. And I don't know if you could answer. I am not qualified to speak on behalf of. So is Brijash around? That would, he's probably the right person. Or we can prepare your, a response to your question for the public hearing. Well, I want to ask it today. So I just, we're going to have some discussions later on, and it just seems relevant. Sorry, Brijash. Good day, Council Members. Sorry, I was actually on my way back to grab my glasses. I think I'm running up back to home. That's fine. Typically, I wouldn't bring this up in the first hearing, but obviously we're going to be discussing some of these items later. And in the stormwater part of the report, it talks about due to the back, and I'm on page 5 of 11, due to the backlog of municipal stormwater drainage system improvements and the time required to implement improvements, existing conditions are adopted as the level of service for stormwater. Can you please explain that? Okay. So right now we're moving forward with implementing this stormwater master plan. We do have approximately 73 BMPs identified. However, we do have projects that were identified that are part of the rate funding process itself. And also, the backlog is really driven in the fact that a lot of these projects, we were waiting for the master plan to be completed. So now it's a lot of projects being implemented. That's why we really advanced the B and C projects and the show acres projects first, because we know those projects were critical. We knew there were needs there. But now, essentially, all the projects, the BMPs have been identified, so we're just moving forward with implementing them. So it's just a matter of getting them programmed in, which we have already identified in the CIPO workflow process on them. So they're identified, there's a backlog. How much is it to implement the stormwater master plan? So the stormwater master plan, and just to keep into context, the last master plan that was developed, this master plan, it identified, I believe, this master plan. We implemented approximately one-third of the projects that was identified. Reason because it's a master plan evolves over time. The conditions that we implement today, when we update the master plan next 10 years, a priority project that might have been, say, 53 in the list may no longer be 53, because as we implement rain events at Cove, whereas the topography was these projects actually start to come into operation, it changes the dynamics of how the overall system operates. So that's why it's really a living document. So we may never install all of them. Again, it's because it's a living document. I understand that. My question was, what is the cost associated? We have a stormwater master plan. We had meetings before. I know at one point it was $750 million that was given to us. We have, obviously, certain projects that have been identified. I understand in the future this could change, like everything does. So is it $750 million at this point, or what's the number? It's identified approximately $1 billion in projects. $1 billion. Okay. And then in terms of since we're talking about a backlog on the stormwater drainage system improvements and obviously results in the existing conditions being adopted as a level of service, we have a billion-dollar plan. So how are we funding the billion-dollar plan going forward? How much would it require to actually implement, since that's what we're talking about? Okay. So I'll use some of the projects that we have currently within the CIP as an example. We utilize what we call the master plan line item in our budgeting process to initiate some of the projects. By initiating some of the projects, so to simplify the answer, both the enterprise fund plus supplementing with grant funding. And how we've been able to leverage this is in the fact of as we implement projects in the planning phase, we develop what we call really detailed preliminary design reports in year one. And as we develop that, that's how we secure grant funding for year two, for design, and year three. So a good example would be like the Butler Lake Pump Station. It will cost approximately $20 million, but we're getting approximately $10 million of that in grant funding. And I appreciate that we're going to have some cost savings from grant funding, and we also have cost increases because cost increase originally was $750 million, and now it's a billion dollars. So my question is, if you divide a billion by 30 years, what would be kind of the funding levels that we should be looking at in terms of stormwater master plan yearly? You're an engineer. I know you know math better than I do. I'm actually thinking about just, you know, if I have to actually account for the cost escalation rate as well. You know, normally you're 20%. So we should be in the magnitude, sorry, a 2% cost increase, 2 to 2.5. So we should be in the magnitude of about $50 million a year. About $50 million a year, and how much are we putting in yearly? We are approximately $30 million, but we're ramping that up. Some years maybe slightly more. Some years maybe $40 million. It all depends on how we're implementing the projects. We have, you know, one major project may be $20 million. And that year we may be doing more design as opposed to construction. Sorry, you go ahead. No, no, that's fine. Have we passed any year where we've met the $50 million? So we're now ramping up to that. Now we're ramping up to that. In terms of stormwater, for those that don't understand before I just finish up, just explain really quickly. This has to do with the rainfall. Correct. It falls in areas, and there's impervious areas, and the water goes through the streets, and there could be localized flooding. All right. So stormwater system is essentially everything in the right-of-way. It's your streets. It's your curb line. The roadway itself functions as an open conveyance system to get stormwater, rainwater that falls to the stormwater inlet. And once it gets to the inlet, because if we didn't have an open conveyance system, an open channel like a roadway, we'll have to put inlets everywhere. So we want to have basin boundaries, and if you really think about it, and I use this analogy a lot, when you cut, if you take a golf ball and you just lay it out flat, and all those little sinks around, all those dimples, that's essentially how the topography is. So as rain falls, it collects and flows to the center or the lowest points of those basins, and we have to connect those basins from one to another to get to the discharge point out of the bay. So that's why you would also see a lot of lakes, a lot of ponds around, because those are essential elements of our stormwater system. We can flow by gravity. Florida is naturally flat, especially in St. Petersburg, so you would see those basins. And a lot of people may ask, why did my street flow flood and not that street across the street? Because that's probably where that basin boundary is. What is flowing into your area, you're probably the lowest part of that basin. Now the stormwater then pipes underground, and we have over 500 miles of pipe underground. So that's enough to drive from here to, I believe, South Carolina, Myrtle Beach. And now each inlet connects to each other until it finally gets to what we call a stormwater, again, a pond or retention system. The reason we have retention systems is we want to slow down that volume of water, the velocity of that water. It gets to a velocity of less than 2 feet per second, sediment falls out, and then a cleaner water discharges on what we call the outfall structure. So if you ever look at a stormwater pond, you'll see a high, like a concrete cube on one end from where the pipe is on the other end. It's because by the time that water gets to that end, it's slowed down to less than 2 feet, and then trickles into that outfall structure, and then it continues down to another stormwater system to then connect to another lake. And then that's how the system continues and continues, ultimately picking up more passengers, if you may call the different flow pipes coming into it, different passengers along that path until it reaches its ultimate discharge point. So it's very important how we design our stormwater systems to account for both water quality and water quantity. That's great, and I just want to make sure that, so whatever investments we make into our stormwater master plan is supposed to help with whatever flooding issues that occur within the system, the stormwater master system, to kind of move areas out of the flooding. Marine, yes. Yes, okay. Thank you so much. No, thank you. Great questions. Thank you. Seeing no more questions, I'll entertain a motion. Move a per vote. Sure. Seeing that we have a motion and a second for E1, clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please cast your votes. Seeing that all present council members are voting, can you please tally and announce a vote? Madam Chair, a motion to approve agenda item E1 passes unanimously. Thank you. Now we're moving to E2. Clerk, can you please read the title of that ordinance? Ordinance number 605-H, an ordinance concerning amendment of the city's 99-year lease of waterfront property for use of the Dolly Museum to allow for expansion of the museum, as conditionally authorized by the referendum called by City Ordinance 512-H and approved on November 8, 2022, making findings concerning such an amendment, approving such an amendment, providing for severability, and providing for an effective date. Public hearing for this item is the 12th, and we have one card. Joining us is our Development Coordination Managing Director, Mr. Chris Belestra, who is on our presentation. Yes, it's first reading, but if you'd like, I'd be happy. It's short. I'd be happy to go through it with you. Yeah, Chair, the administration would prefer to make the presentation and let there be any discussion today that needs to happen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Does the speaker go first, Madam Chair? No, you go ahead and make your presentation. Very good. Thank you. Again, Chris Belestra, City Development Administration. Before you today is the first reading of an amended and restated Dolly Agreement. If you can go to the second slide, which is me there. You don't need a lot of advertisement on what the Dolly Museum is. We began the museum. The museum began itself with the city's help in January of 2011. A 99-year lease, substantial lease with a renewal of 99 years, blocks what we call 1, 2, and 3. Those numbers are important. I'll get to a picture right after this slide in block 1. And so on the history of the potential expansion of the museum, there are several things that happened along the way. Very briefly, the TDC, Tourist Development Council, awarded the Dolly Museum about $17.5 million in 2019 for what was effectively a garage and some offices on Lot 3. Ultimately, that project was not viable for a number of reasons, and so they then converted it to a building expansion, which is what we're here to talk about today. Initially, there was a referendum that was withdrawn in 2021, then a successful referendum in 2022. I believe about 70% of the voters authorized that. A very important component of that, though, is, as noted in the slide, Ordinance 512-H. Those provided very detailed provisions that are a requirement of any agreement to allow Dolly to proceed with the expansion of the building. It's a very busy neighborhood, as you know. There's lots of partners and activity, and it's a very growing center of the arts, center for the arts, that we refer to it now as. So if I could go to the next slide and point out for reference, this is effectively the Platte, and if you look in the center down to the lower right, you'll see a strip of land called Lot 6. Dolly has control, through their leasehold interest, of Lots 1 and 3 on the southern edge of that, boarding Dolly Boulevard and Bayshore. And Lot 6 is technically not a right-of-way, but it is a city-owned land that is part of the potentially expanded facility. So one more time, this even more clearly maps out what the referendum was about. Obviously, waterfront property, we can only do a five-year lease on waterfront property, so we couldn't be consistent with Dolly's existing 99-year lease, the reason for the referendum, to tack that on to their lease as an additional leasehold interest. So from here, their award, while it got increased and then reduced during COVID and then increased back to $25 million, that's where it stands right now. That original project, while based on a garage, is now a much more detailed and originally surface-based building that went across that Lot 6. So as a part of the Center for the Arts project, including the Mahaffey Theater and Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, the project that was proposed in 2022 has been amended many times. And following meetings with all of the partners and Dolly's internal discussions tied to FEMA and other issues with the building, that is part of the reason why it's taken us several years to get here. We've resulted in, again, just another snapshot of the Lot 6. Their objective would be to expand over that portion, that westerly portion of Lot 1 into Lot 6. And then this is actually a new schematic image that reflects a beneficial change for several reasons to the project as it is still in the design stage. You can see that portion to the left or the west of that image is elevated, up above what is Lot 6 right there. So effectively, their addition would span over that lot. That's the current projected design. It is still in design. It has a ways to go, as does the budget, which needs some more improvements to get to where it needs to get Dolly to a point of effectuating that project. So that brings us all right back to amending and restating the contract. The original contract language had substantial language in it relative to new construction. It was a vacant piece of land on the waterfront, and through everything and all the hard work of the legal team, including Jackie and Brad Pettigrew, we've been able to get the contract currently in compliance with ordinance at 512H, the referendum requirement, as well as clean up the contract to remove a lot of that original, not just construction, but other items that are now more than 14 years old, along with the museum. Several things beyond contract language generic adjustments are one thing that is also going on is indemnification. The collection, as it is called, is something that is obviously a prized possession and really cannot be touched, and so there is an indemnification limit, which is tied to the insurable level established of $10 million. So it is a change from maybe how we would normally draft language. Additionally, there's been robust provisions for the Mahaffey Theater and their operator, Big Three Entertainment, and the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. We made sure to loop them in on this project so that they weren't clearly an afterthought as to a building expansion, that those projects collectively utilize the project year-round, and anything that changes on any of the Dolly lots has an impact to that. So in summary, the goal was to provide Dolly with that mechanism. Ultimately, if for some reason their project doesn't happen, another contract adjustment was to give them the ability to exit the new construction component of it, yet maintain the current contract with all of the updated provisions. So that is very beneficial, I think, for all the parties involved. Again, it allows us to proceed even if that project does not happen. Another extremely important component embedded in the project are the milestones. There's great detail relative to planning, design, construction, and regulatory issues that need to be complied with in order to get this project off the ground. So in the end, and really my last bullet point is fairly simple, subject to advancing this to a public hearing and potential approval by this body, the balance of the project with city staff help along the way will be to effectively walk through those milestones and wind up with a developable project that covers what's now currently a vacant lot 6 in between their primary lots 1 and 3. So with that, again, administration recommends approval of this, advancing it to public hearing. And as and more important, Brett Pettigrew is available. He is the architect behind this masterful agreement. If there are any specific questions by the body. Thank you. Thank you. Public comment, please. Chris Steinacher, please state your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes to address counsel. Good afternoon. I am Chris Steinacher, president and CEO of the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce, 102nd Avenue North. Our Waterfront Master Plan Task Force met on Monday to review these revisions with all the stakeholders in the room. And then we met as a board on Wednesday to review those as well. We are very excited that it includes, first of all, we want to thank our city administrators team of Chris and our legal team to work so closely with the Dali team, but also the Mahaffey team, the Grand Prix team, and the Florida Orchestra team. Like, we have a beautiful neighborhood down there, and it's great, you know, fences make great neighbors. And what this really has done for all of our partners is create a sense of confidence that going forward, everybody's business model, everybody's vision for their future, everybody's opportunities to get bigger and better are still part of this. So we ask you to move this forward and continue to applaud and appreciate the Dali. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair. So 2021, we're here at 2024. Y'all are cutting it close. I'm sure you're making your attorneys nervous at this point, but I'm very happy to see that the agreement you guys have come up with, I have to tell you. So the robust provisions regarding coordination, I think, are fantastic. I think that y'all have done a really good job at trying to find a place where you can land on this because this is an important asset to the city. So I want to really thank everyone that has been working on this because I know, I remember when this came before, and y'all weren't in the right place, and you found it. And so I'm happy that we can get this done. I do have a question regarding the FEMA rule and the 49% rule and how this could play out with the new rendering. I think the new rendering is fantastic. It looks really neat. So can you, Chris, I don't know if you can answer that or someone else needs to answer that. I will only, I'll be very brief on that. I'll only say that there have been discussions on that subject. There isn't a preliminary determination on that yet, but I think it's very positive in the direction that it can go. It's also important to know there are, you know, utilities underneath there, and that's part of the planning and design process that would likely require removal or relocation. So there's the FEMA issue and underground issues as well. There is a spider's maze of activity going on throughout the entire Center for the Arts. So any change you make vertically, the city has to have the ability to access it and then compliance with, obviously, drainage and overflow. So not a full answer for you at this juncture. Again, this picture, which is provided to me just within the last couple of days by Dolly, that last image, we've talked about it during the summer, but it's the first image that actually reflects that proposal. And it can change. It's obviously a design still underway. But that planning process with their consultants, an architect who is a Harvard jolly at the moment, I think will need to continue in a very serious fashion both with FEMA and the city to ensure compliance. At the end of the day, without that, it can't get built. Well, it's nice to feel that you're all thinking as to, obviously, your city went through the storms, and that is going to affect everyone that is building and thinking forward. You know, how can you better prepare and how can you better build assets such as the Dolly Museum? So thank you. Vice Chair Gers. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chris, thanks for the presentation. I know, as you described, it's been a road. Same to the Dolly and Brett. Good job, buddy. This was less of an amendment and way more of a redevelopment of this agreement. And so I appreciate all the hard work. Excited for this. I've been able to, over the last two and a half years, follow this both through TDC and council. And so it's been very exciting and excited to get here. And so, again, I just want to reiterate, Brett, great work, man. Thank you. The red line version of this is overwhelming. And so I know you had fun. That's one way to describe it. We'll keep it positive. So very excited for this. Move approval. Second. Now that we have a motion, please open the machine for voting prior to me, too. Council members, please catch up. Now that our present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item E2. Passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Balesha. Thank you, Brett. We appreciate you. Now we're going to move on to our report items, beginning with F1. And joining us is our Code's Compliance Assistant Director, Mr. Joe Waugh. How are you? Good. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of council. Joe Waugh, Code's Compliance Assistant Director. So I'm here this afternoon requesting approval for some updates to a program that you all recently approved. There's a very brief presentation, or I can just quickly touch on the points that we're updating, whichever you all would prefer. Run it. Presentation, okay. Presentation, okay. All right. So just a little bit of background. The new program was recently approved by council just recently in August. Available properties, it was available for properties, excuse me, with active code violations or cases. It was eligible for owners at or below 100% of AMI. We were providing funding up to $7,500 per property. And then with rollover from the FY24 budget, we were able to increase the $100,000 that we had initially allocated. And we have $195,000 available in the FY25 budget. So the goals with what we're proposing here is to expand the eligibility requirements to capture residents impacted by Hurricane Talene and Milton that would not have otherwise qualified under the current guidelines. We are increasing the funding amount per project to ensure the required repairs don't fall outside of the scope of the program. And then we want to provide some additional flexibility to ensure that properties that sustained damage during the storm would be eligible to receive assistance, even if they weren't cited for violations previously. So the proposal is very simple. We're increasing the maximum AMI to 120%, increasing the available funding to $10,000 per property, and then removing that requirement for an active codes compliance case or violation. But these funds would be used to correct those violations. It was just removing the red tape of actually having to have a violation there with it. So just very briefly before the last point here, so far, we've already had four properties approved under the current guidelines. We have 14 that are in process of going through the process to see if they would be approved in determining eligibility. And then through that, we had several that fell outside. So either through telephone conversations, going over the AMI chart, initially they said, no, I'm going to fall outside of that. Or once we actually got to the qualification process, they fell outside of that. And that's what triggered us to quickly kind of bring this back before you all to make sure we could capture those and they didn't fall through the cracks. So administration recommends approval of the superseding resolution. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and the reasonable updates to the program. I think I must have spoken with someone you all have spoken with that fell outside of the bounds of the previous resolution. But I'm not sure that this one would catch them either. And so we've had conversations about means testing on all sorts of other things. I wanted to suggest and see if administration was open to, instead of just like a hard cap at like 120, maybe like a phase-out program. That way, you know, say you make 121% of AMI, you're just not completely ineligible. And maybe you just aren't eligible for as much. Something like that. Because I've talked to people who are very, very close to the cutoff and just over it. And, you know, I think the hearing back that you make $5,000 too much a year so you're eligible for nothing is, you know, a sticky situation to be in. Council Member Floyd, I mean, I would defer to legal on if there would be a way to even accomplish that. But we do have a couple of programs that will not have any means testing. And so what may be more appropriate is that this one moves forward in this fashion. And then we would refer somebody like that to the We Are St. Pete Fund program we discussed in HLUT this morning or some other program that doesn't have, you know, those types of requirements. But there's so many people that need help. There's always going to be somebody that falls outside of the guidelines. But some of the programs we spoke about this morning would go up to 140% AMI. And then the rapid resolution program that you're hearing next week has absolutely no means testing with it. And so in that kind of situation, I'd probably refer them to that. Okay. Thank you. And I appreciate that. I would like to hear from Legal if what I described is even possible. I think, Council Member, that's something that I would agree with how Administrator Foster characterized it. We're happy to look at it. We wouldn't be prepared to, you know, incorporate that kind of on the fly today. But it certainly could be a next step that we can take a look at and circle back. And this is an evolving document and process, so there's nothing to preclude that in the future. Okay. I appreciate that. And, yeah, we'll have that conversation. In general, I would prefer programs be structured like that. That hard cap is something that I think can create resentment in our community, to be honest. And for the longevity of social programs and their political stability, I think it's always best if we try to capture as many people, even if we do have to make sure we do it in an equitable way. So I appreciate that. And, yeah, I'm glad to hear about the other programs you're describing. I would have hoped to have gone to HLUT this morning, except I was at home meeting with contractors for my own problems in my own home today. So I am grateful to hear about all that. And I think we can – I'm happy to move this forward today. But, yeah, I'd love to continue to have this kind of conversation. I think you all know that. So thank you very much, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Gabbert. Thank you, Madam Chair. And Council Member Floyd, we missed you this morning. I definitely know you would have loved to have been there for that conversation. I think you will find that there was a lot of creative options that were discussed today. Council Members gave a lot of feedback into what more we can do as more funding comes available and really trying to make sure that we are meeting the needs where they are because they're so great, but they are very complex, and there's a lot of nuances. And so I just wanted to say to staff and to Administrator Foster a huge thank you for everything that you all have done, bringing these things forward, working in real time to make sure you are addressing the needs of residents where they lie. We had a lot of conversation about that, too, this morning. And so I'm very happy that we are bringing this here today for us to be able to catch some of those additional needs. But I think that you will find there is a lot more coming, and we will be bringing it back for a follow-up in January, just because some of the feedback we gave today I think they'll be able to implement pretty quickly. So look forward to continuing that conversation in January, and hope everything went okay at your house this morning. Yeah, I know. I'm in it, too. I hear you. You know how it is. You never know. You never know what the day brings. But with that, I will go ahead and move approval. Second. Thank you. Being properly motioned and in seconded by item F1, let's clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, if you can please cast your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item F1 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. Thank you. Now we will move on to item F2, and joining us is our co-operation manager, Ms. Patrice Zafra. How are you? Madam Chair, council members. Theatra Zafra, operations manager for the codes compliance assistance department. I am here respectfully requesting approval of changes to the foreclosure disposition policy, and I have a presentation prepared. Yeah. Yeah? So first, some background on the affordable lot disposition program. The program was first approved by council in April of 2018, and this provided the city with a process of disposing of our city-owned lots with the express purpose of creating affordable housing. The codes compliance department took over the administration of the program in July of 2023, and since then we've been working on process changes and improvements in order to increase our home production. So our current process, anyone's welcome to apply to be added to our list of interested developers. The developers self-attest that they meet the minimum qualifications. Everyone on the list of interested developers is notified via email of available lots, and they have 30 days to submit property request forms. Each request form scored by staff and presented to a committee made up of two city employees and one mayor designee who make the final decision. Chosen developers sign lease and development agreements for their lots and agree to pay the city $10 a month in rent for the first 18 months and $500 a month thereafter. Staff monitors the construction to ensure that the developers are meeting the construction timelines laid out for them in their lease, and staff also qualifies their potential homebuyers as being at or below 120% AMI. At closing, the city has paid out $10 of the closing costs, and a restrictive covenant is placed on the property limiting its resale to income-eligible buyers. And this is my mistake, the slide says five years, it's actually seven years. Or the current required number of years required by the down payment assistance program, if that's applicable. Since the program's inception, there have been 44 homes constructed with an average sales price of $274,667, and the average AMI of our homebuyers is about 93%. We currently have four homes in progress, and with the recent addition of the NSP lots, we now have 42 available lots. When the program was first moved to codes, we reviewed the project timelines to see where we could improve, and in reviewing the data, we realized that our top performer was skewing the timelines, so we've pulled their line out for you all to review. So here we're defining completion time as the time from when they received the lot to the day it sold to the affordable buyer. When controlling for our top performer, we can see a very different picture appear between the other participants. Our top performer is able to get approved permits for their project four times quicker as the rest of the program applicants, and complete a project three times quicker. So with this, the program faces a few challenges in its current state, so it goes without saying that the housing and construction market is considerably different than it was in 2018, and not only has the city's needs for affordable housing increased, but construction costs have risen and interest rates are higher. So as I've shown, we have large gaps in the performance amongst our program participants. At its inception, the program was intended to broaden the base of nonprofits working in the creation of the affordable housing sphere, but now, six years later, it's unintentionally resulted in a significant disparity between program participants. And this is made even more complicated by the fact that terminating leases for underperformance takes a considerable amount of time, anywhere from six to 12 months, to get the lot into new hands, and the decision to terminate is difficult if vertical construction has already started. So the lot disposition program is a collaboration between several departments, codes compliance, housing and community development, real estate, and development review services all play a part. As you can imagine, there's a considerable amount of staff resources that's dedicated to the program, from reviewing and scoring developer applications, ensuring compliance with the lease agreement, collecting and processing the monthly rent, and reviewing corrections during the permitting process. Lastly, our current disposition process ties the city to the improvements of the lot and gives the appearance that we bear responsibility for the improvements that are made. As a result of the existing challenges, the city departments involved with the program began to meet regularly to identify process improvements in late 2023. The suggested program changes were then presented to HLUT in January of this year, and the committee was supportive of moving forward with the changes and with our plan to seek additional feedback from the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee and the Citizen Advisory Committee. The program changes were presented to AHAC in June and the CAC in August, and both committees were supportive of the changes, and their feedback was incorporated to include incentives for mentorships between the developers and maintaining a list of eligible homebuyers who could then be connected with those developers. I've outlined the changes to the program side-by-side with the existing program. So the first stage of the program is the qualification of developers. In the new process, we would utilize a request for qualifications to develop the list of approved developers, and this would allow for a much more thorough review of a developer's experience. The minimum qualifications remain largely the same. They have to be legally entitled to own and operate a business in Florida. They have a financial ability to build homes and business acumen to successfully manage home construction, but as part of the RFQ response, they'd actually have to provide documentation to support their affordable home development experience. The evaluation committee will be made up of city staff with relevant experience, and the RFQ will then be reopened every 18 months to add additional developers to that approved list. Developers will remain on the approved list for a term of three years. In the new notification of available properties section, the approved developers will be notified of available properties, and the lots will be available in groups no larger than 10. The aim is to award properties based on similar traits, such as geography or opportunities for increased density. The notification will include the evaluation criteria used for that award session. So, as I mentioned, the evaluation criteria will be tailored to the properties in that award section, and in the new selection of the developer section, staff will review and score each response, and the developer with the highest score will be awarded their choice. This will be limited to two properties per award session unless all other developers have been awarded a property. Tie scores will be settled by a coin flip or lot draws. And lastly, in the disposition process, the selected developers will have 30 days to execute the lease and development agreement. The rent for the first 18 months of the lease will now be collected as one upfront payment of $18, and after 18 months, the rent will go up to $500 a month. The restrictive covenant is recorded before the transfer and restricts the resale to income-eligible buyers for 10 years, or the current number of years required by the Home Buyer Assistance Program. The lease will allow for the property to be transferred to the developer and then concurrently transferred to the qualified home buyer. The administration recommends approval of the proposed resolution and procedures, and I'm here to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. My question is on the request for qualifications. This is something that will be, after the initial list is developed, it will be reopened, it says, every 18 months to add new developers to the approved list. Why was it decided that this would be something that was closed and then reopened, rather than just having rolling applications? We currently do rolling applications, and I think with the way that the RFQ process works with procurement, I don't know if there is an ability to have just an open-ended rolling application. The idea was to approve a library of developers, release a set group of lots, and be able to monitor that cohort that's building, and then reopen as needed and for more manageable from the staff side. 18 months is a long time. There could be a new developer that, you know, perhaps has been working in Pasco County or in northern Pinellas and has decided that they would like to be part of the solution here in St. Petersburg, but they have to wait a year and a half, and that could be a deterrent, and it actually could keep good developers out. Oh, yes, Council Member, I understand the concern, but I think we would still be able to capture some of those developers that have interests. As part of the evaluation criteria for the approved developers, we would incentivize mentorships between other developers that might not have experience in St. Petersburg or haven't been previously approved in the RFQ. So as we could happily connect those developers that are new to St. Pete, they've heard of the program, they want to participate with someone on the approved list and see if they want to form that partnership, work on a project together, and gain that experience. And then the next time the RFQ opens, they would already have an idea of how the program works. So the experience that you're talking about is experience in St. Petersburg and not necessarily experience in development. So someone could be, so there could be a company that's been, you know, working in development very successfully for 20 years, but they wouldn't qualify to be here because they aren't considered to be experienced? I don't think Ms. Zaffer is saying that they wouldn't be experienced by not working in St. Petersburg, but I can tell you that even people who typically build homes may not be the best folks to build affordable housing because of other economies of scale or their ability to understand the AMI qualifications and the down payment assistance and the other programs that have to go with that. I mean, we certainly can do whatever council directs us to do. These changes were brought to you knowing that we were having some trade-offs, right? The initial program goals were to cast the widest net possible and to have all types of developers in the program. You can see that that has limited the success of the program, and people need housing tonight. And so this is a trade-off that we were willing to make in order to impact our affordable housing stock. We thought 18 months made sense. We're perfectly willing and able to change that to some other amount of time. I can tell you in the three years that I've been sitting in this chair doing this work, we haven't had a number of new developers come to the table wanting to do the type of work. There are developers who have done this that want to get more lots. Not to say that there wouldn't be new developers, but, again, the new developers that we had come to the table took 40 months to produce a home rather than 10. Right, right. New ones who lacked experience, period. Not necessarily, Councilmember. I think these are people who had home development experience but maybe didn't have affordable housing development experience and the ability to sell and qualify the right AMIs. Well, and we have felt the frustration from that here on this dais many times. And the evaluation of the performers and the comparison of the top performer to the average here, it makes it clear that this is the right way to go. I just want to make sure that we're not selling ourselves short by keeping out potential new partners for that period of time. I think maybe a year, maybe once a year even could be better. How many do you expect that you would have once the RFQ, when you go through this RFQ process and do the evaluations of the applicants, how many do you, what's the goal? What number is reasonable? Do you think you'll end up with three or 20? I think it's hard to estimate. Currently, we have 93 applicants on the list of interested developers. And when we were doing the initial review of them, about 30 did not indicate on their initial application that they had experience with constructing single-family homes. So we could knock those off initially. And I think, you know, it depends entirely on their interest still in the program. But I would estimate around 10 to 20, maybe. Okay. All right. I'm willing to try this with the 18 months. That was the only concern that I had. I want to make sure that we're not going to end up with, you know, lacking at all. But, of course, if that does come up, we can change it, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, the other thing that Mr. Waugh mentioned to me, which is correct, which is why kind of the 18 months was thought about, is, again, we only have 42 lots. I don't anticipate we will ever get more lots into this program, right? We're not able to purchase. We don't have the type of buying power. Lots are going for much more than they were during the last economic downturn. And so we have 42 lots left in the program. About 10 of those lots are flood-prone areas that we have not been successful in getting developers willing to develop on in the past. And so it's one of the reasons we're doing that in 10 lot groupings. And so, you know, it would take a while for that cohort, again, to go through that process to then open for another cohort. If we wanted to drop that down to 12 months, we certainly can. But, you know, kind of trying new things and seeing what shakes out from it. Right, right. Well, I like the direction this is going in. And I'm comfortable with seeing how it goes with 18 months. And I'm very supportive of this. Thanks to all of you for the work that you've done on it. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. And seeing no further request to speak, I'll entertain a motion. Move approval. Now this is properly motioned and seconded for F2. Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please cast your votes. Seeing that our present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve it. Your item F2 passes unanimously. Thank you. Now we will move to item F3. And this item was requested by our council member Gabbard. And I am going to open the floor for your introduction. And also joining Council Member Gabbard is our prevalent works administrator, Claude Takersley. Thank you, Madam Chair. So we've had lots of talk about infrastructure over the, well, even today, right? So I thought it was timely for us to go ahead and kind of bring this conversation back to city council. Everyone will probably remember that on September 19th, exactly one week before Helene, we had our first committee of the whole regarding our Resilience St. Pete plan and all of the resiliency work that is happening. And at that time, we were talking about, you know, our planning, our planning for the next few years, the planning for hopefully what was a worst-case scenario that would happen maybe even decades into the future. It happened exactly one week later, and then it happened again two weeks later. And so, you know, we've really been put in a place where our city is not only now tasked with rebuilding, but it's also tasked with continuing to move forward on all of these plans that we were already discussing and working on, funding, and trying to implement. And so I thought it was an important moment because, you know, I'm out in the community, we are all out in the community, we're talking with our residents, and residents are kind of past that initial shock phase, and they are working into the rebuilding phase. And they're looking at the future, and they're looking what they need to do to make sure that they are ready for the future. Well, they need to know that we're doing the same. They need to know that we haven't taken our eye off the ball, that we are continuing to move our plans forward. There has been a lot of work on these plans happening behind the scenes, but because so much of what we're doing is hurricane response, I think a lot of people haven't been seeing it. So I wanted to make sure that we came back today, we had kind of a recap conversation, so that we could talk about, you know, where we were, what has happened since that time, but then also, Madam Chair, you know, we did leave that committee of the whole with a Part 2 that is supposed to be coming. So it would be my hopes that after we have this conversation today and we have this recap, that we can look when we do our calendar scheduling meeting next week, that we can talk about the soonest we can get Part 2 on the Cal agenda, because we want to make sure that we continue to have these discussions and we have them sooner rather than later. Thank you. So with that, I'll go ahead and turn it over to Claude. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Council Member Gabbard. I appreciate it. That is, I mean, very good. So as Council Member Gabbard mentioned, this was a report item that what I attempted to do for this presentation was to remain as true as possible to the report item, recognizing that, honestly, this conversation could be in many hour-long, many committee conversations. So I'll do my best to try to stick to this. So one of the questions was a review of the resilience plans and studies that we've done in the past, but also that we're working on now. I've put on the right-hand column a list of some, not all, but some of the resilience plans that we've been working on in the last eight years or so that have been completed and are being implemented at this time. I do want to point out some specific ones, obviously, that you're familiar with, such as the Integrated Sustainability Action Plan, the St. Pete Water Plan, which looks at our water, wastewater, and reclaimed water utilities, the Stormwater Master Plan, which was just completed in 2024, this year, and then we also have the Cosme Water Treatment Plant, the Emergency Operations Center and the Generator, that plan. So a lot of these plans are already, we're starting to implement them now. However, we do have two specific resilience plans that we are currently working on right now. One of them is the Seawall Vulnerability Study, and the other one is what we're calling Resilient St. Pete. So I'll start with the Seawall Vulnerability Study to give you an update of where we are on that. We received a grant through the state of Florida. The grant actually came from the federal government for this analysis to look at the seawall vulnerability of city-owned seawalls. We received that grant. We got notice of that grant in 2021. We worked through the process of getting that grant awarded, and we started the work on it in late 2023. As of now, we have completed the topographic survey and the condition assessment of those seawalls. The next items for this program is the public outreach, the prioritization plan, the cost analysis in 2025, with the final deliverable of the plan in 2026. I know we've discussed this many times, but for those who might be listening for the first time, within the city of St. Petersburg, we have roughly 100 miles of seawalls within the city limits. Only approximately 14 of those 100 miles are city-owned. There are probably a little bit more than maybe two miles of seawalls within the city that are either owned by the state or the county. The remainder of those seawalls, 85 percent or almost 85 miles of seawalls, are privately owned by thousands of different individuals. And so that makes our seawall resiliency a challenge because we're only able to really affect the 15 percent roughly that we own. But that's what this study will allow us to do is to look at the vulnerability of those seawalls. The next thing I want to talk about is Resilient St. Pete. And I want to start with an overall description of what Resilient St. Pete is. Resilient St. Pete will give us an action plan with strategies to move forward to taking all the information we've put together over the years and figure out how do we can prioritize these and come up with strategies to prioritize them. So the plan itself is being developed with two different phases. We are currently in Phase 1. And in Phase 1, we have something called the Vulnerability Assessment, which I'm calling Phase 1A. And then we're also working on the action plan, which is Phase 1B. But following the completion of Phase 1, we'll be moving into Phase 2. And we'll be taking the information and the data that Phase 1 will generate and then create a resilience strategy for implementing and moving forward with resilience. And then once the Resilient St. Pete plan is completed, then it will allow us to implement policies, programs, and projects that have been vetted and prioritized through this process. So the Resilient St. Pete plan will address several questions and will identify specific and implementable actions. Some of the questions that we'll address would be how should we proactively adapt now to make the next generation of residents less vulnerable to flood risks? What changes must be made to foster healthier communities and environments? How do we expand opportunities for city businesses and residents related to resilience? and how do we tailor those actions within St. Petersburg's unique landscape of neighborhoods while also preserving our shared waterfront spaces in the natural environment? So that's what the Resilient St. Pete plan will provide us. So let's start with Phase 1A, the Comprehensive Vulnerability Assessment. This is being done right now as we speak. The Vulnerability Assessment is being funded through a grant program by the Resilient Florida program that's run out of FDEP, the Florida Environmental Protection Agency. And it follows a specific template. So in order to get that grant, we have to do things exactly as the Resilient Grant program tells us to do it in the right order. As you can see, I put those tasks on there. This vulnerability assessment, it's an assessment only. This vulnerability assessment itself will not give us those strategies, but it'll give us the data necessary for us to move into Phase 2 to develop those strategies. And I wanted to highlight that those last four tasks in Phase 1A overlap with what we call Phase 1B. So what is a vulnerability assessment? So a vulnerability assessment is a process, very structured process, that identifies risks to the city's critical assets from existing or potential flooding hazards. And the assessment will look at three main components. First, it looks at the exposure. What is the exposure of a critical asset to a risk? So, for instance, assets that may be in the center of the city may have zero exposure to storm surge, whereas assets that are along the coast might have a high exposure to storm surge. So that's what the exposure part is for. Then we look at the sensitivity of that exposure. Does the asset have, what would the impact be to the asset if that exposure, if they are exposed to the actual risk, the actual risk occurs? And we will usually look at this as to a low, medium, or high risk. So, for instance, we may have an asset that's very close to the coast that may have a high vulnerability to storm surge, but the asset may be very inexpensive to replace, may not be that critical to the system, and so, therefore, it may have a low sensitivity, even though it has a high exposure. And then, finally, we'll be looking at whether or not adaptation is possible. So, is the asset able to be adapted in its location to be more resilient? And if not, we can look at does the asset need to be moved? This process of the vulnerability assessment will look at four critical asset types. It'll look at transportation and evacuation routes, critical infrastructure, this is things like water and sewer, critical community and emergency facilities, things like hospitals and schools and fire stations, and then, finally, natural, cultural, and historic assets. So, phase B, phase 1B, which is the action plan, is also currently underway. This is a program that we are working with the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, TBRPC. TBRPC is serving as the subject matter experts to help support, give us technical support on this program, on the vulnerability assessment, and also to help us find ways, effective ways, to communicate and engage with the community. And the reason why TBRPC is seen as the subject matter experts is because they came up with a regional resilient plan that outlined what not only the region should do as a region, but also had suggestions for what the member communities should do also. This will serve as a pilot project for neighborhood-level engagement that will occur more intensively in phase 2. Council approved this agreement the 1st of August of this year. Task 1.1 has already been completed. We've received a draft crosswalk, and we've been reviewing it and should be finalizing that very soon. And again, I do want to highlight the fact that 1B does overlap with 1A. By task 1.3, providing that technical assistance on the vulnerability assessment, and then task 1.4, providing engagement and outreach potential ideas. So overall, the resilience strategy, when we move into phase 2, we now have all this data. When we move into phase 2, where we do the resilience strategy, this is where we take the data and we come up with a strategy of policies, projects, and programs that will help us prepare for, adapt to, and quickly rebound from acute shocks and chronic stressors. It is an overarching planning framework that will build upon all the different planning documents that we've created so far that were usually very specific. It will build on the vulnerability assessment under phase 1. It will build on the action plan from phase 1, but also build on things such as the ISAP, St. Pete 2050, the St. Pete Water Plan, the Stormwater Master Plan. And these are all very specific planning documents that this will provide that overarching umbrella, so to speak, for all those plans. And it will help us create that comprehensive program so we can prioritize our investments based off of sound science and the community's goals. So, again, it is a multi-phase process that will eventually lead us to an overall umbrella guidance of resilience strategies so that we can move forward with policies, projects, and programs. So we currently have some projects ongoing at our water reclamation facilities, and I wanted to start with giving a little bit of history that members of the previous council and our current mayor and the previous mayor have been working on for the last seven to eight years. So, as you recall, back in 2016, we had some sewer spills that were related to some wet weather, and we received a consent order from the State Department of Environmental Protection. That program, that consent order, over the seven years that we were under that consent order, we ended up spending over $800 million on improving our infrastructure under that consent order. I did an analysis to look to see what would we have been spending if we had not gotten that consent order, if we had just been doing business as usual prior to 2016, what would we have spent during that same seven-year period? And I found that if we assumed the same trajectory of spending prior to 2017, it would have been about $350 million. So, the council and the mayors over the past eight years have significantly increased, almost doubled, more than doubled, the amount of money that's been put into our wastewater and water systems to make them more resilient under the consent order. That consent order has come to an end. We are finalizing the final paperwork with the DEP. We expect them to release us around February of 2025. One of the things that we did under that consent order is that we raised the critical electrical equipment at the southwest plant above the base flood elevation. The base flood elevation for the southwest plant, which is the base flood elevation, is the FEMA 100-year storm elevation that FEMA has done the analysis and said, based off of a 100-year storm, you can expect to have flooding on this location at this elevation. For the southwest plant, that elevation was a total of 10 feet as the base flood elevation, and then we added 2 feet to that, and so we've raised the critical electrical equipment at the southwest plant to 12 feet, and that occurred prior to the completion of that consent item, a consent order. But now, what we're working on right now is we're doing that same thing at the northeast plant. And the northeast plant, the critical electrical equipment was recommended in our St. Pete water plan that came out in 2019. So when that information came out in 2019, we started the design in 2021 and 2022. We went into construction in 2023, and construction is expected to be completed in 2026. It is a $70 million project. We're going to be raising the critical electrical components at the northeast plant to 11 feet because the FEMA base flood elevation at the northeast plant is 9 feet, and then we added 2 feet to that for freeboard. So that's what we'll be doing, and that should be completed in 2026. However, I will say that we're trying to find ways to accelerate that so we can get it done sooner, but I cannot make that promise at this time. We're also have started working on, ironically enough, just this year. In April of 2024, just this year, council approved us to start the design on the operations and maintenance buildings for the three plants. Now, whereas the projects we did before was protecting the critical electrical equipment, this project will protect the people because when these plants are flooded, we have to protect those people who are there to make sure that they are safe. And so we'll be moving forward with raising those operation and maintenance buildings also above that base flood elevation. We've already received some grant funding through Resilient Florida for just under $9 million to do that work, and we expect the construction to begin in 2027-28. So overall, for the next five years, well, for fiscal year 25, what I did is I looked at the capital improvement budget for fiscal year 25 for stormwater, water resources, bridges, and seawalls. And I looked specifically at projects that are resilience-specific. Not all projects are resilience-related, but for those projects that are specific to resilience, for fiscal year 2025, we have a total of about $116 million budgeted in this fiscal year. And for comparison, back in 2016, the total CIP for these categories was about $65 million. The total, not just the resilience, but the total was $65 million in 2016. The total of the CIP for these categories for this year is $140 million. So we're getting close to almost tripling in the last eight years what we're spending on this infrastructure. Over the next five years, we anticipate spending $633 million out of a $780 million CIP program. So about 80% of the CIP budget for these categories in the next five years will go towards resilience projects to make them more resilient. So some other initiatives I want to talk about. I want to introduce you to something called, we're calling the SPAR, the St. Pete Agile Resilience. Now, Mayor Welch has alluded to this several times over the past year, including after Hurricane Adalia and the Resilience Community Listing Session. He referred to it as the Marshall Plan originally during the September 19th, 2024 Committee of the Whole, which you mentioned, Council Member Gabbard. And then he also referenced it on November 21st at this council meeting. The SPAR is going to run parallel to the Resilient St. Pete program and is going to focus on flooding the water reclamation facilities, resilience to storm surges, and accelerating, which is why it's called Agile Resilience, accelerating critical projects in our CIP. Our Public Works Administration has been meeting twice weekly with staff to develop this program for rollout and implementation in 2025. And this will be prior to the completion of Resilient St. Pete. And again, it's to look for ways that we can do things more quickly than we would normally be able to do so that we can accelerate some of these projects and get them done more quickly. The other initiative I want to share with you, which I give 100% of the credit to our Engineering Director, Mr. Bergesh Preyman, for this, but we are developing a resilience data-sharing initiative with USF St. Pete with their College of Marine Science to share innovative technologies, modeling, and the most current data, data such as rain gauge, groundwater, tide gauge information, resources, staff expertise, as well as technical and advisory and mentoring. This initiative will allow both USF and the city to better understand, predict, and mitigate the impacts from storm surge and extreme rain events. It'll provide pathways to better inform us of the risks and to help us prioritize those capital projects. So this will be a part of that Resilient St. Pete. The last thing I'd like to do today is to introduce you to our new Director of Sustainability and Resilience. I'd like to ask Maven Rogers to come join me. So Maven Rogers is our Director of Sustainability and Resilience. Maven joined us on October 14th of 2024, just days after Hurricane Milton. So she spent her first two weeks actually out in the community, helping the community to recover from the storm by working at recovery centers and helping to hand out food and clothing and water and just out in the community, working with the community to try to help us recover as quickly as we could. Her professional experience includes sustainability and resilience stints at the City of Palm Coast, Orange County, and Orlando, Florida. She has Master's Degrees in Communication and Economic Development, and she will be our lead on the Resilient St. Pete. So Councilmember Gabbard, thank you for this opportunity to come and share with you this information. Council Chair, I'm completed with my presentation and I'm available for any questions. Thank you. And to be clear, we have no other request to speak. Madam Chair, I do not have any cards. Councilmember Gabbard. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Claude, so much for the presentation. And I know how busy you and your team are, and so I was a little hesitant to ask you to put this together because I want to be respectful of your time, but once again, as I said earlier, I think it's critically important that the residents understand what is happening and what is planned to happen and how we're going to see through that. And then, Maven, welcome. Thank you on behalf of the residents of District 2. You were out, as Claude said, you know, doing food distribution and things like that, and so I just want to thank you for that and welcome to the team. So I have just a couple of follow-up questions to a couple of your slides. I'm going to start. Can we pull the presentation back up? What slide? Go ahead and start with four. So talking about the seawall capital improvement plan, there's a lot of question from residents about us changing our code for them to be able to elevate their seawalls. So recognizing that this is focused on our seawalls, our 14 miles or so, how is that going to translate into changes to our code for residents when they improve their seawalls? So we, Public Works, are working with our planning departments and administration to figure out how to meld the two together. We've already got some information from the stormwater master plan, and I know that Mr. Praman will be bringing some proposed code changes to this council early next year from that. But on the seawall, we'll also be following up this assessment to bring some recommendations of how we can make those changes also. And you speak of Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, so I would be remissed if I did not just remind us that they have gone through an exercise where they have an actual seawall model ordinance, and so I would recommend that we pull that back out and take a look at that and see if there's a way maybe some of that work has kind of already been done for us and could really help because resiliency isn't just a St. Pete issue, it's a regional issue, and so I would just encourage us to look at that as well. So moving on to, I want to, I think, go now, let's fast forward to the slide eight. Okay, so you're talking about the vulnerability assessment, and you talk about the water reclamation facilities. Are we going to be able to utilize anything out of the vulnerability assessment to prioritize those? Is that kind of where the prioritization of the water reclamation facilities would come? And talking just about, you know, we're building it now up to the 11 feet, but obviously we see that we're very vulnerable to potentially even higher surge at this time. We're in the middle of a project, so how do we, if we can, pivot at all at this point to maybe looking at it and seeing if we are more vulnerable than we thought we were when we started that project, is there a way to increase that resiliency for those plans? So is there a way to increase? We are definitely looking at that. Will this vulnerability assessment provide that information? No. So regrettably, as I mentioned, we have to follow a pretty prescribed process for this from Resilient Florida, and that prescribed process doesn't necessarily get that deep into the weeds. We're looking basically holistically at all the critical assets just to make sure that we've identified all of them, identified what their exposure is and what their sensitivity is based off of a low, high, and medium. And so we wouldn't really be getting that deep into the weeds through the vulnerability assessment. Now, that's why we have the SPAR. That's why we're looking at ways we can accelerate things and do something different. One of the things we discovered that we didn't anticipate through these storms was that we were following standard practice by elevating these facilities above the base flood elevation plus an additional two feet. So we didn't just stop at the base flood elevation. We added an additional two feet. We were following standard procedures for doing that. The storm surge that we were predicted to get was much higher than that, which caused us pause. And so we are looking to see what would be the feasibility of, instead of raising to the base flood elevation, what would it take to raise to the storm surge elevation? Now, I will caution you, based off of the best information that I can find, and it's not all consistent, unfortunately. The storm surge for a Category 3 storm, from what I can find, is typically estimated to be between 12 and 15 feet, which actually matches up pretty well with what we were expected to get from Milton. When Milton was a Cat 3 storm, they were saying, oh, about 12 to 15 feet. So that already with a Cat 3 storm is above the base flood elevation that we've already raised the Southwest plant and that we're raising the Northeast plant. But if you go to a Category 5, this is what's really scary. You go to a Category 5, the estimated storm surge from a Category 5 is anywhere from 25 feet to 42 feet. So these two plants sit at an elevation of about 5 to 7 feet. And so if we were to raise the plant to be safe under 42 feet of a storm surge, that's probably not feasible. We probably couldn't afford to do that and I'm sure the surrounding neighborhoods probably wouldn't like to see a four-story tall wastewater treatment plant right next to them. So those are the kind of things we're going to be having to talk about over the next few years as to what is the feasible approach for us to protect these plants where they are. One of the challenges that St. Pete has is that we don't have a lot of empty land for us to move the plant. So in 2004, the city of Pensacola, Florida, experienced Hurricane Ivan. Hurricane Ivan flooded their Main Street wastewater treatment plant down by Pensacola Bay, put it out of service. Pensacola was lucky enough to be able to purchase some land 15 miles north and to build a new treatment plant on empty land 15 miles north. I think it was about 20, 25 acres they were able to purchase. And then they had to build a bunch of pipelines to pump all that sewage in the opposite direction to go there. And it cost them close to a half billion dollars to do that. And they were lucky enough to have land to be able to do that. Unfortunately, we really don't have that opportunity. So it's just one of the things that makes our resilience different than another community. Well, and to that point, I mean, you know, I was meeting with residents last night, having conversations about rebuilding and elevating and, you know, I mean, we talk about base flood elevation plus the free board and having these conversations about, okay, well, you could rebuild today to those standards, but recognizing maps could change, storm surge could be higher next time, there is no guarantee, right? Like, we cannot spend our way into a guarantee. What we can do is the best that we can do with the information that we have today and make the best decisions possible to rebuild into the future, not knowing what the future holds. So I think that there's parallel with what we're dealing with with our city assets and what residents are going to be faced with when it comes to rebuilding their own properties as well. So thank you for bringing that point up. A couple more questions and then I'll stop. Neighborhood level engagement, talking about what I call like the resident task force, right? This was a very critical piece when we first started this planning. the mayor was very specific on we want to have the residents engaged, we want to have the residents voice. Can we talk a little bit about what that's going to look like for residents of affected neighborhoods? So that's part of what we're going to be trying to figure out during this phase 1B, the action plan, which is why TBRCPC is going to be helping us find a way to effectively communicate that. So during that pilot study we selected a handful of neighborhoods, that had been impacted by Adalia or heavy rains, this was obviously before we had Milton and Helene, that we could run this pilot program on to learn how to reach out to the communities, engage them in these conversations, to talk about what critical facilities and assets are within their neighborhoods, what are unique to their neighborhoods, what might be unique to a neighborhood that's a coastal neighborhood is very different than a neighborhood that's interior, but they both have risks, they both have vulnerability, and so we'll be working through the next year with TBRPC to basically test run these conversations, learn our lessons from them, so that when we go out to the broader community during phase two, we'll be able to do it more efficiently and more effectively. That's wonderful. On the resilient funding slide, slide 13, can you just remind everyone how we pay for these particular projects? Yes, so the stormwater projects and the water resources utilities projects are all paid for currently with utility rates, utility fees, and they're called enterprise funds, and basically on your monthly utility bill that you receive, on your monthly utility bill, you have a fee on there for sanitation, garbage, you have a fee on there for your water usage, for your wastewater usage, for reclaimed water if you have reclaimed water service, and for stormwater, and so your total utility bill comprises those five enterprise funds. We are required under state statute that when we charge a fee for service, so this isn't a tax in that it's just based off of how much your home is worth, it's a fee for service, so if you use 1,000 gallons of water, you pay for 1,000 gallons of water. So under that fee for service, we are required to only spend those funds for that service. So we cannot take funds that come through the water bill to pay for fire trucks or dump trucks or anything else. We can only use it to pay for the water or sewer utilities. On the bridges and seawalls, those are paid for out of what we call our general funds. There is no utility that's associated with those. And then finally, the USF resilience data sharing. Very excited about this. I just wanted to ask one quick question. So there's a lot of resident reporting of flooding that they see in their neighborhoods going through the storm squad and they are partnering with USF. So will we be able, like, will we be accessing that data that's given by residents in order to utilize this? What I'd like to do is ask Mr. Praman if he could come up since he's the one who's been having the direct conversations and let him address it. Good day, counsel. So the data sharing is going to basically open up the avenues for whatever we need on conversation between both agencies. So yes, if that is something that is available, again, if it's available, but there are other mechanisms that we're looking at as far as how we are planning to implement our projects in our right of way and how they are currently implementing special test programs that they would like to pursue within the city limits that may provide even higher levels of benefit of accuracy. Fantastic. Well, I was already planning on bringing a presentation to our HERS committee for this initiative, so I'll work with you on putting that together because this is, I mean, if you've not seen what is happening with USF and the storm squad, it's phenomenal. Boots on the ground, resident engagement, and that's how we're going to build a resilient city is all together, so I'll work with you to bring that forward. Thank you. So, Claude, thank you so much. Thank you for everything that you do. Thank you to administration, and I really want to thank Mayor Welch for making this a priority and really excited about the acceleration project, so thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, and Council Member Gabbard, it is scheduled to come back on the February 27th, Cal. I'll hold you to it. All right. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and for putting so much into this today. This is something that's important to all of us. I had asked in our last meeting for some discussion on the lessons that we learned from the storms and how we're adjusting current plans and future plans, current projects and future plans, to really apply those lessons into good practice. And you've pointed out a little about that here, but I want to make sure that the public understands that it's not business as usual here. And as you mentioned, the elevation for the northeast plant, you know, it's at 11 feet. we got the prediction that it would be 12 to 15. Is that something that you've looked at? Now, you also mentioned that you want to, you would like to be able to accelerate the northeast facility project. project, what would it take to do that? And would that include things like raising it a little more? Because I know we can't do 42 feet. Right, right. But 12 to 15 is going to happen again, or that threat is going to happen again. So our engineers are looking to see what can be done given what has already been constructed under this $70 million project. One of the things, the one thing that will allow us to accelerate it is the actual generator that we're waiting on for the project. Let me make sure, is it the generator? Or is it the switch gear? Forgive me. Both? Okay, thank you. So two of the major components, two of the major electrical components have a very long lead item, anywhere from 50 to 75 weeks. And so therefore, they are currently being constructed and we have already notified the vendor that we would ask them to accelerate that construction if they can, and they've already written us a letter saying that they will look at ways to try to accelerate it. If they're able to do that and we're able to get it in sooner, then that will help us accelerate that particular project. As for, you know, whether we will be able to get from the 11 to 15 feet, my staff are still looking at what options might be available to us. I'm not comfortable, you know, discussing those now just because we may not be able to do them, but we are looking at them. Thank you, and I think it's important to know that we're revisiting these items since the storm so that we can really protect our residents. That's what this really comes down to, from having those adverse effects and making sure that we do have a resilient system. You mentioned generators, and it was mentioned earlier that there was a lack of sufficient generator power throughout the city. Is that something that you'd like to talk about that's part of the plan? Well, so one of the things that Mr. Hampton, Marshall Hampton, shared during agenda review was the fact that during Helene we had roughly 80 intersections that went down, and we have generators available to be able to power those intersections. During Milton, we lost over 200 intersections, and during, I think it was Ian, during Hurricane Ian, I think we lost approximately 50 or so intersections. But between the time those intersections are operating versus the time that they're down, those generators that we use for them are just in storage somewhere. And so one of the analysis we have to do is how many generators do we buy to have sitting around in storage that we have to maintain and replace every now and then in order to be able to get a generator to every single intersection if it goes down. Frankly, we had never anticipated over 200 intersections going down. That had never happened. And unfortunately, we're all human, and we think about what's going to happen, and we tend to look to the past. And since we had never had over 200 intersections going down, it never occurred to us that we would need to go out and buy 200 generators to sit around for the chance that a hurricane might come that we might need those 200 generators. We just need to do the analysis of what is the cost and benefit ratio of having these kind of generators available. Now for our lift stations, we have many of our lift stations actually have what we call dedicated permanent generators located on-site for those lift stations, and those are our critical ones, the ones that really we must make sure that they are operating. For some of our smaller lift stations that don't run as often, maybe they don't have that much of a larger flow, we have portable generators that we'll use for those, that we'll take out to the site and use for those. Again, in this situation, we had never had a situation where all of our lift stations went down, lost power, because they're all on Duke power, and as we all know, we all lost power. The whole city pretty much lost power. So we were able to keep the lift stations running as best we could by rotating those generators. We would take it to a lift station, run it there until the lift station was drained down, and then we'd move the generator to another lift station to drain it down, then we'd move it back over here to drain it down, and we would just rotate them around that way to keep them running. So we are looking to see what would be the appropriate number of additional generators we need to get in order to make that process easier, and if there's any additional lift stations that we might need to make the investment to have a permanent generator available. Thank you. I like the idea of this, I forget what page it's on, that the resilience strategy is pulling together these different action plans and master plans that we have, and I think getting that all under one umbrella and creating a strategy from that is absolutely the right way to go. It's hard because even when you're out talking in the public, you know, there's the improvements being made to the, you know, in water resources, and just explaining the difference between water resources and stormwater can take a little bit of time, and we have a stormwater master plan. So we have all of these different things that are working together, and it would be easy for someone who is maybe more critical to pick out one piece that we're still working on and say all of it's bad, and that certainly isn't the case. There is great progress that is being made, and because this is so large and has so many different components, it really is hard to see the successes along the way, but you do have them, and I certainly appreciate that. I also appreciate that you are taking a serious look at how we can make improvements based on the storms that we just went through, because we had some firsts during that time, and we want that to lead to us being able to say that it was the last, you know, one day. So, thank you for that. I also think it could be helpful that we have our local delegation at the state and the federal level seem to be quite motivated to seek help for cities like ours, and I hope that you you will continue to talk with the administration, with the rest of the administration and people like David Thompson to make sure that the asks are specific, that the feedback and the insight that you're able to share is helpful to them, because that's going to make their case that much stronger as they ask for, you know, not just funding, but on the policy side. I think there are things that can be done that would be tremendously helpful. So, I think it's important for everyone to know that we're not in this alone. That's why I want to bring that up. This is something that is city, county, state, federal, and we're all in it together and committed to making these infrastructure improvements so that we're all, we can all get through a storm and deal with the aftermath of a storm in a better way. So, thank you. I certainly appreciate this and I hope that once we get to the update in February that we'll have even more news and maybe some follow-up information on what we've discussed today where we've still got some questions out there. Absolutely. Thank you, Councilmember. If I could just say that's a wonderful point and we'll continue to work with our state and federal partners and we appreciate your partnership in that. And I just want to take an opportunity to say thank you to all of City Council. I mean, Mr. Tankersley mentioned the increased funding over the past eight years or so. A lot of that credit is the leadership of City Council. So, thank you for everything you've been doing on this issue. Absolutely. Thank you. And finally, I'll say that, you know, to go along with this, it's hard to talk about this without talking about our coastal high hazard area and the ordinance that we have in place. And I think, you know, now that it's been, I think, yes, it's been four years since City Council approved the ordinance with the guidelines for building in the coastal high hazard area. And I think it might be time to just revisit that in light of what we've learned after these storms, just to make sure that the ordinance that we have in place still makes sense for St. Petersburg. So, I will be filing that new business items soon. It'll be a great way to kick off the year and incorporate that discussion into these other conversations. Council Member Hanowitz. Thank you, Vice Chair. Well, thank you, Claude, for your presentation. I always tell people I honestly believe that you have the most difficult job in the city, being the public works administrator, just because of all you have to deal with. And I will tell you, nobody likes it when the sewage plant goes offline, when there's issues with potable water, all those issues, you hear about it immediately. And you deal with everything in the city. In my district, I think probably the majority of the issues end up being related to infrastructure one way or another. Having said that, so you've heard me say this before. I'm going to say it again. We have lots of plants. Oh, my gosh. We don't lack plants. To be clear. I can't keep up with the plants. I mean, the St. Pete Water Plan was at one point the Integrated Water Resources Master Plan. I mean, I have, I can't even, that's 700 pages. So we have so many plans. So how far back do these plans go? So we'll be looking at plans roughly within the last decade. Anything beyond that. So these are just in the last decade. So 14 plans. It'll mostly be plans that we've developed in the last eight years. Right. So these we've developed in the last eight years. Wow. That's a lot of planning. Yes. What we do lack is funding. Yes. That's, that's the big issue. So in terms of, you know, the resilient St. Pete and proactively adapting, by the way, proactively is, the definition is causing it to happen rather than responding. And one of the frustrations that everyone has is the stormwater issues. And I have to bring it up because it is the biggest issue. And earlier today, we talked a little bit about level of service and stormwater. You saw me ask Rajesh, you know, when we were covering it due to the backlog of municipal stormwater drainage system improvements and the time required to implement improvements, existing conditions are adopted as a level of service. And as we know, people are not happy with the level of service of the existing conditions. Right. Right. So I just, I'm just trying to wrap my head around doing all these plans, but yet we don't have the funding to get to the point where I think people want to see it. And I know we talk about utility fees and that's where the money comes from, but the reality is the money can come from the general fund if we wanted to implement it, right? Because it's a general fund. So if we had money in the general fund and right, we can actually use it for other projects. So there are ways that we could do this, even if people wanted to do a referendum, right? Even if people wanted to say the city of St. Petersburg and the residents wanted to say, you know what? We want to pay more money to go to our systems, right? That's something that we could do and the voters could decide whether or not look, you know, we're going to take out bonds and, and we're going to do this because we care, right? So there are, there are, it's not just related to the utility fees alone. There are other ways that we can maybe try to fund it. So in terms of the risks and doing this plan, it's, my understanding is obviously you kind of identify the risk. It kind of sets a framework. Really, what I'm trying to understand is don't we already know the risks and our critical assets? I mean, at this point, don't we just know it? Because we should. We know them for the ones that are city owned. Right. Actually, a lot of community critical assets that we don't necessarily own. So that's one of the things that this plan, the state set it up that way for the resilient Florida to look at not just water resources or stormwater. Okay. And just because it said here, a structured process that identifies a risk to the city's critical assets. I'm sorry. It's the city's critical assets, though, right? Yes. That we're looking at. Yes. It's the critical assets within the city. Right. And so what we will be doing is partnering with, like, the school board and other facilities. Like, school board has schools within the city. Right. And so by knowing that within this particular region, we not only have a fire station and a school and we have a lift, a wastewater lift station, and so therefore we know that these are all the critical assets within this region of the city. What are we doing for our hospitals? We'll be cataloging the locations of the hospitals, their elevations, their risk, and their level of risk that they're being exposed to, as well as the sensitivity. Right. Because, I mean, from the storm, we know that there were some real issues with the sewage plants going down and affected all the hospitals here in St. Petersburg, right? That's correct. Okay. I'm sorry. Can you elaborate on that? Sure. My understanding is that at the hospitals, because the sewage plant, I mean, they obviously can get potable water. They can get electricity through generators. But the issue of the sewage plant going down, my understanding is they were not prepared for that. Were there reports of backups at the hospitals? It wasn't the reports of backups in the hospitals themselves, but they are not supposed to be using the facilities, right? Like, they can't use the bathrooms when the sewage plants are down, right? We had conversations with them and let them know that we thought they had capacity. We were on the phone with them constantly. So they can actually use the baths? So the hospitals could use the bathrooms when the sewage plants were taken offline? Yes. Okay. Well, my understanding, and we can have this discussion separately, but... No, that was just a strong statement. I just wondered where that came from. I had conversations with the different hospitals, but we can definitely talk about that. So in terms of the projects, let's see here. What are we doing now between now and 2026 to protect our, like, systems, the sewage plants? So you have, obviously, a project in 2026. Right. So right now we have the one project at the Northeast plant that's under construction. It's supposed to be finished by 2026. We hope to get it finished a little bit earlier. That's the project that lifted up the critical electrical components at that plant up to the 11 feet. And then we have, we've started the design at the Southwest plant and the Northwest, Northeast plant and the Northwest plant, actually, on their operations centers so that we can move into raising those and not only raising them to protect them against storm surge and flooding, but also to harden them for wind. So we'll be looking at, you know, a Cat 3, Cat 5, strengthening to harden those facilities. And in terms of any perimeter flood barriers? So one of the recommendations that has come to us, we get a lot of options that are thrown to us over the years. And one of the options thrown to us at one point was to build a wall around the plants. That has its own challenges, and it can be very costly, but it's certainly something that we would consider as part of the overall cost-benefit analysis. The other thing, how do you, in terms of separating the projects for resiliency, like for instance, stormwater, for instance, and you said these are resiliency-specific. Yes. I mean, to me, it seems like stormwater flooding is all resiliency-related. So how is it that you... The way I chose to do it, and it was my choice, and so there, of course, my opinion, the way I chose to do it was I was looking, are we spending money to replace something that is worn out? So for instance, we all know that all equipment, all materials wear out over time. It may have a 20-year lifespan, a 50-year lifespan. And over time, we have to replace them. If we're replacing like for like, if we're replacing a 200-gallon-per-minute pump with a 200-gallon-per-minute pump, I did not consider that to be resilience. If we were looking to increase the amount of storm resilience we can provide by moving more water out of the area, or by enlarging pipes, or by adding anything that would help reduce the amount of flooding going on, I consider that to be resilience. And then the City USF Resilience Data Sharing Initiative, very excited about that. Will they be able to share all that data publicly? How is that going to work? Do we know? And I know Brajesh is probably still here. So data, it's very important to take it into context, the data that you receive, how you use it, because it can inform decisions, but it's not always what you should always rely on. So we have to be very important. I'm very careful about how we display specific information. So those are things that we're still discussing between USF and the City, as far as how and what sort of data is, and how we manipulate it that it's presented publicly. Because at the same time, there's data that's used for analysis that helps with decision-making processes and planning, or emergency management. But there's also data that can be provided publicly for helping the residents make their decisions, or for guidance, or that can be open for interpretation. So it is a thin line as far as how you provide it, because we don't want to be in a position that we're providing data based on modeling and scenarios that puts residents at risk. So we have to be very careful with that. Yeah, I just was wondering in terms of like, what the result of this initiative is, and how that, you know, it says here, provide pathways to better inform our city and our residents of risk, how that evolves? How do you foresee that happening? So we, you know, it's so early in the time, in the discussions, but really, it's, we're looking at multiple projects as it comes up throughout us. And I'll give an example. So, you know, I also sit on the Tampa Bay Estuary program, and there were grant projects that they were, I would sit on the management board for them, and there were grant projects that they were applying for USF that would have been really good, simple projects to partner with the city on. They were doing flow modeling and analysis. They were applying for a grant for flow modeling analysis for Boca Creek or at Rosa Park section. Those are simple projects that we could have partnered with, provide a benefit to USF, but also get, getting us data. So projects like that, but there are also other projects as we're going to embark on the more insulation of water tide level sensors across the edges of the C&P itself to really understand how that surge and that where it is and how it's impacting different areas of our coastline. Because obviously, you know, we have inland channel sections, canal sections that operate differently based on the wind direction, the tide, and the duration of that storm event. So increasing the intensity of those tidal buoys will help us, but also provide them information to strengthen their modeling that they can then provide back to us when they turn. That's good. Yeah. Well, thank you. I'm very excited about that, and thank you for the work. Thank you so much, Claude, for the presentation. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. I'll want to touch on some of the points that have been brought up already. And first thing I want to say is thank you so much to the administration for showing us a little bit about, I think, what you called SPAR. Yeah, because it's been hinted at for a while. So I'm glad to have gotten a little insight. In that vein, you know, we've talked about, and I'm grateful that in the last meeting the mayor was here and he said we're looking at all resources we can allocate towards our infrastructure. And that's sort of what I wanted to touch on, which is, yeah, I don't, I've said this before and I just want to reiterate it. I don't think that we can just rely on utility users' fees to tackle the problem that we have. Those fees are paid directly by residents who live here, and every year we're increasing the cost of living. I understand we're doing the best we can, and I applaud us for a lot of things. Like in the past, we've had lower raises than projected this past year. I was really excited to get the rate restructuring that was good. But I think it's definitely time to look outside of there, and I'm glad to hear that we're thinking about it. I think Council Member Hanowitz's point about maybe we wanted to talk about how much the public does want to invest in these things and there be some sort of referendum. I don't know exactly what that would look like, but I think it's a hot-button issue, and I'd love to get the public's opinion on it in a detailed way, so that's interesting. But I just wanted to put forward something that I've mentioned previously in committees as well, which is I think a lot of people see all of the new development that's happening. I know some of it is locked in CRAs, so it maybe does or doesn't apply to this conversation. But I think being able to tell people that the new development that's going in is directly paying for infrastructure upgrades would be a really potent thing for our city to do, to be able to say, like, this new development produced this much money on the tax rolls, and this portion of it was set aside for infrastructure upgrades. I think that that would be something that would give a lot of people in our community a lot of encouragement to say that, like, the growth in the city is benefiting them, as well as being able to say, I lost my train of thought, but that's where I'm at right there. I think, oh, also, I was going to say, it also is, like, it's new money on the tax rolls. We're not having to take from something else. And before that money gets allocated elsewhere, and then we want to change to infrastructure spending, you know, we'll miss it elsewhere. Like, before it gets allocated elsewhere, we can just immediately say that it's for infrastructure. I've sort of mentioned that before, but I wanted to make clear, like, I think that that would be a great possibility. I think that there's a lot of opportunity in the future to look towards, you know, any funding opportunity possible, not just utility fees. And I'm glad to hear that administration is starting to look into that. And I'd love to be part of those conversations. And really appreciate that, Council Member. And we hear where you're coming from. And appreciate your comments and the similar comments by Council Member Hanowitz. I think in the first quarter next year, we'll be bringing you some ideas and thoughts for further discussion with City Council around some of those alternatives and what they might look like and try and get some unity with City Council on where we might go. Along that note, I do want to thank City Council for raising the water closet fees on new development this past year. I think that's exactly what you're referencing. That was significant. One of the things, yeah. We're very grateful for City Council for that. And so we look forward to the beginning of next year coming back and having further discussion. We're working on it currently. Okay, great. Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, and that's what I've been hearing from y'all over the last, like, couple of months. And so I'm really grateful for it. The other thing I know, I've heard about it from the county's aspect, but, like, upgrade, or I'm sorry, updating ordinances around impact fees, I assume that there's been, you know, some at least paying attention to what the county's been discussing, and I think that that's supposed to flow down to us. Yeah, is that accurate? So I think what you're referencing typically through the county is multimodal impact fees. Okay, okay, okay. So, yeah, I'm getting my wires crossed a little. You know, there are other communities that have a much wider variety of impact fees than we do. Yeah. And if that's something that maybe we should talk about in a committee, we could certainly do that. Oh, yes. Okay, yeah. I would love to have a broader discussion around impact fees. I also want to, you know, promote something that I think we've been slowly getting towards the stormwater master plan. We've talked about our level of service a lot. You know, I'm really looking forward to the discussion around the standards and regulations around, I think, particularly commercial but large-scale development as a whole and how we can hold people to as high of standards as we think feasibly realistic. And I have quite a strong stomach for making sure we're holding, you know, new development to high standards. So, you know, anything we can get there. I know that conversation's in the pipeline. And, you know, I'll just reiterate, like, I think this conversation does change in scope based off of, you know, what economic development is locked in in our future. I'll just say that much. But I think we need to, you know, have in mind, like, if we do have locked in economic development or locked in just development in general, that we can extract a lot more from new development than we would be able to otherwise. Without getting into details about what we're going to be discussing later, I think that's a silver lining that I've been looking towards. All right. Thank you, Chair. Councilman Pedrisco. Thank you. I do remember that a couple of years ago I brought forward a new business item asking for, and it went to PS9 to discuss a funding mechanism for non-utility-related infrastructure. And I remember us talking about it. Of course, it didn't come to a solution. I don't even know if it's still on the referral list. But I'm really glad that that's been brought up because, you know, I think at the time it was, we were really putting a lot of our hopes on the bipartisan infrastructure law and the funding that that could bring. Of course, that's not a funding, a recurring funding mechanism for us. But looking for opportunities like that, I think maybe it's time to get more aggressive with it because there is money out there for such things. The other thing I wanted to bring up, and this is more thinking about stormwater and flood mitigation. We often talk about the importance of green space and how that can contribute to not only the beautification of our city, but the resilience, right? And it just reminded me of an item that I actually have working its way through the Weeki Wachee Fund process right now, and that's the acquisition of a parcel of land that is on 4th Street South at 17th and 18th Avenue South, just north of Bartlett Park. Bartlett Park sustained a lot of flooding during Helene. And efforts like this to preserve more green space can help to mitigate that and reduce the harm from the storms. So, and I know that we've talked about, you know, potentially rolling that into a pump station project along with parks, and I know that can all be worked out if that's what's decided from conversations that I've had with Mike and with Brej. So, at this point, and I just thought it might be a good time to bring it up, that there are actually things that we can do right now to start. And sometimes it's a lot of these things that look little, but you put them all together and they can make a big difference. So, right now, the item has gone through BF&T, and it has been on the referral list for a committee of the whole meeting. The property is still for sale, but they do have an interested buyer, and, you know, it could be gone tomorrow. So, I wonder if there is an interest. I know that you all know that the Weeki Wachee process is long, and since we've already had some discussions about it in committee, this shouldn't take very long. It's a pretty straightforward item. And so, our next committee of the whole meeting is next Thursday. I wonder if we could, you know, make a statement about what we're willing to do and go ahead and take that up on that agenda next week to discuss it. So, I just wanted to throw that idea out there. I'll make a formal request right here and now. I can follow up. But I do hope that this is something we could move to the next level because that won't even be the last stop. We'll still have to do the city council meetings to finalize that. But, yeah, I just wanted to say that while we're in the sunshine. And while I'm thinking about it, I would love to be able to move forward with that. I think it would also show the people of Bartlett Park that we care and that we're doing something that benefits them, too. Thank you. We can certainly try and get prepared by next week if council wants to have that discussion, council member. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Seeing no further requests to speak, thank you so much, Claude, for that. And, Council Member Gavard, since you brought this item, I want to let you close it out if there's anything that you want to say. Okay, we're good. There's nothing for us to vote on on this. And hopefully our residents understand a lot of what we're going through. And we are, I have almost 410. I'm going to recess to 420. Council Members, I'll see you at 420. I'll recess to 420. Y'all, two of me, and she said, let me start. But, hey, you're welcome back. Okay. Calling city council meeting back into order. And we are now going to recess city council and convene as CRA. And we'll now take up item CRA2. And joining us is our Economic Development Manager, Mr. George Smith, who also has a presentation. Very good. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Council Members. Do I have a presentation? We are bringing forward for your consideration a request that you approve a resolution adopting the First Amendment to the Declaration of Restrictions regarding Citrus Grove Apartments. Citrus Grove was built in 1971 and was previously named Bethel Community Heights. It is a northern gateway to 16th Street South with John Hopkins Middle and Campbell Park Recreation Center. It's comprised of 84 units, 11 of which are one-bedroom units. We have 27 two-bedroom units. We have 25 three-bedroom units and 21 four-bedroom units. All units are restricted to households with annual income of less than 60% AMI. These are project-based vouchers. And the maximum rent is 30% of the household income. In 19-2022, South St. Petersburg CRA provided $1.4 million to the Foundation for Affordable Housing Citrus Grove LLC to fund the cost of renovations to the complex. The Foundation wishes to transfer Citrus Grove Apartments by sale to Citrus Grove Preservation Limited. This organization will further rehabilitate the apartments and assume the responsibilities regarding the Declaration of Restrictions. All the renovations that we funded have been completed, which includes replacement of all windows, replacement of roofs on all buildings, to paint and power wash all the buildings. There's a wall that was demolished that surrounded the complex, installation of new fencing around the complex, including gates and access control. It's also installed new lighting and signage, and a new asphalt parking lot has been installed. You can see the approximate location, again, it's directly across the street from John Hopkins Middle School and Campbell Park Recreation Center. We are asking that you approve the recommendation, and the City Council also approves the resolution adopting the First Amendment to the Declaration of Restrictions regarding Citrus Grove Apartments. We can state that all the restrictions that were in the original agreement still remain intact, which includes affordability to the year of 2062. If you have any questions, we're available to answer them. Move approval. Second. Councilman Bedriscoll. Thank you. There's already been so much great progress with Citrus Grove Apartments, and I appreciate all that was done by the original group. Having had some good conversations with the new folks, I'm confident that the improvements to Citrus Grove Apartments will continue as we move forward. This is something that's important to the Campbell Park neighborhood and important to many people out in the community, including me. I'm very happy to see this moving forward. Thank you. Councilmember Floyd. Thank you. I appreciate the presentation, but unless I'm missing something, I don't know that it was covered exactly what the amendments are, so if you could speak to that a little bit. I mean, I've read, but I'd love to hear. I'd be glad to. The only amendment is changing the ownership, so we are moving our Declaration of Restrictions to a different owner. That's the only change. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I was reading that, and it wasn't jumping right out at me, so thank you for clearing that out there. Okay. Thank you. CRA2, having been properly motioned and seconded, clerk, can you please open the machine for voting for CRA2? Councilmembers, cast your votes. Seeing that all present councilmembers have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, motion to approve with your item. CRA2 passes unanimously. Thank you. We're going to also move to item CRA3. Mr. Smith, that is you as well. That is correct. Thank you, Madam Chair. We do have another presentation, and this is something that I would consider a good news item, if you will. We're bringing forward to you, requesting that the agency recommend and the City Council approves an amendment to the Affordable Single Family Homeownership Sub-Program, which is our Rapid Roof Replacement Program. In 2018, the Affordable Single Family Homeownership Program was created, which encompasses down payment and closing cost assistance to first-time homebuyers, rehab assistance to owner-occupied properties, barrier-free mitigations, homebuyer education, credit counseling, and foreclosure assistance. It is restricted and limited to those households whose income is 140% and below AMI. All of our housing programs are administered by the Housing and Community Development Department. The Rapid Roof Replacement Sub-Program was approved as a program on July 11, 2024. This particular program is in partnership with the Foundation for a Healthy St. Pete. It encompasses the replacement of roofs and any repair of damage to the ceiling, soffit, fascia, and walls that was caused by roof leaks. The properties with active roof code violations were the primary properties that this program was focused on. What we are requesting is that we also add any properties that experience roof damage from Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. The maximum award amount is $20,000. It is limited to households whose income is at 120% AMI, owner-occupied residential units only, and is a forgivable loan. And that means that the residents must remain in the house at least five years once the work has been done. The 120% AMI is identified and highlighted on this chart, give you some sense of the household incomes that this program is restricted to. In our original program that we brought to you, these were the residences that had active code violation cases with the city. We have not yet determined what the number of households that experience roof damage from the hurricanes, and that information will be coming forth very soon. So we are requesting that you all recommend and the city council approves an amendment to the affordable single-family homeownership sub-program, the rapid roof replacement program, available for any questions that you may have. Council Member Gabbard. Thank you. And, George, thank you for the presentation. Just one quick question. Maybe it was in here and I missed it. But how does this work for individuals who also have insurance? Or do we see that typically people who would be applying for this program don't have insurance? And we anticipate that many of them will not have insurance. Okay. But they will have to go through the same normal process. And, again, housing is working through finalizing who those are who applied and who would qualify. And they will do the underwriting and the processing of those. But they will have to go through the process to determine whether they have insurance as well as FEMA assistance as well. Yeah, and I think that's my only concern. I'm very supportive of the program. My only concern is, once again, as we continue to talk, limitations on our resources, trying to meet the need for as many people as possible, and that sensitivity around duplication of benefits. So just making sure that the people that we are helping, we've already verified they don't have insurance at all. Or maybe they have insurance, but they have a high deductible, and now they need to cover the deductible portion. So just wasn't sure how that would work to make sure that we can stretch our money as far as possible. Yes, and that is part of the process. Okay, good, good. All right, very good. Well, I'll go ahead and move approval. Second. Thank you. Seeing that we have a motion, it's been properly seconded for CRA3. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please cast your votes. Seeing that all federal council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, a motion to approve agenda item CRA3 passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Council members. So now we will adjourn as the CRA, and we will reconvene as city council. And before we move into item F4, Council Member Driscoll, I just wanted to let you know that we've scheduled January 23rd for that. So, administration, would that be okay for Council? I'm sorry, which date, Chair? For Council Member Driscoll's request, January 23rd for that, Cal? That's fine for us. Okay, okay, January 23rd. Thank you. All right, thank you so much. I appreciate that. Now we're going to continue with our reports. F4, and joining us still is Mr. George Smith for a resolution adopting the First Amendment for the Declaration. Move approval. All right. Well, second. I got to say we need a second. Fourth choice. Okay, so we have a motion and a second on item F4. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, cast your votes. Seeing that all present Council Members have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, motion to approve Gen Item F4 passes unanimously. Thank you. Moving on to Report Item F5, which is the resolution approving it, the approving the amendments to the South St. PCRA Rapid Roof Replacement Program. Move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council Members, please cast your votes. Seeing that all present Council Members have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, motion to approve the Gen Item F5 passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Now we're going to move on to Item F6, the Stadium Bond Series. And joining us is our Assistant City Administrator Tom Green and our Debt Financing Director Ann Pritz. And there are two parts, A and B, that we will vote on together. And joining us is the Mayor, Kenneth T. Welch. How are you, Mayor? I am doing well, Madam Chair, Council Members of the community. Thank you all for being here. Before I turn it over to Tom and Ann, I just wanted to give you just a real quick update, Madam Chair. Since your last meeting on November 21st, we've continued our discussions with all of our partners, including the County Commission, the Heinz Group, and the Rays Group, including a meeting with Owner Stu Sterberg and his leadership team, along with myself and our leadership team here at City Hall on Tuesday. I want to let you know that there is consensus that the agreements that you all approved in July is valid and in effect, using the wording from the Rays. And while significant issues do remain with regard to the Rays Stadium obligations, the discussions were productive and our options are becoming clearer. However, what has not changed is our belief that the best path forward and the path that best positions the city for any future decision by the Rays is to move forward with these bond resolutions so that we are prepared to fulfill our obligations as a partner in this development. With that, Madam Chair and Council, I want to thank you for considering this item today and certainly respectfully ask for your approval of these bonds. Second. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. We do have public comment. Can you go ahead and... The first two speakers is Ron Diner and Michelle Dyson. Go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes to address Council. Hello. I'm Ron Diner. I live on Brightwaters Boulevard in St. Petersburg, and I'm here opposed to the bond vote. I want to make several comments. First, no wonder the public does not trust the government. Look at how few people are here. The vote on the bonds was added to yesterday in a last-minute decision. As a result, the public isn't here, and how can the public trust what's going on when they aren't given a chance to participate? Two, you don't need to... You don't borrow money when your partner says that you're counting on says that we're out. How many ways, as Brian Ault said, this deal does not work? So when your partner is out, don't borrow the money. Three, it seems that the city and the city council are being played by the Rays. Who's giving you advice as to what you should be doing? The Rays know the city is hurting, but what do they do when asked, are you in or you're out? They don't answer the question. Why can't you get good advice and focus on the facts? They don't want to do the stadium deal, but they do want to keep track, keep hold of the 64 acres, and buy it for 10 cents on the dollar. Four, there are zero reasons to borrow funds now. You don't have to vote now. Again, if you ask the million-dollar attorneys that the city's been paying for to see what they say, I don't think they would say you have to do that. Five, since the Rays are out, why aren't you focusing on all the infrastructure matters which were discussed earlier today? Three, the report that I saw shows that we have $5 billion worth of these needs to stop flooding so we can use our toilets and run our water, and so that the costs of these things are not going to be on the backs of the people who can't afford it through increased utilities. Fine. Six, a fair deal is what the city needs. I understand we've talked to the Rays, but I'm not sure I don't understand why at this point in time we aren't talking to them about a fair deal, a new deal, a deal that's going to save us $1.6 billion, which is the total cost of the city, and then we have the money to focus on infrastructure. We have the money to focus on housing. We have the money to focus on the commitment to the black community. The people in St. Pete deserve better. And P.S., we're at the Rays. Hi, my name is Michelle Dyson. I spoke before. I'm a little nervous, but I wrote that I was a proud employee of the concessions company at the Tampa Bay Rays, but actually we all got our termination letters today before we came here today. So I want to start by thanking each of you for putting every effort into getting this deal done, a deal that we've already committed to. I know many of you may have your minds made up, but I hope you're still willing to listen. I'm here to remind each of you that every time you vote, your decisions have a direct impact on people's lives, no matter the topic, please never forget that. So I'm here in the support of the new Rays Baseball Stadium and the impact it has on this community. Many people, I'm sure, including most of you, have attended a Rays game, but you may have never realized how many people it takes to create the game day experience. Did you know that every game at 3 a.m., Mr. Irvin Whitehead comes to the stadium to pop the popcorn? Just like many people, Mr. Irvin grew up right here in St. Pete. Did you know that he's never missed a game? Well, until now, Mr. Irvin started there, like many others, volunteering. The stadium helps many nonprofit organizations. The work created gives NPO groups like Rock Salad and Sand opportunities they may not have. It relieves the financial burden off of people from the community. The kids can play sports, cheer, and dance. Tournaments and competitions can cost families thousands of dollars they would not be able to afford for their kids. I'm sure you're familiar with the James B. Sanderlin Neighborhood Family Center. They are also another huge nonprofit that works at the stadium. The money raised goes directly to the center, which continues its great work in the community. These are just a couple of organizations that depend on the money they earn at the stadium. I can only imagine how much money they would earn at a new stadium. Just like the NPO groups, the stadium will also do its part of giving back to the community. The community needs the stadium. Many people speak about the hate for corporate greed. It takes wealthy people to invest in our communities. They create jobs and generate opportunity for all. They give back to their communities. They move their families here. They become invested. You can hate the Rays, hate the Rowdies, hates do all you want, but what they brought and invested in our community speaks volumes. I am a direct recipient of this generosity. I thank the Rays for investing in St. Pete. So today is the day. Let's agree to tear the trap down immediately and begin to build the future of St. Pete. Leave the egos at the door. Don't come in here with a no set in your mind. Listen to the constituents. The majority of you, as you may be surprised, want to keep the Rays. Show the county commissioners we support the deal. Each of your bios mention fighting for people. Then show us. Vote yes on the stadium bonds for working class people like me. Thank you. Next two speakers. The last two speakers is Stephen Morrison and Nicholas Carey. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes to address counsel. Greetings, counsel. My name is Stephen Morrison, and I live at 151 7th Street South in St. Petersburg. I'm speaking in support of approval of the bonds. Investments. In St. Pete, we have a world-class park system along with the St. Pete Pier. These are public amenities that enhance our quality of life and help form our city's identity. They produce little to no direct revenue for the city at significant costs. They are investments that make St. Pete unique in one of the great little cities in the USA. Do all of you remember the divisiveness of the St. Pete Pier before it was built? I do. Many said it was wasteful and unnecessary spending and criticized the design. But our city pursued the vision and built it, and now it's the absolute gem of our waterfront park system. In 2022, the St. Pete Pier was one of only six winners of the Urban Land Institute's Global Awards of Excellence. The other winners that year were in New York City, China, Singapore, France, and Poland. The Pier showcased St. Pete as a world-class city on the move. A new multi-use stadium and Major League Baseball team are also public amenities that enhance our quality of life and help form our city's identity. But much more than an amenity, the Rays are an essential and valued community member made up of people, our neighbors and friends who contribute daily to our city. And unlike our park system and the Pier, the Rays, a new multi-use stadium, and equitable redevelopment of the historic gas plant district would produce significant streams of revenue and function as huge economic and social drivers over time. Truly a world-class city on the move. St. Pete's identity. Who are we as a city? Are we a city who lacks the vision to keep its Major League Baseball team and valued community member? A city who makes deals and then goes back on its word? Or are we a city who invests in our future in partnership with the county and the Rays, not only preserving Major League Baseball on Tampa Bay, but creating one of the largest, most dynamic, and most equitable developments in the entire country, honoring commitments? Today's vote is not about the deal. That vote was in July. Today's vote is about the city honoring the commitments we've already made. Think about the message the city will be sending to Fortune 500 companies who might consider relocating here, to our residents, business owners, and other stakeholders. Will our city send the message, our deals mean nothing, our word is no good, or will our city honor its commitments and stand as a trustworthy partner? I ask for your vote today to approve these bonds, honor the deal we've already made, and continue our journey as a visionary, world-class city. Thank you for your service. Nick Carey, 10th Street North. I've been here a bunch of times. I know that most of you know I'm not a big fan of this deal, but I also acknowledge that the deal was approved back in July, and so I don't want to relitigate anything about the current deal as it is. What just concerns me the most is how quickly the Rays have shown themselves to be bad partners. It's not exactly inspiring to hear that even behind closed doors with the administration, they're not able to give any more assurance other than the deal is still in effect. We all know why the deal is still in effect, because there's 65 acres at play that the Rays don't want to give up. What's amazing to me is that they've managed to do the work of convincing a lot of people that somehow the city or the county has failed to meet their obligations, when in fact it's the Rays who have come out and said the deal is dead. And so nothing seems to have changed from the last two weeks, and so I see no rush into approving bonds without any sort of assurances from the Rays. The city is never going to have any more leverage than it has right now. As we continue with the development and the construction process, we continue to lose leverage when they come back and ask for more money with a half-built stadium, a half-developed gas plant district. Eventually, we might be forced to approve the bonds, but as has been stated by numerous lawyers, we're under no such obligation to do that today. I think it would benefit to have more community involvement beyond just 24 hours' notice. The Rays are using every bit of leverage that they have, and that's really all I'm asking, is for the city to use all the leverage that we have to hold the Rays accountable to a deal that they approved not even three months ago and are already running back for more money. So I'm just asking you, even if you want this deal to happen, don't move forward. Don't commit the city to funds that the Rays have not even committed themselves to to begin with. And in fact, all public statements have said that they're going to need to rework this deal. I appreciate the mayor's comments a couple weeks ago saying that the city is not going to give the Rays money. I really, really hope that you stand firm in that agreement. Do you need any more cards? Madam Chair, no more speakers. Ms. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you, and thanks to all who took the time to come and speak today, as well as those who have emailed, stopped me at Publix, and yelled at me during the Santa parade. You got that, too? Yeah, oh, yeah. It was positive. And that matters. I mean, we've been listening for the last couple of weeks, just like we have been since this project was first announced, and we started working through the details. The details of the project, the terms of the agreement are not what we are deciding today. That's already been decided. Today it's about the funding. And we did commit, when we agreed to the terms of the agreement, that we would do our part to provide this chunk of the funding. So that's not what we're trying to figure out at this point. At our last meeting, I asked that we take a step back, because things had gotten really heated, you know, back and forth between the Rays and the county. And there was a moment of uncertainty. And I'm sure that many of you in the audience have faced really big decisions before and gotten right up to the edge and felt a little bit of uncertainty and thought maybe you needed to stop and just take a breath. And that's what I asked us to do at the last meeting. I feel pretty satisfied with what has happened since then. We wanted to find out, were the Rays on the verge of sending a termination letter? Turns out that they weren't. They're still in. And so am I. Vice Chair Gerdes, at the last meeting, spoke about the city leading on this. And by taking this vote today, we have an opportunity to do that. And so I look forward to doing my part on this. And today I urge the county to next do their part and join us to see this through. And to Michelle, I am very sorry for all that you have gone through during this time. And you have really shown us that the type of community that the Tampa Bay Rays has created in our area, it's not just outside of the walls of the stadium or inside the ballpark, but it's within the team of employees that make it all happen for us every time we go to catch a game. And I'm certain that once we move forward, and I'm confident that we will, that you are going to continue to be part of the great tradition that is baseball in St. Petersburg. So again, I thank everyone who has spoken up, spoken up and spoken out. And I know that we are probably not at the end of a little bit of a bumpy path, but we are buckled in and ready to go. Thank you. Council Member Hanowins. Thank you, Chair. Well, the Rays aren't here. We are about to approve, because I can count the votes, hundreds of millions of dollars, and they don't even show up. Don't know why. Based on our last meeting, there were conversations about termination letter. Are there still ongoing conversations, Rob, regarding a termination letter with the Rays? You know, I would say the conversation this week didn't focus on that. It focused more on the funding gap that they perceive and, you know, how we might be able to assist with that. And, you know, folks like the Chamber of Commerce could assist with that, with looking at our partners for maybe sleeve sponsorship rights or naming sponsorship rights or maybe other ways in the private sector that they can work on this gap. And that's what the discussions have focused on recently. What is their funding gap? The specific exact number I don't have. So, I mean, what I'm gathering is obviously there's no indication that the Rays have changed their position. Since the last meeting, they still have the gap. They have clearly defined where they see this deal based on that gap in funding and have been consistent in their position since their first letter to the county commission where they state that the ability for delivery of a 2028 ballpark has ended and they cannot absorb any more costs, which, by the way, was a material term of the agreement. That was material. And then we have the latest letter that they sent to county commissioners, which was sent November 29th. And if you read through the letter, their comments throughout the letter, they first start off with disputing a conversation with a county commissioner. The next paragraph talks about inaccurate comments made and how they clarify all that. The third paragraph talks about how when it comes to honoring the spirit of the new ballpark agreements, it is Pinellas County and not the Rays that fall short. So it's everyone else's fault. Mind you that there is nothing in the agreement that's written that required them to have the vote then and nothing that requires any of us to approve bonds. Why? Because you can't do that. You cannot find a future city council or a county commission. You just can't. You can't do that and you can't find any boards. And they know that and everybody should know that. And they enter the agreement knowing that. So none of this is shocking. And by the way, it wasn't a simple administrative action that they were seeking with approval of bonds. This is not a simple administrative action. They were looking for a penalty provision when they were negotiating to make sure that somehow, if it didn't go their way, they can get money and the penalty applied. If it was a simple administrative action, that wouldn't happen. And then they go on in their letter talking about as a technical matter, there are longer outside dates in the agreement. Well, not a technical matter. They're actually in the agreement. But then they go on to say they have made it clear that the viability of the project depended on having certainty about the project's approval and funding prior to the 2024 November elections. Well, you know how they can make it clear? They could have had it in the contract. They just didn't. That's not in the contract. So all this stuff, it would be helpful if they had it in the contract. They don't. They say in their letter that they have fulfilled their obligations. I haven't seen any evidence that they have fulfilled their obligations. Very conclusory. So when partners are communicating via letters such as the ones that we have seen, it's not an indication of a good partnership. When our partners are not here, it's not an indication of a good relationship. There's no commitment to move forward. There's no clarity as to what will happen with all the agreements between the parties. And this is how a 30-year relationship is supposedly beginning. This is how we're starting. They have asserted that they have no, they do not have the financial capacity to execute the terms of the agreement. This is before anything's built. This is from the get-go. They don't have the financial capacity. It would have helped if we would have had financial statements so we can verify this, but we don't. We haven't even got into the building stage. They are supposed to stand behind their commitments to pay for cost overages, including due to unforeseen circumstances. And they said that they're not. This is all due to the raise. This started with a letter from the raise. Not the county, not the city. It started with their letter saying this. There is no requirement to approve bonds. I don't want to go and repeat all the things I said at the last meeting. But, look, they can terminate whenever they want to terminate the agreement. It's not clear how this is going to work out. But the fact that there is no clarity, I just cannot see how we can approve hundreds of millions of dollars on bonds when we see that they're not even here, and these are the letters that they're sending out. Two partners. And if it's the county now, it's the city later. We're not far behind. Thank you. Chair, if I could, just for the record, just so people know and, you know, for the sake of people's reputations, the raise did offer to come today. I told them that I didn't think it was necessary that the mayor and I and Tom could answer questions, and so I just want the public to know that. Well, and to Rob, I actually spoke to them yesterday, and I asked Matt Silverman whether or not he was coming, and he wasn't sure. And he told me that he would get back to me after they made a decision, and they decided not to. So that was based on my conversation yesterday. But I did ask him. Councilmember Muhammad. Thank you, Madam Chair. And Councilmember Hanowitz really lifted up a lot of the things that I had as thoughts about this as well. I love the framing of the position and where we are that was given by Ash, I think, Alonza, the woman who talked about the bad relationship dynamics that we're in, and I think it's absolutely on point and spot on. And then as a girl dad, it just kind of started running in my mind like, oh, yeah, I was trying to tell you about this partnership when I first met this guy. But now we're here to the point about not litigating the contract, rehashing the contract, understanding where we are. But the fear that we would be somewhere like this was part of the reason why I didn't support that contract in the first place, but it's here. So they're responsible for cost overruns, and they're saying that they can't do it alone. In your conversations with them, Rob, what exactly does that mean? Like when they say they can't do that alone, what are they saying? Yeah, I mean, I think that maybe there's been some semantics and some mixed messages, you know, along the way. But I think the gist of what they've been trying to say is that they've experienced cost increases, you know, that is higher than what they had originally planned for their portion of the stadium, and they're looking for ways to fill that gap. And, you know, like I said before, we're willing to try and work with private partners, try and make introductions to help them. But as the mayor clearly stated, we cannot financially make up that gap for them. Right. And that was one of the selling points, right? It was like it was presented like this is a great thing. We're not responsible for cost overruns. All of that's on them. And before the courtship's even over, before we start to make payments for the wedding, they're saying we can't do it. But then that's contractual, right? But then they're saying the contract still applies. Is that what we mean when we say there's a lack of clarity? You know, no, I don't think so. I mean, I— But what do we mean when we say there's a lack of clarity? I think that there's a definition of cost overruns in the agreement. I think the definition of the agreement is extremely clear about what a cost overrun is. They can certainly read that and understand that. When I was talking about semantics and mixed messages, the deal's dead. Well, the deal's dead in 28, maybe not 29. You know, there could be some other alternative funding sources that might make this work. So that's what I was referencing. Okay. And then I made a statement last time we met, and you emphatically said it was not true. Is that still the case? Yes, I think the point that you made was you said something to the effect of this was bass-ackwards about dealing with the roof repair. And you indicated that we had not had conversations with the Rays about the roof repair prior to the meetings, and I stated that that was factually incorrect. Okay. Thank you for that. And another topic, not on this particular topic, about the roof repairs, but thank you for that. The last question that I have is, which stadium code, or STADCO, would they qualify for a lot under the Affordable Lot Disposition Program, as amended this afternoon? Well, STADCO, I mean, I would have to research that. I don't believe STADCO would. I think the Hines-raised development, you know, Hines could potentially qualify, you know, to build an affordable home, just like any other developer might build an affordable home. Thank you. All right. I think it's kind of clear. And the other thing, too, I just wanted to say that it came up, again, the last conversation that we were having, that some of us who didn't support the original agreement, it was almost like a foregone conclusion that we would not be supporting, or I, since I speak for myself, as one of those who were a no vote, would automatically vote against anything related to this deal. And I just wanted to say it publicly, that that's not the case. I've supported and defended the, you know, mitigation efforts and those types of contractual obligations. But where we are right now, it's just unfortunate, because, in my opinion, I think it's showing us how bad this deal is for the city, how our hands are being forced, and we're being pushed into these positions based upon what's in the agreement. And I continue to have that position, and it's just unfortunate that we're here. But we are, and I don't want to pay for a wedding at this time. So thank you, Madam Chair. Council Member Gabbert. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I do just want to, because it's been brought up by members of the public, legal, is there any concern about the fact that this came onto ads and deletes so quickly, and the public feels as though they were blindsided by that? Is there any legal concerns about that as part of our process? Not from a legal standpoint, no. Okay. And we have before done these things with other items that are not public hearing items. So there's a precedent that has been set for there are times that this has to happen, correct? Correct. Okay. I just wanted to make sure, I just wanted that to be very clear, that we are not in any sort of violation of our policies and procedures. I think that's very clear, because there is so much doubt and confusion around this. I did not want the doubt and confusion to continue over our process. So I'm just going to be real clear. It's not a surprise I voted in favor of the agreement. I thought it was a good deal for our city then for the numerous reasons that we hashed out in committee meetings and negotiations and behind the scenes. And I don't think that changes because of a hurricane. And I know there was a lot said that we can't rebuild our city and move forward with this development hand in hand. And I just think that that is a very short-sighted way of looking at the future of our city. And, you know, the district that I represent was highly affected by the hurricane. Yet I have not had one resident, when I am out in the community working with those residents, say to me, help me with resources here, but don't build a stadium over here. I'm not hearing that. In fact, last night at community meetings, I heard people saying to me, are you still going to build the stadium? Do you think there's a chance to still build the stadium and still redevelop the gas plant? People are looking for hope. And I heard the word vision. People are looking for that in our city right now. And we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Yes, resources are limited, but that should not change the fact that we have a city that is on the cusp of greatness when it comes to how we move forward, and this development is a piece of that. Now, what happened at our last meeting, I wanted us to go ahead and vote then. Vote it yes, vote it no, just vote. Because what is the purpose in continuing to delay this? Continuing to delay, continuing to delay, it doesn't get us anywhere closer to resolution. We have a lot of questions about what's going to happen. What's going to happen with the county? What's going to happen with the raise? Well, we're never going to know if we don't know what happens with the money that we need to commit. I'm ready today, and like I said, it's no shock to anybody who knows my position on this, but we need to move this forward because, quite frankly, I think we're calling their bluff by doing so. So, we put it out there, we're in, we're a partner in this, hopefully the county will follow suit, and then it'll be up to the raise to decide. It'll be up to them to decide. It'll be up to them to go back to their partners, go back and find other funding. And then when they can't perform, it'll be up to them to come back and say they can't. So, I am very glad that this came back today. Thank you, Mayor, for bringing it back. Thank you for the one-on-one that we had. And to, you know, the point of where are the raise? Quite frankly, I told the mayor in my conversation with him, I didn't want to see the raise here today. I just, the spectacle of it all, I feel like is unnecessary. We have business to do, and the business to do today is to approve the bonds, move this forward, and do what we said we were going to do. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, thank you. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. I'm not going to get in the weeds. We've talked about this enough. I'm just going to briefly state the same opinions that I've had this whole time for the public and for everyone here listening. City shouldn't give $500 million over 30 years to subsidize the corporation. We're going to lose money on this project over 30 years. If you want to argue or speculate about what happens after that, that's sure, go ahead. But then, you know, over 30 years, the money coming in is not going to equal the money going out. And we can create more jobs, do a better economic development, and create better quality of life for our residents by protecting our public wealth and not giving it to corporations. I'll stop there, and I'll say that I really do appreciate the administration's process recently. I know this has been something tricky to deal with. I really appreciate you, Mayor, saying last meeting that you're not going to give them any more and looking at them and telling them to honor their agreement. That meant a lot to me, you know, just because I disagree doesn't mean I can't acknowledge where you all are coming from. I hope that that remains the case. I'll be upset if it doesn't. Administrator Gerdes, you said you talked to them about helping them overcome their perceived funding gap. Love the word perceived there. What I'll say is, is, like, what I, I hope that I heard that you're talking about, go find it in the private sector, don't come ask for us for it. And I, that includes, like, I don't want to hear, oh, the city's buying the naming rights to the stadium we paid. I don't want to hear anything like that. I'm just putting that out there. I think that's what I heard from you. It is. Okay. All right. So, I appreciate it, but, you know, this is not what I said I was going to do when I ran for office. This is not what my MO is. This is not how I believe economic development should take place. I understand there's a different view to that, but I'm where I'm at and where I've always been and where I'll always be. So, thank you. Thank you. So, it's been motioned and we have a second, but I am going to close out with a statement or two, and it's no secret. Everyone knows I'm an NBA fan, and it wasn't the raise that was my advocacy for this particular deal. And I've had the conversation, and when I was asked, could we add this to the agenda, my stance was, as long as we are adding this to the agenda to discuss the bonds that we originally agreed to move forward with. Now, when someone stands before me and says, the development deal is dead, unless we are having a Lazarus moment, sound like to me it was dead, right? And so, to have it come back put me in a different position in some of my thoughts. But what did not change was the commitment that the mayor's administration, that the council members that wanted to see this move forward, the things that are going to come with this. I have partnered with the Rays long before I was on city council, and it wasn't just about baseball. I have children that learned about gardens. I learned, I have children that learned how to do archery, how to play chess. There are several of us in here that have problems with this deal, whose organizations have benefited from a whole lot of Rays, generosity, and donation. There's more to it for me than just baseball. And my whole concept of this is moving forward, acknowledging what it is. Talk about leverage. This is leverage. This is leverage. We're upholding our part of the bargain. This is what we're doing. We said we were going to do this. We're doing it. Now, what you got? Where are you going with this? I couldn't agree with Mr. Carey more about some of the pieces of this, but I've never, never shied away from that. I want us to not forget that everybody that left the gas plant didn't mind leaving. I do not want us to forget that so many of the gas plant ancestors, they supported this deal. Without this, we would lose the legacy garden that reminds us of all of those plots that are still under those parking lots. Let us not forget those people that are still buried there. Without this, yes, I'm going to say a museum. I want a museum that's in a prime area that celebrates the history and the heritage and the development of this city. Those are some things that we have worked so hard for for so, so many years. And if nothing else, the events that we've had at the TROP that we've sold out, there is possibilities for revenue to be generated from this. So, again, I appreciate everybody's feedback on this because we can't all think the same. We're not all going to feel the same. We're not all going to receive it the same because, for me, it was the benefits. But for us moving forward with this, because I wanted to move forward with it last time as well, Council Member Gabbard, because I wanted the city to be in the best place to say, we honored our deal. We did this. Now, what do you have? And I appreciate the mayor about No More Money because they asked me about that too. And my thing was, now, we're not coming up with anything else, are we? Because that's not in the plan. So, again, I want us to make sure that we are steadfast with our commitment to this. But I see it so much more than just a baseball team. I see it so much more that we are going to – what really scared me was, you're right, those 60 acres and the benefits, and losing those that we have worked so many years for, so hard for. But I do appreciate everybody's perspective on this and all of the opinions on this. And I must admit, I'm like you, Council Member Gabbard. Everywhere I go, people are like, what do you think? You think we're going to do it? You think we're going to get it? I've gotten more pros than I have cons, just to be transparent. And also, just to be transparent, when I was also asked, as chair, I couldn't tell anybody not to come to a council meeting, and I wouldn't. And I wouldn't. Did I think it was relevant? Not with what we needed to discuss. Because I did not want it to be a go-back, forward, forward, back, go-forward. I didn't want that to be the focus of the commitment that we've made as a council. So, no, I wasn't going to tell anyone not to come. Couldn't do that and wouldn't do that. Because everybody has the opportunity, and they should have the opportunity to have their questions answered. So, with that, we have been properly motioned, and it has been seconded. We're both voting on F6, A and V together. Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Now that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, a motion to approve of June 9 of F6, A and V, passes 4 to 3, with council members Floyd, Hannah Witts, and Mohamed voting no. Council members Driscoll, Fick, Sanders, Gabbard, and Gerdes voting yes. Thank you. So, now we're going to go ahead and recess this city council and convene again as the CRA. And we're going to now take up CRA 4, the resolution for the St. Pete, approving the form and joining us. Oh, okay. Tom Green and Anne Fritz. And, Madam Chair, this is a very brief report. We had done this at the last council meeting. The CRA action item basically formalizes the agreement between the clarifying. Chair, I'm sorry. Hold on. Hold on. Could the administration ask the city attorney to clarify the motion? Was it A, B, and C bonds? No, just that. Just, it was resolutions A and B. It covered all of the bonds. Got it. Okay. Just wanted to make sure we had it all. Yep. Well, right now I'm looking at A and B. So, what are we? We're good. Oh, we're good? Okay. That was good. Hold on, Tom. Let us clear the chambers. All right. Thank you, Mr. Green. Yes, ma'am. Tom, you cleared the room. Yeah, right. Do I offend? Okay, Mr. Green. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, council. Council, this resolution by the CRA is a simple form to document the relationship between the CRA and the city with respect to payment of the bonds. As you know, part of the repayment plan is tax increment revenue generated within the in-town TIF district. And this just appropriately documents that official relationship. It also talks about some of the other outstanding debt that the CRA is paying to the city. And it helps us to stay in compliance with financial reporting and things like that. And we're certainly here to are able to answer any questions that council may have. Move approval. Second. Council, move a Floyd. Thanks. I was just going to say something for the public, but they left. So, I'll state it for, yeah, so I'll state it, you know, anybody else watching, like, I don't support the CRA anymore at all. Not even a little bit. I think it's bad. I think it's keeping money downtown that should be spread to the rest of our city. Thank you. Thank you. It's been motioned and properly seconded. Can you please vote for CRA4? Seeing all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item CRA4 passes 4 to 3 with Councilmembers Floyd, Hedowitz, and Muhammad voting no. Councilmembers Driscoll, Fick, Sanders, Gabbard, and Gerdes voting yes. Thank you. So, now we will adjourn the CRA and we will reconvene as city council. And we will now move on to open forum. Do we have any other cards? Madam Chair, we do not have any speakers. Or in Zoom. No Zoom. So, we, well, y'all, we're here. We're here. And, you know, and I think that if anybody have any announcements, no announcements. Okay. Well, with us having no announcements, we're here. We officially adjourn. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you.