City Council - Dec 11, 2025

Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1 and Council Chair, Copley Gerdes, District 2, Brandi Gabbard, District 3, Mike Harding, District 4 and Council Vice Chair, Lisette Kanowitz, District 5, Deborah Figg Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, Corey Givens, Jr. and District 8, Richie Floyd. Welcome to the December 11, 2025 City Council Meeting. If we could do a roll call, please clear. Kanowitz? Here. Sanders? Here. Driscoll? Here. Givens? Here. Floyd? Gerdes? Here. Gabbard? Here. Harding? Here. Okay, thank you. Today we will have our invocation given by former Council Member Charlie Gerdes, my dad. And then please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Will you please join me in standing? Almighty God, creator of everything, seen and unseen, father of all people, first, we rightly raise our voice in praise, honor, adoration for your unending mercy and unconditional love for us, your undeserving sons and daughters. We are grateful beyond expression and words for the paradise that you have created and gifted to us to call our home. And we are equally grateful for the legacy of stewards of this place we call home that have jealously protected its beauty and bounty for those of us who now are the heirs of your blessings, including these stewards who are now entrusted to preserve and protect the new destinies and dreams that are born and fulfilled here. We pray unceasingly that these stewards will elevate and honor the value and dignity of each person individually and to advance their common desires for purpose and fulfillment of passions. We ask you, heavenly guardian of creation, to send your Holy Spirit and your Archangel Michael to place our love and admiration upon the hearts and minds of all those who have sworn to save us and protect us. The police, the police, the fire and rescue, first responders, doctors and nurses, and to all their families for their sacrifices. Please also speak our love and appreciation into the ears and minds of those that dedicate their labor, talents and intellects in the service of our city and her people each day and night for the good of all of us. Lastly, Father of the servant king, we pray for delivery of the Holy Spirit's gifts of wisdom, counsel, fortitude, devotion, wonder, and compassion to be refreshed and renewed in the nine elected servant leaders among us today and by those whom their service will be most meaningful and material. In this season of expectant joy for the celebration of the birth of the redeemer that opened the gates of paradise for us, we pray that the peace of Emmanuel will fill and possess the hearts, homes, and families of each of these servants who carry the trust of our collective hopes and dreams in their earthly care. We pray for all of this in the name of your beloved son, our savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please be seated. Dad, thank you. Love you. Love you too. Love all of you. Love you. I have to live up to that. He's amazing. Okay, council members. We have an agenda in front of us with the deletion of E1. I'll entertain a motion for approval. Second. We have a motion and a second on the agenda. Seeing as no other council members wishing to speak, clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Mr. Chair, the motion to pass the agenda approves unanimously. Okay, thank you. Now we've got consent agenda. Clerk, I believe we have a card? We do, sir. Okay, if we could call. Representative Lindsay Cross, please go to the podium, state your name and address for the record. We only have three minutes to address council. Welcome, Representative Cross. Good afternoon. It's wonderful to be here with all of you. Chair Gerdes, Vice Chair Hanowitz, and members of the council. I'm honored to be here to support an item on your agenda for our state and local investment and our resiliency. You know, a year ago, we were in a very different position going into the holidays knowing that hundreds of our residents would not be spending the holidays in their homes because of the severe impacts of hurricanes. Helene and Milton, also Debbie earlier that year, and it still is something that touches all of us very deeply, and I know we're committed to their full recovery. We saw what residents of neighborhoods like Shore Acres and Riviera Bay experienced in Shore Acres, upwards of 82% of the homes flooded in that neighborhood. And with that low-lying elevation, its position in Tampa Bay, the chronic flooding in Shore Acres is a serious threat that demands action. And so I'm here today to commend you on taking action because this project and the broader resiliency plans that you're implementing and we'll hear about today represents a necessary investment in protecting our community. The grant that you'll be addressing is vital in implementing stronger flood protection measures, particularly as we see sea level rise, higher tides, and intense rain events. The planning behind these projects prioritizes resiliency, reduced flooding, improved insurance rates, we all want that, and stronger public access and safety. And it also reaffirms that our leadership is focused on the future, and that these initiatives are essential to building a safer and more resilient Shore Acres in a stronger St. Petersburg. Our residents and businesses are counting on city leaders to provide safer conditions and to give them peace of mind. And really keeping our community members safe is one of the core functions of government. This truly is a commitment to them. So I want to thank you for your investment in our neighborhoods and for making progress on strategic stormwater and flooding initiatives. I was really grateful and honored to be able to work last year in the legislature with Senator Nick DeSiglie in securing a $1 million appropriation and advocating for increased resiliency in our region. And as always, you as city council members, our mayor, we're exceptional partners in helping to identify the most urgent needs for our community and ensuring that the voices of our residents guided the process from start to finish. As a state legislator, so much of what I do depends on the people around me, and that's why I'm proud to have such committed partners at the local level. This project is a very important step forward. I'm excited to continue strengthening our community and building a more resilient St. Pete for our current and our future generations. So thank you for the opportunity to address you, and I wish all of you a wonderful holiday season. Thank you. Okay. We have somebody in Zoom. Okay. Thank you. Garrett Marple. I'm going to bring you into the meeting space. Please, please unmute yourself, state your name and address for the record, and you'll have three minutes to address city council. Excellent. Thank you so much. Garrett Marple, 4021 38th Avenue North. I just wanted to say that I'm extremely happy to see the extension of the MLK North protected bike lanes on the agenda today. I work with an activism group for safe streets and transportation called Activate St. Pete, and I wanted to say on behalf of them, just thank you to city council and city staff for continuing to support bike and pet improvements around the city. We are eternally grateful for this. We've been pushing for this for over a year now, and I'm so happy to see it get this far, and I wanted to just, you know, say, like, let's get this across the finish line, and let's get more of these. We need about, you know, 50 more of these all across the city, and this is a great, great first step. So thank you to everyone involved, and let's keep going. Let's do more. Okay. Thank you. All right. Council members, we have a consent agenda. Move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second. Before we vote, Representative Cross, I just wanted to quickly thank you for being here. Thank you for your continued partnership in the state legislature. You know we love you, and so just thank you for everything you're doing. And, council members, after we vote on consent agenda, we're going to take a quick picture. Council member Harding, because this project is in his district, is going to go down and take a picture with Representative Cross, and we're all going to stand up here just real quickly. Okay. We have a motion and a second on the consent agenda, seeing as no other council members wishing to speak. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Mr. Chair, the motion to approve the consent agenda passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you. Council members, if you'll join me in the center to take a quick picture. Yes. Will you unhook so she can up there? There we go. Love a big check. He's talking about the check. There we go. All good? All right, council members, one more. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. We are going to move into open forum. Clerk, could you please read the rules? If you wish to address city council on subjects other than public hearing or quasi-judicial items listed on the agenda, please sign up with the clerk. Only the individuals wishing to speak may sign the open forum sheet. Only city residents, owners of property, business owners in the city, or their employees may speak. All issues discussed under open forum must be limited to issues related to the city of St. Petersburg government. If you're speaking to an item on the agenda, you may only speak once, during the open forum or when the item comes up on the agenda. In order to provide an opportunity for all citizens to address council, each individual will be given three minutes to speak, and after which the microphone will be muted. If you wish to address city council through the Zoom meeting, you must use the 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 in use, normal rules apply, including the three-minute time limit on comments. The requirement that any presentation materials must be submitted in advance of the meeting and the rules of decorum. If live public comment is disrupted by the violations of the rules of decorum, the chair is authorized to accept public comments by alternate means, including by email only. And, Mr. Chair, we have two speakers. Okay. Ron Diner and Mark Glover, please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes to address council. Go ahead. I'm Ron Diner, and I live on Snell Isle. Over the past week, we've both received dozens of comments. Mr. Diner, could you please give us your cross streets? I'm sorry? Could you please give us your cross streets? Your address. Your address. I have to give my full address? I'd like at least your cross streets, please. The bright waters, and I can't tell you what the cross street is. I just don't know what it is. Waters Boulevard. You don't know what the cross street is? No. Neighborhood. All right. Thank you. Over the past week, we've both received dozens of messages from residents about the gas plant. I also polled the subscribers to Home Runs Matter, and 70% said planning must come first. People simply do not understand why the city is rushing into a proposal-first process where developers design our future before the city and the community even create a plan, and it could cost us a billion dollars. I want to read a letter we both received. It reflects what many longtime residents are thinking. These are the writer's words, not mine. I have lived in St. Pete since 1959. I love the city. In that time, the city government has made some good decisions and some poor ones. I've never complained until now. I am very concerned that the mayor is leading the city into what may end up destroying the greatest opportunity this city will ever have to create a unique centerpiece. For the record, I supported this mayor in his last campaign with my vote and a significant financial contribution, so I have no personal animus toward him. But I can't imagine any city that would not like to have 86 acres in its town center to improve life for its citizens. Hopefully, we wouldn't even build a park without planning. Yet, instead of planning and presenting a plan to developers, we're asking developers to tell us what they think we need. No business would ever operate this way, let alone a city. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. St. Petersburg cannot afford to get it wrong. Giving developers 30 or 90 days is not the right way to go. What's hard to understand is the sudden change at this time. We lost baseball in March, heard nothing about it, until an unsolicited proposal arrived, and suddenly we opened this up for bids. Baseball will be here for the next three years. We have plenty of time to plan. None of us know why the mayor is pushing this at lightning speed, but it's hard to ignore that he's entering a contested election this year. Let's hope that's not the reason. The city needs to step back and take the time to get this right. First, council members, whether you agree with every sentiment in this letter or not, the public does not understand the rush, and when people don't understand the process, trust breaks down. That's exactly why planning must come first. I'm asking you to do what you were elected to do. Protect the long-term interests of the city. This moment requires curvage. There are two steps that will restore public trust and put St. Pete on the right path. First, make it clear publicly and now that you will not support any proposal that comes from a proposal's first process. And two, insist publicly and now on a real planning process with national experts and community advisory council. And make it clear there will be no developers until the plan and the framework are set. You have the authority, the responsibility, and the public's trust. Please use it. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Mark Glover. That podium will raise at the little switch near your hip. Yep. I'm that short? I didn't say it. All right. Good afternoon. Happy holidays to everyone. Thank you so much for having the opportunity to speak. My name is Mark Glover, and I represent Aligned Strategies and Partnerships. We work with the city. Will you give us your address, please? Our address is 121 South Orange Avenue, Orlando, Florida 32801, but we represent the Housing Authority for St. Petersburg, and we work with them currently. Thank you. Okay? Thank you. I've come to this council about a year ago, almost to date, and at that time I shared with you all some options in terms of being able to make sure that this city received the appropriate review for the private insurance recovery options that are still available, but that window is closing rapidly. We did have a conversation with your risk manager, Blaise Missoula, to offer assistance in evaluating the city's private insurance recovery. I followed up again most recently about and reviewed the current documents that were publicly available. And I'm here today because what is publicly available appears that the city has received approximately $13.93 million in insurance proceeds for all the damages that are city-owned and property. And while I recognize that this city has also received FEMA and Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Funds, FEMA basically, those programs come with strict restrictions, and they cannot replace or substitute the comprehensive recovery under the private insurance policies. When we compare the publicly reported damages across the city facilities to the insurance proceeds received, there appears to be a large gap. In my professional experience, you know, the gaps of this size usually indicate supplemental claims may still be an opportunity for outstanding additional documentation that will be required to secure the full value of the losses. This brings me to the time-sensitive concern. Under Florida Statute 627.7013, any supplemental insurance claims, meaning updated expert reports, comprehensive damage documentation, revised valuations, or additional evidence of loss, must be submitted within an 18-month date of the loss, which will take us to about April 9th, 2026. This deadline is critical. After it expires, the ability to seek additional insurance proceeds narrows substantially. My purpose today is to simply ask that the city of St. Pete does not leave money on the table. I see that you're basically looking at grant options, and the state rep is here to support that, and we support that as well. But we would like an opportunity to partner with you to at least take a solid look at what is available for the city of St. Petersburg as a result of the hurricane challenges that you all received last year. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chair, no other speakers. Okay. Thank you. We'll go ahead and close open forum, and we're going to move into awards and presentations. We're going to start with D1, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Zeta Oop Salon. I said that right, didn't I? Omega Chapter Day Proclamation given by Council Member Fig Sanders. I got it right. I made sure. Oop Salon. I'd say it over and over again, too. If I were at you, you'd be right here. So that was a wonderful attempt, Chair. So say with me, Alpha, Hapa, Alpha Sorority, Inc., Zeta Oop Salon, Omega. How y'all doing? You know I have to give you a hard time your last council meeting. Now she done. You know I have to give you. Y'all, this is his last council meeting. So with that being said, I have to give my chair a hard time because this is his last council meeting, and he's done a phenomenal job. So before I get started, y'all, please. So thank you for that. It brings me great honor to stand here and read the proclamation for our mayor in regards to a service organization that I have been a member of for 36 years, and I want to salute the ladies of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Sheila Jackson Lee. Felicia Rashad, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Kamala Harris, Coretta Scott King, May Jemison, Rosa Parks, are some of our notable members of the sorority. Now they just messed up my whole intro. Y'all didn't hear me call them, did you? But what I want to do is I want to, um, Janae, come here, please. Now this is our president. This is Janae Skipper. We have to keep camera-ready pose. Okay. I can do that. Yeah. So I'm going to read this proclamation in regards to the ladies of AKA because it has been an honor for me to be a part of the sorority because we really do, and we are the oldest Greek sorority of African-American college-educated women, and we just cannot be more proud to accept this proclamation from the mayor. So the proclamation reads, whereas in 1908, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated was founded for and by college-educated African-American women at Howard University to serve others through the arts, education, health, family, and scholarship. And whereas for 117 years and with 390,000 members in 1105 chapters, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated blazes new trails with the theme soaring to greater heights of service and sisterhood and maintains a progressive interest in serving all mankind through a nucleus of committed and service-minded women in the United States, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. And whereas our local chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, Zeta Upsilon Omega chapter was chartered on December 15, 1955, and maintains an ongoing commitment to our city through youth development, mentoring, education through scholarships, service projects, and charitable donations to community organizations. And whereas the members of the Zeta Upsilon Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated have embodied America's premier Greek letter organization for African-American women for 70 years in our great city of St. Petersburg, Florida. And whereas the city of St. Petersburg takes great pride in recognizing the Zeta Upsilon Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated efforts to make a lasting impact in lives of women, children, and families in our community. Now, therefore, I, Councilmember Deborah Fick Sanders, on behalf of our Mayor, Kenneth T. Welch, do hereby proclaim Monday, December 15, 2025, as Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, Zeta Upsilon Omega chapter day. Yay! So I'm going to ask our president to come and say a few words. Thank you very much, Councilmember Fick Sanders. In the absence of our mayor, Mayor Kenneth T. Welch, and to the city council members, the Zeta Upsilon Omega chapter here in St. Petersburg would like to thank you for this special recognition. As indicated, we were founded on the campus of Howard University. And 70 years ago, on December 15, 1955, the Zeta Upsilon Omega chapter began serving the citizens of St. St. Petersburg by impacting our community through service and sisterhood. And today, we continue the legacy of our 15 charter members. In 1998, we established our Youth Development Foundation of Pinellas County Incorporated. And today, we are happy to announce that we have graduated more than 1,000 high school seniors from our program and honored to say our donations have far exceeded a half a million dollars to this community through our charitable donations, donations, service projects, and educational scholarships to date, much of which could not be done without the support of the city of St. Petersburg. And I'd like to add, we've been providing essential services before the term ever became popular. We will culminate this year's charter events with a celebration reflecting 70 years of service and sisterhood on Sunday, December the 14th, at the University of South Florida Activity Center, which we are very proud. Again, to our great mayor and the city council members, it is an honor to accept this distinguished recognition. Thank you for your support. Don't go anywhere yet. Council Member Givens. Thank you so much. I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize these pretty ladies in pink and green. To my divine nine sisters, you know, I thank you so much for your service to not just the St. Petersburg community for 70 years, but globally, 117 years, since 1908. I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize the legacy of your trailblazing charter members, great women like Ruby Weissinger, Lena Brown, I see the senator here, his mother, Vivian Roussan. You know, these were women who, you know, cared enough about their community to establish an organization that long after college, that's the beauty of the NPHC, long after college, our service to our community has continued. And so I thank you all so much for blazing trails that future generations have followed, my sisters in AKA, my aunts. So, again, I see it all around me. I see you all doing the great work that you're doing, and I just want to say that we commend you and keep on keeping on. You all are supreme in service, so congratulations. Thank you for that. Thank you so much. Congratulations, Council Member Vic Sanders. Thank you for bringing that forward on behalf of the mayor. Okay, we're going to go to E, or excuse me, D2 for the 100th anniversary of the St. Pete Theater, and we've got Vice Chair Hanowitz bringing us this proclamation. Thank you, Chair, so much, and for those that are here for the St. Petersburg City Theater, can you come and join me over here, please? Celeste. So I'm honored to present this proclamation on behalf of the mayor, who unfortunately could not be here with us today, to an institution who has been in the city for 100 years and is an integral part of our community. And I'm going to be sharing a little bit of their history when I read the proclamation. Thank you. It turned out that one of their members is also my neighbor, I just found out today, which is great. Whereas there has always been something special about the city of St. Petersburg, among many things, it's a place where art and culture come alive, given birth to various expressions of performing arts and theater. And whereas St. Petersburg City Theater began in 1925 with the formation of the Sunshine Players, sponsored by the Women's Club as a play-reading group, offering opportunities to perform and encouraging freedom of expression by staging works by local writers. And whereas incorporated as a nonprofit in 1937, the city of St. Petersburg gave the theater exclusive use of the name St. Petersburg Little Theater as a community joined the Little Theater movement of the 1930s. And whereas after decades performing downtown in the Old Grist Mill and Mirror Lake Junior High, the theater raised enough funds through the sale of debenture bonds to members in the community to purchase 3.2 acres of land and build the current theater building at 4025 31st Street South, dedicated and open to the community on September 21st, 1958. And whereas for a hundred years, this community theater, currently known as St. Petersburg City Theater, has been a definite part of the civic and social life of our community that provides an opportunity for self-expression, growth, and goodwill through the arts of the theater, welcoming, without barrier, all members and agents of the community. Now, therefore, I, Vice Chair, Lisette Hanowitz, on behalf of Kenneth T. Welch, Mayor of the City of St. Petersburg, do hereby recognize the 100th anniversary of the St. Petersburg City Theater throughout this city and encourage St. Petersburg residents to commend and celebrate the members, volunteers, and supporters of our community theater. Thank you all. Thank you, City Council members, for this incredible recognition. There are certain milestones when one starts thinking about legacy, but the thing is the legacy can start with nothing more than a single spark, a glimmer of inspiration and a mission fueled by the party, the power of a group of passionate people working together towards a common vision. In 1925, a group of only 20 St. Pete citizens came together for a community theater club called the Sunshine Players, and the little theater movement grew in 1933 when we became the St. Petersburg Little Theater and again later for St. Petersburg City Theater. A legacy is built by adapting to the changing world around it. Through the years, there have been ups and downs, trials and tribulations, war, financial crises, and just last year, a hurricane literally ripping the roof off over our heads. But through it all, we've persevered. A legacy is sustained by cherishing the human beings at the heart of what we do. For us, a production is just the art. It's a vessel and an incredibly compelling one, but just a vehicle. It's the people inside, whether they are 9 or 90 years old. We are a theater wholly dedicated to the people inside, being a gathering place by the community and for the community. A second home for some, a chosen family for others, a place to find meaning or purpose where all are welcome. I found St. Pete City Theater when I was 13 years old, stayed shy, and it propelled me on a trajectory that led to the rest of my life's vocation. We invest in the people at SPCT, and that's why we're here and why we'll continue to do what we do and fight for the odds to keep our doors open. Because a legacy looks around to identify the small decisions it can make today that will impact our tomorrows. Because our choices today affect the future we leave behind and pass on to the next generation. Those 20 citizens in 1925 could barely imagine our little theater would still be here today to accept this proclamation. But they and all of the countless members that served this community over the last 100 years left an inheritance for thousands of citizens of St. Petersburg, including myself. On behalf of all of us at St. Petersburg City Theater, past, present, and future, thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Givens. Thank you so much, Chair. I just want to congratulate each and every one of you. You know, like you, I, too, was a benefactor of the St. Pete Theater. You know, Chair makes this joke about some people being theater kids. I was one of those theater kids. I was never athletically inclined. But I was a lover of the arts. And I knew my forte, and I stayed there. Okay? But I think about that legacy. Those 20 citizens 100 years ago, they did not know the legacy that they were imparting on future generations. And so I thank God for being a part of that legacy. And a lot of people don't know this, y'all. Hollywood actress Angela Bassett got her start on that stage 50 years ago. So I think we got some future Oscar winners that are coming up on that stage right now. So keep doing what you're doing. Congrats. Well, first of all, thank you for everything you do in the community. I joke about it because I was one, too. And fun fact, I've known this family right here since Stephanie was maybe born. And my eighth-grade talent show, I was on stage with her brother singing Cats in the Cradle. And so thank you for everything you do. Thank you for the continued investment of time, talent, treasure into the St. Pete Little Theater. I've seen, I don't know, dozens of shows there. It's one of my favorite places. And like I said downstairs, I'm so thankful for the investment and the whole spectrum of ages of our community for a place to go and feel like home and become who you are and be who you are. And it's just an amazing, it's an amazing, amazing feeling just being a part of it, right? It doesn't even have to be. There's lots of people that aren't on the stage that help, that are just, they're doing their thing, too. And so I'm just so thankful and very, very happy to celebrate. So congratulations. Okay, council members, we're going to move into new ordinances. And we are going to move into E2. Could you please read the title? It's ordinance number 631-H, an ordinance of the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, amending city code, chapter 16, land development regulations to revise the city's planning procedures to conform with the requirements of Florida statute, chapter 177, as amended by Florida State Senate Bill 784-2025, amending provisions related to variance authority, preliminary plat application, review and appeal procedures, and final plat application, review and appeals procedures, amending the discussion, the decisions and appeals table to reflect changes to review and approval authority in preliminary and final plat review, providing for severability and providing for an effective date. We do not have any cards in the public hearing for this item is January the 8th. Move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second on E2. Seeing as no other council members wishing to speak, clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Mr. Chair, the motion to approve agenda item E2 passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you. All right. We're going to move into our report items. We're going to go to F1, a presentation on teen arts, sports, and cultural opportunities, our TASCO update. And this was requested by Vice Chair Hanowitz. So I'm going to turn it over to her before we go to Mike Jeffries. Thank you, Chair. I thought it would be a good time to give an update on what TASCO teen programs do for our city and for our youth. It's been a very long time. And I know a lot of the work that they do throughout the city. I've been fortunate enough to have their offices there at Crescent Lake Park in my district. And it is amazing the work that they do with what they have. So I'm going to turn it over to their fearless leader to share with us all the great and exciting things that are happening at TASCO teen programs. Thank you so much. Thank you for that intro. And thank you for the time to go over TASCO. So I think it's one of those things that has been around for so long that sometimes we forget that, you know, everybody in the community may not be fully aware of what we have going on. I will start off with a funny story. There was a council member who sat on the dais who, during one of our committee meetings, scolded me and said, I really think the Parks and Rec Department should be more like TASCO. And I had to tell that council member that's good news. TASCO is just a division in the Parks and Rec Department. So they had done such a good job of branding themselves that this council member really thought that it was a nonprofit or an external organization. So I still joke about that. I think that was sort of a funny moment in TASCO history. TASCO stands for Teen, Art, Sports, Cultural Opportunities. We learned early on that every child connects differently with the community that they live in. And TASCO really is that vehicle to make those connections. TASCO serves middle and high school youth citywide with a focus on leadership, economic growth, and technology enrichment, and safe recreation. Our core principles really boil down to four. We've got inspiring creativity, teamwork, and leadership, building essential life and workforce skills, strengthening community connections through service and civic engagement, and providing safe, structured spaces during OST, out-of-school time. One of the things that we're most proud of with TASCO is that it really ensures equitable access for every child in our community because it's free. The child care, we decided many years ago that the care that we provide through TASCO, through our grants that we get through the Juvenile Welfare Board, fantastic partners that we have, that we would not charge any child, middle school child, high school child, to participate in the TASCO child care. And I think that's important, as we all know, that really is a transitional time in a teen's life, and we did not want a family member to not want to or not be able to invest in that child care. Rick's moving my slides to keep me moving. After the YFS presentation, he wants to keep me going. So TASCO really has two different channels. The first channel that we'll talk about is what we call Citywide TASCO, and that really is the division that focuses on technology programming, special events, teen sports. We really look to unite teens from across the city in all areas, including youth leadership, academic motivation, and positive peer socialization, which I think is key. We've got the Center for Teen Technology. That's the facility that Councilmember Hanowitz has right there in her park at Crescent Lake. And it's funny, because the community wasn't 100% in favor of that facility being there. We met with them. We really had to convince them that we would be good neighbors. And I think that we've kept those promises. And now I think we would have a real challenge if we tried to move the Center for Teen Technology out of Crescent Lake. So definitely a great partnership there as well. The Center for Teen Technology, we have programs that include multiple different aspects. We've got fall, spring digital media and engineering classes. We've got robotics. We've got coding, 3D printing, video production. We've got something called Level Up Game Nights to support social development. We have a 10-week summer tech camp focused on Steam and digital media. Basically, the premise for the Teen Technology Center is to really focus on future-ready workforce skills and to expose teens to emerging technologies. One of the things that we decided early on when we were working with this division of TASCO, we wanted the children, the teens that were in this program to be using state-of-the-art computers and technology and software. We wanted somebody to be able to be hired directly out of our program and be using computers and software that the industry was using. So many times I think we're aware of programs, municipal programs, nonprofit programs that get hand-me-down computers, old software, and that really doesn't equate to a workforce development. And with council's support and the mayor's support, we were able to really invest in this program so that we have state-of-the-art technology. Next, we have our TASCO Citywide. Actually, I'm on the wrong page. We've got our Citywide events. So, again, this is some of the most popular youth teen events that we have in the city. I have a listing here. I won't go through all of them. I'll just touch on some of the bigger ones. Obviously, we've got dances. We've got the Field of Screams, which are just fantastic. We've got summer extreme events, mud wars, game extravaganzas. We've got the Fort DeSoto Beach Bash, which I like to share with people is important because we've got some children, some teens in our programs that if they were not in TASCO, they would never experience the beach. They would never go out to Fort DeSoto. And so we're able to take them in a safe manner, let them enjoy that natural resource that we have, and really experience something that they may not have an opportunity to experience. We also do cultural programming, which include our annual Black History event and our Hispanic Heritage celebrations that we have. So lots going on in that area. Next, we have our TASCO Teen Sports Leagues. And again, we realize that, you know, there are some kids that will connect with us through sports, and we find that we have a lot of high schoolers that connect here. If they're not playing on the teams at their high school, then we are able to offer them programs through the sports leagues. During the fall, we have dodgeball. We've got flag football during the fall and winter. During the winter and spring, we do volleyball. And then we have summer basketball as well. These leagues really support physical wellness, teamwork, and all that fits into the methodology, maintaining consistent team programs, attendance, and engagement. And we'll talk more about the methodology when we get to the Juvenile Welfare Board slide. The next channel of TASCO that we have is center-based. And again, this is really, I can boil it down very simply, this is a trusted adult at every one of our rec centers. Every one of our rec centers has a teen center that teens can come up, they can hang out, they are there for out-of-school time. We serve over 1,400 teens in FY25. We have these programs at 11 of our rec centers. These programs are designed around the needs of each community. So the teen supervisor we have there typically comes from the community in which they're serving. So they're able to connect. You know, Councilmember Givens and I had a meeting yesterday where we were meeting with an adult who is now successfully running a nonprofit who worked with Pola, who is our teen supervisor at Child's Park. And to see that kind of go full cycle really is quite amazing. But I think that's the important part, that we have the right supervisor, the right trusted adult. Because let's face it, middle schoolers and high schoolers go through some transitional scary things. And if you feel like you can't talk to your parents because they're not cool and we've all been there, then we've got somebody at the rec center that you can confide in and talk to and give, you know, get good advice from. All right. We've got programs that are designed around the support systems for teens at our at-risk households. And otherwise, without these programs, they would be unsupervised at home. And that's one of the things that we try to avoid. On this slide, we have our fiscal overview and growth. I cannot say enough about the support that we get from the Juvenile Welfare Board. While they don't fund all of the TASCO program, they certainly provide the funding for this child care element. They provide us just over $3.7 million to run these programs for both the center-based and the city-wide programs that we just discussed. Again, we talked about the methodology. The methodology is important, and I know each of you will really connect with this. We have to annually update our methodology with the Juvenile Welfare Board. We have to tell them about our deliverables. We have to tell them what we are going to accomplish with the funding they provide. At the Youth and Family Services Committee, I provided you all a report card for FY23 and FY24. I think you can see from that report card that we're killing it. As far as the deliverables, the Juvenile Welfare Board has consistently reached out and told us that, you know, our audits, we have had 100% financial accuracy in all of our audits and our file reviews, and I can tell you that it's not a – that's a heavy lift. We have staff that work very hard. When you're talking about $3.7 million, there are a lot of T's to cross and a lot of I's to dot, and the staff does a fantastic job of that. And the Juvenile Welfare Board constantly praises us with our efficiencies. We also have very minimal lapse of funds, meaning that we're really able to kind of navigate the grant and make sure that we're giving the kids exactly what they need. All right, next we've got some examples of our OST, out-of-school time. We offer before school, after school, summer. We also offer care during the school out days. Some of the core components that we're really proud of would be our homework assistance, tutoring, academic goal tracking. We also offer sports, recreation, and enrichment. One of the things that we just started, and I mentioned it at YFS, is the Friday Night Flex, which is super exciting. That's part of this program as well. We're opening several rec centers that are geographically spread out throughout the city. This is a year-round program. We're opening those centers on a Friday night and just kind of allowing free recreational pickup in the basketball, on the basketball courts, volleyball, whatever the kids want to do. We've got something to keep them occupied and to avoid idle hands. We also do a ton of community service projects. We offer technology access to try to conquer the digital divide. We work on digital skill development. Another great partnership. We have with the Pinellas County School Systems. They help us and provide us buses. They charge us direct costs for those. We also use city vans, which allow us to move the teens around so they can experience more of our city. The TASCO program offers a safe, supportive, and structured environment. As most of us know, that's absolutely critical in the world that we live today. Economic enrichment and overlay programs. This is a very exciting program. I think most of you know that we subscribe to a philosophy called disguised learning so that, again, we know that every child learns a little differently. Some learn in a formal setting. Some learn better in a rec center. And so what we do is we hire education specialists and behavior specialists to help us navigate this. If you're at, and I'll use Walter Fuller as an example, if you're a teen who's going to Azalea and then you go to the TASCO program at Walter Fuller, chances are highly likely that we've hired the teacher that assigned you that project and they're going to be at the rec center tutoring you on that project that they assigned. One of the things that we really hope and desire for our teens is that they do have an unfair advantage. We want to make sure that the teachers that are assigning the projects, the quizzes, the tests, they're right there after hours with the kids and kind of poking, saying, hey, you may want to study this a little harder or this one, this might be something you want to know about. So that has been really, really successful and really helpful. I can't tell you the number of calls that we've had that have come in from parents that have said, we don't know what you're doing, but you've changed the trajectory of my child. The grades are improved, and we're super excited. We also have behavior specialists, and you probably know one of our behavior specialists, former council member Steve Cornell. He works with us and helps us when we have a situation where we have a child who is navigating scary waters or experiencing something they've not experienced before. We have that behavior specialist that can come in and really kind of help guide. So we've got two of those, and they're just absolutely fantastic. In our overlay program for economic enrichment, we focus on STEAM, job skill development, leadership, teamwork, financial wellness. We work with credit unions. We work with you name it. We'll partner with anyone to kind of connect those dots. Next, we have community safety and service, and this one is something that we're excited about. So we work with the Juvenile Welfare Board, and we provide swim lessons for some of the children in our program. All in all, you guys have heard this number before. We served just over 4,500 swim lessons last fiscal year, which we're super proud of. And the Juvenile Welfare Board has funded a handful of those to kind of keep that moving in the right direction. Last year, we had over 130 community service activities that the teams participated in. We have partnerships with Healthy St. Pete, More to Life, Credit Unions, St. Petersburg College, our fantastic partners in PD and FIRE, and many, many local nonprofits. Again, I think when we talk about police, we talk about FIRE, if we can have a relationship with our teens before an emergency happens, before an interaction happens, that badge is less scary, and there's a trust there. And we really find that that kind of helps bridge some of the gaps that may exist. Next, I want to talk a little bit about teen councils and youth employment. We have teen councils at each and every one of our rec centers. Each of the rec centers gets the kids who are really kind of interested in civics, if you will. From that group, we find a handful, two or three, from each center. And those individuals become part of the Mayor's Youth Congress, which actively engages the teen council members, and it gives them a chance to see how city government works. They take on community leadership roles, provide the mayor with youth-driven input on issues affecting young people. They help us with budget input. They're really exciting. It's pretty neat to talk to middle schoolers and high schoolers and ask them what direction they think the city should go. We've, in the past, we've asked them about the design for the pier. We've asked them about the raise. And it's really interesting to get some of their input. We also, as far as youth employment, and again, this is through the Juvenile Welfare Board as well, we have 27 paid rec attendants. These are helpers to some of our youth development workers. These are from ages 15 to 19. We want to make sure you're in high school if you're in this program. What we find, and I'm reminded, each year council does a management study. Several years back, there was a management study on TASCO. And the firm that came in and went through all of our records and talked to all of our participants, family members, they really summarized it by saying TASCO has the secret sauce. And I'll never forget that as long as I live because it made me laugh, but I really think it's true. We have folks, we have teens that are in our program. They start out and they go into our TASCO program. They get into this rec attendant program. They then get hired full time. They then become career employees. And we've got many of those folks that are working with us now. So, again, TASCO has something for everyone. I would be remiss if I didn't thank this group for all of your support. Each and every one of you has been tremendously supportive of TASCO. And each and every one of you knows that it is a division of the Parks and Rec Department, so I don't have to educate you on that. But, again, when we come to you with needs or even requests to have you participate in programs or events, you guys are all on board. We have 100% participation from this group and just cannot thank you all enough. So, happy to entertain any questions. I would like to introduce a couple of people. To my right, we have Rick Craft, who's the assistant director over the rec side of the house. Wow. And then standing next to me here, we've got Lynn Gordon, who is our manager over the citywide TASCO components, so leagues, field of screams, all of those good stuff. And then also to my right, give her a round of applause. And then also to my right, we have Rob Lovelace, who is the manager over all rec centers, and so he oversees the center-based TASCO components. So, happy to entertain any questions you might have. Thank you. All right, we'll go to Vice Chair Hanowitz. Thank you, and Mike, of course, thank you for a fantastic presentation. It's always very thorough. Clearly, you and Rick and your team do have the secret sauce and have figured it out. And by the way, the last photo in that slide, if you can go back to that real quickly. Real quick. That group right there, those people every day, day in and day out, they're fantastic. They really are. I've seen them at work, in the office, and I will tell you the welcoming environment that you feel in there. And like you said, teens can be a challenge. I've raised one. I have one turning 11 and entering that era. And even for parents now, it's even more challenging because you have phones and you have all these other things that you have to deal with. And your group has found ways to get them off the phone and do other things. And that is what we need in society so we can have productive young youth in our community. And so, the last time I went, I will say that they do the 3D printer. And it was just amazing, the work that they were doing with the 3D printer and like the widgets and all these different things. And this is our city that is providing this. And I thought it was just fantastic. So, I wanted to make sure that we shared that with the community. I also want to give a shout out to Juvenile Welfare Board for their support, for all of you that don't know. So, I mean, if you pay taxes in the city of St. Petersburg or in Pinellas, part of that goes to the Juvenile Welfare Board. It's a line item on your property tax bill. And we all pay for that. And it's almost about a mil. And some of that money is coming back to us through like the teen programs. And without that, it would be very difficult not to be able to support a lot of these programs. We would not be able to do this without the Juvenile Welfare Board or the Pinellas County School System. Our partnership with those two groups, we partner with a lot of people. But those two are outstanding partners that really believe in what we stand for and really support us. So, you're 100% right. 25 years with JWB. That's amazing. And, you know, the other day I was talking. I'm a mentor to a young teen girl. I've been her mentor since she was in elementary school. And I followed her through the years. And, you know, it's like what is it that teens, like what are the activities that they do nowadays, right? What is it that keeps them busy? And this is the type of stuff that they should be doing out there and getting out off their phones and off their tablets and doing that type of activity. And I'd love to see more of that. So, I thank you for sharing that. And you always have my support. Thank you. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. I really just put myself on here to say thank you for the presentation. We come across TASCO in a million different ways, like as council members. And to see it all laid out like this was, I feel very beneficial for myself and I'm sure others. So, I really appreciate it. And after I put myself on here, I got a note from my aide, Courtney, who wanted to say she was a TASCO kid and that it was a great experience. And she wants me to praise the TASCO to City Hall Pipeline. So, I appreciate the work. She actually, she'll catch me off guard every once in a while. I was at Shore Acres when Courtney was in elementary school. And she'll still call me Coach Mike every once in a while. And it's like, whoa, that's a blast for the past. So, yes. That's great. Yeah. No, I really enjoyed it. You know, I grew up in a different city in Florida and I spent a lot of time at the rec centers and doing youth sports and whatnot. It's great to be able to get here and support that as well. So, I appreciate it. Thank you. Council Member Harding. Thank you, Chair. Mike, thank you very much. I think it's first important to recognize that this is not a part of every parks and rec system. This is not only something unique, but we have taken it to you and your team. We have taken it to a whole different level. And it's important for everyone listening to know that you're not following a playbook of how we run counties and cities. We are truly committed to doing things that are way above and beyond. And that is a big deal. To add to that big deal, I've worked with JWB. To work with them for one year is not hard. To get them to work with you for a second year is incredibly hard. That they are very serious about their standards and about crossing T's and dotting I's. And I have seen plenty of organizations that haven't been able to carry the torch for them. But for us to somehow garner their attention for 25 years is pretty incredible. So, I cannot say enough about you and your team. Do you want to quickly brag on the bigger department for your winnings last night? Oh, gosh. I didn't know you were going to put me on the spot. We're happy to announce that St. Pete Parks and Rec won a Good Burger Award last night. Huge surprise. Huge honor. The category is sustaining St. Petersburg. So, we're very appreciative. And, again, like you said, it's the entire team. Every staff member we have, they really enjoy giving back to this community. We work so others can play. And it starts in parks. I would be remiss if I didn't say that. Correct, thank you. I got you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Givens. Chair, and congratulations again to you, Mike, and the entire team. You started off with something that was very poignant. You said every child connects with their community differently. And I love the fact that TASCO is all-inclusive. I, too, Council Member Floyd, was a TASCO kid. I can remember Fearless Fridays at Roberts Rec Center. So, yes, thank you so much for the great memories of my childhood. But one of the things that I'm thinking about, and I'm a little jealous, Council Member Hanowitz, is this Center for Teen Technology. I would love to know how we can replicate that, Mike, at other centers throughout St. Pete, whether it be West St. Pete or South St. Pete. So, good news, part of Mayor Welch's design for Enoch is just that, is to have a Teen Technology Center baked into the Enoch Davis project just for exactly what you said. We want to share the love, and we want to make sure that we have those resources available across our city. Exciting. And I went on a tour recently of the, it's currently under renovation, the Jordan Park Gym. They are working on that. It's a partnership with St. Pete College. Can you speak a little bit to any partnerships that we may have with some of those institutions of higher learning that we have here in St. Pete? Because I know Dr. Williams has piloted a number of certifications that are really industry-leading. And I think the early exposure to our students here in Pinellas County Schools would be beneficial to them. So, I'm just wondering, is there an opportunity for our after-school care programs to really work with this new gym that they have? Because, to me, STEAM is their goal. Yeah, absolutely. So, there's definitely new opportunities, but I'll talk about what we've done in the past as well. So, we've partnered with USF, with St. Pete College. We also, and again, as Rick and I put this together and Lynn Gordon and her team put this presentation together, it's very difficult to cover everything that we do in a short period of time. But one of the things that we really do that the kids really love and has really made a big difference are our college visits. And so, we will take kids throughout the year on field trips to FAMU, UF, you name it. We'll take them to different colleges. And sometimes it's the first time that these children or anybody in their family really has ever stepped foot on a college or university property. And so, we're able to kind of have them meet with counselors, meet with, you know, peer teams at some of the universities and colleges. And it really creates a fire and it creates an interest that may not have been there. We, like I said, we will partner with anyone, especially during the summer. We have overlay programs where we have speakers that come from St. Pete College, from USF, to really kind of talk to our juniors, our seniors, some of the kids who are graduating, and just say, hey, what are your desires? Where are your pathways? I do want to say publicly that I don't think college is the only option for our youth. And so, we also have, you know, the Pinellas Technical School will come out and share some opportunities. And, like I shared with you earlier, we have staff that have come up through our programs that are now working full time and have a career with a pension, health care, and parks and rec. Frequently, they get stolen to other departments. That's why we say it starts in parks. But, exactly, we have Councilmember Harding started with us. Tom, Rob, I mean, the list goes on and on. So, but it's one of those things where we really do look for those opportunities to connect. And, like you said, we will not turn down a good partnership. We'll work with anybody. Thank you, Mike. And you kind of segued into something that I wanted to bring up next, which is employment opportunities. I love the fact that TASCO is doing that, providing pathways to career opportunities. You said it best. Not everybody is going to go to college, but everybody deserves a career that pulls them out of poverty. And I really would like to hone in specifically on employment opportunities for teens. Have we considered a possible peer-to-peer approach where we could pay these teens who are working for TASCO or participants in TASCO to get out there and to be peer coaches for their other peers who aren't already involved in these civic organizations or productive organizations like TASCO? That's really what we have going on now with the rec attendance. So, during the out-of-school times, the days that the school is not in session, we have them come in, we pay them, and then we specifically work on, you know, workforce education. And so, we have them work together. We have them do peer-to-peer, you know, skits and that sort of thing. I remember when Susie Ahock did a presentation on how not to dress to a job interview. You know, we do things like that on the out-of-school time scenarios. At the YFS presentation, I gave you all a number. I don't have that with me in front of me right now, but a large number of the employees that we hire are in this age group. So, like I said, for the rec attendance, we hire them at 15. While we only have 27 of those positions, those fill up very quickly. But when you've graduated high school and you're over 18, you're able to work in our rec centers as a youth development worker. And those, you know, we've got, I think we, over 200 employees. 260, we employ 260 employees that are under the age of 24, so from 15 to 24. That can be lifeguards, WSI, the list is long. So, yes, we are probably one of the larger employers of this age group. We also work very closely with the Bullies Program, and we hire a lot of those individuals as well. Again, not only giving them a job, but giving them that workforce development, that training, so that they can then be on the right path and the right trajectory. And the last thing I want to finish with is just a celebration. You had a really innovative, forward-thinking approach through your partnership with Pinellas County Schools by hiring classroom teachers, certified classroom teachers, to come in to tutor and provide homework assistance to our kids in our after-school care program. And that really has moved the needle forward in the right direction. So I thank you so much, again, for being forward-thinking and doing all we can to really provide that foundational support for our students who need it best. So thank you so much for all of your hard work, Mike, and thank you to the team. Thank you. Thank you so much. None of this works without council support. And again, even when we brought the joint use agreement together forward, you guys were all on board with that. And it's very exciting to bring new ideas because I know we'll be supported. Thank you. Council Member Fick Sanders. Thank you. I just want to say thank you. Trust me. Mine is going to be real short. Thank you, thank you, and thank you. And for all that you do, even before I was elected, we can pick up the phone, and Tasco really has always been phenomenal. But you have to always remember it starts from the top because you surrounded yourself with awesome people. You are open to innovative ideas. But more importantly, I salute you for what you do for our children. Instead of chastising, you celebrate. Instead of tormenting, you teach. You have connected with the youth of our city. A lot of areas, a lot of folk will not go. But you all have connected with our teens, our children of all ages. So for that, you know, I want to say thank you because it's, you know, they say it starts in parks and rec. But with that, I'm going to say that it also ends with success. And we thank you for that. Thanks, Mike. Thank you, Rick. We have an amazing team. I can't say enough about them. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Well, I was going to bring up Fearless Fridays. Council Member Givens stole my name drop. But I just, you know, I say it all the time. Listen, I grew up with parks and rec. Like, I am not where I am today without it. And that includes the Fearless Fridays, the gym opportunities, the rec sports, the just being able to be on a space. I mean, just like what we were talking about with St. Pete Theater early. Like, you find safety in your space that you feel comfortable in, right? And so I was lucky enough to find two. And I wouldn't be here without either of them. And the people, our employees are the best on the face of the planet. I know we all agree on that. I also, just because I was thinking about it, and frankly, Stephanie's dad, who was here from St. Pete, little St. Pete City Theater, he was my 10-year-old baseball coach. And so it's not just the employees, it's the volunteers that have to happen, too, right? It's the parents and the family members and the friends that give you the ride and are sitting at practice and doing all those things. It's such a community effort. It is amazing to see what happens at our rec centers, on our parks. It's absolutely incredible. And so when we get an update like this, you just go, and this is just one small part of it, right? It's just a piece of the pie. And so I'm just always so amazed about just the breadth of what's going on. And frankly, although it's disappointing that you hear a story about like Tasco needs to be more like Parks and Rec, it's also not that surprising because the department does so damn much. And so it's just incredible. And so I just, again, everybody has said thank you, but I'm just so proud of what is happening throughout the city, east, west, north, south, spread out at all of these different places, different opportunities to talk about art, to talk about steam, to play a sport, to be in a gym, right? Just to go be busy, to go be doing something else, just as a release. Maybe you just not need to be home, right? And so I'm just so thankful, man. And more than anything, I'm proud. And so thanks for the leadership of that to both of you guys, the whole team. Just thank you so much. And Vice Chair Hanowitz, thank you for the update. I always, I could hear about our Parks and Rec department all day long. So thanks so much, guys. Thank you guys again for your support. Thank you. Okay, we're going to move into F2 and a presentation on our Resilient St. Pete Action Plan. And before we jump into this with Maven, quickly, I just, I was on a Zoom a couple weeks ago for this, and I wanted to thank Council Member Gabbard for her involvement in that, and I know she participated. I was on the bench listening. Council Member Harding, I think, was doing the same with me. So we were keeping the bench warm there. And just wanted to say thank you for participating in that. And Maven, thanks for all the work that you're doing on this and excited to hear this update. Great, thank you. Yeah, yeah, Council Member Gabbard. Yeah, thank you. So, you know, I put the item on the agenda. Oh, I apologize. I didn't have that. That's my fault. That's okay. Wanted just to quickly give a quick announcement or a quick intro for it. So certainly it's my pleasure to bring this forward, this report item today, to announce the completion of the Resilient St. Pete Action Plan. I wanted just to kind of give a few words of thanks first, because this has been quite an undertaking to get to this point. So I'm going to start first by saying thanks to City Council. Not only did you approve the funding for this initiative, but I really wanted to say thanks to each and every one of you for your trust in me to champion this initiative. I also want to say a thanks to the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, who are here with us today, for their partnership and their leadership in the climate-resilience space for the entire Tampa Bay region. Our city team and the professionals at Jacobs, who are also here with us today, I want to thank you all for your hard work and your dedication, especially in the wake of what we went through for the last 18 months. But most importantly, I want to thank the resident-led task force. I know many of them wanted to be here with us today and were not able to, but they really are who this work is rooted in. Countless residents devoted immense time and energy over the last 18 months to develop the action plan that will be brought before you today. They did so, remember, even under unimaginable stress and upheaval in their own lives due to the impacts that each participating neighborhood experienced during Hurricanes Helene and Milton. The impacted neighborhood residents never for one moment faltered on this work, even as they went through recovery and rebuilding from the storms. But instead, they used those events as a catalyst to create a movement of change in our community about how we invest in our infrastructure going forward. Today, you're going to hear about a final work product, and I want you to be very clear. This is not just the creation of a plan that will sit stagnant, but this is the beginning of how true action will follow to ensure that the St. Petersburg is a thriving coastal community long into the future. While we will never hold back seven-plus feet of storm surge, this plan will help us prioritize work on our stormwater system to ensure that it is as capable as scientifically possible to handle everyday stressors. And while this is an exercise in resiliency, it is also an exercise in housing affordability and stability for our residents and one that affects every corner of our city. I'm proud of the work that has been done today, and I am very happy to see how this plan will continue to evolve and form the work that we will do for generations to come as we strive to be the resilient city that I know we can be. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Maven for a brief presentation, but I want to remind you all that Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council and Jacobs are here to answer any questions if necessary. Thank you so much, Maven. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Gabbard, and good afternoon. And part of my thank you is you really took them away. That's great, but it's also to you and your leadership in this project. So thank you for that. We are excited to get in today to share the results of a study that began in the fall of 2025 and represents a significant step forward in our resilience planning efforts. This project, to Councilmember Gabbard's point, is a truly collaborative effort. We have Jason Bird in the audience with Jacobs. He is the Resilience Market Solutions Leader and has been excellent to work with alongside the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, so thank you to both of those. Finally, to reiterate what Councilmember Gabbard said, I want to extend a sincere thank you to the residents and stakeholders who joined us in the walking tours. Councilmember Harding joined us, and Representative Cross was also there, as well as Councilmember Gabbard, so thank you all for your participation. The lived insights that we learned were invaluable and helped us ground this work in real community needs. So let's get into this. And some of you Councilmembers today might recognize the slide that is presented here. Claude Tankersley presented this ad, a committee of a whole. And I wanted to start here so the audience and the community can kind of get a broader spectrum. So Resilient St. Pete Action Plan lives under the umbrella of Resilient St. Pete. Resilient St. Pete serves as the city's overarching framework. As a large umbrella, we have under that umbrella things that bring all of it together, as you can see from up above, adding Sunrise St. Pete soon to that list. Resilient St. Pete works to understand our hazards and works to establish our own risk tolerance, strengthen our infrastructure, empower neighborhoods, and plan for our future. It is an ecosystem approach that includes data and assessment, infrastructure and adaptation, flood mitigation strategies, coastal flooding, community engagement, weather vulnerabilities, policy and planning, green infrastructure, level of service analysis, and more. So it is a very large initiative. Considering it is large, the city of St. Petersburg is working towards a proactive approach to on-resilience measures, which takes all of these and integrates it into a comprehensive strategy, which we have not started on quite yet. But we are working on getting that all into one group. So to talk a little bit about the project today, the Resilient St. Pete Action Plan, the end product is actually a story map. So there is a QR code. So if you see that QR code right there, you can have your phone or if you'd like to access it and follow along with the presentation. This effort focused on nine different neighborhoods. This included Child's Park, Kingston Street South, Shore Acres, Rivera Bay, Old Pasadena, Bartlett Park, Coquina Key, Bonita Bayou, or Bayou Bonita, depending on who you talk to, and Harbordale. These nine neighborhoods were chosen for its unique relationship with the water. Some were low in elevation, adjacent to coast, or contained major drainage ditches and lakes. These characteristics made them suitable to study as part of this pilot program. The results of this program can be applied to other neighborhoods across the city with similar characteristics. I also have on the slide an email, sustainability at stp.org. So if anyone or any of our neighborhoods are out there watching today and didn't get to participate in the pilot study, I encourage them to reach out and we will get with them and come to their neighborhood to present some of these findings and have a conversation with them on flood solutions. So as part of the pilot, really where did this all begin? So the city conducted a series of walking tours, which the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council really helped us coordinate. So what they did is they organized community leaders and neighborhoods in those areas, and neighbors in those areas. These leaders went out to their neighbors and asked, what was your experience? Would you like to be involved in this project? Is there any type of flooding that you're seeing in your neighborhood that you typically don't see? These are questions that we were asking and trying to find solutions for as we walked through these neighborhoods. These tours created spaces for residents to share their lived experiences with our team. So we had a crew of engineers, our stormwater team, our engineering team. We had local elected officials all attending these walking tours to really understand what the flood risks of these neighborhoods are. The neighborhoods pilot was intended to document resident experiences, study localized flooding patterns, and confirm and refine our technical data, as oftentimes these reports do not include resident stories. These nine neighborhoods were selected as the first focus areas because they show some of the most consistent and well-documented flooding challenges in the city. So when we look at the story map, when you go, it really breaks it down into six areas. We have our introduction, community voices, our flood risks, pathways to resilience, looking forward, and a glossary. I'm gonna go over some of these areas real briefly and then kind of dive into some of them a little bit more. Again, the QR code is right there, so if anyone needs to link to the website. The introduction and background, this area gives an overview of the plan structure, including community engagement. It also talks about the history of our stormwater system. So when did all this start and what were we planning for during those times? The community voices section, this is where this centers the local input. The lived experience that we documented in these walking tours are represented through this tab and discusses more about how those local voices are being heard and problems that are being identified and discussed. Our flood risks, this section identifies and maps of real flood challenges faced by the city and neighborhoods, potential storm surge, sea level rise, drainage, floodplain issues, neighborhood-specific threats. And the pathways to resilience is the solutions, and well, some of the solutions to our flood risks. So this really equips the residents with the tools that they might need to advocate for the solutions because a lot of residents that we talk to really are not for sure what the solutions are for tomorrow. So it's part of our job to help educate them on those solutions. Looking forward, this section is a longer-term vision, and we'll kind of go over that here in a second. Glossary is a little self-explanatory, but there is, flooding is very complicated, and so we have added a glossary in case anyone might have questions. So now we're going to get into a couple of different sections on that story map so I can explain a little bit more. So when you go to our community voices, it has the individual community profile. So if you see, I have Bartlett Park up here right now. It says how many acres there is in that neighborhood, how many homes, what's in the FEMA floodplain. And when you go there, you can actually toggle on the map. We have a FEMA floodplain layer where neighborhoods can see if they are in the 1% or 0.2% chance annually of a flood hazard. These identify the flooding issues in those walking tours, the drainage systems that are around those neighborhoods, and as well as roads and access to those neighborhoods. It also utilizes the state of Florida adaptation framework which focuses on four areas, protection, accommodation, avoidance, and retreat to discuss some possible solutions. Some of the things that we heard during the community feedbacks is that flooding is worsening and driven by multiple factors such as rain, high tide, sunny days, and storm surge. Going to our flood risks. So this is useful as we look at the different types of flooding can be complicated. We're not always, some of our residents are seeing coastal flooding. Some of our residents are seeing rainfall flooding. Some of our residents are not for sure of the difference between the two. So what we did is we decided that this area should reflect the different types of flooding. So from everyday high tides to extreme storms to heavy rainfall. So you can capture the full spectrum of a flood threat. Oftentimes residents may not even realize the types of flooding that may be impacting their area so it might be really hard for them to communicate what their issues are if they do not know. So this helps us understand that flooding isn't just one thing. Sometimes it's a slow and creeping such as sea level rise or sometimes it's sudden and dramatic like storm surge or rainfall flooding. This helps us enable targeted flood mitigation and associated planning by knowing what flood we're addressing. Each type of flood hazard may need different strategies such as a seawall or elevation or coastal tidal flooding, drainage upgrades for surface flooding, things of that nature. The following flooding threats have been identified by the Jacobs team. Coastal flood, rainfall flood, ditch flooding, and compound flooding. So you can learn more about that in our flood risks. So we wanted to really take it a step farther because we didn't want to just identify the risks for the residents and leave them at that. We really wanted to work alongside the residents during these walking tours as well as our own research on how we can best address our flood risks. So when you go to the citywide, the pathways to resilience, what we have done here is it explores the flood types that we identified previously such as ditch, rainfall, coastal, and compound and breaks them down into a list of strategies that can reduce those flood impacts. This is a list that needs ongoing building and identification of projects. By any means, is it not over? This is a reiterative project. So it will change as community feedback comes in. Our looking forward section has quite a lot of different information, but one thing that's important here is that neighborhoods can look at, the neighborhoods included in the study, can look at their current CIP projects that are underway, the strategy type, the type of flood it seeks to mitigate, the intent, and the project status with description. So we're very excited about that project. And as we continue to look forward, resilience planning is a very complicated and complex subject just as flooding. So really, the city is taking a phased approach, and this phased approach, in the first phase, we're really trying to understand. When every day we're getting closer to fully understanding our flood risk, whether that is through the vulnerability assessments of our water treatment plants, the stormwater master plan, the seawall capital plan, sunrise St. Pete, our sea level rise vulnerability assessment, the city's one water plan, or even our current work with the EPA to model future climate impacts. We are continuously trying and striving to understand our flood risk. The truth is, this is a massive undertaking. Each flood threat looks different depending on the neighborhood, the elevation, the infrastructure, and the use. And all of these things must be taken into consideration when making, when coming up with solutions. So phase one is a learning phase, and even though it's ongoing, we are already trying to connect the dots. Phase two and three is assessment and adaptation. This is where we start turning what we've learned into action. This is where assessments meet real-world solutions. For example, at the Northeast Water Reclamation Facility, we're currently elevating electrical panels and equipments which drive the plant operation, so it's less vulnerable in a flood event. But if we did not understand the event in phase one, we would have never led to phase two or phase three. So we must understand our events. Assessment and adaptation work is taking place right now and will continue to work as we assess and then adapt. That's what adaptation looks like. Understanding the issue, choosing the hazard we want to design for, and determining whether the return on investment makes sense for our level of risk tolerance. It's how we can make sure our infrastructure stays strong even when the weather doesn't cooperate. And our final phase is integration. Just as true any sustainability and resilience work is, it's integrated. So the last phase, of course, would be that. We're working right now to bring all of these resilience efforts into one place as I stated earlier. We are trying to create one space where residents can easily navigate without needing to look for multiple plans or websites. Ongoing efforts through this process include the city's bar plan, which is ongoing, and really the implementation arm of the city's resilience initiative. And yes, we have many resilience initiatives happening concurrently, but that's a good thing. It means we're investing in the future of St. Pete. Integration helps us streamline that work, connect it, and make it easier for both staff and residents to see how all these efforts support the same goal, very much like why the Resilience St. Pete Action Plan exists to protect our city and strengthen our neighborhoods. So in wrapping up, the Resilience St. Pete Neighborhoods Pilot Project developed, we developed a program to help inform our Resilience St. Pete over our arching approach. This program recognizes that resilience can look very different from one neighborhood to another based on geography, infrastructure, demographics, past impacts, and local concerns. We have to avoid a one-size-fit-all solution. Instead, we have to ensure interventions are appropriate and responsive to real varied conditions across the city, which we learned through this study. Again, we also want to continue this ongoing feedback so that way communities aren't just waiting for us to show up to a community meeting to provide feedback. So here I have a QR link that goes to a job form survey. It's a very short survey. If anyone wants to look at the website and provide us feedback or just even document any of their concerns, they can certainly do that through that method. I would be remissed if I didn't mention why I had the platform that Sunrise St. Pete is going to be a huge initiative for residents to pay attention to and applications open on December 15th. It's just a reminder. So anyone that is interested in that should go to sunrisestpete.org. Thank you. Thank you. And just quickly before I go to Council Member Givens, I just, Council Member Gabbard, I apologize about, that's totally my bad. So, Council Member Givens. Thank you so much, Chair. And thank you, Maven. Thank you, Cloud and the entire team for all your hard work on this. Thank you for better helping me understand how we are going to be integrating this plan. And thank you so much for bringing up something that I was going to mention, which is we have multiple plans. There are multiple projects that are going on. But how can we centralize all this information so that residents have a better understanding of what we're doing? Because, trust me, I know you all go to the same meetings I go to. Constituents wonder what we're doing and where we are on these projects. And so I'm happy to see that this is really going to kind of help guide that. I did have one question for you, Maven. How does the administration plan to use all of this information? How are we going to, I guess, adapt the Resilient St. Pete Action Plan to better inform future budgets? When we talk about capital improvement projects, how are we using this plan to help us budget? Great. Thank you for the question. Do you want? Okay. Thank you, Council Member. Claude Tankersley, Public Works Administrator. We're actually already using this, but we will continue to do so into the future. So if you were to go on to the story map, you'll see projects listed there, some of which have been in our CIP for several years, and it's just a reiteration of these are the work we're going to be doing. But there's some projects listed on there that came directly out of the walking tours with the neighborhoods that got us thinking about how we could look at things a little bit differently, and we will continue to add those projects to our CIP moving forward into the future. As we talk to more communities and as we learn more about the success of some of the projects we already have planned, it'll allow us to shape our CIP into the future. Some of the projects that we are proposing to do are unique and first-time projects for the city. They may actually be unique in general, and so we've got some learning to do. We have confidence that we are going to be successful with many of them. We hope we'll be successful with all of them, but along the way we'll learn what works, what doesn't work, and we'll adapt accordingly. Thank you for that, Claude, and again, my point is that, you know, I think this is really going to help us better inform and better communicate on what we're doing as a city to really tackle the problems that we're dealing with when it comes to sustainability and resiliency, right? To your point, this is an issue that does not just impact our coastal neighborhoods. It's found its way into Chalice Park, so representing that district, I would love to do a walking tour. I haven't had an opportunity to do one with you, but I would recommend that we really bring in the Neighborhood Association to really help us get so robust engagement, so thank you so much, and I appreciate it, Chair. Thank you. Well, this is just pretty cool. I'm repeating, but just the centralized location of all the information I think makes it super simple, and when you're talking to a neighborhood and when you're thinking about resiliency up to this point, you'd have to go to probably six different pages, right? And so to be able to have this and be able to point to it, and selfishly, you don't have to know it all either because you could literally just bring it up while you're there, and so just from a resident-facing, from a tool for us, I just think it's pretty incredible, and I just think it's cool, and so super excited. Again, I want to thank my colleagues for being on the Zoom. That was super helpful, and I'm really looking forward to seeing this grow on my time on council, and as we continue into this, this is really exciting, so thank you for all the work, and across council members' team, this is really neat and exciting to roll out, so thank you so much. I'd like to take this opportunity to recognize Maven. You know, she joined us a year ago. She joined us a day or two before Milton hit, and then immediately after Milton hit us, she was out in the community. all at the same time. She was out in the community and helping, you know, with community recovery, and then she dove into this program, and it's been a really good learning experience, but you did a really good job, so thank you. Thank you. Yeah, Maven, you certainly hit the ground running, so thank you so much. Amen. All right, we're going to move on to F4, and this one I have pulled by Council Member Gabbard. Yes. One for two. I'll take that batting average. Council Member Gabbard, go ahead and introduce the item. Well, you want to talk about lessons learned from the walking tours. You want to talk about projects and how resiliency in action really shows up. I think it's apropos that these items are following the presentation of the Resilient St. Pete Action Plan because I think that anyone who understands impacts from the storms that we saw, if you live on any of the canals, especially in Riviera Bay, immense impacts to the navigability and those canals certainly saw a lot of impact from those storms. And that became very evident not only immediately after the storms, but through the experiences that the residents shared with us on the walking tours from the Resilient Action Plan. So this kind of is all coming together really beautifully as we move forward on the first steps of being able to dredge those canals. And so, Bruges, I'll go ahead and turn it over to you to kind of explain some of the minutiae behind this, but I'm very excited that we've made this progress and we're here today. Thank you, Council Member. Good day, Council, Bruges, Prune, Engineering and Capital Improvements Department. Again, eloquently said, and I just want to start off by going to Council Member Givens your question. This is the result of it. So this is an example of how we are implementing or making that step to implement programs and projects coming out of these walking tours and understanding. So just to give a high-level concept, perspective, canals 11 and 12 generally flow from the South Grass Lakes area in the State 275 along 77th Avenue North, then continues east towards First Street, which then splits with Canal 11 heading north-south towards Sunlit Cove, as well as Canal 12 continuing east towards generally east with the winding turns and connecting ultimately to Tampa Bay. Both of these are tightly connected systems. Now the limits of work generally for this project is within the vicinity of 4th Street towards the discharge points at Tampa Bay. Now what's critical is that this section spans multiple neighborhood associations. You will hear about Riviera Bay Civic Association, the Riviera Bay Subdivision Homeowner Association, Renaissance Neighborhood Association, as well as Caya Costa Association as well. What this project is really aiming to do is we are looking to start that understanding of our programmatic look towards how do we dredge our stormwater conveyance systems, what is the permitting processes, understanding the constraints, and what are the challenges involved in the permitting as well. So this preliminary rule goes up to 30% design, but what it's going to involve, and if you take a look at the scope, it really is in depth in the bathymetric survey, which is actually understanding the topography underwater, but also the sediment analysis, because one of the key confusing points that exist right now is the relationship between the DEP permit and the Army Corps permit as it relates to Section 404 on the tidal conditions and the connection points. So that's really what we're trying to get, is to get that base understanding, understanding the permit requirements, because ultimately, we're a peninsula in a peninsula. All of our stormwater systems connect ultimately to that tidal condition. So if we understand it, it helps us develop a repeatable process in the future. And with that, I ask for approval. Move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. I just have a quick question why we're here, and frankly, Council Member Gabbert, it's for you. Could you share some of what the feedback was on your walking tour and how this, I think it would be just interesting to hear how this project, how it got communicated during your walking tour. Yeah. And then, because it's cool to see, like, to get it here, right? And so I know that's why you pulled it, because it's exciting. Yeah. And so I'd just be interested in, like, how they shared. We have somebody on Zoom? They just raised their hand. Oh, yeah. And actually, I think that might be the president of Riviera Bay Neighborhood Association, if by any chance you wanted to take that before we go back and forth. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Okay. Riviera Bay Civic Association. I'm going to enter you into the meeting space. Please state your name. Please unmute yourself. State your name and address for the record and you'll have three minutes to address City Council. Hi. Can you all hear me? Yep. Okay, good. All right. Hi. My name is Vanessa Puglisi. I'm the president of the Riviera Bay Civic Association. My personal address is 9399 Sun Isle Drive Northeast. We are very, very excited that this item is on the agenda today. We have been asking for the dredging of the canals in Riviera Bay for many years due to issues of increased flooding well before Hurricane Helene hit. And I will say to address the results of the walking tours for the Resilient St. Pete Action Plan, it was actually our second walking tour that we did of Riviera Bay. I want to thank Brandy for organizing one in 2020, was it four? We did the first one in May. And we were able to have our Congress people from the federal level and the state level as well as our representatives as well as the mayor, many of the people from Tampa Bay Regional Planning Commission tour Riviera Bay. And we were able to span our neighborhood which runs from 78th Avenue to 98th Avenue from 4th Street all the way to the water and explain some of the issues that have happened. There have been changes to the way the county has put their roads in. But we went from a neighborhood that did not experience flooding to areas of our neighborhood experiencing five floods in a four-year period of time. We watched sedimentation flow into the canal system from some of the construction in the area, the Gandy flyover area, new condos in the area, and everything that's dumping. And we've watched the levels go to where you can walk across the canals in certain locations now. And we were very happy to be able to take Jacob's, Claude, and Brijesh and their team out and see it. And then even after Helene, now, like, you can walk all the way into Rio Vista Park without getting wet where you used to be able to draft a very significantly sized boat. So we would love to see the flooding abate in our neighborhood just through proactive measures like this, such as dredging. We're very happy that we're starting with canals 11 and 12 as they are the worst in the neighborhood. And we would ask on behalf of all the residents in Riviera Bay, the HOA and the surrounding communities that do live in this area and everyone on the other side of 4th Street that's now impacted by flooding that's backing up because the water can't get out that you support this item. So that's all I have to say. So thank you if you have any questions. Well, Vanessa, thank you very much for popping up and raising your hand and sharing that. That's exactly what I was looking for. So thank you for sharing that perspective and thank you for your service inside of the neighborhood and your continued involvement inside of our city. So thank you. Thanks for pointing that out, Council Member Gabbard. Okay, that's really all I had. I think this is great. We've got a motion on a second on F4. Seeing as no other Council Members wishing to speak, Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council Members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present Council Members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Mr. Chair, the motion to approve agenda item I-4 passes unanimously. Okay, thank you. All right, we're going to move into F3. It's a clapping day. It's a happy clap. It's a happy clap. Tell you what. All right, so we are going to move into F3. We've got Aaron Fish joining us and we're going to talk Tangerine Plaza. Welcome, Aaron. Good afternoon, Council Chair, Vice Chair, Members of Council. Aaron Fish, Director of Real Estate and Property Management. I will start off saying Mayor Welch intended to be here this morning to introduce this item and provide some comments. Those comments were, I believe, shared with City Council in a memo that was distributed earlier. The presentation that we have for you this afternoon, I'll go through the option agreement, the terms of that option, where we're at now, and also provide a recap of the terms of the lease and development agreement. In July of 2024, the City did enter into this option agreement with the Sugar Hill Group, provided initial option term of 18 months, which expires on January 2nd of 2026. Pursuant to the terms of the agreement, Sugar Hill must secure the commitments for all funding necessary to construct the development. They must identify all contractors and professionals for the development, provide a commitment letter to the city from a grocer to operate a fresh food grocery store for a minimum of five years. To execute the lease and development agreement, they shall not be in breach of the option, and they shall provide the city with 90 days notice of their intent to exercise the option. This will allow the city to terminate the Walmart lease and any other places in the Plaza. On July 14th of 2025, Sugar Hill did submit a site plan for review to the city. The site plan included 186 affordable housing units and 10,000 square feet of retail space. The city's initial comments were provided to Sugar Hill at the end of July in 2025 with additional comments provided in August. The site plan comments for water resources are in the process of being addressed. The city did receive a letter in October from Sugar Hill which provided the city notice of their intent to exercise the option to lease or purchase the property. It also provided an update to the status of the site plan comments, an update to their funding plan, and it provided a notification that they had identified the professional services team for the development. The city notified Sugar Hill through subsequent conversations that it had not yet met the option conditions required for exercising the option to enter into the lease and development agreement. Pursuant to the terms of the option, any extension of the option term is subject to city council approval. It does also require Sugar Hill to submit a written request to extend the option no later than 60 days prior to the expiration of the option term. The city did receive a letter from Sugar Hill dated October 30, 2025 requesting an extension of the option term for a period of one year. On October 5th of this year, the city staff did meet with Sugar Hill to address the deliverables required pursuant to the option. This discussion included the status of the financing requirements, site plan comments, and the status of the requirement to secure a grocery store. Also on November 5th, Sugar Hill provided the city with a proposed term sheet dated October 7, 2025 from Boston Capital Finance. And on October 11th, Sugar Hill also provided the city with a letter dated of the same date from National Equity Fund outlining certain terms and conditions for providing equity capital to Sugar Hill for the development. The LOIs are conditioned upon and subject to verification of the development budget, lease up schedule, pro forma, operating statements, ownership structure, and Sugar Hill applying for and receiving low-income housing tax credit among other conditions. Both LOIs assume a contribution of CRA dollars from the city in the amount of 11, excuse me, $11,160,000 and a contribution from Pinellas County of the same amount. On November 20th of this year, Sugar Hill submitted an initial application for city funding through the Neighborly app to support the development to include 56 affordable housing units restricted at 60% AMI or below and 130 affordable units restricted at 80% AMI and below. Since that time, the funding application has been revised to include all 186 housing units to be restricted to 60% and below. The application submitted by Sugar Hill requires additional information for the application to be considered complete. Any request for sitting funding will be considered after acceptable documentation of all other sources of funding are provided by Sugar Hill. On November 20th, city staff had a follow-up meeting with Sugar Hill to inform them that the LOI submitted do not satisfy the requirement to secure commitments for all funding necessary to construct the development. The city informed Sugar Hill that the request for CRA funding from the city in the amount of $11,160,000 not currently possible due to the available funds do not support the funding request at this time. Sugar Hill requested the funding in the amount of $11,160,000 from Pinellas County, which will likely not be supported based on the revision to all units being 60% AMI or below. This is due to the county requiring some units to be at or above 80% to qualify for penny construction dollars. Sugar Hill is in the process of addressing the remaining comments to the site plan. They intend to, in this slide, there is an update to this bullet point that the city did receive a commitment letter from a grocer, but we have yet to be able to review that letter and provide any updates related to that, but a letter was received. And Sugar Hill does intend to submit a building permit package to the city and allow for income housing tax credits for affordable housing portion of the development. And this portion of it is a recap of the lease and development terms, which requires a development of no less than 115 affordable rental units and 10,000 square feet of retail on the property. The initial term is 75 years with rent 100,000 per year, which is abated for the first 24 months until a final certificate of occupancy is met or until the 24 years is met. The construction timeline includes three months for Sugar Hill to submit site plans for approval. That has already occurred. Sugar Hill shall commence the demolition of the existing improvements no later than six months from the commencement date. Sugar Hill shall submit a comprehensive building permit package no later than six months and within 18 months shall commence construction. 50% completion of the construction shall occur no later than 30 months from the commencement date and upon 36 months from the commencement date, the project shall be completed. The preliminary unit mix for the 115 affordable housing units in the LDA included 30% one-bedroom, one-bath units, 50% two-bedroom, two-bath, and 20% three-bedroom, two-bath units. The housing unit shall be restricted to households with an average of an annual income of 80% of AMI or below. The development shall include 10,000 square feet of retail space with no less than 3,000 square feet to be operated by a fresh food grocer. The city shall record a restrictive covenant on the property ensuring that the housing units remain affordable for a period of 40 years and the restrictive covenant shall also include a requirement that not less than 3,000 square feet of the retail space be occupied by a grocery store. Sugar Hill would have the option to purchase the property at $1.5 million upon the completion of the development and just as a, again, a recap of how we arrived at the purchase price is the property was appraised in 2024 which resulted in a price of $1.8 million reduced by the demolition cost of $250,000 putting the estimated value at $1.6 million at that time. And that concludes the presentation. We do have members of the Sugar Hill group here to answer questions related to next steps and related to their development and we also have city staff available as well. Okay. Thank you. Let's go to public comment and call two at a time, please. The first two speakers is Ron Diner and Derek Cooper. Please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes to address counsel. I don't think Mr. Diner is here anymore. Okay. The next speaker is Sarah Harold. Go ahead. Oh, good afternoon. My name is Derek Cooper. My address is 1525 23rd Avenue South in St. Petersburg. I just want to speak to you, Chair Gerties and your honorable members here at the City Council. I wrote something because I tend to be long-winded. I stand before you not just as an advocate of the Sugar Hill Group but as a community advocate deeply rooted in the long struggle for equitable development in midtown and historic uses. I am a citizen of South St. Petersburg born and raised. Very proud. Very proud of that. Over the two decades residents have demanded more than promises. They've demanded partnership, progress, and permanence. Today, Sugar Hill has delivered on the community's vision. A full-service grocery store secured, development partners locked in, the majority of financing already committed, and strong alignment with both city and county leadership on closing and remaining gaps. This is not a request for another chance. It's a plea to uphold the momentum that has finally after years of disinvestment and delay brought real tangible hope to Tangerine Plaza. As a political action chair for the St. Petersburg NAACP, I will be viewing this moment through a clear political and moral lens. Decisions like this define whether our city's commitment to equity is real or rhetorical. The NAACP has long championed community-driven development that centers black and brown residents, not displaces them from voting rights to housing justice. Our advocacy has always been about power, participation, and permanence for those historically excluded from St. Pete's prosperity. Approving this extension affirms that the council stands with the people who have stewarded the deuces through the decades of systematic neglect, denying it risked deepening distrust, reinforcing patterns of broken promises, and signaling that community that community voice only matters when it's convenient. This extension isn't just a technical ask. It's a litmus test for whether St. Petersburg will honor its commitments to equitable economic development, affordable housing, and generational wealth building in this very neighborhood that built this city. Let's pass the test with conviction. Thank you. Thank you. Could you tell us whether Mr. Donner was for or against? Mr. Donner is against. Thank you. And Ms. Harrell is with Sugarhill if you have any questions. She got out of card. Esther Sani and Chase Temple. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes to address counsel. Can we share a podium? Is that okay? Okay, fantastic. Esther Sani, address 1601 16th Street South, St. Petersburg, Florida, here representing the NAACP as the president. I want to say good afternoon, Chair Gerdes. You have done a warrior's job as chair. You will be missed and also honorable council members. I stand before you today to respectfully urge your full and unanimous support for the Sugarhill Group's request of a 12-month extension to truly complete the redevelopment of Tangerine Plaza. For more than two decades, the Midtown and Deuces communities have fought for the return of a full-service grocery store, meaningful economic development, and the stabilization of a corridor long impacted by this investment. As Commissioner Flowers wrote in her memo earlier to you today, this vision dates back to the Baker administration, supported by years of community advocacy. The demolition of blighted properties and relocation efforts intended to pave the way for revitalization, not abandonment. But today, the conditions are true for real progress and they finally exist. How do they exist? Sugarhill has secured a grocery store. That's been clear. They've secured the development partners. They've secured the majority of the financing. They're simply asking now for an extension to move forward with the additional piece of finalizing the remaining BUD funding, both with the city and Pinellas County. We all know, because we've seen it across the city, true transformational community-serving development takes time. It needs flexibility. It needs partnership. I want to name the ones that have come before you before who have received this. Fairfield Avenue, Ed White Senior Housing, Orange Station, the Science Center. You saw them just last week, Thursday. Each of these projects required amendments, redesigns, revision finance structures, and extended timelines beyond reaching viability. Sugarhill's timeline is not an exception. It is entirely consistent with the realities of building affordable housing and mixed-use projects in today's market. The subsidy, Sugarhill Hill, is a request and is also fully consistent with other affordable developments across St. Petersburg. I want to simply say we recognize, and I know that this has been a topic of conversation, the service, that positive impact has provided, but food distribution cannot alone compensate or comprehensively meet the needs of our community. We need units and a grocery store. Absolutely. Good afternoon, Council. My name is Chase Temple of 2555 Madridway, South, St. Petersburg, Florida. I am here as the NAACP Youth Council President, and I am asking for a yes vote on the Sugarhill Development Project extension. There is an immediate need for affordable housing in St. Pete, and there is a need for a stable food source in this neighborhood. The Sugarhill Group has been proactive in securing a grocer to fill this gap in the community that this community desperately needs to combat food insecurity, and doing so, it provides an opportunity for economic development within this neighborhood. It is no secret that the cost of living in St. Petersburg has caused people to move out, and it is important that you have a commitment to affordable housing so young people like me can afford to live here as they find their footing in this amazing city that we call home. And I am asking you to support this community, this community's needs by securing their development and to support the youth's needs to offer affordable housing and the Sugarhill Group will provide that. And I am asking for your flexibility by voting yes for the extension. Thank you. Thank you. The next two speakers. The next two speakers is Senator Daryl Roussan and also Aki Mohammed Akwil. Please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes to address counsel. Go ahead, Senator. Good afternoon. Senator Daryl Roussan, 535 Central Avenue, St. Petersburg. I stand before you today as the state senator for this area of Tangerine Plaza to voice my support for Sugarhill Group's request for an extension on the Tangerine Plaza redevelopment agreement. Let me be clear. No one wants or relishes in delay, especially in revitalizing this important midtown anchor, not the city, not the residents, not even the redevelopment team. But if an extension is what ensures that the promised affordable housing and wealth building opportunities are actually delivered, then it becomes not a setback, but a safeguard for the community we serve. I strongly support the mayor's rationale for extension as detailed in his memo to you of December 10th. I also strongly stand in unison and support with Commissioner Dr. Renee Flowers in her email to you earlier this morning. At the end of the day, I urge everyone involved to keep the focus where it belongs, on the people, not politics, not power plays, but the unmet needs of midtown families must drive every decision we make. The mayor refers to longstanding neighborhood advocates who want to see local partners succeed in shaping the future of their own corridor. I have been such a longstanding advocate. For the time, I advocated that midtown should secede from the city of St. Petersburg if they weren't going to return tax dollars to the community. In fact, former Councilman Ernest Williams said who died and elected Ruusan Mayor of Midtown. Then I sued some drug lords for maintaining crack houses on Queensborough Avenue, took the property, and determined by listening to the people that there was an unmet need of a grocery store, and we built it. For the reasons stated, I support this extension so long as it deepens accountability, strengthens community benefit, and ensures collaboration, moving us closer to justice and opportunity that this neighborhood deserves. And in closing, I was standing in a packed courtroom when Judge Florence Foster looked at me and said, what are you going to do for your client? He's had seven violations of probation. He's had seven chances. I looked down and said, come on, Holy Spirit. I said, well, Judge, I had eight. If there's one more, give it to him. Thank you. Please, no applause, please. It's not the same. Sorry. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for allowing us to come and speak to you. Pax vobiskum. Shalom aleichem. As-salamu alaykum. Peace be with you. Peace be under you. Peace be on you, especially during this time of peace on earth, joy, goodwill toward all people, all human beings. I greet you today with my... Sorry, I need your name and address. That is important. I was trying not to interrupt your greetings. Askia, Mohammed, Akil, 4730, 6th Avenue South, St. Petersburg. Thank you. I had first intended to read into the record and read to you the letter that I sent to everyone, but you already have it, so there's no need for me to read that. If anyone here wants to hear that, get in touch with me. I'll be more than happy to share it with you. I decided that instead I would first offer a prayer and I've had the privilege of coming and opening up your meetings with invocation, so I feel very comfortable speaking in the tone and manner in which I am. So I greet you with a prayer for peace and mercy and compassion and grace and justice and joy and prosperity and equity and empathy and good health forever to all of you, to all of the citizens of our city, of our county, our state, and our country. History is important. For example, I am a native of St. Petersburg, born here in this deep south city in a state that was the third to join the Confederacy, secede from the United States, and fight in a civil war. Growing up here through my childhood and young adult years, I witnessed firsthand the inequality, injustices of segregation, racial discrimination, oppression, second-class citizenship, unjust laws, denial of opportunities based on differences in skin color, culture, and economic status. Members of my family and myself and I helped break down those barriers here, and that fight only ended recently, and in many instances is still ongoing. I won't dwell on much of the details, but I want to just point out, for an example, we're talking about an extension in time. In 1954, the United States Supreme Court declared that separate but equal was unconstitutional. In 1964, 10 years later, I graduated here from Gibbs High School from a totally segregated school. In 1971, I testified in federal court in Hillsborough County before Judge Ben Krensman, who said in 1971, that the Hillsborough County segregated schools were unconstitutional and it was time to do something about it. So things do not always happen as quickly as we would like. Thank you. Thank you. Next two speakers, please. The last speaker is Dr. Renee Flowers. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Honorable Chairman, Vice Chairman, and honorable members of Council, and to all of those that are here on today, I greet you as an individual, even though I'm a Pinellas County Commissioner. I'm not here to represent the commission, I'm here to represent myself, so I wanted to make that clear. I'm not going to rehash the things that I wrote in the email. Commissioner Flowers, I need your address, please. Oh, it's all over. I don't do this often. 2-4-0-39th Street, South St. Petersburg, Florida, 33711, and if all of y'all show up at my house, I'll give you some dinner. Thank you, Commissioner. But I'm here today in support of the Sugar Hill proposal. I've sat in your seats here in this very chamber. As a matter of fact, an individual that stood behind this very same podium I took to task when they asked for $2.5 million more dollars to be able to complete the project for GAP funding. So I've been in your position where you're looking at things that have been said prior and you've given deadlines, and you expect individuals to stick to those deadlines. But I also know, and so do you, that sometimes things happen when you're moving through contracts and negotiations that you can't control, whether it's permitting, whether it's financing, whether it's changing members of the team to move the project forward, things happen. And in this instance, some things have happened. But the one thing that has stayed consistent are the players that have wanted to see this project succeed. In 2000, it was Reverend Lewis Murphy and his wife. It was Senator Roussan and his wife, Ernest Williams and his wife, Mindy Ligon and her husband that came together and said they wanted to do something on that corner. On that corner were houses that had been abandoned and were being used as drug facilities. And for the individuals who lived in the remaining houses that were there, they were living in squalor. Those persons were provided financial remuneration to relocate. The property was demolished. And the building that you see now or the buildings that you see now are as a result of that hard work. Reverend Lewis Murphy has never given up the dream and nor has that integral group that that facility needs to remain in the community. But it needs to also serve as an anchor for the entire 22nd Street corridor. Applying for the Main Street application, I was a part of that as well. That application was supposed to help drive that so that success moved down the 22nd Street corridor just like it did down Central Avenue which we call Main Street. I truly believe with the additional extension, I truly believe that with the county looking at it's penned for Pinellas funds and I've had a number of conversations including the reverend and I believe his name is Terry from the Sugar Hill Group and I brought in Tom Almonte to see just where we were because we understood that you guys were waiting to hear from us and we're waiting to hear from you. So I will tell you that there is no action from the commission. Thank you, commissioner. Mr. Chair, we have one more card. Hey, go ahead. Jason Jensen and he's representing Sugar Hill. Okay. Do you have any questions? If you have any... I guess one clarification if you haven't asked questions... Jason, I need your name and your address, please. Jason Jensen, 3992 42nd Avenue South. Thank you. And just one clarification if we wanted to be part of the answer questions but didn't want to miss out on speaking. Thank you. So we are architects for the project, WJ Architects, and have touched a few of the projects. We actually worked on the Main Street visioning for the Deuces. Originally, we worked on Manhattan Casino and the opportunity to finish the other end of the Deuces was a great one for us to work on. I just wanted to mention how much work and effort has gone on during this project since this was given the go-ahead. We immediately had a pre-app meeting for this project. We actually submitted in 2024 originally. This was actually put on hold during the hurricanes for the review submission and the application. So it was not logged in at that time properly. So there was actually some delay in the process for this project. And then the team has continued to come back and answer the comments through this year. So it's been a very active process. We're deep in the drawings and construction documents. The team has invested in the process throughout. We've also, since the inception of this project, gone from a a very large grocery with a very small amount of housing to answering the city's request for more housing in this project. So it's gone from a 72 to 186. So each time we make those changes, we go through revisions, we increase and respond to those comments, make the plan better. I truly believe what we have today is something that will impact the community. I put our firm's reputation behind it. They have brought in the best team of consultants in my selfish opinion to work on this. But we are all on one goal to get this across the finish line. Worked on the original Tasco development. That's one thing that wasn't mentioned is Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, all those guys originally sat in that building hitting home runs. I truly believe we're in the home stretch here. Let us take it across the finish line. Home base. Thank you. Thank you. No more speakers. Mr. Chair. Okay. So we'll go to Councilmember Floyd. Thank you. I actually just want to ask two things real quick and then hear from my colleagues. But it was specifically about the presentation. There was one slide in there that I was just a bit confused about. It was the one about the 11 million subsidy and CRA funding in the county. I was just hoping to get clarification. It seemed like in that there was a shortfall from the CRA and then the county required different had different requirements and I feel like Commissioner Flowers was about to mention it. But if you could just speak to it a little bit so I can understand it is the what's the status of securing funding for a subsidy to actually get the affordable housing done, I guess. So the funding application that Sugar Hill presented to the city certainly this is something that the city could consider but we need to see all sources of funding and verify all sources of funding before the city's dollars are put in. The city's would be the last dollars put in and then for the county they have their sources of funding are a little bit different and Mark Van Leeu is here and he could probably offer a little bit more insight onto that. Yeah, I'd love to hear from Mark. Good afternoon Council Members, Council Chair, Mark Van Leeu, Assistant Director Housing Community Development, City of St. Petersburg. So the funding request that has been submitted to us for roughly $11.1 million and is in consideration however at this point in time we don't have sufficient funds to fulfill that request and so we would need to work on a plan that may take some time for us to assemble those kind of funds. I had discussions today with staff at the county to get an update on the funding request submitted to the county and although all the documentation that we have shows a request to the county for $11.1 million as well what I was told today was that the application actually indicates $10.5 million but that that application was reopened and sent back to the Sugar Hill group team due to needs for additional information or revisions to the application and that happened about a month ago and hasn't been resubmitted yet so it is an incomplete application at this point to the city I'm sorry to the county in the city's application there are some missing documents and things that will need to be received before we could fully consider and bring a request to council for approval as far as the county's ability to fulfill the $11.1 million or $10.5 whichever it winds up to be the county would have to use Penny for Pinellas funding to fulfill that request and the county has rules around using Penny for Pinellas funding for construction costs in a project and it basically says that there have to be some units at or above 80% AMI and it you know to indicate some economic activity or economic development associated with those funds with the most recent updates to the funding or to the AMI mix for this project they're showing all units at 100 I'm sorry at 60% AMI so if that is the case then the county would have difficulty approving the use of Penny funds to fulfill that request and they really don't have any other funding sources that could be used in the city to fulfill that requirement so that could be remedied by adjusting the AMI mix of the funds to include more 80% AMI units or above and so that would then open the door for that funding to be possible okay all right and given all of that I think the main thrust of my question on this specific subject is you know the do you feel that there's no barriers to you know amending an application of the county and finding money at the city to actually get the subsidy to a realistic point because that's what my question is is like you know if you're saying that we would have to put together a package then I just want to make sure I understand that and I assume this is the case because administration is recommending approval that you feel confident that you can get the package put together when things get to that point you know there will be funding coming in in the future that both at the Southside CRA level as well as you know from CDBGDR and other sources that could would give the city sufficient funds to fulfill this funding request because it's a CRA project most of the time our goal is to fund CRA projects from CRA funding but it would likely at least in the near future would not be possible it may be possible perhaps about a year down the line if certain things that are being worked on in this CRA come to pass okay it's interesting from what I'm hearing it sounds like if the extension wasn't being asked for then we would be in a trickier situation on our end to getting it accomplished but because of the extension it sounds like you feel confident you'll be able to put something together okay I just want to understand that aspect of it I want to hear from my colleagues and digest the conversation more but that slide I just needed clarification on so I'll leave it there for now thank you thank you councilmember hardy thank you chair Mark can I ask you a couple more questions I realize that this issue is much more complex than a piece of land and normal affordable housing and I am absolutely I would like to continue the direction but I need some questions answered and to be fair I have that much respect for Mr. Binger and I know Pastor Murphy personally and find him to be nothing but a gem for his community but at the end of the day we're not here to talk about them building something we're here to talk about how do we get to a point where folks in that community can walk to a grocery store tomorrow that's the focus of this and so I would like to go in a little bit further depth on the funding end I don't know and I'm not sure who might be qualified but I'd like to start with the LHTC credits are you familiar I don't know the process I'm familiar with the concept but what is the likelihood of we've been working on this for 18 months and we haven't accomplished this yet and I don't know why or what path we've followed but is this a reasonable path that the Sugarhill group can find this and get it done in this amount of time and from what you've seen so far will they qualify so my understanding from what we've seen so far on the financing stack the plan is to go for 4% tax credit bond financing that is a non-competitive source of funding through Florida Housing Finance Corporation and it is open on an ongoing basis to apply I know that after encouragement from the city when we met a while back Sugarhill group did reach out to and have discussions with Catherine Driver at the Pinellas County Housing Finance Authority who would most likely provide the bond funding to get those tax credits I have also spoken to Ms. Driver and she indicates that the HFA in 2026 will have sufficient bond funding resources to fulfill their request for bond financing and that would open the door for them to apply for the 4% tax credit so I think the chances are pretty good but they will need to confirm all sources of financing and funding for the project in order to make that application and get that through Okay so there's enough money in that fund for the year and you have a level of confidence that this is a path for them Yes Okay Back to the county funding the Sugarhill group has the best advocate in the world sitting behind you but the rules are still the rules and so can you be more clear on in order for them to qualify they would need to change the mix of the project itself which can be done but if that is done how big is the fund and what's the likelihood that these funds are available and that this project qualifies and does it need the support of the city as well I'm not sure how that process works Yeah so typically just take the last part of your question first any project in the city of St. Pete that is also seeking county funds the county typically wants to see the city's commitment of funds first prior to taking their funding request to the BCC for approval that's not a hard fast rule it's just a general way that they operate there have been a couple of cases where they've gone to the BCC for approval of funding on a city project prior to us coming to city council for approval but they also they wanted to know that we felt confident that we were recommending approval and that it would likely be approved so county is typically looking for the city to commit funds first the penny for panels funds in the county does have the ability to provide funding for construction costs for a project whereas the city penny for panels funds cannot be used in that way and the county has determined and county legal has determined that due to the statute and the rules around penny for panels in order to use penny funds for construction costs there must be an economic development element to a project and that's determined in the county's eyes by the AMI levels and or targeted audience for development so that's why they say that there have to be at least some units at 80% AMI or higher and or that it cannot be a senior housing project side note when I was with the county I kind of argued against that mindset because I think that seniors and and those earning you know below 80% AMI represent a big part of the workforce and the economic viability of our community but that those are the rules and they're based in statute and that's how the county is interpreted so that's the rule that would have to be met in order for the county under its current rules unless those rules change to be able to use penny for panels for construction costs there is sufficient funds in the penny for panels program and coming to the county for you know use to be able to satisfy this funding request okay good afternoon James Corbett city development administrator I just wanted to add on to something Mark said because the questions about the funding and availability I kind of just want to make the nexus and obviously Mark is the expert here but the county requiring some of the units to be 80% actually helps with us because if some right now the agreement says there's an average of 80% in the recent submission Sugarhill has all the units at 60% or below if they were to increase some of their units to 80% that would get that would qualify them for the county funding would also reduce the subsidy needed from the city so it actually is a win-win if they were to adjust the mix to include some 80% units so it actually helps in both ways it reduces the subsidy needed from the city and it also helps qualify for the funding from the county on to the city which I think completes their capital stack you said that 11.1 million that they included in their pro forma is not currently available and some things would have to happen and it's possibly available in the CRA can you elaborate on that and is any of that money committed that future CRA money that's coming in had it been committed to anything and how long would it be before that money is available would it meet their timeline so as a part of within that 12 months that they're looking to have the extension we're looking to bring forth something to council where we would be doing a borrow for the CRA where the CRA were supported and it would be a $25 million borrow if we were to do that obviously that would open up funds that could be potentially available to this project obviously we're not ready to do that yet but that's what we would be looking at to help fund that gap in the next fiscal year okay all right thank you sir thank you mark so my thoughts have been around that concept that the end of what we're really talking about is how quickly do we get to the point where someone who lives in that community walks to a grocery store the rest is important but not as important as how quick do we get there and I know that this has been a controversial topic more so than most we have received at least I have received more feedback than anything that has come before us in the past three months and I've been and I thought about this all night and I went back through the information a couple of times and I would like to propose a thought and see what my counterparts think the plan the most recent plan that I have seen from the Sugarhill group with the progression of events over the next year has their funding locked up in the next 90 days and the project starting to really take shape on the ground can we consider instead of extending this for one year extending it for 90 days it puts pressure on the group it puts pressure on the county it puts pressure on the city to get this done but again if the goal is how quickly do we get to a point where someone who lives in that neighborhood walks to their own grocery store is this a way to get there that proves this out without this going to a year and the possibility that the project doesn't work out I have every faith and confidence that it will but there's a chance that it won't work out and now we're right back where we started and we've been there for years again the project has my support but my consideration is for the thought that I've espoused three times now so I would enjoy the opportunity to hear from my colleagues and Chair I'll leave it there thank you thank you Vice Chair Hanowitz thank you let's talk a little bit about the letters of intent that we have and legal letters of intent they're not commitments is that correct I believe I would defer to staff on their interpretation of what they would consider a letter of commitment council member I can address the question these letters sometimes called letters of interest sometimes called letters of intent these are a starting point when applying for funding they are subject to many things being completed to actually go through an underwriting process with the lender to get final commitments so again this is more of a starting point to get that conversation going with there being multiple deliverables as you I'm sure you've read the letters and there are several things in there that have to be met and there's a reason I mentioned that because a lot of things are conditioned about other conditions about other conditions whether it's the county the city whatever bottom line is the money is not guaranteed from anywhere I don't see everyone saying if they come through with it and they come through with it there is nothing now in terms of money right now and the commitments we have are based on contributions that we don't have money for right now 11.16 million from the city and from the county and the credits and when I look at and there are questions asked about the CRA it says here specifically that the request of the money would require the full CRA multifamily funding allocation over the next two years or more years now we're talking about borrowing money to be able to do this and there is nothing here that guarantees any of this is going to happen and I will say that every year that has passed it's become more and more expensive and these numbers are going to grow they're not going to get smaller they're just not so I have a problem with that because when you're talking about the money not being available in the CRA right now this money for the next two years or more would take to just fulfill this and then we're going to borrow money and use a lot of that to take care of this that's other projects that are not getting money plus we don't have commitments from lenders on this or anything else that guarantees that the other money is coming and that is concerning and I had a problem the last meeting we had in 2024 with the option the risk of going into an option delaying this for 18 months I voiced I'm not going to reiterate my issues with the option but when I look at this and I understand what people want people don't like my position on the raise I had problems with certain provisions of contracts I mentioned those and it's fine if people want to go forward on something because they want it to happen but contractual language and commitments and having funding actually coming really it's not just based on hopes and dreams and I do have concerns I had concerns with the agreement originally and there is nothing here that has been provided that has changed from then to now and that I would like this to however it turns out to succeed but we spent we have an option for 18 months and nothing and I just do not see even from all the documents that are here letters of intent there is nothing here for me that shows that this is going to happen within the time frame of another year and then what it sounds like is we're going to try to borrow money or do other things to actually make it happen and that it just it's not there it's not there for me so I'm interested to see what other council members say but when you're talking about funding for these type of projects and this is not just the only project there are other projects in the South St. Pete CRA and that are after that may be in a point where they're off the ground or not and in the future we have a budget that's coming up that we've already discussed next year that's going to be worse off and it's going to be a tough year next year and there is no guarantee this money is going to be there so that's all I have to say for now thanks thank you chair if we could just a couple comments I mean one just to be clear we're not here asking when the Fairfield development was approved and then we came back at a later date and we requested the funding also I would just say just to be clear that I did brief counsel in January of this year on our intent to potentially borrow from the CRA so that shouldn't be new news and I think Mr. Corbett and his team recently briefed counsel on that as well so we continue to work on that but we thought that you city council was aware of that approach so if that's news to you or a surprise I apologize I didn't and to be clear it wasn't that it's a surprise to me it's like we're talking about this project and an option that we have that's towards the end that has not had deliverables and this idea of that has come up about borrowing money project in general okay I'm having a problem applying that under these circumstances and I'm sorry if I made it seem like I didn't know that you were coming up with that idea but the reality is that you have that now is being used to push and say okay well then we could use that so that's all thank you thank you council member Gabbard thank you chair and I have specific to the mix of the 60 to 80 percent AMI because that is certainly I think causing some concern over the ability to get county so I don't know who on the team on the Sugar Hill team wants to address chair is it okay if so I guess Mr. Gross if you want to take it and you can always call in back up if you need so my question because money if there are no 80 percent units that are involved but on 1120 there were still 80 percent units according to the backup and then it was changed to be all 60 percent units why the change and is this as simple as just switching it back to some degree would you mind just introducing yourself forgive me by now I should have not been flunking that Oliver Gross 8500 Northwest 25th Avenue Miami and Mr. Chair thank you and to our commission I thank you for the opportunity this afternoon but to answer your question Councilwoman I think in terms of again when you're talking about affordable housing and we're talking about in terms of the market that we again target in industry terms anything below 80% and below is still considered affordable housing and then there's a distinction made between affordable and workforce housing and generally what happens when you're structuring these deals you can have a deal that's all 60% units or you can have a unit mix that are 80-60 and sometimes even lower than that sometimes even higher than that but the caveat is that they all need to average 60% AMI and so I think in terms of as we were working in terms of financial engineering the project looking at those different unit mixes at the end of the day so again I think that's the essence the origin of that end of the day but you're serving again I think the opportunity and we saw that as not necessarily a bad thing relative to the county wanting to have the higher AMI units because again I think as community builders and when we look at revitalizing neighborhoods I think we've all seen again the results of just concentrated poverty so here's an opportunity for you to deconcentrate poverty with all 60 or below AMI units at the end of the day so I hope I sort of answered that question yeah absolutely and I mean philosophically I think everyone here would like to see units that are targeted towards lower AMIs we've had that conversation numerous times and so I applaud your efforts at trying to really bring down those rates and making sure that we can serve as many individuals as possible in those lower AMIs I applaud that and actually I mean I'm really happy to see that that was your intention unfortunately it's now creating challenges with funding because we need that layer and that stack and the county has specific rules so I'm not even saying that it needs to go back to exactly what it was but I think a commitment that there can be a different mix that could meet county requirements recognizing that they are going to require 80% and I also heard Mark say that if there are more 80% units then that drives down the city subsidy as well and so that makes better math that helps that pencil better and you know our housing team has done a really good job at educating city council on how to pencil affordable housing deals and so while we have what we want philosophically if that doesn't worth mathematically and we need to come up with a different mix I would like to hear your commitment that is what you are willing to do that is our commitment councilwoman and to each of your colleagues this is what we do again we see ourselves as community builders and so these are not just financial transactions for us at the end of the day that which motivates our involvement in this deal in this particular project is that we see a tremendous transformative opportunity to be a catalyst for the revitalization and redevelopment of the deuces corridor and so again those whatever it takes to be able to make that happen that's what we're in for the realities of it is that affordable housing is a challenge it is hard we have a saying in our company that hard things are hard but it does not mean that they are impossible and so we have been intentional and deliberate about doing this and we will continue to do that we've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to date as we stand here so we have not been idle since the approval that you granted us back at that point Jason sort of alluded to some of the things that kind of hindered that process nobody saw the hurricane season coming right after relatively right after the approval and so we have been intentional about doing those things that pushes us forward the commitments that the councilwoman refers to and that's been alluded to in the presentations are the same commitments that everybody who does this business at this stage of development gets we are about to close another transaction about the same amount of money and we don't have what one would call a hard commitment where all of the I's are dotted and T's across almost until the day that it's closing my folk are working on that as we speak right now that's just the nature of this business it's sort of like getting a commitment for a home loan at the end of the day you got a commitment and there are some things that you need to do as you work through that process that is how this works so again we are committed to it councilman Hardaway your proposal about 90 days I appreciate again your desire to want to see this thing move but again we're moving in this process just like everybody else who does this work across the country and 90 days would not work and we expect I think there was a handout that we had that we weren't able to get to the council that basically outlines in terms of where our next steps are we leave it for you to either be able to peruse now or to look at it at a later date but it says in terms of we project to be able to come out of the ground in September of this year the two major components of that so just so you begin to be able to digest that as Jason alluded to the work that they're doing at this point is being able to get to the finish line with our drawings that are then able to be submitted for permitting because the other thing is that you're not going to close any loan no matter how hard the commitment is until you have a set of permitted drawings at the end of the day and so that is the other component that we're working on in this whole process that that requires another formidable expenditure of dollars that we are prepared to continue to do at the end of the day but this project is moving I think again it is something that we're going to all be proud of at the end of the day one final question for you in the backup in the letter from the national equity fund where it talks about the project financing the first mortgage lender source to be determined has that changed since that letter was written in November 11th and that is the commitment that you see from Boston Capital which would be the first mortgage that would be the first mortgage and that is part of that whole bond inducement process that Mr. Gertes referred to earlier Boston Capital is a major player in this market so is a national equity fund and so those are not commitments that people give lightly at the end of the day we've done over a half a billion dollars worth of development you've never not finished one we have at least 300 million dollars in the pipeline as we speak we're closing in the next 60 days approximately 160 million dollars in financing as we speak and so this isn't anything that we are you know just kind of wishing for this is what we do every day so again just wanted you to have some sense of confidence in terms of not only these seem gentlemen here who represent this community that we're working with but you have a really good team I think these are folk whose reputation speaks for themselves and that which they do well thank you for the clarification and understanding to your point Rob that we are not here to talk about funding today we are very clearly here to talk about an extension of an agreement and the last comment I want to make that would be up to the chair I can't let you do that answering questions is I'm all good with but I want to be fair thank you thank you so I mean for me I've set up here for a very long time and seen a lot of deals come our way a lot of extensions come through many times extensions come through and they're actually asking to reduce the number of affordable housing units they're asking for a whole lot more consideration than what we have before us today and we have approved them and these are with development groups that have a lot more bandwidth a lot more capital a lot more access and we approve them yet we're sitting here today potentially thinking that maybe we may not approve this whenever this is a community led community grown development group that wants to do right by our city in an area that has been depressed for too long and so this is pretty cut and dry for me when we talk about wanting to do this see that something happens sooner rather than later to me this is going to be sooner rather than later because if we stop this and we don't move forward with an extension and we don't give another chance then you're going to go right back to the drawing board and I think we've seen how long it can take for bids to come forward for RFPs to be done I mean that whole process in itself could be longer than the year that this development group is asking for so for me this is pretty easy I wanted to understand more about the financing because I realize we if this gets a pass today we will be here and we will have to have this conversation about money but today when it comes right down to it I see no reason why we should not move forward when we truly talk about equity equity should be applied across the board to all developments and consideration should be given in that equitable manner and so I'm happy to vote today for this extension and continue to want to see the progress and this development move forward so thank you thank you council member Vic Sanders thank you thank you all for being here and I wanted to listen to what my colleagues had to say because I have a lot to say but I know chair wants us to keep it tight but what I am going to say and I will be remiss if I did not say how many of you all remember Tangerine Towers how many of you all remember Laurel Heights or Laurel Park we gladly tore down affordable housing for the best interest of the community but we haven't replaced any of those when it comes down to the city of St. Petersburg I was on the CAC you know those dollars that were meant to remove blight well in order to remove blight seems to me you have to remove hurdles you have to remove the struggles and I agree to the fact that when I listen to the that we're going to use St. Pete CRA money I saw what some of that money went on I saw with a lot of those projects how they were funded it didn't benefit our community so it's hard to convince me that it's a struggle for us to find South St. Pete CRA funds for something that's going to benefit South St. Pete so when I think about people how they want to criticize the community for having their hands out I see this project as having your hands up to help your own so I'm looking at the fact that we've had Pinellas County pulled into the conversation that's big we've had those other commitments and Sugar Hill has continued to be committed to this project you know some people feel defeated when they don't think it's going to matter but because the mission of this project is as strong as it is and will benefit so many other people in our community they have not let go and I would have been disappointed had they extremely disappointed had they so when I think about we look at Fairfield Avenue apartments they talked about that that was going on when I first got in on council but as recently as August of 2025 we gladly extended their site plan not development but I'm just talking about the site plan and we've extended that so you're talking what three years four years and they haven't gotten as far as Sugar Hill then we look at Edward White we've approved three million dollars for St. Pete Housing Authority that has a whole lot more access to resources than Sugar Hill and thank you Council Member Gabbard for bringing that up and we're struggling with an extension not money but an extension then I look at the Orange Station Central Station that started back in 2021 and back in 2020 that was just a plan and although it is very needed and very necessary all we have is a garage and so this to me is housing I understand the importance of wanting to have we have to have grocery I get that but to me this project brings it brings housing it brings the opportunity to close the food desert when I ask myself community equity what does that look like and it's a fair system where everyone gets what they need to succeed by tailoring resources to overcome historical banners we have referral list items that have been on that list for more than 12 months things that we've proposed that we haven't even yet talked about so before we know it to me I'm 12 months I would have asked for more because I know what the struggle has been and so do we we know what a struggle looks like when it comes down to these projects and when you have so many out external pieces of that puzzle we know what that looks like but sometimes we choose to pick and choose so I just want us to be mindful that this is an opportunity for that equity to remain an anchor on 22nd street and 18th avenue now if y'all don't get it done you don't get it done then we move on but it won't be at the request or it won't be for us not allowing equitable opportunity like we did with these other projects and I'm just asking for us to be equitable because again like I said this is my fifth year I've seen projects a whole lot cheaper and a whole lot simpler sit on a list a whole lot longer than 18 months so I'm hoping that with that piece of information and thank you Mayor for the memo thank you Administrator Gurders for having that conversation and I think Sugar Hill for wanting to take all 186 units down to 80% because one of the biggest conversations that we've had has always been I'm so tired of 120% we talked about that so many times so I just don't want us to forget I know today is what Thursday December 11th maybe something different next week but today I want us to mind the fact of the matter is this is an opportunity for us to 10 toes down if we say that we're committed to equity then let's do that again to me removing blight is removing hurdles and again thank you for making it very clear that this is not about money and it's really going to be on the Sugar Hill group to go ahead and make it work but I understand that everything that we set out to do other people are not on the same well as we are they're not on the same timeline and when you partner you have to do just that you have to partner and as though we would love for those that we're working with to move like we do it just doesn't work like that in the real world it's not a reality and I just don't want us to forget that you're just asking for an extension so I think it's easy to hear the fact that I'm going to support it because I've looked at all the other projects that we have supported and I would just think that it would be as we say equitable to show the same to the project thank you chief thank you chief now I know I'm not sure I want either of them council member Driscoll thank you and thank you to everyone who has spoken today and for those who have sent emails and reached out in other ways to express your opinions and your requests regarding this decision that we are working to make today I do have I have a couple of questions just to clarify and this Rob would be for you listening to Jason Jensen was talking earlier and stated that the administration had asked the group to change the development mix to include more housing and a smaller grocery store is that something you can verify no that has not been requested it's 10,000 square feet of retail space with 3,000 square feet for a grocery store the minimum requirement for affordable housing is 115 units per the lease and development agreement okay it's difficult when you're trying to take everyone's comments into consideration getting that clarity is important did the administration receive a copy of the letter of commitment from a grocer that the mayor mentioned in his letter that a grocer had been secured that was also mentioned by someone else and that there was in the memo from November 26 from administrator corporate said that the Sugarhill group intended to submit a letter of commitment from a grocer do we have a copy of that because it sounds like it's done we just we just received the letter why doesn't city count did you send it to city council yesterday I'm sorry the letter was received yesterday and staff will need to review and we'll provide that information so it hasn't been shared with city council no it was just received can you share with us the contents of the letter anything about it do you have the name of the grocer I have not fully reviewed the letter taste of the islands is the grocer that is named in the letter no other details okay so I so I voted against this agreement the first time around a year and a half ago because the information that was provided to us at the time for the agreement did not give me the confidence that the goals would be accomplished and the requirements would be met and at the time you know we were told then a year and a half ago that the agreement was needed in order for the group to get site control because then they'd be able to get the financing and they'd be able to to secure a grocer and now we're sitting here 18 months later and we don't see that and you've got last minute stuff coming in that we haven't even received yet and I gotta say the way that we've been receiving the information about this and the very last minute nature of this and the fact that there are documents that we still haven't received about something that we're being asked to vote on today it's really not fair that you're even asking city council to take this up right now it means and it looks like everything has been thrown together by all sides to get this in front of us because this is the last meeting before the agreement expires it's not fair to anyone so when you have the financing not secured when you have a letter that we haven't seen when you have still questions about the housing when you're talking about borrowing money to help with this the reasons that I voted against this agreement in June of 2024 are the same reasons that exist today and it's why I cannot accept or support an extension today you guys haven't even gotten it together no one has and that is a disservice to the community you can do better I have confidence that we can do better thank you chair thank you council member givens thank you chair and thank you to so many of you who've shown up today thank you so much to sugar hill for taking a chance on tangerine plaza I know that anytime someone is willing to take on such an undertaking like this it is not something that you do lightly or you take on easily so again thank you so much I do have some questions I don't know if this is going to be directed towards administration or to sugar hill but I want to clarify why were there delays it's my understanding that there were some changes in project managers I understand there may have been a hiccup or two with permitting but can we go on record to just clarify why this is taking so long council member thanks for the question I would respectfully defer to sugar hill to comment on any delays that have happened so far I'll speak to a few of those items one the comment regarding the grocery store size was referring to pre option pre option where there was asked to have a larger grocery with a lease in place that could not be accomplished until site control which brought up the site control issue so that's a pre this particular option standpoint the process the affordable housing site plan approval is a pseudo permitting process it's robust in the nature that it goes through engineering it goes through different departments and is getting more comments than a typical DRC submittal so in a way you're doing a lot of pre work during that process and you have to get that approved before you can really get into deep on the construction documents because say there's a major change in exactly where the building is on site you can't move forward with construction documents so when we started directly after the option we scheduled a pre submittal meeting directly after that we put together a package and was submitted for some reason it was not logged into the system for the development and was not issued to the different departments for review from that standpoint so hurricanes hit in that same time period after obviously permitting was inundated with work at that point we realized we contacted reached out we have emails contacting hey where is this and then that came out so then we re-engaged the process this year to go through the process and then it was logged in and then that started a formal review process but we lost a few months in that period and I appreciate you Mr. Jensen and that's been my frustration is we are expecting that developers will come to the table prepared and ready to execute and go vertical but what we don't anticipate is that we on our end as a city will not be prepared to do our jobs and again when you have developments like this of such a large scale it's important to recognize that you all are depending on us to follow through so if there was a failure on our part to upload documents to review permitting or plans again that is something that I think should be clearly spelled out council member I can respond to that if I may so yes there was a site plan approval submittal on I believe December 26th of 2024 and then within days while we were out on holiday I was informed by Ahmad Zachary who was the original project manager and who submitted that site plan approval that he had left new urban development and was moving on to a different role so after the holidays I reached out to the Sugar Hill group team to say that hey this had been submitted were they behind it is this still a good site plan to submit for approval I was told at that time in January that they were in fact making changes to the site plan significant changes which have actually occurred since that time there's been a reorganization of the buildings on the site and some other changes so I explained that I couldn't move forward with the site plan approval until I had a valid site plan to support that they were in the process of looking for someone to replace Mr. Zachary to lead the project and I think that happened around or at least I and we had some conversation about the fact that you know the previous submitted site plan apparently did not align with the plan development that was confirmed and that was told that they were working on that new design would get it to me as soon as possible that was provided on July I think it was 17th of 2025 it was resubmitted with a new site plan and all of the backup data that matched that site plan and then we processed accordingly as Aaron Fish mentioned earlier it was submitted on July 17th we provided the initial response on July 31st and additional comments and responses in early August since that time we've provided quick and timely responses to submitted information and in the past 30 to 60 days they Sugar Hill group has worked on responding to a number of comments from various departments in the city regarding the site plan and at last check there was still at least one outstanding comment or question from our water resources department that remained to be answered in order to be able to provide the site plan approval letter so there was a delay but it was due to the fact that what was submitted in December I was told on no uncertain terms was not going to be the final site plan and it doesn't behoove anybody to circulate a site plan that is not valid with backup information that does not match what ultimately was submitted as the site plan for that project so I just want to clarify for the record I appreciate that thank you can I follow up on to say that anybody misstepped the object is to say that this is the process the permitting process if this wasn't a site plan approval a regular permitting process we have regular projects going through permit that are in permit 10 12 months depending on the complexity of the project so absolutely it's a normal part of the process what I'm saying is the project has been dedicated to getting across the finish line on all those aspects there was a hiccup from the architect standpoint we thought it was in review and it would be a revision to that review and the timeline would continue so that's where the disconnect comes into that on the level of change whether you start the review or not but nobody this is just to say it's a normal part of the process and this part of the process takes where we are to this point and that was the reason I was asking but I just want to stress the importance of accessibility accountability punctuality response rate obviously if we were to move forward with this extension there's some shoestrings we got to tighten right some things we got to get right and whether it's on our side as a city or on your side as a developer I just want to make sure the in July sent an email asking for an update because it had been months since I had heard anything and I'm grateful that you all were willing to come to the table and speak to me in August and get me caught up to speed but there were some things that were brought to light that concerned me one of those things was the grocer and this has been brought up and I'm glad that we've gone on record to talk about who they are I've been a patron of Taste of the islands pretty much my whole life but I do have concerns about whether or not that grocer will be able to perform at this site we know reasons why Sweet Bay and Walmart did not fail right there's a reason the market didn't support those grocery retailers and so we have to get creative with the model that we're introducing here so I want to know a couple of questions one what is the current square footage of Taste of the islands produce grocery store that they have because I understand that they're operating right now off the 34th street and 22nd can you kind of give me an idea how long they've been operating and how what the size is of that square open Pastor Murphy could probably tell you or Mr. Binger in terms of how long they've been operating but I can say to you Councilman that in terms of the size of their current store is probably somewhere closer about 3,000 square feet again as I said to you and please Mr. Chair again in terms of how we approach and look at these projects again as a community revitalization project one that provides and to self actualize as a business and so we see again in terms of why taste of the island it's a community centric business the community is familiar with it they've already demonstrated that there is market acceptance and here is an opportunity for them to augment their business model and so we thought that again when you look at that holistic approach in community development that they would be an ideal candidate for that space and again as you said a little earlier by now and we had a host of conversations with other major grocers regional grocers and the market just wasn't jumping up and down about a grocer at the end of the day so those are the realities of it generally when we're doing mixed use projects we're not asked to identify a user at that particular point in the development process not withstanding that that was okay again as I said we believe in what we're doing today so Roy thank you Roy Binger 1120 North Shore Drive first Commissioner Harding congrats for a good burger we were remiss I didn't say that yesterday everybody stealing my thunder an announcement I've been around probably over 10 years at least they just opened up a second store in Port Charlotte called Coronation Market it's Jamaican heritage Leo Anderson and his family right now supporting what happened the hurricane in Jamaica and just a tremendous family but we and I think Oliver mentioned it we've been working with other grocers trying to find the right mix and the attitude that we took which I applaud from the team was where taste of Alan is now and the capacity of where he is now perfect example of how you can take an entrepreneur minority owned business moving to a brand new complex that leases for three years five years or two five year options $99,000 first year and support them we talked with the St. Pete Free Clinic and they have a capacity to help provide some lower cost funds to help the Father Loan Fund can assist Financial Health St. Pete is able to assist so we will help Leo and his family along with the greenhouse to how to scale up your business and here will be a success story hope that answers your question directly I appreciate it and you know I brought this up before in my conversations with you all I've mentioned this before in the sunshine you know I can't ignore the elephant in the room positive impact they have had a model that has been successful there at that site now granted I've heard people say we don't need handouts but I've said it before I don't see what they're doing as a handout but a hand up so if there is a model similar to that you mentioned at the St. Pete Free Clinic or Feeding Tampa Bay or whatever I just want us to be open to different concepts moving forward should this agreement be extended I do not think that a traditional grocery store model will work there nor do I think that a grocery store that has not had a track record of operating and succeeding at that location like other partners have I just want to know if there's an opportunity for us to explore other options good evening honorable council Reverend Lewis Murphy senior 2551 Tropical Shores Drive southeast council McGivins thank you so very much for those questions let me just say that Pastor Brubaker and I go back years we've worked hand in hand on spiritual matters as far 7x7 we had conversation this morning I'm very grateful and thankful for that we're going to be meeting after this after whatever the council does we will still be we will meet and talk about how we can support each other in doing what we are doing she's doing a great work in the community it's needed the vision of where we're trying to go this is a starting point a book end a revitalization of the deuces of that corridor and we're excited about it we know that we can do it you've heard the facts some of them you may not fully understand other folks have their thoughts and whatever about it but we've been in the trenches for a long time we're committed to our community we are vested our objective is to bring about an effective change within that community not only through economic development social educational spiritual and we've been there over 97 years I've been there for the past 26 years in that capacity but in so many other capacities in this city council I came here in 1976 and marched in your festival of states parade and I said I ain't never coming back to St. Pete old people now I'm old green benches and pigeons but for whatever reason the good lord sent me back here in 1986 after serving our country in the United States Marines we know what we're doing we're committed to what we're doing we've seen the development downtown St. Pete I work for the St. Pete housing authority St. Petersburg Times Florida Power Corporation in the procurement department I know how our dollars are spent and how they are not spent so please I say to the council help us get across this finish line thank you thank you pastor and I appreciate you bringing up the work that you are doing at Mount Zion because that's the type of work that I want to see replicated there on the corner of the deuces and 18th Avenue I would love to see personalized support and job training workforce housing you know what you all have done at your church I definitely think that model could be replicated there I do think that we are maxing out the number of housing units I would like to see that number decrease if possible because I think you all may be taking on a little bit too much when it comes to that I would love to know and I think another council member brought this up earlier but I didn't really get a definitive answer if you're willing to make that adjustment so that we can have a mix that includes that 80% AMI to greatly reduce that public subsidy because that is a concern for me is how much we are going to have to cough up out of taxpayer funds so I just want to know is that something that we're willing to agree to now or you know I'm sorry Mr. Gross you're going to have to come to the microphone yeah thank you sorry no worries I didn't get my jaw again this morning councilman I don't think that that's something that we can agree to today but I think we heard you and this is again as I said just part of the iteration of this business in terms of financial engineering at the end of the day and so we just need to know in terms of what the variables what are the benchmarks that we're trying to shoot for and then you try to model your deal to be able to make those things work at the end of the day so that has been our again I think our position from the outset hence again as I said to you earlier it's not normal in terms of doing deals where you have to identify a vendor for your commercial components at this stage of development but again having accepted that again hearing what was important to the council what was important to the community we're trying to get it done at the end of the day and again I think the most important thing and I'll leave it at this Mr. Chair is that the thing that has really pleased us despite the ebbs and flows is that there is and we do sense that there is a commitment a want to for the council and this city to get this project done and while you're there at the mic if you don't mind what's going to happen differently this time if you are to be approved for the extension well it's nothing that's happening differently we're just continuing as again through this process as I said to you a little earlier where we are in this process other than the ebbs and flows and those things that are bottlenecked the process and from the time these projects take time but where we are as it relates to financing is where anybody in this process would be and you know in terms of getting the LOIs that's all that folk have when they're applying for tax credits bonds councilman that's all you have and I can't stress that enough that is all you have until the point where you get to what they call credit underwriting and you're beginning to close a deal and that's normally the last 60 or 90 days of that process you've got about 30 or 40 people on a call or in a room in a meeting trying to close a deal at the end of the day and by that point we would have spent well into seven figures at the end of the day but where we are right now we're just continuing to push the ball forward at the end of the day and so again the other elephant that was in the room in terms of where we are with the city and the county that was based on some conversations that we had had based on what had been the prior experiences of the city relative to their commitment for project from a dollar standpoint and so when you take 186 units and multiply it by $50,000 a door that's the number you come up with and that's what we thought was the number that would be available if there are some issues that we have to deal with relative to doing that we're going to deal with that at the end of the day we just need to know what we're dealing with thank you I appreciate it and my last question I think it's probably an administrative question I remember being here promise made I guess that's the word to use to help positive impact find a temporary location or an alternative site can we speak to if that has been done and if we've identified some possible locations for them we have not yet found an alternate location the conversation we had in July is as we get closer to this wrapping up and the lease ending or their use of that property ending we would be committed to finding a property at this point there is no need to relocate but we are still committed to that thank you for that Mr. Corbett I appreciate it and lastly the last thing I want to do is see this train get derailed I want to see it through to fruition but at the same time I have expectations and I have concerns I think I've been very vocal about those and we've had an opportunity to talk those out and I'm excited to see where we go from here so thank you chair thank you councilmember floyd thank you I just wanted to ask a question of administration just trying to get clarity but you know this is a question that I ask of most projects like this so if this were to get denied today what would administration's path forward be would it be I mean I assume going back to the drawing board deciding what needs to be done at the site putting out RFPs bid process all of that I see you shaking your nodding yes we would have to discuss it internally and we'd want to discuss with city council members but I think it would surely be a process going forward with something different and I ask to get that understanding because I think it's been brought up here before you know this is a place where we want to see something done sooner rather than later the whole corridor really that's been a huge part of the conversation and when we've had other things brought to us the developments brought to us in this corridor and without that can often be part of the conversation and look I didn't support the last thing that we had going over here for financial reasons but the same arguments were made about wanting to see something done and there was a lot of the perception of a lot of missteps on the way to get there but now it's happening and even though I didn't support it I'm glad to see it actually moving forward this one I don't have financial qualms with because the numbers that you've given us are very reasonable in the scheme of things so I'm looking at this through the lens of you know these other development projects it was mentioned in the memo council member fig sanders mentioned it this is actually not an abnormal process at all what we're going through right now so I'm looking at it through that lens but I wanted to make sure I understood like what how long it would take and what the difference would be I mean we could be looking at a year from now we're just getting to a contract with someone else who may ask us for if we weren't to move this forward who knows how long it could be before we could even get to a contract with someone else so I just want to put that out there so that people know that you know there's nothing super easy about any of this and we can't snap our fingers and get it done that's all I have I just wanted to put that out there thank you thank you councilmember hardy thank you chair I appreciate the the input of my colleagues the as you listen I think you can find that this this is this vote is split at some level and and so I come back to the thought that and I appreciate and understand mr. gross's thoughts on the the being longer than a year but what we're here today today to decide is really just a list of an extension for a list of five things and it seems like some of the boxes are already checked and really what's left aside from identifying partners to work with which may or may not have been done already but I'm sure is in the works is the it is the commitment to funding that's really the piece that's left my assumption I could be wrong but my assumption is that's in the works and and in order for this project to really start that that we need to get to that level in the next 90 days so I offer I offer a third option between yes and no for what we're looking at now and I mean although I'm short on procedure we have smart people at the other end of this oval or this this dais that I sit on and I would I would I would I would like to make a motion that we amend this from a year to 90 days you can do that council member the it would essentially be amending the resolution in the manner that you just stated we'll see if that's a that's a happy middle ground okay does he need to restate the motion or is you okay there I mean I'm okay if everybody else is is clear um council member Harding did you have anything else that's it thank you okay council member Gabbard legal if that were to fail could we go back to the original yes okay I just want to make sure thank you council member Gibbons I don't want to do too much back and forth but legal perhaps you can give me some direction on this I don't know if council member Harding would be open to a friendly amendment to his motion um but I'd like to go from 90 days to six months I'm just putting that out there um but again that's just a suggestion thank you chair I'd be willing to do that so are you are you making that friendly amendment or are you are you proposing that friendly amendment sir and then council member Harding are you accepting I accept okay yeah I know we don't have a second yet but I just wanted to make sure procedurally we were in a good place you could I mean it's fine what council member Gibbons did yep okay so now the motion uh it essentially council member Harding just revised his motion per council member Gibbons uh suggestion okay council member Floyd um thank you chair uh so I uh see and agree to an extent with where this is coming from but um I just now I feel like it's requires a deeper conversation about like what uh metrics we're using if we're changing to such a short time frame if we want to stick with just accomplishing all of the things that are listed then that's fine that's what it sounds like for now uh you're getting a stream of consciousness right now I think because it's just all changed so quickly yeah but uh I guess you know um when it was three months my thinking was we had heard from the development group that they couldn't do three months so we might as well just vote no on the extension so I mean I guess I'll give them a chance to tell us what they think about six months but it could be the very same position so I don't know if you all want to come up to the podium and just and while they're deliberating administration let me ask uh the option for a one-year extension was in the original contract am I correct I see was in the original agreement of maximum of 12 months extension at council's sole discretion a maximum of 12 months at council's sole discretion okay all right um so you know to me it sounds like they're uh attempting to execute what was contractually given to them like we wrote in the contract that they could come ask us for a year and uh but it does say at council's discretion in terms of where we believe we will be in a year um we can't get their councilman in three months or six months at the end of the day um and what we're trying to get to is not just being able to honor those things in the option that takes us and and help me Mr. Corbett if I'm Mr. Good if I'm wrong in terms of being able to get to that point where we're exercising a lease is that we're trying to get to the point where we've got a shovel in the ground and uh the document that we were um again late and getting to you you get a chance to review it you'll see the timeline in terms of next steps but if if what we're saying and I want to be clear about this councilman right when we talk about the financing commitments which is that that piece that's really missing at the end of the day in this whole process in terms of what we don't have are the commitments from the city and the county okay I'll just say I appreciate you providing some info I just wanted to hear you say oh yeah we think we could do it in six months or not and I hear that you're saying no you you will need more time and actually it sounds like from administration that they would need more time to get their end of it uh done as well and so I feel like that puts it into context that it's like we give them a six month extension they say they can't do it we might as well just vote no on the extension period right now uh so um I'll just I'll leave it there uh thank you okay um so here here's where I'm at on on your motion councilman councilman harding I appreciate what you're trying to accomplish I also one we've heard that they don't think it's viable to the original contract that was approved had the 12 month extension in it and so it makes me feel like we're trying to change the contract of which we approved originally approved and both parties agreed to I struggle with that and so um that that's where I am there here here's the deal I'm gonna try to be I'm gonna try to be efficient and quick first of all uh councilman gabbard I thought I literally I wanted to echo everything that you said and so I thought you put it very well here here's here's just kind of my two take you've heard me multiple times uh talk about starting over I don't like delays but I hate starting over worse and so that that's what we would be doing here and if and to be honest with you in the in the grand scheme of projects in the city if we're willing to do six months it should be the same for 12 because when you look at pro we just put a shovel in the ground at pelican place that was five years in the making and so I I just don't I don't see it we we approved a contract that had a the possibility of a 12 month extension it just seems like that's where we should be here's the deal right progress takes patience and persistence in the city it's like driving the Titanic you got to do it at one degree at a time it doesn't turn on a dime and so it's to turn that ship around is way more than to keep it going forward I would also very much agree with um councilwoman fixed standards comments about um that equity in projects and so you know this group uh for for a long time has been trying to get this done and I think again in the grand scheme as you look at other projects and I know it's been said already that frankly this is still not a lot of time when you're talking about an organization and a move like this and so um councilmember harding I totally appreciate what you're trying to accomplish but I think at the end of the day if the spirit is we want this group to get it done then we should be getting it done in the timeline that they've set in front of us which they think is 12 months and I and I and that's I think that's where it's at so at this point I haven't heard a second so that motion dies for fail of a second approval of the resolution second we have a motion and a second on f3 seeing as no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr. chair the motion to approve agenda item f3 please please please please please council members driscoll and hanowitz voting no and council members fig sanders floyd gabbard girdus gibbons and harding voting yes okay thank you all right we're gonna move we're gonna move into h1 excuse me g1 new business council member harding hold on just one second council member we're gonna give everybody a minute to we're gonna give everybody a minute to leave chambers sorry about that all right thank you yes yes you're gonna have street view of my facial my could you please close the doors all right council member g1 new business thank you chair respectfully requesting referral to the budget finance and taxation committee for a discussion on a budget stress test based on potential state legislation eliminating property taxes for homestead assets this discussion should identify the impact of property taxes on the city of st petersburg's budget the discussion should also include core competencies that must remain fiscally intact as well as programs that would be that would need to be reduced or eliminated in the event of state legislation passing and and to be clear i'm this is not about the state and what the state may or may not do i'm not interested in in regards this new business item i really am interested in just what what do we do in the event and this is a good opportunity to stress test uh to stress test the budget if not the state imposing changes then the next disaster or whatever it is but i think it's a good exercise for us to go through if uh in if if if if the state passes this and we lose sixty plus million dollars in uh in in uh budget revenue then we're gonna have to make some choices and i think it's uh prudent at this point for us to at least talk about it um thank you chair so moved okay council member gabbard i just want to thank you council member hurting for putting this on um it's funny after this agenda came out and your item was on the ads and deletes um somebody had actually asked me has the city looked at what they're going to do and i said well funny enough we have a new business item so thank you so much um for putting this forward i think it's a very forward leaning and i appreciate that so look forward to supporting it thank you council member floyd thank you uh i'll just say real quick similar to council member gabbard actually first when i saw this i was like i got frustrated because the conversation around property taxes frustrated me in general and i'm for all that we know they might just say a bunch of things and do nothing uh i will say one thing it says uh in the event of state legislation passings i was under the impression that something like this was going to be a ballot question uh as well so yeah yeah it was not aware at the time yeah okay i don't think it's a big deal i just figured i'd mention it um but having said that you know it's going to be a ballot question and it's going to be something that the state representatives and senators vote on i think this is a useful exercise not just for us i know you didn't you're looking at it as a useful exercise for us but i think it's you know useful exercise for people to actually have the information be armed with the information the broader public to know what it would look like if something like this were to go on and so after my initial revulsion because i just don't like that what the conversation's been at the state level um i realized i i thought about it and yeah this is a really good new business item so i appreciate you for it all right share hands thank you chair and like uh council member gabbard and council member floyd i was thinking the same thing and i've already actually had started having those conversations with people in in my district i i wrote a newsletter i started explaining what the potential impacts were um if we lost funding and i think it's critical for us as not just a city to have this conversation at bfnt but for all of us to start engaging everyone in our respective areas because somebody received my newsletter and they were like why isn't this on the news the majority of people do not understand the huge impact it would have on them personally and their level of service that they would receive from the city so i think having those conversations earlier rather than later is probably is crucial so thank you thank you okay we have a motion and a second on g1 there's no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item g1 passes unanimously okay thank you we're going to move into council committee reports councilman floyd thank you uh i have the honor of presenting you today with a uh an attached resolution and i'm respectfully requesting city council approval of a resolution to support the de-annexation of the lincoln cemetery from the city of gulfport i'll move approval second we have a motion and a second council member gibbons thank you chair i just want to thank you so much council member floyd thank you council member driscoll uh for bringing this forward i really think this moves this council in the right direction on a unified accord um we're trying to do the right thing um and to make right the past wrong so thank you so much i appreciate it chair thank you okay we have a motion and a second on h1a seems no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item h1a passes unanimously okay thank you all right we're going to move right into public hearings we have j1 clerk could you please read the title oppose ordinance number 620-h and 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 cultural capital capital fund 3029 multi-modal impact fees capital improvement fund 3071 downtown parking improvement fund 3073 water resources 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 four of the fiscal years 2026 through 2030 adopting the fdot district seven adopted five-year work program for the fiscal years 2025 slash 26 2029 slash 30 providing for severability and providing for an effective date and we do not have any cards on this okay council members we got uh welcome britain we got this uh during first reading but there was a change to slide six unless unless unless somebody wants the full presentation i thought we'd just go to slide six where there was a change made on a request from vice chair hanowitz and then um we go from there how's that britain yeah sure excellent um good evening um council members britain wilson city planner and i do want to apologize for the very long ordinance title can't control that so let's see it went too far yep so for um the 2024 facility capacities um the city's potable water facilities are operating with 40 percent available capacity the sanitary sewer uh typically has a base system-wide available capacity of 50 percent but with the three storms last fall of debbie helene and milton which contributed to stormwater infiltration the system did very well and still operated with 30 percent available capacity solid waste has 18 percent collection capacity and stormwater is an outlier as it's not population dependent and development must be compliant with city and water management district regulations and rec and open space has almost twice the amount of available area than the adopted los of nine acres per 1 000 people and we do have subject matter experts here from these departments tonight that can speak to the available capacity in more detailed if requested but in general capacity of these facilities can be extended or expanded upon as the population slowly grows which is why we monitor this annually in order to plan for new development and population growth and with that staff recommends a finding of consistency with a comprehensive plan and recommends approval of the annual capital improvements element update thank you thanks so much britain vice chair hanowitz thank you chair uh thank you britain for adding that uh slide and thank you for pointing out there are some subject matter experts here because i knew i was going to ask some questions about it i know claude has attended some of my neighborhood meetings where we've covered this um and the things that i i really want to touch upon is um and claude you've done this so many times um but first of all just talk about where you see our available capacities and how you feel about where they they are um and then also touch a little bit about the storm water and why there isn't a level you know the level of service and i i know here it says not population dependent but there are there's also some other things with the storm water sure so thank you claude tankersley public works administrator thank you for the question the opportunity to talk about this again so we are very fortunate in saint pete in that our utilities our water and sewer utilities were developed at a time when there was high water usage and they assumed that we would always have high water usage but we're such a conserving community that we have cut back on our water usage significantly in the decades which means that we've been able to add population without necessarily adding additional um flows to the system um when you look at the population in 2007 versus now the population increased but our our actual water and sewer usage stayed roughly the same um we are if if you if you look at only the population induced usage of our water and sewer system we we have a significant amount of availability in our sewer system it's about we are our average daily uh capacity is 56 million gallons per day um during the dry season when we don't have any inflow and infiltration which means it's it's only you know population uh usage we're we're seeing 28 29 million gallons a day 30 million gallons a day during this during this past month past two months uh october and november of of of of this year we were seeing 28 million gallons a day because it was so dry um and and then on the water side our capacity at the plant is is roughly 62 million gallons per day and we are again using about 30 30 million gallons a day on average so we have plenty of capacity in the system to build in for population growth now the question might be well why do we need to continue to spend money on our systems it's because the systems are old and we do need to update them and then the other thing with the storm water and it says it's not population dependent and i know we've covered this before um in um the level of service that is adopted is existing conditions and it's due to the backlog of our stormwater drainage system improvements and if you can just talk about that because obviously the investments were extremely low and we've ramped up those investments uh in the last few years and i think that's what's happening you're trying to get to the investment necessary in that system correct that is correct and and the system is not population based it's based off of um the impervious area and we can sometimes increase the population without necessarily increasing the impervious area so the simplest way i like to describe this is if you take a a two-story apartment complex that might have 50 units and you replace it with a 10-story a a complex with with 500 units um as long as the footprint is the same you're not generating any additional storm water and and the the the point to the existing conditions is our level of service that the intention is that we don't we don't increase the amount of storm water that we are generating through our impervious service areas and so that's that's why we have the the credits for the impervious uh the credits for reducing impervious area that's why we have the tiered rates uh the tiered rates for storm water that's why for large developments they have to provide on-site or remediation of the extra storm water that they may generate that's that's under the city code as well as the code from swift mud um and so the the the what's changed really that that has caused perhaps our storm water systems to behave differently now than they used to is the environment and the environment has changed and so the the the point where the storm water may discharge where in the past they may be it may be discharging into a high tide of maybe one foot now it's discharging to a high tide of two feet which means it's slower to get out there and so the the work we are looking to do over the the next decades or so on our storm water system is to accommodate and adjust for the changed environment i appreciate that um i know we've had those conversations and meetings and that everyone is always very appreciative of understanding i i can't count the number of emails i've received and people are like if you stop building in downtown i wouldn't be flooding here on where you know it could be on the west side or the north side and it has literally nothing to do with the flooding in their area but somehow those dots have been connected and in their mind it's like and they're the reason why i'm flooding and it's other issues and that's why i just i think it's always good to have this conversation um at city council so for whoever is listening thank you claude council member gower thank you chair and uh i'm not sure answer this or maybe this is a follow-up for another time um but thank you first uh council vice chair hanowitz for putting having this slide put in um because i appreciate the call out specifically on the solid waste um obviously i mean that you know has a lot to do with pinellas county and their waste energy facility but recycling is taken into account in the backup but i wanted to know if this 18 on solid waste takes into account the ability for collection at the recycling center or how is that all taken into consideration we do calculate and that does um account for the recycling as well and so on the city's side the city's only responsible for collection but the county does also have their own level of service standard which is the same as the city's is 1.25 but the city doesn't measure there so they they exceeded their los this year partly because of the storms and the excessive um debris that was collected whereas our collection rate went down a little bit because a lot of what was taken away was done by contractors so the city didn't account for that okay yeah i mean maybe that's a conversation for a deep dive at a later date um just because i mean there was an article whenever they changed their contractor recently about kind of the useful life of that facility and all of the different you know level of service as you mentioned and so i'm sure there will be impacts to us at some point in time as they look at increasing their level of service so maybe that's a conversation for further um but really i was more interested in specifically the recycling um just because that does live within our purview um right there and i think it was probably one of the first things that i ever annoyed rob about whenever i was first elected was the blight of the recycling and you know every time i drive by the wall i thank thank thank rob girdus for putting that wall up there so that we could hide that but i mean there are times when it gets pretty robust and so just kind of understanding what the future of that might look like um i think might be a conversation we might want to revisit at some point and council member that's not our recycling processor any longer oh okay um so i was aware of that yeah so you approved a different contract in the last year or so um and our our recycling processor is received we do a lot of stuff right outside of the county okay so what is happening there at that facility now at the facility that we did have a contract it's still a recycling processor they're just not our recycling processor okay okay they didn't win the contract bid so there is someone like other entities are utilizing that still i would assume so since it's still in business okay okay so we could have a separate conversation yeah if there's codes related issues yeah yeah i'd like to understand what's happening i think that makes me even more concerned now so okay very good thank you chair thank you okay uh do we have yep thank you second we have a motion and second on j1 seeing as no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted please clerk please tally announce the vote chair the motion to approve agenda item j1 passes unanimously okay we're going to go to j2 could you please read the title opposed ordinance number 629-8 an ordinance of the city of st petersburg florida amending chapter 17.5 article 6 of the city code related to affordable housing site plan approval amending section 17.5-111 related to applicability criteria providing for severability and provided for an effective date and we do not have cards on this welcome all right thank you good evening derek kilbourne director of planning uh this particular presentation is one that is very very similar to the one i gave back uh over the summer you'll recall at the housing land use and transportation committee from that discussion there were some questions that led to some cleanup of the language and clarification but essentially what you have is uh what we commonly refer to as senate bill 1730 that was memorialized as chapter 2025-172 in florida law and so this particular application is intended to take those state preemptions and allowances and incorporate it into our city code chapter 17.5 so specifically on this table here you can see just a timeline in history of some of these state actions and how the city has responded in kind on the timeline starting back with house bill 1339 in 2020 and i think this particular bill is an important one to point out because at that time that bill did allow for housing on institutional properties which included churches and schools which are typically classified institutional as we move through the live local act and live local act update the opportunity to do or consider projects on institutional categories was taken away so with the last legislative session in 2025 there was a lot of new discussion about considering how affordable workforce housing could be considered on church-owned properties and that was a big part of the discussion this past year and it's a big part of what is being recommended here today as part of this proposal with regards to the religious owned properties oftentimes people use the acronym yigbee which stands for yes in god's backyard so you may have heard that term that seems to be the one point that is generating the most comments and and from what we have seen so far supportive comments so just quickly um what this uh includes are several bullet points reflecting the state uh changes first this particular set of changes talks about where uh projects may be allowed and it came up with some new descriptions of what our mixed-use categories based on that we needed to amend our language to include references to um our corridor commercial traditional corridor commercial suburban but also our corridor residential traditional and corridor residential suburban and so that's what this ordinance does the second thing is as i just described to you including language that allows these religious institutions and church-owned properties to consider affordable workforce housing my understanding is that if this particular ordinance is adopted tonight that saint petersburg would be the first municipality in the state of florida to incorporate this into its city codes the third bullet point talks about changes to how impervious surface needs to be considered and also relating to building heights and as after these particular slides we also have the strike through underlying queued up here too if you'd like to see those okay under the fourth uh change there are requirements for mixed-use projects identifying that at least 65 percent of these mixed-use projects are required to be residential and it allows up to 90 percent the fifth bullet point talks about height restrictions on parcels in historic districts and in this particular case the state law is referring to national registered districts only local historic districts are still subject to the normal certificate of appropriateness review under the sixth bullet point it does require demolition permits to be uh reviewed and uh administratively and approved at the administrative level and then finally beginning in november of 2026 we are required to start filing annual reports uh summarizing any litigation or a list of projects that were proposed and approved uh within that last year so for strike through underline you'll see as you move through the language this first one is adding in references to crt and crs it is also referencing the religious institutions and uh properties that are owned and have a house of public worship as defined by state statutes you also have references here to lock coverage impervious surface ratio changes an explanation of height restrictions in our local ordinance we have tried to break this out into smaller bullet points which we thought read a little easier rather than how the state language was set up but this does mirror state language and then finally the calibration of mixed use projects residential to commercial this is your underlying addition language for heights in national register districts and then finally the demolition language that relates to our downtown center zoning districts so that completes our initial presentation um i can answer any questions and we also have different representatives from the housing team here as well thank you move approval second we have a motion and a second on j2 i think we were the first at 13 39 too oh i remember correctly so to the finish line we go again all right we've got a motion a second on j2 great job derek seeing as no other council members wish to speak clerk please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally and announce the vote we have the motion to approve agenda item j2 pass okay we are going to move into j3 clerk could you please read the ordinance 142-hl an ordinance of the city of st petersburg florida designating the abbey uphouse upham house located at 5297 huntington street northeast as a local historic landmark and adding the property to the st petersburg register of historic places pursuant to section 16.30.070 city code and providing for an effective date and we do have a card on this one okay and then clerk could you please swear in all parties and speakers okay thank you we're going to move into presentation staff welcome all right good evening uh kelly perkins historic preservationist of the city of st pete and we are here for an owner initiated local historic landmark designation of the abbey upham house and we did not receive any public comments on this project the subject property is located in the edgewater section of the shore acres neighborhood and the house was built in 1926 according to the building permits staff finds that it was designed to be built in the french eclectic style but there are some changes from the design to how it was built so it seems to incorporate some other architectural styles that were commonly found in st petersburg in the 1920s but the french eclectic style is very unusual for this area there is a one-story garage on the property as well that appears to be of the same era it was not included on the property card and here's another photograph showing the front elevation of the property so the house was built by nathaniel janeway upham who was a prominent realtor and developer from duluth minnesota he moved to st pete in 1919 and he really became known for trying to develop shore acres into pretty much another sort of snell isle where there's a lot of grandiose houses very much sort of the city beautiful type design he also was involved in trying to develop st pete beach as well and then back in minnesota he was involved in trying to initiate a great lakes waterway movement to connect sort of minnesota into the great lake system so while shore acres never fully developed the way that he had envisioned mainly due to the 1926 land bust and then the great depression his sons continued on with the development project in shore acres and in st pete beach in the post-world war ii building boom so here's sort of a newspaper clippings of houses in the top left that were being built in shore acres and then on the bottom right is an aerial and it's actually the intersection of alabama and cheyenne and actually three of those four houses are still there and i'm pretty certain that the house in the bottom right of the newspaper clipping is the house on the bottom right in that aerial so you can go see it looks pretty much exactly the same so he built a lot of houses in the shore acres neighborhood for his family members and himself and so this subject property was actually built for his sister abbey upham and so in the top you can see the blueprints that were designed for the property so you can see it originally was designed with this really uh steeply pitched roof that in the dormers which are much more of a hallmark of the french eclectic style i'm not sure if it was a changing climate this type of roof is often more what you'd have for like snow and maybe they decided that didn't really need that here um but he was also from duluth minnesota and he up and brought him down to kind of develop some of the houses for his um developments he was self-taught and um on the bottom there are three photographs that are other houses he designed in duluth minnesota that are still standing so he designed in a multitude of architectural styles so when reviewing the application staff found that it met four criteria for eligibility a c e and f and that is significant in the areas of community planning and development architecture and its association with the developer and then when reviewing the factors of integrity staff found that it met all seven factors of integrity and then here's a list of character defining features i don't want to read them all out here for you they're included in the staff report i would say probably one of the biggest ones is that prominent brick trimney on the front facade it's kind of one of the more unusual features of this house is that the front entrance was not designed on the front facade it's on the side and that chimney is really like that really defining feature and so um i'm recommend staff is recommending approval to uh the request to designate this house as a local historic landmark and i am here if you have any questions and the owner is here as well thank you does the applicant have a presentation okay and we have no opponent okay uh we'll go to public comment please emily ellen please go to the podium state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council sure i'm emily elwin 836 16th avenue northeast and i'll be quick i'm here representing preserve the berg i'm a volunteer board member of preserve the berg and i'm a historic and i just wanted to say we are really proud to support the third application this year for historic landmark designation you may recall the other two the preserve the berg supported uh which was 19 7 or 1947 beach drive southeast and the trinity church petb provides technical assistance to applicants who want to um who want to um landmark their properties we also pay all fees city fees associated with landmark applications through our landmark designation fund i also want to know the city's comprehensive plan does encourage the city to recommend three properties a year for landmark designation and the council is also able to encourage um land and recommend landmark designation as well but preserve the berg is happy to continue to do this work and to continue to support property owners that are committed to their properties like these property owners um and we want to encourage you to support this application and of course vote yes thank you so much thank you okay no more no more public comment all right uh staff city waves okay and then uh the applicant would uh you have the option to cross-examine at this point would you like to wave okay and then any closing remarks none thank you any closing remarks okay so we'll close the we'll close that and go into executive session council members move approval second we have a motion and a second on j3 seeing as it's a beautiful home by the way yes uh i didn't want to skip that part uh motion and a second on j3 seeing as no other council members wishing to speak clerk could you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing as all present council members have voted clerk please tally announce the vote mr chair the motion to approve agenda item j3 passes unanimously okay we're going to go into open forum do we have any speakers no speakers okay we'll close open forum council members announcements any announcements council member floyd i figured i'd just jump on here real quick to say um not as positive but i wanted people to be aware of uh one thing i've been working on a bunch is helping uh tenants at first the elements in the morgan um to connect your resources and it looks like the morgan went into foreclosure recently uh i wanted uh you have no opportunity to have a discussion with you all about it until next year next council meeting but i mentioned in some of the previous conversations we've had my uh desire to explore the city taking over control of the property because there's a lot of affordable housing there people who are suffering uh and i don't want to see them all get put out on the street through this process so i wanted to uplift that message and say that i'll be bringing something at the beginning of the year but it's something that's happened at sort of an inopportune time for us so i figured i'd mention it during announcements thanks thank you council member gibbons thank you chair uh just want to remind council members this weekend on saturday uh from 10 to 3 there'll be an annual kidpreneur summit um this is an opportunity for youth between the ages of 9 to 17 to get connected to some business owners i see a couple on this dais right now um a great opportunity for hopefully them to be paired with a mentor uh so kudos to duvet weaver and his group closer to our dreams for doing this i think it's an awesome opportunity uh for us to really kind of raise up and mentor the next generation of entrepreneurs thank you chair awesome thank you council member fick sanders thank you um and thank you um council member floyd for bringing the morgan up since d5 and that was a conversation i had last week with administration as to where we're going so we're having the same conversation about the same thing but mine was only about the morgan so i needed to get an additional update from administration because some of that i got some of that i didn't but i want to make sure that we're on the same page since they're calling me about the morgan so i'll set um another conversation like we had last week um about that so i just want to let you know both of us are talking about the morgan okay and then before i um move on of course i'm gonna give our chair a really really really really hard time i decided to sing a song oh no i'm joking no i'm joking but actually i said this is his last meeting but it really isn't you have to open up in january yeah that's all about the news yeah so it's not your last meeting really but um again uh coakley girdus you have been phenomenal as a chair you have been awesome as a council member but more importantly you have just been a really nice and cool dude to everybody on this on on this dais and uh please know that your what's the word i'm looking for it there's a word but it has not gone unnoticed you know your diplomacy has not gone unnoticed because there have been some moments that you have been tested and i must admit you passed the test you did good um but this is your your i've been there so i know what this moment means and for you i have to let you know that you did a fantastic job sir and um you're going to be missed but you're not going anywhere because you got what two three three four more years so you have three more years but i i have to commend you because being the chair uh council member gina you you all know um it is it is not easy it really isn't easy especially when life be lifing and you still have to show up with a smile no one knows what you're going through that is truly a task um that will tell the strength of the leader and you you did a great job sir thank you council member driscoll thank you um first i want to to thank everyone for a great day what a great last day of the year for us um and our committees and in this council meeting tonight it's um it's been a pleasure to serve with you all this year um i hope you have a great break great holiday season i'm really looking forward to next year um last year for me making it count and um but for now i i also wanted to bring your attention to and give a big congratulations to um a couple of people who are from my district who are now elected to lead kona and that would be um the wonderful franklin alvis is now the president will now be the new president of kona and um vice president is andres citron citron from 13th street heights um who is also the leadership kona or kona leadership chair um so with kona leadership doing a lot of things with the city you'll be hearing from andres a lot and i just couldn't be a a prouder district six city council member than to see the two people who have really genuinely dedicated themselves to their neighborhoods um be willing to step up and really and and take the those leadership roles for next year so congratulations um to both of them thank you thank you councilmember gibbons thank you one last thing i'd be remiss if i did not wish everybody a merry christmas a happy hanukkah and a blessed one of us so i just want to take a moment to do that and again congratulations to you mr chair for a job well done thank you for your service and congratulations to our incoming chair and vice chair excited to work with you all and see your leadership thank you chair thank you vice chair hanowitz thank you and i want to i said it this morning it's been a wonderful year with you as chair and i've loved being a partner with you and but i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna share more things next year our first meeting uh yeah so you better bring your you know kleenex yeah he's got stuff i'm i'm messing with you but you you you may i don't know you may i was crying during the prayer no you you've been a fantastic job and and i just i wanted to shake this is the last meeting of the year and tomorrow is our council break yeah but we're all on the break and that are we all on break everyone else doesn't have to deal with us till next year that's the christmas that's their best christmas present so happy holidays to everyone thank you thank you chair and thank you city council for a great year and on behalf of mayor welch and the entire staff i just want to wish all of city council a wonderful holiday season thank you thank you okay just a couple of quick things uh i found out today and fritz is retiring on january 2nd and so i just wanted to quickly ann is one of the first three people that i met with um when i first decided to run i had some good advice um from my dad saying you better understand the budget and so i had a one-on-one with ann and then i ended up having multiple one-on-ones with ann and well and i'm gonna praise on you for a minute and then i'll give you an opportunity to to speak but uh in that first meeting i was just wow uh your understanding of the city and the budget and the finances of such i have said it multiple multiple times but the operation in which you are overseeing uh with i don't know five or six people uh and that amount of money and investment portfolio is normally done by a team of 25 at any wealth management firm across the country and so to the financial stability of this city has your fingerprints all over it and i am thankful for you and for your service and for the knowledge that you have imparted on me and i'm sure lots of other people holy moly you are a smarty pants uh it's it's yeah in the positive sense and so i just thank you so much for the service you this is so well deserved and i hope you enjoy every second of it and uh congratulations on an amazing career with the city of st petersburg thank you so much and thank you so much everybody it was it's been a pleasure being here for the past 15 and a half years before that i was 20 years in ohio so i was 36 years as a finance director you know and so i just it just came across me it's like it's time and you know what is really great to see is to see all of this financial policies and processes and that institutionalized here at the city that's when you know you make a difference is when something is institutionalized with city council right and the next city councils and with the finance side you know city the city of st pete is well set up for the future we have some more staff involved now and consultants and so that that is helpful and so i can kind of go off to the sunset and uh you know and and enjoy the next few years and uh do a quite a bit of traveling and some teaching and there you go amazing yes thank you well congratulations again and thank you we're gonna miss you i will miss you too i won't be very far good good we like that well congratulations and again and thank you and hopefully we get to see you around amen thank you so much okay we also have a birthday it's sam becker our public information officer's birthday on 12 13 so let's sing happy happy birthday to sam happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday dear sam happy birthday to you happy birthday sam uh and i'm i'm sure i will share more uh when we come back in january but again i i wanted to i i'm on repeat today uh congratulations uh chair elect hanowitz and vice chair elect floyd congratulations very well deserved um and uh vice chair hanowitz just want to thank you uh for your partnership um i needed you and so um i could not have done it without you and i'm very very thankful um and i'll say a lot more thank yous um at another time but just i i couldn't i couldn't go into our break without saying thank you i couldn't i couldn't have done it without you um otherwise council members please enjoy your holiday have a fantastic break no my family will be thinking about you and hopefully uh while we have those thoughts you are enjoying immensely because you deserve it you deserve this break you deserve to enjoy every second of it and i hope you have the most joyous holiday and i love you all i love you too okay if there's nothing else for the good of the order our 2025 is adjourned thank you everybody