City Council - Feb 29, 2024

Lisset Hanewicz: present · Gina Driscoll: present · Copley Gerdes: present

Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1 and Council Vice Chair, Copley Gerdes, District 2, Brandi Gabbard, District 3, Ed Montenari, District 4, Lissette Kanowitz, District 5 and Council Chair, Deborah Fig Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, John Muhammad. And District 8, Richie Floyd. Good morning, everyone. We'll now call the order on February 29, 2024 City Council Meeting, beginning with a roll call. Montenari. Here. Hanowitz. Here. Dick Sanders. Here. Driscoll. Here. Muhammad. Here. Lloyd. Gerdes. Here. First, we will have our invocation given by Imam Abdul Karim Ali from the Tampa Bay Area Muslim Association. And this will be followed by a moment of silence in honor of a fallen firefighter. Please remain standing afterward for the Pledge of Allegiance. Will everyone please join me in standing? Thank you, Madam Chair. Before I do the invocation, I would like to make an announcement and an invitation to all. And the invitation and an announcement is we're inviting all of you. The YPTA committee of the City of St. Petersburg is inviting all of you to our sixth annual citywide YPTA dinner event that takes place yearly at the St. Petersburg Coliseum. I believe all of you should have received an invitation. I hope you would please forward that with your name, and we look forward for you all coming out. And to our audience who would like to come to this event free of charge, it's a dinner at no cost there, okay? Just go to Eat Top Bright and click on the sixth annual Citywide YPTA dinner at the Coliseum, March 26th. Thank you so much. May we pray. I'd like to begin by recognizing our chair, vice chair, members of council, to this administration, to staff, and the community. We'd like to extend the greeting of peace, the best greeting of peace from the Almighty, our Creator. We say in our language, assalamu alaikum, which means God, peace be with you. And the next time I come, I'll be checking on you to make sure you understand and respond as well. May we pray. With our Lord's name, the merciful benefactor, merciful redeemer. Our Lord, the Creator, is one. His servants is of one family. The praise belong to our Lord, and we beg for his forgiveness and his mercy. We say to our Lord, okay, who's the Lord of all worlds and all the systems of knowledge, we ask you forgiveness and we beg for your mercy. As we approach this holy month of Ramadan, the month of mercy, the month of forgiveness, we pray that you will keep blessing this body and continue to guide this council, this administration, and all who work for what is right for all of our citizens in this beautiful city of St. Petersburg. The Ramadan message to humanity is we all was created to live and get to know one another, not to despise or reject or to hate one another. We live together as one human family. There's room for all of us to live in harmony and peace. All of our faith teaches us that we should hear and obey our Creator, and if we do so, we will all be at peace. We should all stand for what is right, for what is just, even if it's against ourselves. Our Lord, the Creator, who created us and will bless us, and we will all be at peace. All we have to do is hear and obey our Creator. In your holy name we pray, amen. Please join me in a moment of silence as we honor our fallen first responder, Firefighter Abner L. Daugery. End of Watch, March 4, 1954. Thank you. 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. Ma'am Ali, wonderful invitation. Council members, we have an agenda before us today. I entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. Thank you. Second. Second. Mr. Montaneri seconded. Montaneri. Yes, we have a second and properly a motion. A second, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, can you please place your votes? Now that all present council members have voted, can you please tell in and ask votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve. The agenda passes unanimously. Thank you. We now have for us an approval of the consent agenda. Vice Chair Copley-Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. One of the items on a consent agenda is a piece of art that is going on the new central. And we have the artist and one of the donors here this morning. And I just wanted to give a big thank you to Yaa LaFord and Lorna Taylor. I am super excited. We were able to see this yesterday. And it is amazing, this piece of art that is going to monument our courageous 12. And so just a big thank you from me. And I am super excited to vote yes on this consent agenda, which does not happen very often. So thank you so much for the beautiful piece of art. And Lorna, thank you so much for continuing to invest in this community. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'll move approval. Second. Absolutely. Thank you for that. Do we have any public comment on the consent agenda? Madam Chair, we do not. We do not. Anyone on Zoom? No, Madam Chair. Anyone on Zoom. Okay. I entertain a motion for approval of the consent agenda. So moved already. Yes, you are. Who second? I do. Thank you very much. So now that we have a motion for approval and a second, can you please open the vote for machine for voting? Council members, please tally your vote. All present have voted. Can you please tally to announce the votes? Madam Chair, a motion to approve the consent agenda passes unanimously. Now at this time, we're going to turn the floor over to our lead attorney, Ms. Jackie Kovalaric, to introduce our new assistant city attorney. Thank you, Madam Chair. To my right is Isabella Sobel, who you just confirmed on your consent agenda. To say that me and the entire office are thrilled to have her would be a big understatement for a variety of reasons that you know. Isabella is going to be working a lot on transactional matters, specifically real estate. She has a vast experience in local government law, so we think she's just going to make it a huge immediate impact. So we're thrilled to have her and appreciate your confirmation. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm beyond excited and so honored to serve the city of St. Petersburg. Thank you. Welcome. Welcome. We appreciate you for that. Thank you, Chair. Next, we will now have open forum. Clerk, can you please read the rules? If you wish to address city council on subjects other than public hearing or courtyard judicial items listed on the agenda, please sign up with a clerk. Only the individuals wishing to speak may sign the open forum sheet. Only city residents, owners of property, business owners in the city, or their employees may speak. All issues discussed under open forum must be limited to issues related to the City of St. Petersburg government. If you are speaking to an item on the agenda, you may only speak once during the open forum or when the item comes up on the agenda. In order to provide an opportunity for all citizens to address council, each individual will be given three minutes to speak and after which the microphone will be muted. If you wish to address city council through the Zoom meeting, you must use the Raise Hand Feature button in the Zoom app or enter star 9 on your phone at the time the agenda item is addressed. When it is your turn to speak, you will be unmuted and asked to state your name and address. At the conclusion of your comments or when you have reached the three-minute time limit, you will be muted. All raised hands will be lowered after each agenda item. Regardless of the method of participation used, normal rules apply. including the three-minute time limit on comments. The requirement that any presentation materials must be submitted in advance of the meeting and the rules of decorum. If live public comments is disrupted by the violations of the rules of decorum, the Chair is authorized to accept public comment by ultimate means, including by email only. And Madam Chair, we do have some speakers. The first two speakers is Jay Miller and Laura Hine. Please step to either podium, state your name, address, and city. You'll have three minutes to address council. Good morning, everybody. I'm Jay Miller, 248 Mirror Lake Drive North. I am both a resident and business owner here in St. Pete, and I'm here this morning to express my support for the agreement with the Reyes-Hines team for redevelopment of the historic gas plant district that you'll be considering in the next few months. There's no need for me to repeat the number of jobs projected, the community benefits, or the mix of uses. You all have that information. This project represents a mind-blowing investment in our city, reported at $6 billion of real estate value over 20 years. The city's investment to make this happen is exactly that. It's an investment, not an expense. If the project generates just half of the projected cost in taxable value, say $3 billion, it will generate $60 million annually in tax revenue to support future needs in our city and county. And that will continue after the original bonds are retired. This deal keeps our Major League Baseball team here in St. Pete and the Tampa Bay region, which is a tremendous asset and enhancement to our quality of life. Well, the city's 25% share of the stadium cost is a lot of money. Relative to the investment that other cities have made in Major League Sports stadiums, this is a very good deal for St. Petersburg. I've been a real estate developer for the past 30-plus years. My company was a member of one of the development teams not chosen for the first two rounds of RFPs. In my opinion, the city will not get a third bite at the apple. It takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to respond to an RFP for a project of this size and magnitude and thousands of hours of time commitment to win one. I just don't believe that Heinz or any other capable master developer will make the investment to respond to a third RFP because it will become clear that there's just not a consensus in St. Petersburg as to what it wants to see on this great site or how it plans to get there. Now, if the deal doesn't proceed, we'll continue to have cranes in our downtown skyline. There will continue to be people who want to move to St. Pete to get some of what we've got. But I fear our city will evolve into an upscale bedroom community for commuters to Tampa and snowbirds from the Northeast and the Midwest. We can do better, in my opinion. My vision is that all of our children, whether they're graduating from Lakewood, Gibbs, St. Pete High, Northeast, Bogie, Shorecrest, or Academy Prep, want to stay in or return to St. Petersburg when they graduate, both because our city has a great vibe and because our city offers them professional job opportunities beyond the hospitality industry and services for wealthy retirees. Thank you. Almost finished. Good morning, Madam Chair, City Council. My name is Laura Hein. I live at 525 16th Avenue Northeast here in St. Petersburg. I'm speaking with you this morning about agenda item F2. Unfortunately, I'm not able to stay for the duration of the meeting, although I would love to first thing I'd like to do is say thank you for your participation in our city and your service. You know, this community is built and rebuilt every day by those of us who engage in it. So I really appreciate it. One of my first elements of engagement in this city was at the school North Shore Elementary. So I brought some information for you today. You might, you might have it there. So I'd like to just share this information as you consider this work. The first thing you'll see is an 11 by 17. It's a site plan of the school building one is highlighted that was opened in 1928 is the only building, the first building for North Shore Elementary. You can see all the other buildings since then. Then on the next page, you will see is population within one mile radius of North Shore Elementary in 1930. It was 913 in 2020. It was 16,171. We've experienced some growth in that area. And then next is the enrollment data for North Shore Elementary. So I would like for you to note that in 2015-16, the total enrollment was 334, is up at 500. So we have, we've also, it shows you both the K-5 enrollment and the K-5 zoned population and the percent of that zone that now attends the school. So you could consider it market share in business terms. So we've gone from a 59% market share to 80%. The high-water mark was last year at 83%. So the attendance, the local attendance, this is a neighborhood school. People who live in that zone are going to that school. And the way they get there, they walk, they bike. So on a personal note, my husband, Hank Heine, has been riding by bicycle our two boys to this school for seven years. So we do this personally. And you've also received emails from another parent who bikes her children to school today. And trust me, I know a lot of parents. And I'm happy to have them talk with you about how important the safety of getting their kids to school is. The traffic has increased because the more kids, the more cars, the more bikes, the more walking. And you know what? It's a beautiful thing. Please come. Come and see our kids arrive to school. It is a beautiful place. And people are walking and biking. And isn't that what we want? The secret's out. The city of St. Petersburg is an amazing place to live. And we must have thriving neighborhood schools that people can walk to and bike to. So I would just like to actively support this work in this neighborhood. Thank you for what you do every day. Thank you. Madam Chair, the next two speakers is Sarah Ward and Kathy Filippelli. Please go to either podium. State your name and address in city. We'll have three minutes to address council. Good morning. My name is Sarah Ward, 6779 28th Avenue North, St. Petersburg, Florida. I'm a member of Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church. I'm also in the city of St. Petersburg. So my congregation is a member of FAST, Faith in Action for Strength Together, a group of 50 diverse congregations across Pinellas County working together to solve community problems. In St. Petersburg, we have an affordable housing crisis for families making 80% or less of the area median income. Families who make less than $65,000 per year for a family of four cannot afford to live here any longer. I personally have seen some experience in this area. I have a younger brother who's a teaching assistant who lost his house after COVID, was evicted because of loss of income during that time. And had to move in with me temporarily. After that time, he ended up in a small efficiency apartment that he might not be able to afford any longer because the rent's gone up $100 a year each year that he's been there. And this is the third year. Mayor Welch's current affordable housing plan is insufficient. The hard-working people of our city deserve more and they need more. And there are some things that we feel the city can do. Anytime the city gives incentives, zoning changes, or infrastructure support for new housing developments, the city should require that that housing be affordable for families who make 80% or less of the AMI. We're asking that the mayor and the city of St. Petersburg attend our Nehemiah action on Tuesday, April 30th at 7 p.m. at First Baptist Church on Gandy. We hope that you will be present to show your support for this issue and to some of the solutions that we're looking at. What we're asking for is not unreasonable. We've been trying to set up a meeting with our mayor since December. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to achieve that. Again, we are pushing for the city and the mayor to prioritize housing for those who make 80% or less, the poorest of the poor in our city, 80% or less of the area median income. Thank you for your time and attention. Good morning. I'm Kathy Filippelli. I live at 5836 30th Avenue North in St. Petersburg. Been there almost 43 years. I am a member of St. Matthew's Church, which is in Largo, but I live in St. Petersburg. As you heard, our sister Sarah Ward say the needs of our affordable housing community. As an educator, sometimes they say you need to hear something a minimum of seven times. And a variety of ways so that it sinks in. I taught Catholic high school religion. So we will sing it first. St. Augustine said that when you sing, you pray twice. Okay? So follow with me. One little, two little, three little affordable housing units. Four little, five little, six little affordable housing units. Seven little, eight little, nine little affordable housing units. Ten affordable housing units built 80% AMI or lower every week during the remaining term of Mayor Welch. All right, that was your first time hearing it. Let's try it again. Okay? One little, two little, three little affordable housing units. Four little, five little, six little affordable housing units. Seven little, eight little, nine little affordable housing units. Big finish here. Ten affordable housing units built 80% AMI or lower every week. Say it with me again. Every week during the remaining term of Mayor Welch. You need to have a goal. As an educator, you would say this is what my expectant goal is for this topic, this curriculum, this student. Then you adapt to what the needs are of that student. As you can see, FAST is here. And we are going to be here. And we are going to continue to pressure our mayor and our city council. We need affordable housing units built as soon as possible. I hope that song haunts you. I hope you pray it. I hope you let us know because we want to see the results of what this mayor has done and plans to do. He has plans for all other strategic issues in our city. We need affordable housing to be public and that song to go viral. We hope to hear you and see you at future affordable housing sites that are being made. Thank you for your time. The next two speakers is Carrie Mueller and Oscar Banks. Please approach either podium, state your name, address, and city. You'll have three minutes to address council. Good morning. My name is Carrie Mueller and I live in Campbell Park neighborhood at 12th and James. I'm just south of the Tropicana Stadium. And I'm here to speak today in opposition of the current stadium deal. I have a lot of concerns about it. And I just wanted to let you know that I am in support of developing that site for the highest and best use for the generation of property tax revenue. And that's my main concern with this current deal is I'm concerned about the property tax that won't be paid based on the committee of the whole meeting on October 26th, where the developer indicated that they will not be paying property tax until buildings are put into service. That's a great delay of time that property taxes should be paid beginning on when the land is transferred to the developer. My background is in engineering and construction. I have a degree from 2000 working in both the public and the private sector, reviewing contract administration projects. And I also have a broker license that I hang underneath my engineering firm. I've been working in public and private construction for 25 years. This current deal was made after it was awarded. The mayor gave the project to Ray's Hines before the terms were submitted. And now the terms are basically a blank check. They're asking for extraordinary amounts of public subsidies. And we're not getting any good returns. We're not getting even the 50 cent per turn style turn that we are getting currently. Recently, the Tampa Bay Times wrote an article, Who's for and against the Tampa Bay Ray Stadium? The question shouldn't be who's for or against the concept. It's a question of whether the current deal is a good one or not. As it stands, it's literally the worst current sports stadium subsidy proposal to date. We'll make the Miami baseball stadium look good if the city council votes to go through with it. First, the amount of city funds to build the new stadium is $700 million with bond debt interest. The bonds will be paid back with property taxes out of the in-town CRA. The high-rises that are being built on Central Avenue will have half of their property taxes diverted into paying for the stadium bond debt. A whole that these property taxes leave in the general fund will have to be made up by taxpayers, resulting in less money for other projects and higher property taxes. Since property taxes are passed on to renters, this will directly increase housing costs and negatively affect housing affordability. The actual cost of the stadium is over $1.2 billion when you take into account the lost property tax revenue on the 20 acres of land that the stadium sits on and the value of the land itself. It's one thing to subsidize the stadium, it's a whole other thing to pay Rays Hines to take 60 acres of land off the city's hands and act like they're doing us a favor by doing so. They're currently paying $105 million for the land. The city is giving them $130 million in infrastructure, so they are effectively paying them to take the land off of our hands. If you include the $50 million in community benefits that the city is holding back, the Rays Hines are paying only $25 million. Thank you. Hello, my name is Oscar Banks. I live at 2437 15th Avenue South. I'm also a pastor here in St. Petersburg at Palm Lake Christian Church and a member of FAST, Faith and Action for Strength Together, a conglomerate of 50 congregations of interdenominational connectedness here in the city of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County as a whole. I'm standing here today because I believe and my faith teaches me to love your neighbor as you love yourself. And the things that our city is doing by choosing profits over people is not right. As I was preparing for today, I was remembering that I saw an article by someone who's very close to the mayor and close to his administration. And their words were, this idea that someone is going to come to save the African-American community with free housing and free meals is un-American, naive, and immature. This is an opportunity to get a piece of the pie by participating in capitalism and being entrepreneurs. What good is building a stadium if the people don't even come, if they can't afford to come? What good is building a museum in the African-American community if the people who the museum is representing are moving out of the community at alarming rates? What good is providing prosperity for a team if we're not going to provide prosperity for people? I know this article says, oh, asking for free housing and free meals, that's not going to, that's un-American. Nobody's asking for free housing. When you talk about people making 80% of AMI or less, you're talking about regular people. A single person who's starting out in a career, you're talking about somebody making $48,000 a year. That's not free housing. When you're talking about a family of four making $69,000 a year, that's not free housing. We're talking about working people who keep this city moving. And I think our mayor and I think our city and I think our pastors and our churches, we've got to work together to keep people in our city and not move people out. We're not seeing an upward mobility from the African-American community. We're seeing an outward migration. People are leaving our city because they can't afford to live here. And I believe it's on us. It's on you. And it's on our mayor to make this thing happen. We can't worry about a stadium. We need to worry about housing. 10 houses every week? I'm for it. Let's go. I don't mind being at the table and helping us figure this thing out together. Nobody's telling you to do it on your own. We're saying let's do it together. Let's fight the good fight for the people of St. Petersburg. God bless. Thank you. Madam Chair, the next two speakers are Nicola Zaner and Julia Wilson. Please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes to address counsel. Good morning. My name is Nicola Zaner. I live at 430 40th Street North in St. Pete, Florida. I'm here to support the Ray's Heinz development. I used to work in investment banking, and there was, in fact, an article written by an investment banker who I worked very closely with saying that this was not a good deal for St. Pete. And there are a couple of flaws in his logic, but the biggest one is the idea that there's something else out there. There's another opportunity floating about, and we just need to go to market and get the next person to come along and make their claim. That doesn't exist. If we don't go with what's on the table right now, whether you think it's a good deal or not, what are the alternatives? Well, the alternatives are that we sell this off piecemeal, as was recommended, and then you end up with more of the same. And by that I mean more condos, more uniquely developed parcels that are not integrated. What that means is you end up with these siphons of wealth, and the argument is, okay, well, we can put affordable housing in those. We can make a certain number of units, 80% AMI. That crowd just left, I guess. You know, we can do all of that. But the Ray Sainz project is that much bigger than that. 1,200 units. 1,200 units for people who don't make top dollar. That means that you're going to have 600 units in the space that are dedicated to people who can't afford to pay market rate. There's also 600 units that are spread throughout the city. Now, that does two things. One, it means that you don't have a concentration of people of lower income means. It also means that throughout the city, you have this increase in the stock of lower income housing. That's huge. Because from what I understand, the way that it's been calculated, that's an increase of 15% to 20% of our lower income housing in the city of St. Pete. That's one of the biggest opportunities to increase housing for people who don't make a lot of money already. Never mind the benefits of mixed-use properties. Never mind the benefits of having an anchor team and having a lot more opportunity in the form of job creation. All I'm saying is we don't have a better opportunity on the table. We don't even have another one in the parking lot. This is the opportunity that we have to make the city better and to give us a lot more opportunity. Take care. Thank you. Good morning, Council. My name is Erin. I handle Gum Relations for Power Design. I also have Julia Wilson here with me. She's on our business development team. We are a national multi-trade contractor proudly based in the city of St. Petersburg. We're here today to show our support for the Historic Gas District Tropicana Field Redevelopment Project. We have over 1,700 employees sitting in our St. Petersburg office, most of which also reside in the city. We also regularly host out-of-town customers, vendors to our office and show them around what St. Pete has to offer, for hotels, restaurants, you know, that sort of thing. So, you know, we support this development for a number of reasons. It's going to flourish the economic growth and infrastructure in the city. It's going to significantly expand the local workforce and provide opportunities for local businesses and residents. So, we support this development and we just thank the Council for your continued efforts to make the city of St. Petersburg the special place that it is. So, thank you. Thank you. The last speaker is Jeremy Tolberg. Please go to the podium. State your name, address, city. You'll have three minutes to address Council. My name is Jeremy Tolberg. I live at 417 Lido Way. Thank you. I'm grateful to be speaking here in front of you again. Many of us have come before you to speak out against funding a new stadium with an estimated $1.6 billion in public funds. You know, if I stood here for a million seconds, I'd be here for 12 days. But if I stood here for a billion seconds, I'd be here for 31... Can you please let us know your city, please? St. Pete. Thank you so much. If I stood here for a billion seconds, I'd be here for 31 years. That's the magnitude of the dollar amounts in this project. It's hard for the people to comprehend, much less every other piece of this dishonest, convoluted proposal. Many of the people I've spoken with think their elected officials are being dishonest or just plain indifferent. And I can't think of a starker example why they might feel that way than the community meeting we had on the impact of flooding in St. Pete. The mayor and some members of this council were in attendance to hear people from all over St. Pete voice their concerns. I encourage everyone on council to watch that footage. Listening to these speakers is absolutely heartbreaking. There's families and neighborhoods dealing with constant upheaval and loss, not just from storms, but from neglected infrastructure. While the city's trying to rush this stadium approval through in months, these people have waited years to hear a plan to address the devastation that a simple thing like a heavy rain can have on their lives. Some broke down in tears. Some don't even know if they can survive another flood by finances. One woman spoke about how she loves St. Pete and just wants to enjoy her golden years, but her exact words were that she lives in fear when it rains. I don't know how we can reconcile what this council claims to represent with what days must be like for that woman, how someone has to be afraid of something that happens here almost every single day. That woman and everyone else speaking that night, they can't afford massive marketing campaigns like the Rays, they can't host private luncheons with the mayor and influential people, they have to juggle city meetings with going to work and taking care of families, and even if they do show up, they can only speak for three minutes at a time. But every one of those people knows the same thing as everyone on this council. This is a terrible proposal. It'll do nothing to safeguard the citizens of St. Pete, it'll only transfer tax money to a small, incredibly wealthy group of people who absolutely do not need it. I guarantee you, there's not a single Rays executive who share that woman's fears when they hear rain is in the forecast. This council needs to stand up and protect that woman because it's absolutely the right thing to do. We can either lie to ourselves, like some of the stadium supporters would prefer, that giving a billion dollars away to a billionaire will somehow do any good for people struggling to survive in this city. Or, we can plan wisely for future emergencies and safeguard all citizens. This council needs to stand firm and say that we cannot support this deal in its current form until it's renegotiated to reflect a just and responsible conservation of the financial interests of the citizens of St. Petersburg. Thank you. Do we have anyone on Zoom? Matt. Nope. One Zoom speaker. Okay. Lema Al-Hassan, once you enter into the meeting space, please unmute yourself, state your name, address, and city, and you'll have three minutes to address city council. Hello. My name is Lema Al-Hassan. I live at 5011 Starfish, St. Pete 33705. I'm Palestinian, and it's been 145 days of a genocide in Gaza. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been murdered, and at least 15,000 of them are children. Two weeks ago, a ceasefire resolution was proposed by Council Member Richie Floyd, and instead of voting and passing that resolution, this body felt it was necessary to have an alternative version that was not even seen by the public, mind you, that demeaned the suffering that Palestinians are experiencing and doesn't address the atrocities that they are facing at the hands of Israel. So let me start off with some basics and what it means to call for a ceasefire. Imagine you're in a home, 50 people there are with you, your family, your friends, people that you care about, your neighbor. Someone comes into the house and starts shooting everybody. Would you demand that they stop? Or would you instead say that wherever there's violence, it needs to stop? Because that's exactly what y'all did two weeks ago. The people who are responsible for the carnage happening now in Gaza is Israel. Israel needs to stop. By not supporting the ceasefire resolution, you told the people of St. Pete that you support the murder of black and brown people. You support the murder of children. Honestly, the people would have so much more respect for you if you just came out and told us the truth. There's no other ways to interpret this. You either support justice or you support genocide. One of the council members said that it was unfair to make that comparison. I don't see where the fairness is in genocide. You've made a choice and we've seen it. How can we expect city council to do what's right by the people if you're not even able to call to an end to a genocide? I want my taxes to be on taking care of the people here, including the black neighbors who were kicked out of the gas plant district decades ago. The city claims to want to do right by them. But why would you even give space for the rain's high, rain's high, whatever, the name of that deal? It's terrible for the people of St. Pete. It's only good for the wealthy few. The people of St. Pete will continue to struggle until you use our taxes, our money, to actually take care of us through things like equitable housing, education, healthcare, and transportation. Not having our federal taxes go to bomb and murder Palestinians or having our local taxes go to redevelopments that make the city even more expensive for its residents. So propose a ceasefire resolution and say no to the Rahein's deals that is bad for the people of St. Pete. Thank you. Is that the only Zoom speaker? Yes, ma'am. No more Zoom speakers. Okay, thank you. So we'll now close open forum and move to our awards and presentations. Item D1, which is a proclamation recognizing flood awareness week, read today by Council Member Brandi Gabbard. Well, thank you, Madam Chair, Vice Chair, and I want to thank the mayor for the opportunity to present this proclamation today. I am joined by lots of people from our city team. So if everyone, I think, come on, you guys have to stand as well. I have your name down. So I'm just going to introduce High Level and then they can introduce their individual team members if they would like because I don't want to forget anyone. So I am joined today by Claude Tankersley, our Public Works Administrator, Elizabeth Abernathy, Director of Planning and Development Services, Hannah Reibholz, our Floodplain Manager, and Amber Boulding, Fire Emergency Management Manager. So this, as you are all well aware, is our team who goes to work to not only protect our residents ahead of wet weather events, but then to respond afterwards. So before I read the proclamation, if we could all just give them a hand for all of their hard work. We know after the course of the last few years what a heavy lift it has been for our staff in particular. Many of them who I always remind people actually live in the neighborhoods of which are affected. So I know this work is personal for many of them. And so I just want to share my sincere thanks for everything that you all do every single day. So we will read the proclamation and it says, whereas St. Petersburg has experienced severe weather in the past in the form of extreme rainfall or tropical system events resulting in flooding in coastal areas. And this flooding has caused damage and flood loss to homes and buildings in all areas where they are high risk, special hazard areas, or low to moderate risk flood zones. And whereas approximately 1,466 homes in the city of St. Petersburg have experienced these severe weather events numerous times since 2020 and are requesting a heightened sense of awareness and action from our city. And we are committed to responding in a proactive way through enhanced planning and action to preserve and protect their coastal communities and the residents way of life for generations to come. And whereas St. Petersburg is a voluntary participant in the community rating system through the National Flood Insurance Program that provides residents with the opportunity to protect themselves against flood loss through the purchase of flood insurance at reduced insurance premium rates, as well as setting higher regulatory standards to reduce flood risk and the potential flood damage to property. And whereas the reduction of loss of life and property damage can be achieved when appropriate flood preparedness control and mitigation measures are taken before a flood. And whereas public education and awareness of potential weather hazards and methods of protection are critical to the health, safety, and welfare of all residents. And whereas the Florida Flood Plane Managers Association, FFMA, have declared the week of March 4, 2024 as Flood Awareness Week to promote awareness and increase knowledge of flood risk, the availability of flood insurance, flood protection methods, and how to prepare for emergencies. Now, therefore, I, Council Member Brandy Gabbard, on behalf of Kenneth T. Welch, Mayor of the City of St. Petersburg, Florida, do hereby proclaim March 4th through 10th, 2024 to be Flood Awareness Week in St. Petersburg and encourage our citizens to increase their knowledge of how to protect themselves and their property from flooding. Liz? Hannah? So I have presented this to Liz, I think, almost every single year. And so I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to her. But if anyone on staff would like to speak or introduce any other team members, please do so. Thank you. And I know we have a busy schedule this morning, but we've had a busy year this year. So I wanted to invite everybody that's put in extra hours, time, commitment. I'm so proud to be part of this team. And I just want to thank everybody for all the extra work that we've been doing to try to address this very serious issue for our city. I wanted to give Hannah just a quick moment. She has really stepped up this last year. We've promoted her to our floodplain manager, and she is just doing an exceptional job for us. So Hannah just wanted to say a quick word. Thank you for your recognition today. Good morning. Really quick, I know we're busy today. I just wanted to say thank you. It's an honor to accept this, not only on behalf of floodplain management, but the entire team, as we work as a team to provide our community with a safe place to live and with the education of the risk. And that is exactly what Floodplain Awareness Week is. It's to educate our community about the risk and how to protect their home and family from that risk. So thank you for your help on this endeavor, and we look forward to it. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council Member Montaneri. Thank you. I, too, wanted to acknowledge the whole team for being here today as one of the two city council members that represent a repetitive loss neighborhood in St. Petersburg, along with Council Member Gabbard. Flooding in some of our coastal neighborhoods is something that is never very far from our minds. And when we do have storms, the workload goes through the roof, and we go on a 24-hour-a-day operation. And I know me personally, I spend a lot of time interacting with a lot of our team. Rob gets a lot of calls from me. So does Claude, Brej, Marshall, because when we do have flooding events, the city responds in a very positive way. In the past, since I've been on city council for eight years, I've been dealing with a whole lot of issues with Shore Acres, and I'm glad today that we're going to address some of the other problems with backflow preventers. And I also want to say, when my family moved to St. Petersburg in 1976, my family, we lived in Shore Acres. We lived there for 11 years. My parents' home was flooded during Hurricane Elena. And that whole neighborhood, that was some of the worst flooding that our city has ever seen. But going back to 1921, in 1921, there was a major storm that hit St. Petersburg. It destroyed our downtown. We had multiple piers in our downtown, and that's how we ended up with a million-dollar pier. And fortunately for the city of St. Petersburg, we haven't had a storm of that magnitude since that time, but we've had a lot of major storms. And even the not-so-intense storms, tropical storms, no-name storms, cause big issues in neighborhoods like Shore Acres and Riviera Bay. So I'm glad that the mayor and Council Member Gabbard could present this resolution, marking Flood Awareness Week. And I'm very happy that we have a team that works together to solve these major problems for our city. Thank you, Madam Chair. Council Member Gabbard. But I would be remet, we do have someone in the audience who is also a very important part of the Resilience Action Plan that we are working with Claude and the entire team to try to bring forward the city council. So we have Kara Sarah with us today. She is the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council's Director of Resiliency, and she has already been an incredible partner with us, will continue to be an incredible partner. I know that the Regional Planning Council resiliency is one of their key issues. They've done a lot of work, which this council has supported to date. And so we continue looking forward to working with them on an action plan that will actually prioritize and help us look at measures that we can implement short-term, medium-term, and long-term. So thank you for being here today, Kara. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for your hard work. And thank you, Council Member Gabbard. Before we move into our public hearings, we will take up legal item J-1, and joining us is Assistant City Attorney Ken McCullum. Good morning, Council. Good morning. I'm here today for you on a proposed settlement seeking council approval. This is a workers' compensation washout matter. The matter involves employee Christopher McClure from the police department. This case, the officer's 54. He's involved in two on-the-job injuries. One was back in 2016 involving a knee injury, which resulted in surgery. Another on-the-job injury in 2021, which resulted in a rotator cuff injury. There's a projected need for a spine surgery. Also, in this case, past medical bills or projected medical bills are in excess of $200,000. And if he gets perm total disability from the court, which we anticipate, that will take the total value of this case, over $1 million. We have reached a contingent settlement for $87,500, inclusive of all attorney's fees and costs. He'll no longer be a member of the force, and that will end any involvement with the city. Move approval. Second. Okay, now that we have a motion and a second, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, can you please place your votes? Now that all council members have placed their votes, can you please tally and announce the votes? Chair, motion to approve agenda item J-1, passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. We will now move into our public hearing, starting with item E-1. Clerk, can you please read the title? According to December 1163-V, an ordinance approving the vacation of 20 feet of street right-of-way on the north side of 23rd Avenue North, abutting lots 15 through 28, between 32nd and 31st Streets North, in Block B of the Waverly Place Subdivision, generally located at 2300 31st Street North, setting forth conditions for the vacation to become effective, and providing for an effective date. And, Madam Chair, we do not have any cards on this. Thank you. And joining us is our Development Review Services Planner 2, Ms. Sherover-Galo. Good morning. I have a brief presentation, if you'd like to hear it. Move approval. Second. Now that we have a motion and a second, clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, will you please cast your votes? Mohamed. Mohamed, thank you. Okay, now that all present, council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, motion to approve agenda item E-1, passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. McGalo. Now we'll move on to E-2. Can you please read the title? Ordinance No. 1164-V, an ordinance approving the vacation of the north-south 11.2-foot alley between Central Avenue and Commercial Avenue South, and the full length and width of Commercial Avenue South, in McAdoo-Re-Platt of 1921, generally located at 1100, 1120, 1122, 1126, 1128, 1180, Central Avenue, and 1101 First Avenue South, setting forth conditions for the vacation to become effective and providing for an effective date. And, Madam Chair, we do have cards on this one. Thank you. Good morning, Elizabeth Abernethy, Director of Planning and Development Services. So, at first reading, we provided a staff report, and there were two members of the public that spoke in favor of this vacation, supporting the request to remove a requirement for an east-west pedestrian easement in condition number two. Multiple council members expressed concerns about public access and loading and delivery. The city's attorney's office was asked to review if a stipulation could be added to require that Commercial Avenue South remain open during specified hours. And as a result of the legal review and after discussion with the applicant, the ordinance has been amended, removing the second sentence of condition two, requiring a pedestrian easement, and adding a new condition number nine, which requires that the pedestrian arcade service and delivery area remain open to the public daily from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Your updated package that came through Ads Deletes had the amended ordinance and had this information in the memo. Cheryl is available to provide you the full presentation again if needed, and I know the applicant is here today to answer any questions, and Cheryl and I are here to answer any questions you might have. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Abernathy, and I did fail to acknowledge you, so my apologies on that. Council Member Driscoll. Oh, okay. Please. How many cards do we have? We have a total of four. Okay, thank you. The first two speakers is Don Mastry and Lynn Lockowitz. Please step to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and city, and you'll have three minutes to address Council. My name is Don Mastry. My address is 200 Central Avenue, and I represent all of the applicants in this matter who own the south part of the 1100 block of Central. All of the applicants are in agreement with what Ms. Abernathy presented, and I would urge you to approve what she has suggested to be presented. I'd answer any questions that you have. Thank you. Thank you. Lynn Lockowitz, I'm here for item E3, but I'm not speaking. No. Oh, okay. Thank you. He's against. But that's the wrong item. It's the wrong item. Wrong item. Yeah, wrong item. We're on E2. Okay. Okay. Roger Curlin and Debbie Reiser, please step to either podium, state your name and address in city. We'll have three minutes to address Council. Roger Curlin, 4535 6th Avenue North here in St. Petersburg. I am the executive director of the Edge Business District Association, and thank you, Council, for considering this matter. The board unanimously supports this project, the vacation of the alley, and as described, the new contingency to make sure that we've got that zone for loading and deliveries. We're absolutely thrilled with this project. It's going to bring hundreds of new jobs, hundreds of new residential units, dozens of businesses, and an increased vitality. The developer has been, they've been transparent, they've been interactive, they've listened, and they're really going to wrap this new gem around several of the gems that already exist on that block. One of the other things I want to do is also thank city staff for their diligence, their understanding, and their ability to work with not only the district, but also the developers to make sure that this project can come forward. In the Edge district, we will be adding, with current developments and coming developments, over 1,000 residential units for the city. We know that housing that is affordable for all levels of income is important. The biggest thing we can do is add inventory in every area of the town that that is feasible, and so we're proud in the Edge to add over 1,000 new homes over the next coming years, and thank you again, Council, for support of this project. Good morning. My name is Debbie Reeser. I live at 105 4th Avenue Northeast. I'm the president of the Edge district, and I thank the city staff for reaching a compromise with the developer. Thank you very much, Liz. So I wanted to talk a little bit about PTM Partners because we're so grateful that we have really good developers in the Edge district that work with our board that are considerate of the character of our neighbors, and in particular, PTM Partners was very thoughtful in the design on this project. They engaged early with the Edge board and were sensitive to our desire to maintain the uniqueness of our district. Part of our special character comes from the older buildings in our district. We are aware it would have been easier and more economical to have raised all the buildings they own in the two blocks in the heart of our district, but they chose not to, and they chose to work with us. They took a genuine interest in what we thought was best for the Edge. I wish all developers were as sensitive to their neighborhoods. So I just thank you for your support, and we support this vacation and we'll be so happy to see this project going forward. Thank you. Thank you, and that's the last speaker, correct? Thank you. Okay, now, Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. I would first like to thank everyone involved in the discussions that brought us to this point. Our city staff, the residents and stakeholders from the Edge District and PTM, who is one of those thoughtful developers that I wish more would be like, and I certainly appreciate all of the collaboration, the transparency, the proactive approach to working with the community to make sure that this is something that everyone can benefit from and everyone can support. From first reading to now, there have been some changes. I was one of the council members who expressed some concerns, and so I just wanted to confirm and have it out there on the record that the changes that have been made, I think, have satisfied those concerns, and so I, but the two things I had asked about in the meeting and after were on the pedestrian access and how the deliveries would work and all of that with this arcade and then also with sanitation. I think that is still in the works, but it sounds, my understanding is that there's been some progress made in what sanitation needs in order to properly service those areas, so I was wondering if someone from staff could speak on that, on those two items, the transportation and sanitation. Evan is here to answer transportation. I don't, we don't have representatives from sanitation, so I might ask that we bring the applicant up to give their update since they've been working directly with them and I'll let Evan answer some questions about loading. I have some. Yes, well, first off, we're very thankful to the applicant and Mr. Mastery for working with us quickly last week in order for us to make these changes and get them in on adds and deletes for you so you had it in advance and we're very satisfied with the pedestrian and public access. I think that the loading will take a little bit more design work and we're happy to work with the applicant to get there, but I'm sure that it can be worked out to everybody's satisfaction. Loading is always difficult. It never goes exactly according to plan, but I'm sure that it will be designed well here and again, we'll be happy to work with them moving forward. Thank you. It's good to know that you're in a good place with this. And as far as sanitation, I know that with the sanitation vehicles coming in to service the compactors that we're using on this one. Sorry, we've got a lot of developments right now, so I'm trying to make sure they're all, I'm talking about the right one, but as far as the way that they can pull in and then pull out and keep moving along, there's like a turn circle that was needed and I think that there's, I think that from my understanding, there was a great conversation with sanitation actually on site to discuss how, what kind of clearance they need to make, to make their, their work work. Councilman Driscoll, you got it just right. Everett Colas, architect on the, on the project. Yes, we met with Troy Davis in December, right before the holidays. He came on site and we had some discussions about the turning rate as he needed at least 18 feet wide to make it happen. We had a follow-up call with him on, just last week and he mentioned the reason why he hasn't gotten to the letters or some staff changes. Everyone is moving on and the folks we know are all retiring. So there's another staff change happening and he needs to get someone updated. So there's a verbal approval here. He said two things, please be sure that we have a four-foot raised bed so it's easy for us to pick up the trash compactors and move in and out without having to slope down which we are going to do in this project and to make sure that we have the clearances and that when the gates are open, they're able to get in and not have any, anything that stops them from coming in. Thank you and I certainly appreciate that there was an agreement reached on having the access during certain hours. It sounds like that was a win all around and I, I'm very happy with this and getting it to this point, I've been a fan of this development from the beginning. It's a really exciting addition to a neighborhood that is growing by leaps and bounds and this is an example of how together we're doing things the right way. So I appreciate all of the work that's been going into this and I will be supporting it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair and thank you all for working on this and listening to our concerns that we expressed at the last meeting. I, like Councilmember Driscoll, had some issues. My main issue was we're vacating an area and we were told that it was going to stay open but there was no guarantee that we can enforce it being stayed open and that was my pushback mainly and I just want to clarify with legal and someone could please explain how the enforcement happens. How is it that we're guaranteed through these changes that this area we can enforce that it's going to remain open to the public between 6 and 9 and any other ways that we can enforce. Right on. Okay. Councilmember Hanowitz, we have, so any condition of approval to a site plan permit those types of things but in this case a condition of a site plan approval is enforced through section 1-17 of the city code and that would be through municipal ordinance violation if they were not adhering to the terms of that condition. Okay, great. Great. And I just, and I wanted to make sure everyone understood that that's something that's important. I think if we're going to be vacating this and there's an arcade there that is open to the public, I think the hours are reasonable. The other question I had is in terms of maintenance, how is that going to be maintained and we want to make sure do we have anything where we can enforce if it is, you know, open to the public and it's maintained properly? I just want to understand that part of it. Thank you for that question and I'll have to go get my code to get the exact section but generally, once that's vacated, it becomes private property. Right. So it's their obligation to maintain it as the private property and I don't know if Michael has anything else to add to that or the applicant. I don't really have much to add to that. Okay. I would like to hear from you. It would become a code violation. Okay. We have a requirement to maintain it and good repair. That's in the city code and if they did not, it would be a code violation that we would pursue. Good. Good. Well, I appreciate everyone collaborating. I really appreciate staff's work on this and making sure that they're watching out for the city and making sure that we're doing the right thing here so I'm supportive with this change. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. What I, you know, want to speak to is not necessarily like specific to this project but just vacations in general. We do the vacations and we're giving away a piece of property owned by the city. I mean, it's a road or an easement or a alleyway but it is land owned by the city with a value and we're just giving it away. It's a gift to the people who are receiving it and often it's in return for the development that we're getting at the site but I just am frustrated that we give it away and don't receive any sort of gain from it other than they get to develop as they please and, you know, sometimes that benefits us. Sometimes it may not. I'm grateful that they've been able to come to a compromise with staff but I would like to see us have a broader conversation about vacations and, you know, is it just that our job as a council and as a city is to give away property because that doesn't feel right to me at all and it's coming to a head here because we had a negotiation with them about giving away our own land. Like, we're giving it away. Why is it a negotiation? Like, we put stipulations on a gift to you and you should meet the stipulations so I'm frustrated by the situation in general not specifically here but in vacations as a whole. I don't think we've thought through enough what we're getting for literally just giving things away to people so I want to say that out loud and I want us to I don't know each have it in the back of our mind and think about it a little bit. Thank you. Chair, if I could just respond to that and happy to have a follow-up conversation with Council Member Floyd or happy to go to committee on this issue but just for the public's knowledge and I'd like to hear Mr. Dima on this but it's my understanding that on a right-of-way we don't have fee-simple ownership of the right-of-way so it's not land that we could sell so happy to talk more about that I'd like to hear from Mr. Dima on that just so the public has some understanding of a right-of-way and how a right-of-way is dedicated to the city. That's right. The vast majority of the right-of-way in the city is not owned in fee-simple ownership by the city. It is essentially in many ways an easement that is dedicated to the public and held by the city and the public's trust so the underlying property under the right-of-way is generally owned by the property owners bordering the right-of-way on either side. Thank you. Council Member Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair and Mr. Gerdes beat me to it. I was wondering in terms of property law what the standard was for right-of-ways because that's what my understanding was and I'm not even sure if it's within the legislative process more maybe in the legal process in terms of determining certain rights but I think that we can still have a conversation but my understanding is legally it's we don't own that property. No, we have a major interest in the, you know, they talk about property rights as a bundle of sticks and we have some of the sticks in the bundle of sticks but we don't have all of them so that interest still has value and has great value to the city but it's not complete ownership such that we could transfer it in a normal sale of property. Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Flory. Thank you. I want to get clarification on this. So the city can tell people what to do with the property and that has some value in this circumstance on easements and right-of-way. What in particular Council Member the city could tell? I mean, I'm sorry. So we have legal controls over it in that in order for you to be able to do with this property what you please you have to get approval from the city. You have to get the vacation of the right-of-way from the city. That's correct. So that vacates some of the sticks that interest that we have it eliminates that. So now the abutting property owners own in fee simple the entirety of the property to the center line of the right-of-way. Okay, okay. So as of right now we can make determinations as to whether or not that vacation happens even if it's like not like deed owned by the city. That's correct and there's criteria set forth in the code that are also set forth and the staff reports that go to DRC and to the city council where the final action has to be taken by ordinance that dictate how that analysis occurs. Okay, okay. So there's value in it but not complete and total ownership the way that we think about it. It's not the way we sell a parcel of property that is owned by the city. It's a different type of interest less than the whole but still of value to the city. That's exactly what I was getting at. So it's still a value to the city and when we vacate it we eliminate that value. Well, you do yes, ultimately but those criteria allow you to evaluate whether it's whether that should be done or not. Perfect. That's all I was wondering. Thank you. Yep. Thank you and thank you to my colleagues for this conversation on this and I just wanted to enter Jack my two cents on this and so thank you for that clarification Councilmember Floyd because when I think about value I also looked at this and I'm glad you clarified it in your initial statements that you weren't speaking about this particular item in specific because for me that value that we are actually questioning is the safety of those residents and the use of that building which is why I thought the vacation was important so that the public safety issue for me warranted the giving that vacationing of that so since we're now on the same page as far as what the intent was mine was maybe looking at what the public safety portion of that was and every value doesn't have monetary value to it so thank you to everyone for the clarification on that and seeing no other further request to speak I'll entertain a motion move for approval second now that we have a motion and a second can you please open the machine for voting now that all present councilmembers are voting can you tally and announce the votes madam chair motion to approve agenda item E2 passes unanimously thank you thank you so now we'll take up item E3 it's the quasi judicial appeal of the DRC approval joining us is zoning official manager Corey Maleska thank you good morning so anyone wishing to speak must fill out the yellow card and present the card to the clerk all speakers must be sworn in prior to presenting testimony including city staff clerk can you please wear in our speakers thank you can you please read the title of the ordinance this is a resolution madam chair I'm sorry I'm reading okay I'm reading ordinance in here can you please read the resolution it doesn't mean to be right okay so we're going to move to the initial presentations each party will have 10 minutes for the initial presentation Mr. Maleska thank you good morning I was waiting for my presentation that could come up the subject property before you today is located at 332, 340 and 344 4th street south and it's currently developed with three buildings one is a two story two unit apartment building built in 1920 there's a two story four unit condominium building built in 2003 and a three story 19 unit apartment building built in 1920 the applicant does propose to demolish all the existing improvements to construct the 25 story building with 152 dwelling units 4,800 square feet of commercial space and 130 space parking garage on the screen is the proposed site plan the proposed development will operate as a hybrid between a residential condominium and a hotel use the hybrid use will allow flexibility by the owners to offer their units for short term rental or to reside there for permanent occupancy the arrangement is facilitated by a dedicated management team with 24-7 onsite staff the owners can choose to opt in or out of the rental program based on their own personal preferences the proposed 25 story building will be sited towards the north side of the property leaving a large uncovered open space along 4th avenue south the upper portion of the proposed tower overhangs the ground floor of the building leaving an area for a covered open space along the 4th street side of the project including 4th avenue south this rendering here on the next page shows that a little clearer but this being the covered open space here this being open to the sky the ground floor of the proposed tower will consist of a residential lobby and commercial space also back-of-house facilities uncovered and covered open space the parking garage entrance will be from charles court this will provide access to underground parking for one level there will be access access to the parking garage also from 4th avenue which will provide parking to the upper levels floors 5 through 24 will be devoted towards residential units the 25th floor will have an amenity area which is being referred to as a sky bar the residential mix of the units include studio one bedroom two bedroom and three bedrooms pedestrian access to the building will come from the abiding right-of-ways and the commercial space will include that will be oriented towards 4th street the loading area and dumpster area will be accessed off of the two existing alleys and northern alleys referred to as Charles Court and as well as a 10-foot alley on the east side this is the proposed front elevation and rear elevation the front elevation faces 4th avenue is on your right and the rear elevation facing Charles Court is to your left the community redevelopment agency heard this application on January 4th 2024 after hearing from staff and the agent for the project the CRA made a a motion to approve the resolution finding the project consistent with the redevelopment plan that motion passed by a vote of 5-0 the next hearing this is the rear elevation facing Charles Court the development review commission heard the subject application on January 10th 2024 after hearing testimony from staff the agents and two members of the public the DRC made three motions the first two motions were to amend two special conditions of approval and the third motion was to approve the site plan all three motions passed by a vote of 6-0 this is the facade just for reference facing 4th street an appeal was filed in a timely manner by Karen Carmichael which is sits on the board of directors she is the vice president for the sage condominiums on January 19-2024 pursuant to an appeal as outlined in chapter 16 section 16.70.010.6 appeals require super majority vote of the city council the standards are reviewed for the appeal as de novo which means the city council may hear new evidence and may substitute its judgment of the DRC city council may decide to retain eliminate or further amend any conditions of approval the burden of the proof of the appeal is left on the appellant the relevant legal criteria for this appeal of a site plan are found in chapter 16 subsection 16.70.040.1.4.d in the DRC staff report that is also contained within the appeal report staff outlined all the criteria and answered those criteria this is the front elevation facing 4th Avenue the appellant first issue was that they contend there are no buildings in the city that have designations as a condo hotel and there is no mention of this type of occupancy in division 2050 a short-term rental could be a hotel which does require a staff person on site 24-7 the St. Pete 2050 plan does not address specific land uses rather is a broad visioning document that outlines temporary community themes the community character and the growth theme identified downtown as an area for redevelopment and future growth on September 7th 1983 the Environmental Development Commission which was before the DRC approved a site plan to convert an existing hotel which everyone is referred to as the Hilton to a condominium hotel subject property is located at 333 1st Street South the property at the time of the approval was zoned CBD2 the subject property is located in the downtown center 2 zoning district multifamily and hotel uses are both permitted within the zone as well as commercial uses as outlined in section 16.20 of the code permitted uses and use regulations for properties within the DC2 district require a minimum 75% of the gross floor area to be devoted towards residential and hotel uses the applicant is proposing that either of these uses be allowed for all or a portion of the units this will allow flexibilities for the owners to offer their units to short-term rentals or reside there for permanent occupancy there will be a requirement for 24-7 on-site staff the DRC approved approval includes and conditions of approval to address impacts of the project the project will need to meet the minimum requirements for both uses and be licensed by the safe for the hotel occupancy city code does not regulate the ownership entity for a hotel unit or hotel establishment a hotel use does require access to individual units through an inside lobby and an office that is supervised at all times the hotel use will be required to be licensed through the state item 2 the developer refuses to comment on the use of the sky bar as a public or building amenity a building amenity is from a bar open to the public as previously noted the property is located within DC2 a minimum 75% of the gross square footage of the building has to be devoted towards a residential or hotel use this leaves 25% of the building that could be utilized for commercial use such as a cafe restaurant or bar the code does not restrict the use of the rooftop to a private building amenity any permitted use can occupy any portion of the building as subject complying with city code the DRC approval included a special condition of approval requiring a noise mitigation plan for approval prior to any installation of any outdoor amplified sound system the subject property is located within downtown within the in-town activity center and the in-town redevelopment area the downtown and in-town activity center were established by the city to encourage urban development and a significant higher intensity and density of the other parts of the city multiple objectives in the comprehensive plan include concentrating more intense growth in activity centers this as I said this area is located within the in-town activity center the city shall concentrate growth in designated activity centers another land use policy additional land use policy talks about the city shall continue to develop evaluate and implement appropriate activity center development incentives this area is located with the land use of central business district this district allows increased floor area ratios may be permitted as a bonus which is property sought for development that provide additional amenities or other improvements that achieve the design guidelines and development objectives of the land use the in-town redevelopment plan also contains development proposals in the community redevelopment area shall be reviewed for compliance with the goals objectives and policies of the comprehensive plan and goals and objectives and policies of other redevelopment plans and the land development code with respect to the land development code the property is located in DC2 as demonstrated by staff the DRC report staff determined the project does comply with the zoning district standards the general description of DC2 as outlined in the DC regulations as the district provides for an intense residential development that still allows a mixture of uses that enhance and support the core and surrounding neighborhoods including the dome stadium this is a document that was provided provided by the applicant and also provided to the appellant and included to council this is just telling you different requirements of the code there will be two loading bays provided off the existing alleyway there is no distance between buildings required for the lower portion of the building up to 50 feet since the proposed building has zero windows and the adjacent building has windows that occupy less than 50% of the wall above 50 feet the building does up back as required no less than 45 foot separation from the townhomes to the east and a 50 foot separation from the apartments to the north buildings in the DC should be constructed up to the right-of-way line as a requirement in the design regulations and again this is just a height map where this height proposed of this area is unlimited and in closing just showing the buildings that were built within the area referring again to the tapering that the proposed building will be shorter than the building just to the north which was approved at 30 stories thank you now just a reminder that each party will have 10 minutes for their initial presentation and once we get the lights on our applicant today is Mr. Don Maestri representing Forest South Valor Chair if I may yes I believe the appellant is first up after okay it has applicants so I'm just going by the skirt I'm just reading our quasi-judicial procedure okay and that's fine okay opponent is Ms. Karen Carmichael who's the VP of Sage Condominiums good morning I submitted a oh there it is okay great good thanks so I want to start this by saying well I'm Karen Carmichael 404th Avenue South Vice President of the Sage Condominiums oh oh okay these arrows got it I want to start by saying who is the we and we are St. Pete we've been following this project since the summer and we met with our zoning official in August and we expressed concerns that early on in November when the plans were received we reached out to Matt Poling at Trenum and spoke to him about the project for at least 20 minutes the developer and their representative this is not moving oh there it is okay the developer and their representatives have been made aware of our concerns for months we invited the Valor representatives to our building because we wanted them to see where they were building and get a feel for the residential neighborhood where they were proposing this project we expressed concerns for the hotel use and the sky bar we then followed up asking additional questions many of the residents at the Sage emailed and got some responses but they will not commit to anything regarding the hotel use or the sky bar use and they will not commit to limiting the sound so prior to this hearing we did send a request via the city planning department to limit the rentals to 30 days 12 times a year which is the precedent that you all already set with the Julia and we've asked for no amplified sound from the sky bar but we've received no response so we would like some restrictions put on this building because it has the potential to disrupt the lives of over a thousand people who live at the intersection of fourth and fourth the newer residents who live at second and fourth and the future residents who will be living at third and fourth the building coming up at third and fourth is 33 stories if there's a sky bar with amplified sound on the 25th story of this building it's sure to interrupt your quality of life so I'm speaking on behalf of the sage but I would like you to consider the folks who currently live at the Evo who will be living at the Echelon who live at the Beacon 450 the harbor edge and urban landings which are both limited income places the townhomes right next to this building and of course us so that's seven buildings and we're asking that you limit the use of this building to short-term rentals with a minimum stay to 30 days or more which as I said before is a president you said already with the Julia and our interpretation has been that a building amenity is exclusively for resident use but it's been very clear to us through conversation that the plan is to open this to the public it would be nice if the scale of the building actually fit the design of the area instead of maxing out the zoning codes but we're not going to argue that point today I would like to say though just because you can doesn't mean you should all right so we've been following this in the press we've followed the statements by Mr. Dima who makes us think that if it's a hotel there are some protections for the residents but we aren't clear on what they are and then of course you already saw the sizes of the buildings other statements in the press are that they will probably allow 15 or 30 day rentals but we're not sure they don't know who's going to manage the building which is very troubling to us right because we don't know when this management company takes over what they're going to propose what they're going to plan to do on that roof and we don't know really if the lounge is going to be open to the public according to what Mr. Mastery has been telling us so they've built some gorgeous buildings and I do want to say that to you Moises your buildings are beautiful the Serena by the Sea and the Skyview projects which they've invited us to look at are nothing like the building that they're going to be putting across the street from us they're claiming that they want this building to be less of a residence and more of a destination we're concerned with that statement we're concerned with the statement that they want a building where people have to squeeze through the lobby to get inside and that's the type of happening they want for the corner of fourth and fourth where they're surrounded by residents so we spoke to the city planners about this and we were referred to the mint house which is 11 stories and in the middle of a business district we also asked about the bar and we were told that we have a bar in our neighborhood well that's on the corner of fourth and fifth it's about 700 square feet it's not open after 10 o'clock at night and if you are walking past it and the door happens to be open you might hear the television in the evening this is the area that we're talking about you can see the sage building is the one that's the tallest with the 12 stories in the back across from the sage which I can't point up further in between the Madison which is all those red roofs and the sage that's urban landings and harbor's edge both of those pieces are limited income restricted so one is for seniors the one closest to the sage and the one closest to the Madison is affordable I guess affordable housing of some type you can see the smaller red roof to the left corner is beacon 430 there's probably a couple hundred apartments in there across the street is that tan building which is one of the pieces that's coming down next to it is the gray townhomes that are three stories that blue strip where the windows are blue and across the street from the Madison that's Camden Piers the folks at the Madison hear people on the 18th floor of Camden Piers when they are upstairs playing games they play cornhole up there and people on the fourth floor of the Madison can hear audible conversation and follow the conversations so this is the area that we're talking about the sage we understand is the lime green so we're a smaller building we understand the whole idea that all those fuchsia areas can be 325 stories and we're not arguing that we're not arguing that what we're saying is they're going to be a hundred feet away from harbor's edge and urban landing with a sky bar on the roof they're going to be 164 feet away from us and 100 feet away from the beacon 450 430 sound travels downtown we're concerned about the size of this lot and how the deliveries are going to be made because we don't know how many people are going to be moving in and out every day so we would like some clarity on that I really don't think that we're being unreasonable there's the sky bar and at 25 feet 25 stories the DRC thinks it's not going to be a problem for anybody but we already have evidence that without amplified sound 18 stories is affecting the folks at the Madison so these are the buildings that front currently on 4th Street this is the brand new building on the corner of 2nd Avenue South and 4th that's the Evo they have put 9 stories across the street from the Avante which is consistent with the character of the block down there the building that's the graphic is the Echelon which again 33 stories and is going to be 1 block away from this building also fronting on 4th Street it's 9 stories they've put their parking garage and some retail ground floor retail across the street from the Avante to me that's being very respectful to the folks that live at the Avante this is the proposed building and that beige building and that block is what's going to be taken down so that was naturally occurring affordable housing the people that live directly across from there are living in some level of affordable housing because it's senior rentals at Harbor's Edge I don't know where that 55 plus community is going to move to when the parties start on the top floor of the sky bar on this building that's being proposed the Beacon 430 is across the street it's 4 stories that's urban landings that's the other corner that's the sage so again we're asking that you limit the stays to 30 days we're asking that there be some kind of restriction on sound up there not just the normal mitigation because that doesn't work we've already been proven that over and over and over again and as far as the Hilton being used as a president in 1983 Janice Landing was vacant back then the Vinoy looked like Sleeping Beauty's castle and the decision to allow the Hilton to instead of going into bankruptcy and becoming another vacant building to become a condo hotel I'm sure was smart thinking at the time I don't know how to open this can somebody open that google drive so we can see what our neighborhood looks like and just press play we were told at the DRC hearing that our neighborhood is very noisy because we live near the hospitals and we live near the highway so I recorded this video while I was walking my dog the other day I'm walking now towards where this building is going to be built from 3rd to 4th Street from 3rd Street to 4th Street this is the urban landing building that I was referring to we'll be coming up on the gray townhomes pretty soon to the right I guess there's the gray townhomes as you continue up this block you can hear I'm sure you can hear the birds chirping this is a quiet residential block and we're asking for your consideration about the fact that thousands of people are going to be impacted by this not just the people that live at the intersection of 4th and 4th but the folks that are moving in to the newer buildings Ms. Carmichael so now we have our applicant Mr. Don Mastry representing 4th South Valor thank you my name is Don Mastry my address is 200 Central Avenue I have been sworn in and I represent the applicant in this matter as you've heard this project was approved unanimously by the CRA and was unanimously approved by the DRC the appellant has two main grounds the hybrid use of a residential condominium as a hotel use is not permitted she says and she wants clarity on the rooftop bar as you've heard from the staff neither ground is a basis for granting this appeal the use of the units either as multifamily dwelling or as hotel rooms does not conflict with the LDRs and because both uses are allowed in this district in this location and the length of stay or number of times rented per year as you've heard from your staff does not apply the property is in the DC2 zoning district and both multifamily dwellings and hotel uses are permitted principal uses in the DC2 zoning district and this application before you does not have any request for any variances at all also the DC2 zoning district is a mixed use it's not a single use zone it's described as a mixed use zone and the city code does not regulate ownership entity for a hotel unit or a hotel establishment the hotel does require access through the to the individual units through an inside lobby and an office and is supervised at all times which this project has on the issue of the bar the DC2 zoning requires a minimum of 75% of the gross square footage of the building to be devoted towards residential and hotel uses this permits 25% of the square footage of the building to be used for other permitted uses such as cafe restaurants and bars as your staff has told you the code does not restrict the use of the rooftop of a private building to a private building amenity any permitted use can occupy any portion of the building if it's a permitted use the subject property is located in downtown within the in-town activity center and the in-town redevelopment area the in-town redevelopment plan and the in-town activity center were established by this city to encourage urban development with significant higher intensity and density than other parts of the city redevelopment of existing properties to higher intensities is an expectation and a goal of the comp plan and the comp plan for the downtown area the staff report sets forth several comp plan goals objectives and policies that this project is consistent with and the project also complies with the LDRs and the in-town redevelopment plan with respect to the building height the height of the building will be 325 feet there is no maximum building height for this property and staff reviewed the proposed building height and found that it complies with all site plan review criteria and the code and the heights will need to be approved by the FAA and the building is required to have a decorative crown which it does have I will go through the standards of review that the DRC went it was required to go through in approving the plans the use is consistent with the com plan it's designated central business district and in-town activity center these designations permit the highest intensity development within the city along with a range of various uses including the proposed uses for this project the properties land use central business district and in-town activity center and DC2 zoning designations permit the property access to the project have been designed in accordance with code vehicular and pedestrian access will be provided on 4th street Charles court and 4th avenue south sufficient loading utility sanitation and emergency access are provided from these access points parking and loading have been designed in accordance with code off street parking and loading will be provided within the parking garage the parking garage will be screened the project will be landscaped according to code the project's drainage meets or exceeds all code requirements and the property's drainage system will be upgraded as required by code the project meets or exceeds all required setbacks and is consistent with the appearance harmony and character of other buildings in downtown and the surrounding high intensity mixed use neighborhood which is approved for and contains similar mid to high rise building types the project is compatible with the surrounding high intensity mixed use neighborhood which is approved for and contains similar high rise buildings such as the sage at 13 stories Camden Pier at 18 Salt Air at 35 stories Evo Apartments at 24 and the block immediately north of this project echelon has under construction right now a 33 story building which this commission this council approved also the project is not expected to cause any detrimental effects on property values in the neighborhood the project will be screened from surrounding properties the land area is of sufficient size for the development and is appropriate and adequate for use no historic or archaeological resources are known to exist on or within 200 feet of the property and the site is not in a national or local historic district the project will meet all adopted levels of service for water sewer sanitation parks and recreation and drainage and the staff indicates there's excess capacity of those services the application is consistent with and furthers the purposes of the code and other city ordinances and actions designed and implement designed to implement the comp plan specifically with regard to promotion of redevelopment and expansion of the downtown now attached to the staff report were three letters one letter was from the preserve the bird preserve the bird letter acknowledges that these buildings are not historically designated and are not in a historic district but does not want the buildings on this site to be demolished this is in effect a backdoor attempt to designate buildings without going through the process the letter also states that this project will reduce the downtown affordable housing well there's 26 units there all but one is vacant and the one is not vacant is a holdover of a party who sold its condo to the developer and negotiated to stay a little longer so nobody is going to be displaced by this project there's a letter from a Mr. Hoth and he states and I quote he is not opposed to the 25 story building its height design or footprint but is opposed to the uses and questions the parking and states this is a quiet neighborhood that will be disrupted I question the description of a quiet neighborhood I think it's urban living his building on the east side is on 4th street on the south side is on the entry and exit of the interstate it's near two hospitals a university the Mahaffey Theater another hotel that's urban living that's not a quiet neighborhood in spite of the video Ms. Carmichael said this is in a high intense district there are there's another letter from a Mr. oh Mr. Hoth also questions the parking he says that if all these rooms were considered 152 hotel rooms we would need a lot more parking spaces than the 130 we're providing well your code provides if at all were 152 hotel rooms 38 parking spaces would be provided not the 130 that we're providing 62 are required by your code for this project and we're providing 68 excess parking units Mr. Zimmerman has a letter there and he states the code requirements for setbacks have not been met and Mr. Melisca showed you the documents prepared by George F. Young that shows all the setbacks are complied with and I would also point out that as staff did that this building has been located as far north and as far away from the sage as possible and they've created a 40 foot open plaza on the south side and I also point out that these buildings are not on the same side or next to each other they're across 4th street intersects between the two buildings and I would based on what Ms. Carmichael has said and I will get into this a little more on my rebuttal but she just wants you to ignore what the rights of the code provide to a property owner and what she needs to do is have the code amended and I would answer any questions you have and thank you thank you I'm sure we have cards how many cards do we have Patty currently we have 16 cards we have 16 cards clerk can you please call two names at a time and when the clerk calls your name can you please go to either podium and you have three minutes to speak the first speaker is Caitlin Hiller and Cheryl Rosenzak please go to either podium state your name address and city you'll have three minutes to address council hi my name is Cheryl Rogensack and I reside at the Sage 400 4th Avenue South in 1982 I began my professional career here in downtown St. Petersburg and I'm so proud of how far the downtown has come and I'm thrilled to currently be a downtown residence I always knew the property at 4th Street and 4th Avenue South would someday be redeveloped but I never imagined it would be a 25 story condo hotel with a rooftop bar the immediate area around this location is almost exclusively residential it's a quiet residential community with a mix of apartments and condos that are filled with owners and renters who respect one another and take pride in our neighborhood it is an amazingly serene location when compared to the action that takes place several blocks away in downtown I do object to the height of the building although I realize it's code but moreover I really object to the use of it as a hotel with a sky bar the height of the building is just massive given the distance from the core of downtown and given the size of the immediately adjacent residences the use of the building as a condo hotel allows for much more transient population than is desired in a residential neighborhood the developers use description allows owners of the 152 units to opt in or out of a plan that would permit units to be used as permanent residents or short term rental properties more than half of the units are slated to be studios and it just sounds like it's more of a transient hotel situation rather than a condo development also the addition of 152 units in what is already kind of a tight and confusing intersection at 4th street and 4th avenue south to me are a detriment to the safety of our neighborhood the presence of the sky top or the sky bar is just in a quiet residential neighborhood to me is just wholly inappropriate the sound travels very well in our environment and a sky bar would be disruptive and inconsistent with the current residential neighborhood and would create a public nuisance when I observed the DRC committee meeting in January I was struck by the manner in which a lot of the city employees appeared to almost promote or represent the developers which was troubling to me and I'm just asking that you not destroy our neighborhood in exchange for your tax revenues I urge the council to require the developer go back to the drawing board and present a plan more consistent with the character of the neighborhood one that does not include a sky bar and one that does not include short term rentals thank you very much thank you Caitlin Caitlin okay next to Clark she's against Bill Holt and Bob Kirstein please go to either podium state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council to lower that hi my name is Bill Holt I live over at the Sage Condos and at 404th Avenue South I had a few comments I wanted to make about this proposed building number one thing I really hadn't going to say it but everyone from the city has talked about the DC2 what's required what's not required but no one ever mentioned they've read parts of it but they never said that the building height in this district is supposed to taper down as it blends into residential neighborhoods so you know for no one to actually mention that I don't know I think it's kind of crazy but anyway the city has greenlighted this unproven buildings use plan with no research to determine if it's good or bad for our city city staff added to the developer's application that there is a precedent for this type of building the staff claims in 1983 the city gave the concourse hotel permission to convert to a condo hotel so there is a precedent for this use is the staff member who wrote this aware that the conversion never happened and I believe the entire project ended up in foreclosure in 1983 many developments took place that would never be allowed today a 40 year old permission is not a precedent quite honestly the city staff comments throughout this application sound more like the staff works for the developer rather than working for us several residents in my neighborhood had met with the developer a few months ago during this meeting no details or commitments were ever made by the builder all answers to our questions were met with the response quote we just don't know yet and they still don't know we are counting on this council to get the answers to our questions since we are unable to get them a builder who does not know how many units he's planning does not know if it's a hotel or a condo it does not know if it will be a sky bar or a sky observation deck etc he should not be allowed to make these decisions with a permit in hand we should know these answers far before a permit is issued I feel that the residents of my neighborhood have a right to know exactly what is being built and how it will affect us before the city greenlights this project why can't we know the details before a building permit is even considered the developer states many times throughout the application that the condo docks will address many concerns with the building such as noise staffing security again with few details will addressing these concerns be contingent upon issuing them a building permit if not they are just empty words coming out of yet another developer's mouth our neighborhood is not the beach and it's not beach drive all we are asking is to have real neighbors not bar patrons and not spring breakers who will join us while we share our wonderful in-town neighborhood together as a community we are counting on this council to help us achieve that goal I don't feel we're asking for too much thank you for your time yes hi my name is Bob Kirstein I live in this age neither St. Petersburg's comprehensive plan land development regulations nor in-town redevelopment plan have any references to condo hotels therefore we have no clear criteria for evaluating this condo hotel proposal given the absence of clear criteria you should accept some of the common sense recommendations called for by neighbors today one season discussions of the proposal before the DRC on January 10th examples of the problem of having no ordinance regarding what is required for condo hotels for instance as Mr. Zimmerman pointed out hotels the size of this project require two 10 foot by 60 foot loading dock spaces staff has responded saying this is unnecessary because it is not a full service hotel and the hotel use is secondary to the residential use developers however certainly are not proposing solely a multiple family residential building whose units can be rented out because airbnb is not a permitted use in the city so the hotel use is important but staff does not insist in that developers comply with all requirements stipulated for hotels in the codes a consulting group that serves hotel and other hospitality clients noted in a 2006 publication that many cities were adopting zoning ordinances to establish standards for the operation and development of condo hotels in part to ensure compatibility with the city's comprehensive plan both palm beach and treasure island have adopted such ordinances st petersburg has not in the absence of any clear guidance on the city's land use documents regarding condo hotels i suggest the fairest perspective regarding this proposal is to respect that the developers were to some degree flying blind due to lack of specificity in the codes but also to respect that citizens have legitimate requests that should be on it in fact page 26 of the future land use element of the comp plan emphasizes the importance of neighborhood input modest modifications of the developers proposal have been discussed by previous speakers and as you consider these please don't forget that the neighborhood where this project will be located is designated in town development implementation implementation plan 15 year review page 17 as university park which is characterized as mid-rise residential it doesn't include the Mahaffey beach drive and so on so certainly a sky bar unless it is fully enclosed and does not offer amplified music has no place in this neighborhood further Ms. Carmichael's point about providing for a minimum 30 day rental of the units is compatible with the character of the neighborhood and it's also compatible with staff's contention that the residential use of the property is primary it avoids any issue with Airbnb restrictions in the city and would also make the units more attractive to buyers who want to live in St. Petersburg for at least much of the year the end result will be a nice addition to the neighborhood that will be profitable to developers who are personable and talented people and enhance or at least not be detrimental to the quality of life of residents thank you and peace could you please state your address for the public hearing record 400 4th Avenue South St. Petersburg apartment 706 I agree with my good friends and neighbors about these livability issues that they're bringing to your attention today and I suspect that some of you are or at least the right brain part of you is saying that these gentlemen have bought this property they have property rights and they can develop it to their fullest potential but I want to give your analytical brain cells some facts to make this decision so you can kind of think about it from both sides I go to the code directly since Mr. Mastery has decided to pick on some of the things I did I'm going to throw it right back at him to say this is your really what is your code and this is the bonuses to FAR calculations all projects within the downtown center districts may utilize bonuses to receive greater development rights these bonuses are specifically written to provide public amenities and to mitigate secondary impacts associated with additional development rights think about that let that set in okay there's three criteria right underneath that that say that you have to you have to meet these three criteria project shall comply with the minimum use requirements of the district okay they got that one here we go the new construction shall shall shall this is a directive comply with the restrictions for the building envelope for the district they don't Mr. Mastery says that I stated that the setbacks aren't compatible and they're meeting the setbacks that's not my contention my contention is on the northeast corner of this property they don't have separation of the buildings they're closer than the 15 feet that you're required to be by fire code or by the city code which is a reflection of the fire code beyond that they put the they put the generators and the the the electrical equipment on that same corner so they're risking our public service people coming out to do emergency service the third thing that they don't comply with is they shall comply with minimum parking standards we've mentioned this at DRC we've mentioned it to letters to staff a hotel and they can't keep going back and forth between a hotel and not be in a hotel requires to have two tractor trailer loading docks the staff mentions the Hilton and the Hilton has tractor trailer loading docks all of these developments you're not thinking or you have to think about how do they affect other hotel owners here yes all right I'm Scott Clark at the Sage Condos 400 4th Avenue South St. Pete me there are four reasons why this is the wrong project for this part of the neighborhood of St. Pete and why we want you to reject this project as outlined as Karen said just because you can doesn't mean you should we are existing citizens and residents of this neighborhood and just because technically this building could be put in there doesn't mean it should and here are the four reasons it's the wrong project because it doesn't fit this neighborhood we talked about the size I mapped out the four corners that we have three stories three stories three stories five stories five stories three stories five stories three three three four stories now 25 stories think about your neighborhood if across the street somebody put in something five times the size of your homes would you like that does that make it feel like it's the same neighborhood it's not number two why it's the wrong project we who have bought into this place purposely found the part of St. Pete that was quiet we didn't want beach dry we didn't want the high rise we wanted a low mid-rise neighborhood that's why we're there you're taking this away from us if you approve this project number three mentioned before but this particular intersection all the egress routes no matter which side you come out of this building are going to be within two car lengths of the front of a traffic light and these are one-way streets with a lot of accents to start with I don't know how you're going to have 130 parked cars coming out trying to join traffic with only two car lengths in front of them it's everything's going to get backed up it's just not going to work the last reason why this is the wrong project is that we have asked questions of this developer and they have been only half helpful they've been very vague not answering our questions if they're this way now and they're not even in the neighborhood what's going to happen is they build this facility this is just not the right place so please think about the citizens think about those that live there now and reject this project thanks next two speakers is Robin Jones and Brian Johnston please step to either podium state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council hello my name is Brian Johnston I live at 404th Avenue South St. Petersburg and when we were looking for a place to live in Pinellas County we looked at the beaches we looked in downtown St. Pete and what we didn't like about the beaches was the transit nature of the neighborhoods you go to the beaches and you've got neighbors for a week two weeks a day maybe a month you never know but we found the sage in St. Pete where they have a minimum of one year rentals we said wonderful we now have neighbors who live here all the time since the neighborhood of the sage is what attracted us to us I did some research and I've got some stuff I'd like to share with the council some articles from those are just excerpts since all the articles are like 60 pages long but I've got the Washington Law Review Economic Policy Institute the United Nations the Scottish Government the general sentiment of these articles is there is benefits to short term rentals in the downtown area but there's also some costs to those same benefits and I feel that they're outweighed by these the benefits are outweighed by these costs because you've got rising housing costs we had that group here earlier that was looking for affordable housing in downtown this is not affordable housing in downtown the wealth for this is non-diverse wealth if you look at all the studies the wealth for most of these places go to whites the white people really it does it's predominantly white it's significantly so and it's out of balance with the wealth and the actual cross section of the diversity of the city also you get into some of these places and perhaps there is some discrimination because you know if they are using you know BRBO or Airbnb which I know is restricted but how is that how well is that enforced really we're going to have increase in noise trash and burden on the infrastructure in this area because what we find out is the people that don't live there all the time don't care as much they're saying we're paying to live here so I can throw my trash out here I can do this and cause all kinds of additional disruption and noise I'm only here for a month I don't care how loud it is right and a huge decrease in social capital you know we lose that neighborhood feel and I guess I'd also encourage everybody in the city to read what DC2 says in 160.20.3.3 on your online it says the district establishes performing standards and design guidelines appropriate to the urban form residential building heights should taper down as development sites become less proximate to the core and transition to surrounding neighborhoods so in essence that and it also says it should be catered to the local business the local residents not thank you yes ma'am afternoon or good morning whichever it is I'm Robin Jones 400 4th Avenue South Unit 706 I love cities I chose to live in them study them vacation in them I seek density diversity and beautiful design by the way I actually think this building is a beautiful design but I also love planning and process I've lived at the sage for 10 years and I learned how the complex design of the sage came about with the two lower buildings and the entrance courtyard facing 4th Avenue and the 12 story tower pushed back so that it abuts I-175 turns out the developer city and community negotiated that configuration the sage developers even reconfigured Del Mar Terrace to include rear garage entrances and a turnaround circle for refuse collection they also provided landscaping lighting and sidewalks beyond their property to 5th Street turning a narrow narrow derelict alley into a community asset the DNA president at the time said quote the project is exactly what we'd like to see in our neighborhood a zoning official said it would quote create an exciting architectural anchor for that part of downtown where 4th Street the interstate University Park and medical center meet media called it a win-win-win solution for the developer planning and zoning officials and St. Petersburg residents this sage wisdom could be applied here for example the developer could commit to clear alternatives that are outlined in the codes an amenity is for residents yet when asked if the sky bar would be open to the public the answer has been either avoidance or we haven't decided yet condo hotel and hybrid are made up words according to our code they're not mentioned and to continually use it or to redefine it is disingenuous the developer could engage in community dialogue not public relations attempt to ameliorate the impact on immediate neighbors perhaps do not build to the bot lot line on all three sides and particularly on George Court to allow for garbage collection and better ingress and egress the city could recognize that the downtown core is made up of different neighborhoods ours still called University Park in the documents differs from Beach Drive condominiums it could respond to appeals thank you very much thank you next two speakers the next two speakers is Jose Perez and Anna Alder please go to either podium state your name and address you'll have three minutes to address council hello my name is Anna Adler and I live at 100 4th Avenue South I'm here because that project as described is just not appropriate for that neighborhood has been has been sold here it is surrounded by residential neighborhood communities apartments condos and senior living this this building is first of all the height good heavens 25 stories I don't know if you've ever been to Paris but it is as beautiful as it is in poems and songs amazingly enough it has one of the reasons of its beauty is the strict adherence they have to their building code twice it's been modified since it was established in the late 1800s most of them are six stories high the new height is 12 stories somehow that's able to accommodate all the tourists that come every year it is the number one tourist location in the world also this particular building it has echoes of the metro which is now run by mint and that works really well for those short term stays because you walk out of the mint the metro and you're at intermezzo you're at the red mesa cantina pin on walk you are there and that is truly urban that is truly an urban commercial but here you have to go three blocks to get to a CVS you know so we're not dealing with a tourist location at all this is very much a residential area if this was an area oh my god the word from the previous city plan was blight everything was addressing the blight in the city this area is well developed and well established if this was an up and coming area if it was even farther out from the edge I'd be all for it because the new businesses would be able to come in and really revitalize that area that area does not need revitalization it is absolutely what it should be which is a residential area a low profile residential area 25 stories is absolutely insane to put in there and this sky bar business you know it's only going to be a matter of time I've noticed with a lot of the development proposals is it looks great in the beginning it matches all the codes everything and then as it goes through the process it becomes clearer that it's the money that's ruling like the development of the old police station it was going to have x number of affordable housing units and now as it goes that number has shrunk and shrunk and it's going to be really interesting to see how many they finally end up with it's just after thank you very much good morning and a happy 1832 I believe today we're celebrating the city of St. Pete my name is Jose Perez I live at the sage and I am here to speak specifically about the sky bar in this proposed building now as downtown St. Pete grows so does the relentless noise now despite the belief that it's something we can get used to science tells a different story we cannot turn our ears off our body is still listening activating our nervous system the health effects of noise pollution can be significant it can cause physiological reactions in our bodies which then can manifest into heart disease diabetes and stress now daytime noise levels in St. Petersburg downtown especially can exceed the world health organization's recommendation of 55 decibels health issues actually start at 50 decibels the rare time we can escape the relentless daytime noise of construction trucks traffic is at night when construction stops and the traffic significantly quiets down when one is exposed to relentless amplified music generated from the bars or restaurants that happen mostly at night then music becomes unwanted noise this happened to me in Dallas Texas I purchased a condo in a historic mid-century modern building complete with a wraparound balcony the first night I spent in my condo I thought would be a quiet night it certainly was not quiet I could clearly hear loud music and yelling from the open air bar across from the building I was then briefed that the condo association had been involved in a lawsuit with the bar one entire side of our building from the first floor to the penthouse was affected after many meetings with the owners of the bar it was evident they had no intentions of being a good neighbor based on their revenues they had no problem paying the city fines and legal feeds they incurred a group of building residents very similar to these today rallied together and spoke at several city council meetings and we caught the attention and support of several of the council members the outcome was amazing they had the bar remove the outdoor amplified speakers still the decibel levels exceeded that that was actually acceptable to the city and that's what brings me here today so far there is little information about the sky bar even mr mastery just said it wasn't any of our business pretty much and the street that I live on truly has a feel of the neighborhood within an urban center it would be devastating for this residential oasis to have another janice landing bridgewood top bar or tryst the fact that the sky bar is atop a 25th floor of the proposed building is no guarantee that the decibel levels won't surpass the city's noise ordinance affecting the residents in St. Pete and there was a wonderful study and I'm just going to quickly say this about quality of life and it says the results are significant deterioration in the quality of life because of noise causes sleep deprivation I vote you to vote against this next two speakers please Alan Roberts Paschali Manganielli please approach either podium please state your name address and city you'll have three minutes to address council good morning my name is Alan Roberts and I live at 400 4th Avenue South of the Sage and I moved to St. Pete from Miami just about a year ago and I wanted to share some of my personal experiences having spent 30 years in Miami in a medical practice Miami had very good intentions but Miami succumbed to growth and development and that's not always a bad thing but what we found in our neighborhood was as the buildings got taller and the amenities became open to the public whether they were bars or spas what increased was the noise in the area the traffic in the area it was so difficult to find parking and the quality of life for those of us who live there full time definitely changed now when I found St. Pete and the neighborhood that I moved into I was absolutely thrilled to return to sort of what felt like a blended smaller city that respected residential living and the standard and quality of life so you know what I don't want to see is what happened to the big city of Miami and Miami Beach happened to our beloved St. Petersburg this is a great town it draws many people and I think you really have to weigh growth with the quality of life going forward I appreciate your time thank you yes sir good morning my name is Paswell Manginelli I'm a member of I live at the Sage 400 4th Avenue South Unit 208 I am against these two notions that there needs to be a sky bar in the building I also am against the other issues that were mentioned today I think it's important to note I do have experience in developing property I do have experience in developing large tracts of land for housing and I learned when my family was doing that that to be a good neighbor every now and then you've got to give and take a little bit so far I think this building that they're creating is a wonderful idea it's great for the growth of St. Petersburg and it's wonderful to see it happen in downtown however I think it's worthwhile for them in order to be a good neighbor to just turn over on these two particular items I believe that they would go far away in making the neighborhood a much better place for everyone to live and for everyone to enjoy future as well as current I urge you to turn down the to vote against this and to take a good serious look at all this thank you very much thank you next to speakers please Michael Ross Michelle Villaveau please approach either podium please state your name address and city you'll have three minutes to address city council good morning my name is Michael Ross I live at 400 4th Avenue South the sage I only want to mention a few things I've been living there since 2014 and I know it's a downtown and I know there's a certain amount of noise we hear helicopters going in and out of the hospitals we hear trucks going on to the interstate but all that is momentary this sky bar there's no guarantee that the first of all it's going to be at night mostly and secondly there's no guarantee about the noise levels we need more information I think about that but I think before the council approves this and I just want to say that I agree with the others that have stood up and talked today and I think this project I'm not saying it shouldn't happen at all but I think it needs a lot more clarification thank you for your time please begin okay my name is Michelle Veyu I live at 400 4th Avenue South at the Sage I've lived in St. Petersburg since 1993 when I graduated from college and this was my first job down at All Children's and I've owned at the Sage for 10 years and I think this proposed condo hotel does not fit with the existing character or scale of the neighborhood and is not in alignment with the vision of St. Pete 2050 the proposed project would replace missing middle type housing with what is essentially a very expensive let's face it it's very expensive multi-owner investor Airbnb I mean it's essentially that this will not further the housing needs of the residents nor contribute to the stability and character of the neighborhood in scale it is an out of proportion building which is essentially a revolving door of 152 units of non-residents these out of area owners and people renting for a night or two have no skin in the game as far as the peace and tranquility of our neighborhood they won't be particularly interested or concerned about being noisy or having loud party like atmosphere on a rooftop bar partying that is bound to spill out into the city street which by the way is a major corridor for ambulances to get people to the hospitals to the south of us having large numbers of people as well as traffic trying to get in and out of that building it's already a very difficult intersection to cross as I know as I walk there all the time with my dogs having rescue vehicles impeded by the the comings and goings would be even more probably not safe the nightly renters are not invested in the community or quality of life per se and there isn't the connection of knowing your neighbor and since it's unlikely that there will be owners on site accountability for such issues as nuisance noise will be more than challenging as there are potentially 152 individual owners who likely are investors and do not live there but for us this neighborhood is our home putting an outsized non-residential transient occupied building right in the middle of this neighborhood diminishes the feeling of safety security and comfort that we rely on at the end of the day to come home to rest a 152 unit nightly rental condo hotel with a rooftop bar like this is not it is not peaceful and it provides nothing necessary to the residents of this city and certainly not of this neighborhood I implore you with all my being to consider our appeal for a more appropriate use of this space and suggest that this firm go back to the drawing board of this project to build something consistent with the scale the character and the residential nature of our neighborhood thank you thank you next two speakers please next two speakers Madam Chair Greg Stanek and Lynn Lockowitz please approach either podium please state your name and address you'll have three minutes to address city council we're missing someone Lynn Lockowitz she's against so the call the next last speaker and the last speaker is Daniel Budnick and he has been sworn in please state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes to address council we start sure hi I'm Greg Stanek and I live at the Sage 400 4th Avenue South number 909 I have a couple of questions regarding the development of this property I'm not against the development of the property but I am against what they are proposing my questions in specific to the city council are is this a condo or is this a hotel it's a legitimate question that you have to ask yourself because as we hear from Mr. Mastery well we can do this because of a long time ago they had an approval that never happened but for the residents that surround this building it's important to ask that question is it a condo or is it a hotel because if it's a hotel they have to follow certain rules if it's a condo they have to follow other rules they seem to be kind of cutting in between and trying to figure out the best way to make it work for them without regard to us and what I mean by that we use example of say the Mint wonderful building it's downtown between Central and First Avenue North that is a heavily traveled area there's no residential place nearby there there's hotels and a lot of restaurants we're in a neighborhood that's very much different and I hope that you consider that because there's 152 units earlier before I stepped into this room I asked one of the people that's involved with the development is it possible that these 152 units could be theoretically rented out every night I know that's not going to happen people stay for multiple nights but even if you say half the units are rented and they eight times a month that's thousands of people in and out thousands of people that don't know the rules they're here for Grand Prix they're here to have fun it's not residential it doesn't add value the building's beautiful love it the Sky Bar same deal what condo has a public bar on top of it none hotels do and we do have condos and hotels where it's separate this is not that this is 152 people that own the unit so if I have a complaint about I hear somebody's TV because they've got the door open on the 20th floor and so what do I call I call the management company if it's a hotel I can call the night manager if he doesn't he or she doesn't respond I can call the corporate office this I'm stuck with okay well somebody better do something about it so there's a lot of questions that I think as a council you should be asking them is this public is the Sky Bar open to the public number one and number two what about the daily rentals why not set a cap on it 30 days I think that's reasonable thank you very very much hi I'm Dan Budnick we don't live at 400 we live at 200 4th Avenue South at the Madison and we fell in love with it six years ago mainly because it was a low building it wasn't a high rise and it had a beautiful courtyard with a very zen appeal to it so I just want to share a personal perspective about condo hotels because we've owned three of them and the ones we owned and the dream about you buy this and you rent it out which is really we learned the hard way these were in South Carolina they were on the beach and they were in resorts we still own one of them and it's purely a rental property because to believe that you're actually going to live in this thing on a continual basis is really a fallacy what ends up happening is we bought into the dream you buy this two-bedroom condo on the beach and you can rent it and it's it had a very strong property management company which I didn't hear spoke about here and that's very important because for maintaining the standards that's why hotels this is not even as good as a hotel because a hotel has standards but these are really at the end of the day what it is is a hotel the only difference is the owners have paid the bill to build the unit and after we bought it we lived it we used it a couple times and then you start renting it out people steal things from you and then you're staying in it and you have someone in the next unit that's rented out that might come back drunk and they're screaming you know drunk at night or all the there's a lot of disruption who do you call because all the tenants own the units there's no centralized security and we lived all this and we finally sold it and then when we were looking in St. Petersburg we saw the Madison and the first thing I looked at was minimum two year rental because the last thing I wanted was a transient environment where your neighbors are in and out every several days and it's really all it's all you all every what it ends up being is a bunch of investors exactly what was said I lived this a bunch of investors buy in they don't care about it all they care about is the check that they get at the end of the month but for the people and ours was on the beach and all of the units were condo hotels the whole grand strand was condo hotels this is now you're going to put this right in the middle of a residential area so if we're not going to limit it to condominiums what I would plea is do what the first lady said at least 30 days because otherwise you're going to get all the spring breakers you're going to get a lot of transient people coming down there's going to be a lot of noise and it's really not conducive for all the residents that are living around it thank you thank you madam chair no more speakers no more speakers thank you so this concludes Flevick attorney Dima yeah okay yeah yeah she was sworn in yeah she was sworn in hi my name is Caitlin Hillier I live at 341 4th Avenue South thanks for letting me speak my townhome complex is called Charles Court and we are the gray townhomes from Karen's presentation that would share the alley on the east of this proposal I thank Karen and the sage community for all the time they've spent putting into this presentation and I'm just here to say that I completely support her appeal I would like to say that I am a huge proponent of progress my husband and I we just moved here last summer from downtown Chicago and the fast but smart progress that this city is developing with is the main reason we chose it we actually spent over two years traveling all the major Florida cities determining where we wanted to end up we just knew we wanted water and as soon as we saw downtown St. Pete it was a unanimous decision this is where we needed to be moving from downtown Chicago we wanted the walkable vibrant downtown that we were used to we wanted more housing options that would give us the option to walk to a bar or restaurant but also have space and a two car garage something not available in Chicago a major reason we did not choose Tampa was for the smart development laid out in the land regulations that Karen and others today have spent time on that the grade of the height is moving out in a gradual basis that allows so many people like us to be right on the edge of the downtown district but in these small complexes like our town homes the single family homes next to us or the mid-rises like the sage placing a 25-story high-rise at the edge of the downtown heart next to our three-story town homes it does not fit with the character of our neighborhood or the goal of the land regulations a year ago when the development review commission was asked to was discussing a proposal at 200 mirror lake a commissioner brilliantly said that the city needs to take a pause whenever development seems out of character of their direct neighbors and asked do we want to be New York City or do we want to be Charleston in that particular proposal they decided they wanted to be Charleston they asked the developer to go back to the board and find something that was more appropriate for the neighborhood unfortunately in this case the commission decided they wanted to be in New York City but I would ask you to take this opportunity with this appeal presented today to say that this is not in line with the neighborhood and ask the developers to go back to the drawing board and find something more appropriate to be my new neighbor thank you thank you so now this concludes public comment and we will now move into our cross-examination where each party will have five minutes for cross staff would you like to staff waves our opponent our appellate Ms. Carmichael you have five minutes I don't know if I really have a cross examination does that mean I ask questions that's correct you ask questions of anybody who has presented testimony okay so I'm curious to know if anybody's heard from the people at the Beacon 430 or the folks that live at Harbor's Edge or the Urban Landing those have to be specifically directed to somebody who presented testimony Ms. Carmichael oh sorry okay so Mr. Mastry have you heard it all from the Beacon 430 folks no and how about the Harbor's Edge or the Urban Landing people who are living in the affordable housing on that's directly across the street no okay so there's a 55 plus community there at Harbor's Edge and Urban Landings is limited income I see the folks that work at Ms. Carmichael it's only for questions of yeah so I'm I'm sorry you can bring that point up again at closing yeah that's okay no worries Mr. Mastry do you like to cross examine come to the podium please Mr. Mastry thank you one of the residents that testified or stated that we this project did not meet the building separation requirement can you answer whether it does or not it does meet the building separation requirement the code requires that distance separation Mr. Maleska could you please approach the microphone thank you yeah it does meet the building separation requirement for the DC the building separation is zero between blank walls and what is defined as a blank wall is a facade that has less than 50% glazing we'll be in okay so now we move on to our rebuttal and closing remarks each party will have five minutes to provide closing remarks or rebuttal staff do you have closing remarks or rebuttal staff waves Mr. Mastry do you have closing remarks or rebuttal I'm sorry Ms. Carmichael I'm sorry Ms. Carmichael no Mr. Mastry oh thank you yeah it's confusing it's always confusing yes she goes first the first time and then we go back and it's I you know we have a nobody says we have a DC2 district that requires 75% of the square footage of the building be used for a hotel or residential and now they don't you know we're not supposed to do the hotel and I don't think that the building that doesn't exercise all the rights in a zoning district sets that for all the other buildings that come afterwards but I your staff has said this better and I'm going to read you some of the provisions in the staff report in spite of the fact that the neighbors think the staff is favoring they are favoring the developer because the developer is following the ordinance of the city and the first one is the St. Pete 2050 plan does not address specific land uses rather it is a broad visiting document that outlines 10 priority community themes to help inform future decisions and guide plans programs and services throughout the city in support of its sustainable resilient and equitable growth over the next 30 years the community character and growth theme identifies the downtown as an area for redevelopment and future growth another paragraph use of the units as either multifamily dwelling or hotel room does not conflict conflict with the land development regulations because both uses are allowed as principal uses in this location and therefore any restrictions related to the length of stay or number of times rented per year do not apply the land development regulations defines both a multifamily and a hotel use the next one as previously noted the zoning of the property is DC2 for section 16-21-25 a minimum of 75% of the gross square footage of the building shall be devoted towards residential and hotel use this allows 25% of the gross floor footage of the building to be used for other permitted uses such as cafe restaurant or bar the code does not restrict the use of the rooftop to a private building amenity area any permitted use can occupy any portion of the proposed building subject to complying with the code the DRC approval includes a special condition of approval requiring a noise mitigation and monitoring plan to be approved prior to the installation of any outdoor amplified sound system the noise mitigation and monitoring plan must be properly certified to meet ANSI and ASA and demonstrate how the operation will comply with the noise ordinance and shall at a minimum include the number and orientation of speakers noise mitigation methods hours of operation location of stages and performing areas and monitoring requirements the subject property is located in the downtown within the in-town activity center and the in-town redevelopment area the downtown and in-town activity center were established by the city to encourage urban development with a significantly higher intensity and density than other parts of the city redevelopment of an existing properties to higher intensities is an expectation and goal of the comp plan for the downtown area those statements are your staff they're not my statements and all they're doing is telling you what the zoning ordinances and the comp plan require and permit and this project before you meets all of those requirements that's why it's a no variance application and it was unanimously approved by the DRC and you were sitting as a CRA and unanimously approved this I don't think a site that's only four blocks from the heart of the city fourth and central is kind of considered the heart of the city this is less than four blocks away and it's not to be considered an intense area to develop and I would answer any questions you have and I would urge you to deny this appeal thank you thank you the appellant please Ms. Carmichael would you have any closing remarks or rebuttal yeah I would just like you to consider the statement or the slogan of our city we are St. Pete and you've heard that no one reached out to the people at Harbor's Edge or Urban Landings and I know that to be a fact because I went over there and I spoke to the building manager of Harbor's Edge I'm here speaking on behalf of the Sage we're property owners I can sell my place I can sell and move anywhere in St. Petersburg because I have valuable property downtown the people that live at Harbor's Edge or Urban Landings don't have that a lot of the 55 plus seniors that live in that building which is directly across the street from where the Sky Bar is going to be have no place else to go where are people with limited income supposed to go when their lives are disrupted by a project that's built right across the street from them I'm speaking on behalf of the citizens who cannot speak for themselves and I urge you to consider them the other piece of this is how does the Sky Bar meet the daily needs of the people that live in that neighborhood that's what the retail is designed to do according to the DC2 regulations their application says there's no detrimental effects on the surrounding buildings I'm sorry but we're here because we don't agree with that we know that it's going to be detrimental to our way of life we already have issues on 4th Avenue South with trash collection just from the building that was built across the street from us and doesn't follow the proper sanitation rules so what's going to happen when deliveries for linens and everything else that's connected to a hotel use are going to be coming in and out of those narrow areas what kind of traffic is going to be backed up on 4th Avenue South as the liveries are brought to that building we're simply asking we're all friends here okay you came to our building we begged you not to put this kind of a building in our neighborhood we love the Serena by the sea that picture was at the top of the first St. Pete Catalyst or St. Pete Rising article and everyone in my building said oh my god look what they're putting across the street from us this is beautiful and then we read the article and I had neighbors in my apartment crying not because they were going to lose their view but because how are we going to live across the street from a sky bar yes we have urban noise clearly I'm a New Yorker I lived on the corner of Queens Boulevard and Yellowstone Boulevard Kennedy Airport was over here LaGuardia Airport was over here planes were flying over me all the time buses were stopping all the time taxis there was three bus stops in front of my building urban noise is something you can manage the noise from a sky bar is going to be disruptive to the people in my building in Harbor's Edge in urban landings in the Beacon 430 probably the people in the Madison and certainly to the folks next door in those little gray townhomes I don't know what else to say about this we're just asking you to limit no amplified sound is what we're asking for because we already have proof that no amplified sound carries from the 18th floor to the 4th floor of the Madison the folks that live there tell me about it we know that the 25th floor who's going to have a sky bar one block away there's going to be a building that's 33 stories you've never seen me here complaining about buildings and I've been living downtown for a long time this building we love the designs that this company is able to produce this particular building has the potential to be disruptive to all of our neighbors thousands of not just 112 units in this age there's going to be thousands of people in the surrounding area that are going to be disrupted by amplified noise coming from that sky bar please limit that the noise mitigation policy that currently exists in the city still causes problems and not for I'm not here representing the neighborhood association but most of you know I'm the president of the neighborhood association so I might as well just put it out there I get the phone calls okay and I told them that when they came to talk to us I said look I don't want to give phone calls about this building so that's the reason I'm here you've heard from the people at the ovation about the parking bell what do you think is going to happen when there's a sky bar with amplified noise on the 25th story of this building we're asking for 30 day rentals and no amplified sound please consider that thank you so now that closes our judicial proceedings and now we will move into executive session council member Floyd thank you I want to start with just getting some clarification in our backup info it talks about the DRC approved with a couple of caveats or amendments what were those and are those included on what we're voting on today I just they are included it was included in backup material from the hearing let me just get that here one second where I just find the vote record thank you page nine thank you so two conditions were added by the DRC the first condition was to remove the second sentence from special condition number nine that said the parking garage screening shall incorporate a mulling and pattern in the image of the door front system and that passed by five to zero or six to zero excuse me the second motion was to revise special condition number 19 from the date of December 15th 2023 to January 8th 2024 and that was for a memo received by one of our reviewing agencies it was either our engineering department or transportation department and that also passed by a vote of six to zero and the final motion was the overall approval of the project okay thank you I just was flipping through my notes the same as you were digging for that information I'm having some technical difficulties today so I wanted to be sure I was up on all of that okay the next thing I have is there was some info in the backup I think it might have been mentioned something about noise mitigation if you could just speak to that a little bit well I mean the applicant if they do have amplified sound they will have to submit a noise monitoring study to the city for review and that has to be done by an acoustical engineer the city has reviewed some since the ordinance passed most of them have been actually in the Grand Central District at this point so if they do come in and want to do outdoor speakers we would have to review that plan before a permit could be approved for that it's interesting you mentioned the Grand Central District this is just a side note there's some issues there right now and a lot of complaints so it's just interesting that you bring that up okay now I'm going to get into really what I would like the most clarification on in it and it's about like the hotel versus condo these two things are regulated differently really and so and some of that's come up but it just sort of an overarching conversation or comments about like will they have to maintain like hotel standards if it's this kind of building and I mean I see that we've already allowed them not to have the loading docks where if you could just speak to this a little bit because it's kind of blurry for me and I'm assuming some of my colleagues so both multifamily and a hotel are both permitted principal uses in the DC2 zoning district the code also allows a mixed use to occur on a property this is a mixed use so when we look at the standards for both so we look at the FAR neither use is exempt from FAR so we look at the total FAR so they didn't comply or qualify for any FAR exemptions there's no difference in height requirements for the uses there's no difference between building separations for the uses there is a difference for parking residential requires more parking than the hotel use would so they would have to meet the residential parking standards so the hotel use does require access through an internal lobby which they do have it does require 24-7 on-site staff so that similar to what was approved for the mint house they have someone on-site 24-7 so if there's a complaint or an issue that person can take care of it that's also a requirement in the city code under the definition for hotel going into the area the discussion about loading they do have two loading spaces they don't have a loading berth so when staff looked at this we looked at this building is roughly 150,000 square feet pre-exemption the code says over 100,000 you have a loading berth so if you look at the other hotels have been approved the true by hilton is just under 100,000 square feet if you look at the hilton the hilton's 240,000 square feet you look at the true the true has 131 hotel rooms the hilton has 228 hotel rooms this has 152 potential hotel rooms the true just like this proposal does not have any conference space meeting halls large gathering spaces like the hilton does also these rooms are occupying more space because their studios one bedroom and two bedrooms the true is a typical hotel room just like the hilton is so staff looked at this that that standard would not be needed for this type of use especially since it's not functioning like the hilton or even the vannoy which are conference center based hotels over 100,000 square feet so that was the difference there but all other requirements of the code and such they will have to get any state licensing just like any hotel use or any short term rental in the city would be required to have okay thank you for that last comment that was going to be my next question okay so if the use for this building was explicitly just condo how would that work with our short-term rental regulations in the city I mean would they would still be outside of you know any condo restrictions so if you are a home owner condo town home single family home you can rent your house up for 30 days it's not short-term rental three times a year you can rent it for less than that and you would comply with our requirement it would not be considered short-term rental okay so basically we're I mean okay and you know maybe I'm being too simple here but it feels to me like we're giving approval for a condo building to just have an exemption to the ordinance on short-term rentals I mean I think the really the big difference here is that it's the hotel use is a permitted use in the zoning district versus it being a prohibited use in single-family neighborhoods so that underlying fact is what makes this allowable in the first place yeah and I hear you there and that makes sense I'm wondering like how it compares to like you know an existing condo building in the in the district like they have to abide by the short-term rental regulations that we have in in the same zoning district I mean I think what's going to be controlling there are the condo documents yeah okay more than anything okay but but you know absent that the city's policy there is you can do the short-term rentals three times a year for less than 30 days Commissioner Floyd to add that I mean they could apply for a change of use from a condo to a hotel okay yeah that's and they could get a license from the state okay they could apply for a change of use would that still allow them to do would that allow them to do the condo tell like this they could ask for a change of use for mixed use which would include both uses okay and then they could do this kind of thing okay I'm just still trying to wrap my head around it a little bit but if you know any building asked for approval of just a condo they have to meet our current regulations but they can ask for mixed use and then have sort of the best of both worlds it seems like and the only time that this has come up before was that one development mentioned in the past 1983 at the Hilton okay and that was before we had our short-term rental regulations I cannot speak to what the regulations for that were in 1983 yeah I don't know it could be I don't know that yeah things were just yeah quite different back then okay all right yeah I'm just trying to wrap my head around it it really you know it feels like I know legal took issue with the simplicity of what I said and I respect that completely but does feel like we're trying to build a condo building and not have the short-term rental regulations apply to them and I just I don't know what to think about that right this second so I'd like to hear from the rest of my colleagues thank you thank you council member driscoll thank you and thank you to all who are here today to speak on one side or the other of this case I appreciate all that's been put into this you know there are a couple of different problems that I have with this one is the what it's the the request itself the plan itself the other is the how the transparency or lack thereof is is really quite disturbing to me and and there are multiple individuals who are involved in that and it's so incredibly disappointing first there is the the point that council member floyd brought up what is this and the fact that we have to ask gives me great pause we should not be voting on things based on blurry based on unclear based on hybrid or confusing it's got to be one or the other you don't get to cherry pick when it gets to be a hotel and when it gets to be a condo and find your own customized version of the rules for each one to match what you want to do we don't have condo tell as something that comes up this isn't as was said earlier this this is not something that we just come up with every day this isn't like any like other developments that have come before us and I usually vote for them because they do comply this one does not it simply does not the example that we were given of when this was done before was in 1983 in 1983 I was 12 years old gas was $1.24 a gallon return of the jedi was one of the biggest movies out there and you know what else was popular big shoulder pads that's what we're looking at that's the comparison that we have remember that that is significant to me this is not like just any other development and this is not what our regulations were created to allow the height usually I don't have a problem with this but again there's an issue with transparency in the staff presentation there was a map given this has been talked about by everyone so I'm not going to bring it up again unless I feel like I need to later but this comparison of this project to other buildings in the area is not transparent it is not complete because somehow we managed to omit the buildings that are directly adjacent to this site beacon 430 four stories right across the street urban landings right across the street five stories this stuff you found the ones that are 1312 all of that the apartment building directly to the north of it is two stories the townhouse is directly to the east of it are two stories maybe three I can't remember it's been a long time since I had a friend who lived there but I think it's absolutely shameful that those were not included in here and those are the direct neighbors be honest all I ask for is true transparency on this stuff but that makes it look like somebody's on a certain side from the beginning and it's not right this as Mr. Masry said this area is four blocks from the heart of downtown it's four blocks from the core it's not in the core yeah there's noise I used to live just a couple blocks west of this site for 17 years yeah there's noise you've got the hospitals you've got the regular traffic for me it was the master fire station a couple blocks then further down there was that kind of noise but you got used to it like Karen Carmichael mentioned living in New York all of that but overall it was a different kind of noise and it's a different kind of quiet that you have when you're removed from the core I would never have wanted to live in the core because of the noise there I don't want this to become that it's not as someone mentioned it's even technically called a different neighborhood University Park let's honor that this does not is not compatible with the other properties in the neighborhood this is a neighborhood within the neighborhood of downtown if you just take a walk down that street you'll know exactly what I'm talking about because I did it for many years the rooftop bar the code it specifies it's okay to use it based on what you decide that day that this is going to be I don't know if I can't figure out if it's not clear I can't I can't I can't go along with this I can't support it and the noise ordinance I think is going to be even more difficult to enforce than normal with this type of with this type of a development finally I'm very concerned that the developer has not been more transparent with the neighborhood earlier today we approved another development where the collaboration was clear the desire to work together was clear and I'm disappointed that that didn't happen here I will close but I do want to get some clarification from attorney Dima on what does for me and what does against me and what does resolution A mean and what does resolution B mean and if you'd like to wait that's fine I am ready to make a motion but I want to make sure that everyone understands because these appeals can be a little tricky sure so resolution A is a resolution denying the appeal and upholding the DRC's approval of this project so we make all motions in the affirmative of course so moving approval of that resolution means means that a yes vote is a yes vote for the project a no vote is a no vote for the project the converse for resolution B thank you and therefore I'll move approval of resolution B or do you need me to say E3B resolution B is fine okay I'll move approval of resolution B and I will be happy to revisit those instructions again when it's time to actually vote okay thanks thank you Madam Chair councilmember Hanowitz thank you chair well first of all thank you for everyone who came here today I thought that you provided a lot of thoughtful comments and a lot for us to think about not all of us live where you live not all of us have lived in the downtown I understand that downtown has different neighborhoods whenever I hear it's in the downtown to me it doesn't mean that every area has to have the same activity that's why we had different DC districts so when I look at the DC districts in our code you go from the downtown center core you have downtown center one downtown center two and downtown center three and then when I'm reading it what I'm struck by is DC two is provides for intense residential development that still allows for a mixture of uses that enhance and support the core and surrounding neighborhoods including the dome stadium the district also allows support retail and office uses which assist the residents with the daily needs of living and I know this was mentioned I'm glad it was mentioned in comment closing because that was one of the things I noticed about the DC district which is different than some of the other districts and so what I'm wondering is and I understand you have mixed use 75% could be residential hotel 25% could be other permitted uses and Sky Bar falls within those permitted uses how does this project or the Sky Bar support the pedestrian scale that is encouraged in this center to make it a walkable district with pedestrian oriented businesses that provide vibrant activity that will continue at the street level which reinforces the pedestrian scale of this neighborhood and is in concert with what's in the code there is commercial use on the first floor would reinforce that it's actually required per the DC the Sky Bar for an A street the Sky Bar is something that they can choose to do or not do the use is permitted regardless of where it is in the building so yeah is it going to reinforce the pedestrian scale no but we do have other Sky lounges within the city and different buildings throughout we're not going to regulate if it's open to the public or not you have amenity decks on towers again those are typically private but they could be public you have the canopy DC3 A street that doesn't necessarily contribute it's a rooftop they do have the ground floor restaurant though that contributes as well as the uses under the use matrix which is what tells us what is allowed or not it doesn't exempt cafes or restaurants it's permitted use even though the language is setting forth what the DC2 district is about it did not restrict those uses from occupying a building in DC2 right are there any other Sky Bars in that area in that area not open to the public that I'm aware of they would be private rooftop amenity decks in terms of the condo hotel portion of this you have multifamily and you have hotels and I do agree hotels are managed differently right and condo associations are managed by condo you know condos are managed by condo associations and their property management what I'm having a hard time with is you're going to allow some of the users that typically happen at hotels it's going to be a different level of service and we don't have to meet the criteria of dealing with this specifically I mean one plus one equals two but you can mix two things together and come out with something that is very different than when you intended to be and so I'm trying to understand how this is properly regulated like I said both uses are permitted within the DC we do have use regulations for both uses that have to be complied with that's how our code looks at our code has never looked at per se the management company running that just like I'm referring back to the mint house many of the mint houses were not staffed in other parts of the country our regulations required it so they have to have at least one person on staff all times and that's their management and like I said we just looked at the uses are permitted and what regulations are required for each use so in terms of and we have our short-term rental restrictions throughout the city and it's really important it's so important in fact that we won't make any changes to it because it's grandfathered in because the state continues to try to you know prevent us from regulating short-term rentals and we understand the effects that it has on communities so what happens if you have you're basically telling me that you can have condo hotels pretty much all over downtown anywhere where both uses are permitted in any building as a matter of fact convert the condos existing right now right well I find that completely incompatible with having a neighborhood and what the intent is of our comprehensive plan so I would like to hear from others but I I do not support this council member motineering thank you I I'll just pick off where council member Hannah was just left off because that was my some of my questions so have we have we done a hybrid before not in most recent no okay and the the question that I had which council member Hannah was kind of started off down this down this path are we setting a precedent here that could incentivize other condos or apartments to convert to this sort of use they could do it now today but but it's never been done correct does this require a license from the state it does for the hotel do they have one I would you'd have to ask the applicant if they had one can I ask the applicant then condition of the DRC condition that we would have to get it can't operate it legally okay all right I want to ask legal because in the appeal we have the conditions for approval can we add conditions yes you may amend delete add conditions okay because the appellant of this appeal had a request on restricting amplified sound and asking for restrictions on the rental issue for 30 days maximum could we make those conditions is it a 30 day maximum or a 30 day minimum 30 day minimum yeah I think they're fair to consider does this weaken in any way our current grandfather provisions with the rental code no no I mean that definition with respect to transient accommodation it gets applied all the time that's all that this body would be doing right now is applying it and you know however you know you end up going with the condition of approval here but really we're speaking about permitted uses nothing's changing there we're not changing the definition really that's the main thing is not changing that definition and not touching it at all okay all right thank you and then Corey councilmember Driscoll talked about this developer cherry picking certain parts of the code with this hybrid use can you address those concerns either use has to comply fully with the code so I mean the parking residential is more restrictive so they have to comply with the more restrictive parking requirements for that the hotel requires 24-7 on-site staff so they have to comply with that where a condo would not so they were looking at both uses separately and what requirements are required for both uses so they aren't not providing the one okay I don't see anybody from economic development or CDA here are there any hotels that have this sort of model out there the applicant will know that they did provide some information that there was one in Tampa so they may be able to expand upon that okay all right I have I have concerns about this I like the building but I hear the concerns of the neighborhood and I do see it again I'm one of the I'm one of the council members that don't live downtown I've never lived downtown but I do understand the concerns of the neighborhood and I want to hear from my colleagues thank you thank you thank you vice chair girders thank you madam chair I I don't know if this is for you Corey or maybe you Michael if one of us or councilmember Montaneri was to add those conditions of approval it would be to resolution a which is not on the floor right correct okay so I just wanted to get that out there if you decided to do that so that was first before I forgot it so I know we're talking about permitted uses and I get that both are the code and the comp plan are written as such to where both are permitted but it's also and maybe I'm trying to think too far outside the box but it's also written to where it doesn't prohibit us from keeping them separate either is that would that be true I mean the definition of mixed use talks about uses on a site it doesn't get into the building there's nothing in the code mandating you to allow a hybrid that's why we're here you're applying the to see if it's appropriate compatible consistent etc and then it was like an hour ago so Corey I know you were talking about because in each of these especially in quasi judicial right we're set to parameters on what our decision is being made sorry took me a minute to get there that's right can you just can one of you review those it was like one of the first things you talked about Corey and frankly we've had so much information since then I just want to revisit that real quickly so there's multiple conditions or criteria that we review when analyzing site plans or special exception uses they're outlined briefly in the appeal report and then in more detail in the DRC report so the conditions in general you're going to be looking at so there's multiple here like the use access loading parking landscape drainage correct we get into uses consistent with the comprehensive plan we get into the use should have the valid land use and zoning then we get into transportation under criteria three criterion four again location access traffic under five is the same then under criterion six is drainage seven is signage eight orientation and location of buildings recreational fields open space relations to the physical character of the site nine gets into compatibility which is brought up multiple times and this talks about of the use in the existing natural environment of the site historical and archaeological sites 10 is it detrimental to the surrounding area that I think that was the word you used earlier was detrimental well there is that number 10 substantial detrimental effects of the use I was too soon for you sorry evaluate the impacts of the concentration of similar or same uses and structures property values in the neighborhood then we get into 11 sufficiency of setbacks 12 is if the land area is sufficient 13 gets into landscaping 14 is sensitivity to historic resources you're good there Corey I just wanted to make sure that what I heard and wrote down was where we were at because that's the one I'm struggling with I get the permitted uses although I think they should be kept separate I am I'm trying to figure out how short-term rentals would not be detrimental to the surrounding area that's the one I'm trying to overcome and haven't been able to yet I frankly love the building I'm okay with the height I'm okay with how it looks I like the landscaping I've gotten I we approved the building as a CRA but I'm really struggling with the use not being detrimental to the surrounding area and so I know we've got some other colleagues to hear from which I'd love to but that's where I'm at at this point thank you madam chair thank you councilmember driscoll thank you I just want to remind everyone that if we grant this this appeal it doesn't mean that nothing will be developed and it doesn't mean that we don't want something to be developed it means for me it means we can have something better I would like to see something better than what's being presented to us today that's all I'm hoping that we can move forward in that way because I don't think it will take long hopefully the developer if they weren't listening before they are now and will work quickly to find something that is truly a win for everybody so that's all I have thank you madam chair thank you I just wondering and when I heard the questions of were any of the surrounding buildings asked about this particular project and then I heard they were not but but but but no no no no but excuse me sir but what my question to that was they had heard about it because if I remember what Ms. Carmichael said she reached out that's how she knows that they weren't contacted by the applicants so they were informed that this was happening so I processed that as they knew about it and I am extremely grateful for the sage for being present but I'm trying to process why no one else from the other surrounding buildings are also here I know we had maybe one or two speakers but nobody else from the surrounding buildings were here so I was just trying to figure out that dynamic as to why they weren't here and I think because Ms. Carmichael was leading the challenge which is commendable the second question that I have is I have an issue with not knowing what is going to end up there truly you look at it both ways the building is not the sage it's next to it the people that move into this building will know what the makeup of it will be they know this is going to be a hybrid model they know it's going to be condos and living and they know it's going to be in and out hotel possible use not knowing what that is going to be and I don't know how we can ensure that those moving into that building will understand because I'm all about the public safety and the looking at the residents once they get in it's just not going to come back to council because now we have issues with having non-residents living with residents and what that security looks like would be the hotel be the first three or four floors where they can't go up any higher with the hotel key I don't know what any of those security issues actually look like and it's not in this particular proposal now I did also listen to the residents say they're not opposed to the project they had the two stipulations one being the noise of the sky bar and I respect those two requests that they had so I'm kind of in the same line of council member Monteneering is approving the development with their stipulations they specifically gave us two stipulations that they would be okay with and I would definitely move in that approval for what they asked us for they said this is what we want we like the building we're not opposing the development but we do have two requests that we're looking for so I know that the resolution B is currently now on the floor but I would support council member Monteneary if he moves to approve resolution A with what the sage residents are asking for so I will leave that there council member Monteneary thank you and so let me just state this is one of the classic things that we're dealing with in our city and I know the city council we have approved and we're a fast growing city in a fast growing state and we deeply value here in the city of St. Petersburg quality of life so I'm like like many of us up here on the dais I'm pro growth but I want to maintain the quality of life that we have and this is like a classic type issue that we need to deal with so I too like this building I'm not bothered by the height on it I think it's a good development it's the use that I'm stuck on and I agree with the chair that the residents talked about some conditions that we can add and we can move forward with this so I'll be voting no on the motion on the floor and then I'll make a motion to approve the condition a on the appeal thank you vice chair girders can we do that or do we need to substitute motion for resolution a with additional conditional conditions of approval I feel that a substitute motion for resolution a to accommodate potential special conditions of approval that have been discussed by doing that you don't lose the ability to act on that because an action on resolution B could potentially preclude any further action by the body so that's my I would love to have that discussion but we're either going to need to substitute motion in a second or council member Driscoll is going to need to withdraw her motion and we could have some discussion about what that next step looks like if you're willing to do so we could always go back to resolution B if you're not satisfied where that discussion ended up right there's nothing prohibiting for going back to resolution B correct so that's where I'll leave it there thank you thank you councilmember Driscoll thank you I need to know more detail about what would be included in those conditions before I will change or consider withdrawing my motion so I need to know specifically that the residents of the area are going to be satisfied with these changes and that these questions surrounding this cloudy use and this the circumstances around having this bar there's the questions that came up over the northeast corner of the of the of the building and where the mechanical equipment is going to be I mean there's a lot that's not good about this particular development that could easily be solved if they just go back and make some revisions and go through this process again I'd rather wipe this wipe the slate clean instead of trying to you know sit here and make sausage and and change things then you've got to ask if if the developer will go along with it I mean that to me we might as well just say yes we'll grant the appeal that sends them back to the drawing board if y'all want to go meet with them and tell them your ideas and see what they might come back with then that's fine but this makes a muddy situation even worse in my opinion unless you've got everything laid out and everyone's already said that they can be satisfied with that we I don't think we can do that right here today so that's that's where I stand I don't have any intentions of withdrawing my motion council member Montaner thank you well last thing I want to do is create any sort of muddy situations on city council I'm not big on doing anything from the dais but we heard from the residents of there were two two recurring things that that I heard about and I was trying to address their concerns and move this project forward and the two things that I heard multiple times was the concern with the sky bar with the ample amplified science sound and the other other one was a restriction on the rentals of these units to a 30-day minimum rental and if Ms. Carmichael wants to come to the podium we can just ask you directly about those two conditions can we hold on Ms. Carmichael council member Montaner can we let the council members go ahead and speak first and then thank you council member were you done I'll come come back thank you council member Gabbert thank you chair I'll be brief so I do not support the motion on the floor to me the use is not muddy I get it it's certainly allowable and the building height does not bother me I think to many of your point I like this building the rooftop bar does not bother me I mean we have a lot of places within our city and you go to other cities where this sort of entertainment option is available I think that it can be mitigated with some sound measures so I agree with councilmember Montaneri the rules that are the comments that I wrote down were around traffic and I understand you know the impact report and all of that is going to be taken care of noise and the rooftop bar and the rentals was what I heard overwhelmingly so for me we can continue to say like we want conditions that are going to make everyone happy when do we have a building that makes everyone happy ever these are the two things that were brought before us as the main concerns so I'm if we vote on what's on the floor now with no changes have a no I hope that comes back and I hope we can add these two conditions because then I'll support it thank you thank you Councilmember Montaneri I just wanted to invite Miss Carmichael up to the podium and ask her about those two conditions I don't know what to say because I've been working with this since August since August and so this is going to be life changing if they don't adhere to the regulations that you're going to put forth we didn't know how to appeal this we really didn't know which is a sin and we weren't sure what to ask for and so we looked at the Julia and we thought about no amplified sound and those are really the only two things that we could come up with but we feel like there's been such a lack of transparency going to this date and that started I'm going to say like I met with zoning in August but I reached out in July and I did what I tell everyone to do and here's what I tell everyone to do you got plans reach out to the city planning department go to the city council meetings people work with you reach out to the developer they'll work with you I'm sorry to say this we like we'd probably be okay with those two stipulations but we're not sure we're really not sure because of the way we've been I'm just going to say it's stonewalled in every step of the way and I'm so disappointed by this I really am I've never had to speak to you all about a building downtown before and this is breaking my heart okay thank you let me ask Mr. Mastery to come to the podium please I want to ask you the same two questions about the conditions of no amplified sound and a 30 day minimum rental I wasn't in here I don't believe when you asked the question I apologize but I had a call in nature it's that simple I can only sit so long yes we're looking we're looking at adding two conditions of approval one is to not allow amplified sound in the sky bar and requiring a 30 day minimum rental to make that decision that's here I can't hear you there's no one here that can make with authority to make that decision okay okay all right thank you yes he phoned a friend they will agree to not have amplified music on the rooftop bar okay all right thank you I'll leave it right there thank you vice chair Gerdes and I'll try to be quick it's just clarification so we vote on this motion assuming it doesn't get substituted or withdrawn right and does that mean does that automatically mean the appeal wins because they're you've voted on the item right so by default the appeal wins without the resolution that's that's the concern yes that's that's how I would read this and a reminder that because this is an appeal resolution B needs a super majority to pass so that means six out of eight council members present and if it doesn't pass what happens the DRC's approval is with is upheld upheld excuse me correct okay just clarification thank you council member Hanowitz thank you chair we've had really good discussion I think my biggest concern here honestly is the same concern that all cities have with short-term rentals it's destroying cities at the end of the day it's destroying cities and I just can't believe that it's gotten all the way to us without a vibrant conversation about it and whether it's appropriate and I think that conversation needs to happen at the DRC and I just can't believe we're here trying to do this right now so that's why I voted for the resolution that council member Driscoll put forward because I do believe that the appropriate place to deal with this is at the DRC to deal with these issues and come up with something that we can agree to it's that important and it doesn't mean that we're against development but everyone has questions about this and we're not going to solve them right here and I and it just to me it's the prudent course to go forward and uphold the appeal and do things the appropriate way thank you council member Mohammed thank you madam chair and I know it's been clarified multiple times but I needed clarified for myself as well so a vote of yes on B a resolution B would that send it back to the DRC is that what happens no it denies the project so yes denies it grants the appeal and denies the project so a yes to B is a no to the project in the most simplistic terms okay and then a no would be a yes to the project but does that yes include the conditions that have been brought forth by the residents no okay that would have those conditions of approval would have to be brought forth in A and that's okay and that's essentially why you have two different resolutions here okay there's two different pathways to accommodate where the body ends up going yeah because my support for the project would be contingent on the approval of those conditions that I heard from the residents because it does look like this is being designed in a way for us to have a condo that basically gets around our short-term rental ordinance I heard the term very expensive multi-owner airbnb and that really resonated with me and that's exactly what it sounds like to me and so I will not be supporting the project if it does not have those conditions that the residents have brought forth thank you council member what near thank you I'll go ahead make a substitute motion to adopt resolution A with and adding two conditions for approval of no amplified sound in the sky bar and requiring a 30 day minimum rental second okay now that we have a motion and a second to adopt resolution A with those two subsequent what's the word that I'm looking for the substitute motion the substitute motion vote on the substitute motion first first with the substitute motion okay first we have a motion and a second can you please open the machine open the machine for resolution A sure if I may I just want to make sure everybody's yeah I almost like spinning right now yeah resolution B but we're talking we're talking resolution A yes so we'll just hit pause we'll have the clerk update for the substitute motion which is now resolution A subject to two conditions of approval that were set forth by councilmember Montanari and seconded by vice chair Gerdes so a yes vote on this means you're denying the appeal therefore you're upholding the DRC's approval but with those two extra conditions okay so a yes to this is a yes to the project with subject to the two conditions and because that's consistent with the DRC's decision five five affirmative votes are required for passage of this motion as opposed to the super majority required on resolution B everyone is clear now all right we have a motion and a second for E3 resolution A with amendments can you please open the machine for voting councilmembers will you please place your votes seeing that all present councilmembers have voted can you please tally and announce the votes madam chair motion to approve agenda E3 resolution A with amended conditions of approval passes 6 to 2 with councilmembers Driscoll and Hanowitz voting no councilmembers Vic Sanders Floyd Gabbard Gerdes Montanari and Muhammad voting yes thank you this was good good nice conversation thank you so much to everyone that actually came out and spoke thank you to my colleagues for your consideration and at this point we are going to take a much needed break for an hour it is now 1240 so we'll be back at 140 gonna take an hour man hold this thing really lightly oh my you ready we call the that was too light that was too light from one extreme to the other one extreme to the other that was too light welcome back hopefully everyone enjoyed their lunch but we're gonna call back to order the council meeting for February 29th and we're going to adjust the agenda some and we're gonna take up item I2 the BF&T action item and I'm going to turn it over to Vice Chair Gerdes thank you Madam Chair in our last BF&T meeting we discussed and voted on a 53 million dollar short term bond to for the public utility CIP this is really just to give us a runway to save some interest with anticipated interest rates hopefully coming down over the next 12 months and we did approve this in BF&T and I know legal is here to answer any questions but I'll move approval second seeing no request to speak can you please open the machine for voting for I2A council members please cast your vote seeing that all present council members have voted can you please tell and announce the votes Madam Chair motion to approve agenda item I2A passes unanimously with council members Driscoll and Floyd being absent thank you okay so she's good she's good okay so now we're going to get back to our regular agenda and now we're going to go into our reports and joining us S.Y.O. Quintana good afternoon Madam Chair council Raul Quintana with city engineering and capital improvements department and I have a brief powerpoint presentation to share with you and the subject is the study that we recently performed for the municipal services center which was a maintenance study to determine precisely and over the next several years what are some of the key maintenance type objects and elements that we need to be concerned with so with that just an image here of what the building is on your right that's where we are today and the building on the left same portions of the same building from the 1920s early 30s so as you can see part of that the building is quite quite old this is an image just showing you kind of from west to east the timing of the construction of the building original building built in the 27-29 era as you just saw then the major addition about the same footprint size-wise as the building in the 20s was built in the 50s and then in the 60s a two-story addition which has most of our mechanical equipment and cooling towers on top of and then to the far right the garage that was added in the 1970s so just a bit of a background the city purchased the building in 1995 and renovated it for the use that we have today the municipal services center many of the elements of this building have not gone undergone major renovations of course there have been capital improvements waterproofing and roofing and some other things on the project on the building for some time but as far as major upgrades there really haven't been any the buildings 10 floors with a basement and a mezzanine approximately 140,000 square feet and 540 staff take you know depending on the time of year and such about 14 departments and the garage is 257 parking spaces of which 48 are city department vehicles so real briefly the purpose and the scope of this study we have Harvard Jolly as one of our continuing services consultants who's had experience doing condition studies on buildings they've done a couple of them for us in the past so the question came you know what is the condition of the building and just as a way of informing us informing staff so that we can better plan for the necessary improvements in this building we really never had a comprehensive study and questions did come up when we were looking at the proposal that came in a couple years ago about a new MSC and there really wasn't any backup to that so we thought let's take the proactive step of developing this very thorough study of the conditions of the building let us inform our facility staff and Aaron staff in real estate as to how better to plan and to prioritize their needs in the building going forward with a solid document and then also to kind of lay the basis for determining the timing and the process moving forward for the new MSC so the Harvard Jolly team I believe in April of 23 we brought their task order to city council for approval they commenced in May it took about five months to perform the work again very thorough it was there was some structural visual observations that were made they were you know conducting all of a study of the maintenance logs looking at code analysis doing some exploratory work just to make sure that they understood you know some of the issues that were coming up but it was you know mechanical electrical all the systems were looked at so the and then the inspections on site some of which required even a drone to fly around the building photographing the waterproofing conditions and the windows so the structural survey was conducted the building envelope waterproofing all of the systems the major mechanical electrical plumbing ADA and code issues the elevator a significant study of the performance of the elevators and then a review of the interior maintenance issues so with that there we had asked them to provide us a look in terms of prioritizing and weighing the importance of their recommendations in a time scale of five years so they ended up we asked for at least two five year terms and they looked at it in three and it really gave us a sense of what we needed to focus on whether we're in the building for another five years or ten or however long it's going to be it's really a tool to assist the city in developing those needs so what we found the garage has some noted spalling and some crack areas that in generally the conditions of the garage are good but these are some areas that do need to be repaired and in fact we do have a process ongoing right now to do so the waterproofing issues most of those have to do with sealants and coatings on the waterproofing ultimately there needs to be a full roof replacement not an immediate need but something that needs to be looked at within this five year plan major HVAC upgrades and that we have been aware of that we are working on regarding the cooling tower the chillers and air handlers so that is a focus that we have been very much involved in even prior to the delivery of this report electrical upgrades and the elevators and certainly some of the elevators are in better conditions than others and need to be addressed so within this five year time frame those are the kind of the focus and that is kind of what I believe Aaron will be discussing in terms of what are we doing next so beyond that in the next 10 years look ahead replacing the elevators in their entirety was recommended again doing some more structural inspections continuing the waterproofing it's basically more in depth processing of some of the issues that they've identified and then finally in the outer years minor repairs and so on so all of this was not intended to be you have to do these things in the absence of this broad analysis and broad study we really didn't want to presume that we were missing anything and even though the staff and Aaron have done a really good job maintaining the building there are things that we felt that a professional look at it was going to help us and better identify where we really needed to go so where we where we are some current activities we do have underway a design for the replacement of the cooling tower and the air handlers in the building some mechanical plumbing work ultimately the chillers will be a part of that but for right now we're looking at the cooling tower and the air handlers and those are basically all 10 floors so that design is done and we're in pre-construction services and pricing out with the construction manager and we're also looking at the design of the garage spalls that design has been done and we're working with transportation and funding that and then the future focus areas that are going to be reflected in the CIP coming up in terms of priorities and years these are what we're looking at the elevator upgrades the replacement of the drives and the controls and door operators in the elevator and as we go forward with the balance of the mechanical the chillers the generator and the fire pump and then replacing flooring in the elevators the waterproofing and ultimately probably in about the fifth year replacing the roof and the fire sprinkler piping so all of this is intended to again inform us inform staff provide us just more information that we didn't have it's something we've done before we did it with the building at the port that was recently the old SRI building so we can understand the condition of that building we did it with the science center as we were looking at it we just did it completed one at the Manhattan casino as well so just some images of what we found yeah the basement has had water intrusion and this is you know kind of an awful looking image but it's not nothing to be that we're concerned about in fact the report did not bring up anything of major concerns the report provided us some good information but there's nothing in the report that indicates that there's any kind of safety issue or anything to be you know really concerned about it's just again giving us that map to move forward with just you know conditions of water stains in the building the roof currently is not leaking but it's lived it's served its service life and does need to be replaced there is moisture captured in that roof that we need to properly deal with the roof this is a spa condition at the garage and there's repair methodologies to take care of that again the garage is in otherwise fairly sound condition and just you know samples of you know there's some cracking in the stucco walls again the sealants the joints all of those in a building that you know any building is going to require that level of maintenance and work associated with it over time so with that that concludes the presentation happy to answer any questions and have Aaron Fisch here as well to address any questions or concerns chair if I could just add a little bit to Raul's presentation for context thank you so much Raul for your presentation I just want to talk a little bit to city council about our non-enterprise facility CIP and we talk about this at the CIP Cal and I'm sure we'll talk about it again this year and obviously all appropriations are made in collaboration with city council and we appreciate that collaboration from our perspective when you look at non-enterprise facilities our current focus is on fire station number two the fire and PD training facility the fleet facility and Enoch Davis those are our kind of four highest priority facilities now we're certainly open to having a discussion with city council about your priorities and what we might want to do but from the administration's point of view that's where we're at then we see MSC and stormwater pavement traffic operations as the next phase although stormwater does have an enterprise facility component to it there's also a general fund component to it their facility is also in pretty poor condition and needs to be replaced and we see MSC as you know potentially a premier project in the next round of men and our preferred location is still across the street at lot four for a new MSC so I just wanted to provide some broader context to you for the discussion okay thank you so much for that presentation councilmember Driscoll thank you I brought this forward and requested the report because back in January I asked the administration hey you know we approved this study last spring has it been completed yet and so I was very happy I did get a response the same day but found and it was shared with everyone and I found that it had been received at the end of October and so I really wish we had been given this information when you got it so that we could look at it I'm glad we're talking about it now reading this study there are some real concerns with this building and those were actually brought up a few years ago when City Council was presented with a proposal to sell the MSC building and use the proceeds from that and other resources to build a new facility in the space across the street from City Hall at that time there were a lot of concerns that were brought up regarding the maintenance and it seemed it was presented to us as being pretty negative at the time so I was glad to get this particular study so that we could see what's wrong now that we don't have any plans like we did before in the in the study it actually shows the five years ten years fifteen years of what their recommendations are and the the scope of the study was strictly building maintenance and didn't have space needs analysis anything like that so this is just the maintenance and I appreciate the work that Harvard Jolly did to put this together now in the they have the dollar amounts attached to this but they're not they're not in the presentation and one thing I was hoping for was all right we've we have these dollar amounts from Harvard Jolly that include every everything that's needed and those are pretty jaw-dropping I mean the immediate needs for the for one year were 387,000 and I think that's in addition to the 4 million that you just mentioned that we've already allocated to put into this right that is some of that has already been done and in fact we are prepared to discuss the dollars the estimates and I think Aaron is prepared to do that in terms of how he sees using this information that Harvard Jolly gave us and their estimates to plan out the CIP so while it wasn't in the presentation itself we are prepared to answer okay excellent because it's showing that the for the next five years it's 24,688,000 that they're recommending be put into that which brings the five-year plan according to them to 25,075,000 that's a lot and just to remind everyone in 2021 if May of 2021 the building the property was appraised for 15 million so in five years 25 million the total across the 10-year plan comes to 50,162,000 and the grand total expenditure over 15 years based on these recommendations for building maintenance comes to 54,540,000 that sounds like a building whose time has come so I look forward to hearing those numbers so that we can get a realistic idea of what our plans are and that will help us weigh what time frame do we need to be looking at when we go to prioritize these types of projects so I certainly appreciate that the parking garage the parking garage had many points in here that included things like spalling cracks that makes me nervous but what you're saying is that these are things that are not creating a safety hazard right okay and then the elevators it sounds like there has been an issue with our elevator maintenance company that's something that their elevator inspector brought up but I think Aaron can probably address that okay because I'm seeing over and over and over again the common items start with to comply with code and that worried me as well so and then the overall with the evaluation of the overall maintenance condition on the elevators was average low average or below average and we all know that we have staff getting stuck in elevators on a pretty regular basis so the elevators the parking garage and the HVAC are the three things that really jumped out at me so I do want to learn more about that and I look forward to hearing from my colleagues and more from you okay well we're prepared to address your first questions Aaron if you want to good afternoon council chair members of council yes the after reviewing the report and both understanding what this report says in conjunction with what our building maintenance crew deals with on a day-to-day basis and paring it down and looking at what are the real the real objectives that we have to have on the important building systems based on age condition also based on availability of parts or lack thereof for these aging systems so the priorities that we've identified in the building are number one the HVAC system which we've already started on the replacement of that which would be done in phases priority two is the elevators so part of our budgeting is to replace the critical components of those elevators to get them into a condition of reliability and then we've also kind of taking it another step down from that and the priority list would be the fire system of the building the generator that's on the building and then we would also be addressing later through the probably year five from now as Mr. Quintana mentioned the roof system on the building and then we'd also be addressing some issues with the fixtures actual more cosmetic things that are falling apart on the building that do need to be replaced or timing out so as far as the cost aspect of this is really sort of the moving target because we haven't bid this out yet any of these jobs it's important to note that in this study they break down the costs but a key component of that that is not there is the soft costs of these jobs which is the engineering and the permitting of these jobs so taking those numbers it's difficult to say what's the bottom line number to do all of these things that we're prioritizing for this building say over the next five or ten years and come up with an actual number today because we haven't bid this out but we are estimating costs and doing the best we can and certainly in this current environment the cost of labor has gone up the cost of equipment has gone up which is why it's very difficult to pinpoint actual numbers today but we're doing our best to estimate what we need to spend moving forward and what we're looking at just generally to address the issues that we've identified as being priorities is roughly in the neighborhood of $13 million in that neighborhood and that would give us for the most part would take care of the most important deficiencies on the building and give us a facility that would serve the needs for the city until such time as we either have a alternative location or until we would have to maybe address some more bigger items to stay there more longer term and again those numbers are just they're very preliminary because once we go out to bid for these jobs that's when we're really going to know what this costs and we don't you know again this is a very difficult environment to really figure out what those costs are going to be because we've been getting quite frankly some sticker shock on our jobs and so it's really it's hard to judge that but we're doing the best we can we've at least identified the priorities that was really job one and the biggest priority being the HVAC system and we've started that project and we're going to phase that project over the next few years so with inflation with rising costs it would be safe to say that the numbers are actually higher than what we've been given they could be I think that the numbers that are given in the study are a starting point and some of those numbers they may be a little high for some of those jobs they may be low it's hard to say until we actually go out and get hard bids roughly 13 million that you just quoted is that for 10 years that would be replacing the critical building systems that we've identified within the next five years but those building systems would get us substantially along the way to say a 10-year period meaning that the goal is to at least be in the building for approximately 10 years okay I'll leave it there for now thank you thank you councilmember Hanowitz thank you chair thank you for your presentation first of all I want to start by saying you know some of us were not here for the MSC discussion originally when the discussion was had to move it across the street and then it was pulled but what I find interesting is there was a discussion to have a new building which suggests to me that you need a new building and then we go and have a study which when I'm looking at the numbers suggests that's the route and I know why we did the study is because we're not getting a new building and we're trying to put bandages on something to keep it did not bring up safety issues but there were structural observations right that's mainly the report and the limitations of the report is it shall be noted that the issues listed above were obtained solely from our non-intrusive visual observation during our walkthrough of the site our initial assessment is not intended to be a comprehensive review of all steer components nor complete list of all structural damage so this is not even complete really in terms I mean they're limiting it to what they visually could see so the scope of the work was not a structural analysis of the building it was an analysis of the systems and particularly any of the elements of their skill set whether it was waterproofing or structural that they could identify to us that hey you need to address these things but it was not a holistic structural analysis of the building and that would have been destructive in a lot of ways you'd have to get into areas that are not visibly accessible but that was the direction of the scope okay so when I have here and I look at a report and I see water going into the basement I see water basically in every floor we are close to salt water it concerns me has there been mold testing no there has not how many employees do we have in there we have I guess I think I mentioned 540 roughly 540 it's an old building which has had a lot of issues with water intrusion and there hasn't been any mold testing so the basement has had water intrusion that's clearly identified in the report areas that there have been water penetration I believe those have been addressed by maintenance and the complete resealing of perimeter windows was done 7 8 years ago Aaron correct if I may and thank you council member every 10 years the buildings municipal office buildings get waterproofed we are on we have hit 10 years we're due for our next waterproofing which is part of our fiscal year 24 part of the plan the building water intrusion issues we address them as they come up if in the basement in particular because it's a basement we've had a little bit more issues I think when this report was done it happened to be at a time when we did have a water leak where we were trying to pinpoint the location of that leak which we did and that was really during right at the time of the walk through inspections of the basement that's been rectified and fixed but anytime that we do have water leaks in the building it's not something that we let go we address it immediately but in this waterproofing project this will address most of those water intrusion issues that's part of the scope of our waterproofing project it's to seal the building like I said it's done every 10 years but once we get into that 8 9 10 year period it's time to do it again because some looking at this report it says 11th floor failed roof membrane not a structural issue but failure will likely contribute to water intrusion that could go so that's the roof and then you go down 10th floor signs of water intrusion 8th floor signs of water intrusion 7th floor signs of water intrusion 6th floor goes on and on so it's all over and so I'm having we have oversight to do on this because it does scare me so the mold issue for instance why haven't we tested for mold we haven't seen signs of mold when we do have we walk our crew walks the building every day and they look for any signs of water intrusion especially after anything that comes up is addressed immediately because we don't want the mold issue so if we did have signs of mold we certainly would investigate and take care of that further but this is something that we stay on top of is that the standard that you have to have signs of mold to test for mold not necessarily but we try to catch everything before it gives a chance for mold to grow okay are there other tests that are performed to determine structural integrity besides these the observations and have we done any of those there are the tests there is one item one situation in the basement there is some damage to a column and we're about ready to undergo some minor destructive testing to get to the steel to inspect the steel that's being handled pretty much as we speak but to go beyond the level of this scope yeah it would be probably more intrusive the exterior panels are asbestos panels original panels on the building were I believe granite and those were failing and the panels were replaced so we're not talking about pulling out panels on the exterior of the building to look at the framing any of that we would have to discuss the details of that with a structural engineer to determine if we were to take this to another level and tell us if there's anything to be concerned about structurally what would play in with asbestos the asbestos is not the waterproofing is completely separate issue the material that was used back in whatever year it was that those panels were replaced have asbestos so that's an awareness that we have that we know we can't be pulling those apart that's all it is asbestos in old buildings so you know I think the reality here is we understood that we needed way we said let's just throw the kitchen sink at this thing tell us what we need to be aware of so that we can properly start planning we've known that something needs to be done the building is old guaranteed I've worked in that building for 17 years I'm in it every day and there are things that I see and when I do I bring it up to Aaron and his team I think the building we know that there's been a lot of growth and there's areas that even our own department has outgrown so planning for getting us to the point where we can begin planning and designing a new building is the goal but to get there we got to know what we got to deal with and that's what this report was intended to help us do and I appreciate that my questions are not honestly but I'm trying to do my due diligence in terms of what I have before me to make sure that we have asked the right questions on this issue because I do think it's extremely important especially when you get a report that outlines what it outlines there was a mention of 50 million in terms of cost but when I added the total cost in the back it was 62 million it is the number I came up with that in their detailed report in the back maybe the 15 years is limited and there is more yeah I have to see what that there was there was 50 for the first two years and then the third year may have brought it up and then there was also kind of a couple hundred thousand in the first immediate tranche what was the cost of replacing the building so your question is what is the cost of building a new MSC when we looked at it back in 21 it was combined with a much larger project an apartment I'd have to pull it apart but it's not just a building it's a garage it's a parking garage it's furnishing it's a lot of things that go into it I believe it was about 50 million back then if square footage was on that we were looking at 135 thousand square feet I was unsatisfied with I don't think that's big enough it's that was one of the reasons why I recommended against the deal to the mayor among other reasons you know rail is the expert not me but I think we're probably in the area 75 million for a new building somewhere in the area $6 million a year we're hoping to spend 13 I think that's what Aaron said 13 not including soft I mean depending on what we're already underway with some of the major components the cooling tower and air handlers that GMP we're looking at right around two and a half million two to three million dollars that soft cost is already included some of the as they prepare their their CIP requests we help them and inform them with soft costs I believe the soft cost is probably included okay well I don't like the fact that we're here I I'm and obviously this has been happening not it didn't happen the last two years going on for a long time it's been 30 years since they last renovated this we're now looking at possibly another 10 years before we're looking but I do want assurances that there are no safety issues and I think just to make clarify the report did not indicate anything I understand that there were things that they brought up and there's some things that we need we're looking at if there's things that we feel that we need to look into further we will so safety absolutely is a priority I believe the garage has been thoroughly inspected and that process is being dealt with as well but absolutely that would be priority number one and including if there's any mold absolutely okay thank you thank you councilmember motineering thank you and thank you for the report row so I want to get back to the 13 million dollar figure because the report says for the next 10 years they've identified 50 million and being told that well we really only need 13 million and let's get back to the 50 million dollar number the 50 million dollar number didn't include soft costs so so that it's kind of a low number correct so Aaron help me out here if I get anything wrong I mean I think there's a couple things here just to kind of understand you know I asked Raul to do the study because I was concerned about information I had received not from Aaron but previously about the facility and the condition of the facility and what the cost would be so I asked for the study Raul said that we were going to throw the kitchen sink and see everything that's in there that doesn't mean that all those things have to be done to stay in the building for 10 years Aaron I think has identified the key components for us to stay in the building for 10 years which is the HVAC the elevators the roof and the waterproofing and he's estimating that in the area of 13 million dollars is that accurate sir that's correct okay all right and that's where I was going with with this because there's you're talking about a number that's a quarter of what's they've identified in the report and that's what I need clarification on the report recommends the complete replacement of the elevators and they recommend that like in the second five-year tranche there would be no reason to replace those elevators if we can get through you know the next five six seven years maintaining those elevators continue to replace those elevators when we're getting ready to leave the building makes no sense at all but yet it's in the report and the replacement of elevators was like almost 20 million dollars all right thank you for that clarification that makes make sense and this is what we're here for you know when the number of building a new building is in the 75 million dollar range and you've got a report before you saying that we've got 55 plus million dollars worth of costs I mean you don't have to be some sort of mathematician to figure out this is a easy decision to make so I just wanted to understand that can you can we talk a little bit about budgeting so how much do we have for O&M for the for the building especially the maintenance maintenance part how much are we budgeting for maintenance for the MSC versus short term CIP sure for the currently what we have available and this is using money from past projects that rolled over that was unspent going through fiscal year 24 we have approximately six and a half million dollars available currently and then moving forward into the future budget years we do have some money that's been proposed but currently we have six and a half million available and I think if I could just jump in there it's maybe a little bit off track but I just want to take this opportunity to thank city council really for this for their leadership and one of the ways we've been able to get some of this funding into the municipal service center is over the past two years city council has authorized transfers from general fund into general fund CIP of 17 million dollars that's amazing what you have done through the savings annually of city staff through land transactions and other means you have transferred 17 million dollars into capital improvements over the past two years so thank you for that so Aaron this six and a half million you say we have that set aside that's what's in the balance currently correct okay all right I wanted to talk about this the spalling and the exposed rebar can you talk a little bit about how do we how do we look look into that because usually when rebar gets exposed you know you get like longer term issues so I will I will attempt to answer your question but I got the excuse is here as well so any small crack in concrete due to just the salt in the air here could penetrate the concrete and once rebar is exposed to any kind of chloride saline it corrodes and expands and that causes the spalling of the concrete there's ways to repair it usually it's to remove the area of the spall prepare it and this chemical improvements and as a matter of fact Marshall will probably address that as well that would kind of reconstruct the strength and the support system of that rebar and then patch it so I know there's a better way to explain it if you want to jump in okay great question so really spall repairs are typical methods of maintenance we do it on bridges we do it on multiple types of structures a matter of fact as an example on our bayfront baywalk parking garage we've actually done much more we've had to do much more structural repairs horn supports patches on the decks itself and also some of the spall repairs on the concrete so once that chloride starts to get into the rebar it causes that corrosion the expansion of the steel forces the cracks on the concrete to expand even more once that continues the concrete then pops off that's that spalling that occurs so what we try to do is once we identify that early we get in there and in some instances it's actually just clean sealing that crack some instances we actually have to chip away at the crack get to the steel we clean the steel if it's still good clean the steel and then we put it back and there are multiple types of concrete treatment products that adhere to the existing concrete and seal it much more denser so that is a typical treatment process that we utilize all the time there's also more advanced processes that we go if the deterioration is a higher level where you actually carbon wrap or fabric wrap the structure once we've actually patched it to give that additional tensile strength so hopefully that answers but it's a typical process okay all right thank you I learned a little bit about those sorts of repairs with the pier and all the pilings with the pier so I too am concerned about the water intrusion and have we identified where the water is coming from because we talked about the roof have some issues but I know like right after we did the renovation of City Hall we had water leaks and they were coming from the side of the building have we identified where the water is coming from and we absolutely did the north side of the building has some hairline cracks in the stucco that are being repaired and that could be the source of most of the water intrusion getting into the basement which is primarily on the north side I don't know if the elevation of the basement as to the street might be an issue but there's certainly water intrusion in those areas as far as water intrusion generally through the building it's really the sealants it's those joints and those sealants don't last forever so we need to be starting to look proactively at the sealants on the roof the coping of the roof which is over the parapet those sealants were identified as needing to be replaced so that's where water gets into between the finish the exterior waterproofing and the cavity of the building and to the interior so there's from what we've been talking and we did do we did do some sampling and some tear outs of the roof and repatched it to see if there was moisture between the waterproofing and the concrete deck of the roof and there is which tells us that that roof does need to be replaced but according to the report there was no indication that that moisture was getting into the building from the roof the concrete is so far dense enough to prevent that but that's not what we want so again within the plan that Aaron's developed there's going to be a full roof replacement the lower roof I believe is also in the same condition and the roofs have been coated over time and to get a roof on a building like that the last 30 years is not something you normally see so there's been a lot of maintenance and coatings to extend roof lights and other things that I'm sure have been done over time okay all right thank you and then my last question is what other sort of inspections should we be doing on this building if we're going to stay in the building another 10 years what would you all recommend and what do you all have planned so some of the inspections of the building systems are mandatory for an example the elevators the elevators require recertification every year that's part of that recertification is a state inspection that's part of the recertification process our elevators are recertified every August in that building so and to the point of the the study showing some issues with the elevators that that part of the study to me was kind of curious because it was state inspected and they were recertified and that was at the same time that a lot of these walkthroughs were being done for the building but that's one example of something that is mandatory for us to do okay are there any required or any other inspections that need to be done for the water intrusion mold was brought up that sort of stuff nothing that's required fire systems are do require inspection required inspection I'm just thinking good operating practices and taking care of our people that's that's where my mind's going with this I just want to make sure that we have a safe environment for the people that we have working in the MSC yes thank you madam chair thank you councilmember floyd thank you first I was wondering if let's just say we did this general question for administration let's say we spent the 50 or 60 million dollars of required repairs total on the building would we be comfortable staying in that building for an extended period of time or do we have other needs other than just the repairs when it comes to the function of the building that's a really great question and I think that's probably a conversation we'd want to have internally and with city council I mean it's possible if we completely rehabbed the facility that maybe we could stay there you know there's there's been an idea location wise based on back and forth with city staff into city hall and the courthouse across the street and that lot four is a great location for that so there are some benefits to that location and you know if the rehab total rehab was similar to the new building then I think we'd go with the new building but it's an interesting discussion yeah yeah and that's what I was thinking is you know it sounds like it might be similar but you know when we get down to what might need to occur or what the cost of a new building might be I think some of that stuff would be quite clear just seems to me like if there was a world in which it was significantly cheaper to rehab the building be a discussion worth having okay the other question I have is the repairs put into the building to continue lasting for a while it pertains to them my imagine I imagine that the value of the building as appraised and as we would get for it if we were to sell it is mostly based off of just what the value of the land is and what could be developed there and so I just was wondering you know could be a question for real estate like is that accurate because it feels to me like if that's accurate then any sort of upgrades we do with the building short of a complete and total rehab are not really going to add value to our property there is kind of what I'm thinking thank you councilmember for the question it really comes down to what the property would be used for in the future a complete replacement of the HVAC system would add some value to the building currently but if the building is sold and it's redeveloped it's really land value is what you're looking for if somebody wanted to try to reuse the building then that could add to the improvements on the property some of these improvements that we would be doing yeah but I'm guessing you can speculate or not it's up to you that when we go to if we were to go to sell the property I think most people would probably see that the value of redevelopment is pretty high in comparison to keeping the building and so I do do you think that that's accurate the value is in the land yeah location yeah yeah yeah that's what that's what I assumed okay so yeah I mean it seems like you know doing the piecemeal stuff that we may need to do soon is spending more money when later on we're going to have to spend a significant amount to build a new building but I'm open to the conversation about you know what a complete rehab might cost us versus a new building and if that actually solves our needs or not because I think my end goal is I want to see a safe comfortable and long term place for our city's services to operate and our employees to work and I want us to do that you know as fiscally prudent as possible so that's it thanks for clarifying those couple of things for me thank you council member gabbert thank you chair and I just have one one issue that I want to kind of get into a little bit more it's been brought up but the actual water intrusion into the ground level and then talking about you know what other things do we need to do what other inspections so it seems pretty clear that they feel like this is from runoff but obviously further evaluation needs to come so can you talk a little bit more in depth I heard you say as we speak there's some stuff happening there but can you talk more in depth about exactly what's happening what next steps we think we're going to take and then I'd like to hear from I mean in a downtown area with an older building I mean what maybe from the rains like it's coming in through those cracks it seems to me like it's more runoff issue according to this report likely runoff is primarily but the fact that they identified some cracks on the side leads to the indication that that's probably a source maybe the primary source but obviously we need to look at the runoff how is it getting in the basement level being I don't know start looking at and then there's also ongoing and as we speak the condition of that damaged column that's the one that we are definitely looking at and investing some time and effort to make sure that we know what that issue is all about and that column is the one that it refers to as currently portions of the basement restrooms are so what exactly that was a separate issue the column issue is a separate issue than the bathrooms of course the bathrooms in the basement the basement is primarily storage for us so any time that we pinpoint a leak someplace if we can rectify that whether that's demolition of something or otherwise we address it and one of the and I think it's important to know that one of the leaks in the basement that was notated in the report was actually not due to runoff it was an intermittent leak that we found that was due to a broken sprinkler pipe and water finds a way and we pinpointed it we fixed it that's over with but that was really probably the more major leak issue that they found in the basement was due to that oh okay okay all right and then Rajesh did you have anything you wanted to add about remediation of something like that if it does turn out to be runoff specific so I'm going to use this as an example thank you so Raul give the example of some of the coping so if you think of this as a wall what happens is there a little flashing and goes around the top and then there's also flashing comes down and if corking starts to crack even in our bathroom it starts to crack so it's just routine maintenance which is part of the flashing that we're going to start looking at the other thing and Claude just reminded me and I it's very simple I don't think it's that complicated the major leak that was identified was a sprinkler issue and waterworks by capillary as we continue to fix all these flashing or really waterproof sealing if you have a crack in the stocco that's going to trickle down somewhere else it's going to show up somewhere else because it showed up in the basement it does not necessarily mean it's but I think one important element we can look at what the seasonal high is because that basement water ceiling will be important well I certainly agree with my colleagues I mean I don't want to put you know good money over bad just because you know we've got to keep this building maintained but if we're talking about 10 years I think to me the water issues that encompasses not only what's happening on the ground level that encompasses the roof the cracks those things to me top priority because councilmember Hanowitz said the safety of our employees I would just encourage administration as we move forward to potentially go ahead and do mold testing it can't hurt right and then we know what we're dealing with and if there is any sort of issues in that way that we need to deal with or we can give the employees the assurance that everything is okay and I can also give an example of some simple fixes so right now we have ventilation shafts on elevators and based on the intensity of rain events and the direction and the force of wind that could result of moisture in the elevator shafts so simple things we could take a look at as well that would certainly be a priority for me personally I too would like to see mold testing done we talked a lot about the safety of our employees and their health is incredibly important to you I'm glad we're having this conversation now because I want our city employees who work in the MSC building to know that we're on it that you all are doing the maintenance that can be done and that we're looking for a future plan for this so I would really like to continue this discussion and committee I think that's kind of where we go next because I would like to see us chart a path for the new MSC we don't have the money today but we aren't ready today we can start getting ready by continuing this conversation and talking about what our options are we could just keep spending the money we could sell the property and have at least back until the new building is built but there are things that we can do leading up that we can fund while we wait for the right time to get the money that's needed for construction the planning and design all of these initial steps I think now is the time to start with that we know that it's not going to be approved and built tomorrow but we have to begin and looking at committees my first thought is PS and I and later in the meeting we have new business item H6 from councilmember Hanowitz which includes some presentation on capital improvement needs and number 10 on her list is city facilities so we could have that as part of that discussion however that's going to be a pretty big discussion about many properties and I'd like to zero in on this one a little bit more and I think ultimately we are talking about building something new and selling this property because of its location this creates an incredible opportunity for economic development and the next great project with whoever we partner with on that and so I am thinking that and there's also a bit of a shorter referral list I think on the economic and workforce development committee the chair of that committee councilmember Montaneri might be able to shed some light on that but I'd like to know if my colleagues are interested in referring this to that committee so that we can keep talking about this and get a game plan together thank you thank you councilmember Hanowitz thank you chair and as to that last question I'm chair of PSNI I don't have problems having a PSNI but of course we have a lot more on our list than economic workforce so if the chair of that committee is fine with having that discussion there I have no problem with that I was going to discuss what our next steps are and what are barriers to this because I mean bottom line we're spending a lot of money on bandages but I think we all know where we have to end up especially with a growing city with the growing needs of departments and making sure that we have enough space with our employees and reconfiguring the building the cost of that alone besides all these repairs and everything it just doesn't make sense which is probably the reason why a while ago people were thinking of building a building as opposed to having this conversation but having said that what you know the police department was built you know and obviously bond money was used I mean are we looking at the only way of being able to do this is waiting that far ahead in terms of the next round certainly happy to have the discussion and that's why I started out by focusing on some of our priorities I mean the next round of penny would be an excellent way to fund this project if we wanted to do something different we need to start talking about prioritizing different things you know and if council has ideas on that certainly happy to hear those ideas okay thank you because I think we're all on the same page I think we want to make sure that we have a municipal services center that is healthy and safe for employees and also is I mean we hold standards we are the ones that set up standards for the rest of the community and this should be the same way we shouldn't have any code violations or you know or water leaking so I want to make sure that we set the standard yeah that's a great great point I wasn't going to say anything because I think it goes unsaid but I personally have never met a man who cares more about city employees than Mayor Welch and I think he's shown that I don't ever remember us having a climate survey he cared about the responses how be safe and in the best circumstances and the focus of our non-enterprise CIP is all city facilities so you know it's a balancing act I appreciate that I appreciate that the maintenance study was ordered so we can take a deep dive into thank you very much thank you and I believe that this is one of those discussions that we need to continue and EWD does have room on our agenda to take this up relatively quickly and I think this is one of those issues that we had a proposal back in May of 2021 it was kind of an outside the box type of thinking on how we can solve the problem with the MSC I agree with my colleagues it kind of feels in some ways that we need to take care of the building but we don't want to throw good money after bad and what are we going to do with this so I absolutely agree that we need to keep talking about this EWD would be a good place to do it because we could do the structural part but we can also think in terms of how else can we solve this problem so I would be amenable to motion Councilmember Driscoll wanted to make one thank you Councilmember Floyd thank you I am going to speak on slightly different line of thinking there just to go back and comment on some of the things that I was saying about like a rehabilitation cost versus a new building is just to make this point known it's an old building it may have historical significance there's financial incentive to protect buildings like that development rights that can be transferred that might be a source of finances for us it could be a place where we could raise money so you know just explicitly say like designated historic get TRDs I believe they're called sell them and then we have money to rehab the building or switch to a new building and we'd have to balance that against the cost of selling the building but if we were to rehab it and we were to come out ahead there I just think that that should be a part of the discussion as well we definitely can do some imaginative things to make sure that we're getting the most value that we can and saving the most money we can so I'd hope that that's discussion we have a motion and second to have this moved to the EWD meeting can you please adjust thank you so much can you please open the machine for voting council members please cast your votes all council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes madam chair motion to gosh is it been a long one consent agenda number four that was pulled to reports by council member and joining us to present that is Mr. Buzesh Kramen our engineering director but I'm going to turn it over to thank you madam we had a speaker during open forum school board member Hein talk about this this project this has been something that I've been working on for a good seven years or so and I've been working not just with our engineering department but also our transportation and parking department also to try to find a way to build some sidewalks to get kids to North Shore Elementary safer so this is a good news item and I just wanted to bring this before city council and the public for a little discussion on it I'll turn it over to Mr. premium good afternoon the council produce premium insurance capital improvements and I'll just warn you all I may run out just a little bit just sneeze that time of year for me so yeah I'm I'm fighting it I will wait for the presentation to come up and thank you for that great introduction to this council member so this is a project that started a long time ago as you can see from the front on the cover page it is a city project but it's also a federally funded project so what is the project objective it's really to improve access to north shore elementary increase pedestrian and bicycle safety expand the trail network and also include safety state and federal funding some additional concrete sidewalk curb ramps improvements and reconstruction of some existing good ramps so we're really looking at that entire network within the community how it connects feeding towards that school and also building the main collection routes and I'm seeing collection routes for students and families to walk along as they traverse back and forth to the school what's also really interesting is this while it is a connection to the school during one of the public meetings while one of the residents was complaining against the sidewalk what was really interesting in a sidebar conversation after with her when she realized that the sidewalk was actually connecting to the park she flipped the path if you may say because she was challenged in the fact that she said why are we building the sidewalk to the school she can't even walk to the park with her husband but when we sat down afterwards and realizing that path existed now in the future with the project it was a different path if I may say so in all this is a safe routes to school program it is federally funded local agency program and it is funded through FDOT now this application process goes back some considerable time as mentioned by the speaker this morning and from that time to now obviously there's been changes in the community but the school has actually grown in size and the amount of children commuting to the school and walking to the school has increased now a lot of the easy sidewalks and I always say this a lot of the easy sidewalks in the city are built this is what we're starting to get into now the complicated sections where we're starting to get into people who have landscaping in the right of way or we have utility pools that were originally put in the middle of the right of way because they could not go to the edge of the right of way because of existing landscaping so there are going to be some impacts to residents which we already have had those meetings with them and we continue to have ongoing meetings with them the typical impacts that the residents will expect is the contractor will remove all of the existing trees, foliage, landscaping within right of way that is in conflict with the existing construction we've already sent out letters to all of the affected residents and met with them individually if their landscaping would be impacted and also given them that opportunity to relocate the landscaping before or if they don't want it we can take it out as part of our construction so again we continue to meet with those residents and address their concerns as they come up reconstruction of brick and paver driveways along the section the city inspector and contractor representative will coordinate with residents during construction and standard processes while we continue these notifications now we've had a public meeting seven days to any work within the front of any affected resident they will be notified by door hangers so the project timeline and I'm only going to start from December where we started this where we updated the last public meeting because as Councilman Montaneri mentioned this goes back well over six years the length of time the time this project was developed grown applied for and actually funded through the federal program in December we did have a public meeting right now I work with the final plans and seeking FDOT approval on those final plans we'll be moving for issuing for bid probably in the month in the spring late spring time frame where we'll also do another public meeting that public meeting will update the residents as to who's the selected contractor what type of what time frame are we looking to start construction and then we'll look for a construction duration of approximately six to nine months while not all of the residents will see impacts in front of their property it may be for a shorter period of time because they only have a ramp to construct on the side of the property or along their block and some residents may have that entire sidewalk section to be constructed so with that I ask for your approval approval second thank you vice chair girders thank you madam chair thank you for the presentation council member montaneri thanks for pulling it this is exciting I love these types of projects I really do think they move the needle I just have one question so it's state and federal funding are helping right and we're appropriating $43,000 in change but the total project is 1.3 million in change is that right I guess my question is what's the split so the project is funded federally federal highway is a federal program through FDOT what they call the local agency program that's where the feds funnel that money through the state and then the state working with forward panels the local NPO identify and prioritize projects for different agencies and then put it into their work program then it finally comes to the city so by the time it gets to us yeah it's like six years in now you're asking on a split so FDOT the federal fund will cover eligible expenses that a certain percentage of the project cost so even though we may apply for let's say a project cost maybe two million dollars there are elements that are specific to the project that are key to the intent usually those items are covered but then there are additional enhancements those are what we consider non-participating I'll give you a simple example if we were doing sidewalk along downtown and there were textured sidewalks which we did for the third and fourth street project DOT will pay for the base concrete anything above that will be all cost okay so we essentially pay the 1.3 million and then we're reimbursed some percentage to be figured out in the future based on cover we will we will have the agreement the agreement has the amount that we expect to be reimbursed now once the bids are received that still gives us some opportunity you know there's some cost inflation right now obviously some rumors about that in the industry but we will be able to at least have that conversation what the real numbers are DOT may have that additional money or not remember they're funding multiple projects if they don't it's always up to the local agency to cover any additional expenses that's all I have thanks thank you Madam Chair thank you Councilmember Montanieri Madam Chair if we have public comment you want to go ahead and let them go first yes please okay thank you Madam Chair I only have a card and he's not present and that's Paul Kurtz and he's for the item thank you thank you Councilmember Montanieri very good thank you just two quick questions has the Vinoy been coordinated with because on the south side of 34th Avenue they've got some landscaping there yes we have communicated with them we did meet with them already and I believe they did have some concerns but we're working through that right now with them okay all right and then on slide five you've got temporary sidewalk and road roadway lane closures I know on part of 34th Avenue there's there might be just one way in and out of the neighborhood so typically when we get into neighborhoods that we have very narrow roads or 24 foot wide roads you know one option is we can get a temporary construction easement from the residents to do the work and be on their property while we're working in the right-of-way but we always try to take our first option of working within an hour right-of-way unless we have the absolute need to then we'll go to the residents we don't want to impact them more than they already are so what that means is we need space for the workers to safely work within that area to build they may have a backhoe we may have to pull up a concrete truck at time to pour those sections of concrete so at those points and typically we try to phase construction block by block so we can do shorter sections if we need to we can divert it down to one lane with flaggers or the beauty of this location you have shorter blocks we could set up a detour around the block so for each specific phase we'll do a temporary traffic control plan okay all right very good thank you very much thank you for the presentation thank you councilmember Hanowitz thank you chair and thank you councilmember montaneri for bringing this forward north shore elementary is in my district and we share the benefit of the new sidewalks in both of our districts and I am wondering when you come up with the 43,500 for the 15 year maintenance how do you figure that out so that's obviously working with our operations team based on the length of sidewalk the amount of assets that are created and the typical cost of maintenance of that type of asset and so when you get that the 43,500 is that for the service life of the asset for the 15 years to maintain that do you keep that in an account separately to just maintain it or does it go into a general fund I think that's a question above my understanding I will build it I will defer that to Tom yeah I'm just curious how that works and this is going to require a little bit of explanation but we well in this council item it appropriates the $43,000 we and the budget department keep track of the amount of lap agreements that we have across the organization and annually we kind of tally up what the expenses associated with the maintenance during that time period so we got a good track or a good tracking of the requirements on an annual basis so we do track this on an annual basis and I think at cleanup we have a designation within the general fund for these lap agreements on an annual basis okay so if it's not used then it just goes back into that fund Liz do we appropriate do we appropriate it every year from that lap agreement column so yes and no so part of it would be as part of the departments that's responsible for maintaining in their operating budget requests they request what they need for the year and that's covered by those assignments and we hold that amount we track through the life of that assignment so it's in the general fund it's held an assignment until the assignment is up so it's there it's ready and as departments need it they request it and we baseline it usually through their operating budget requests got it and then once that life the 15 years is up then it just goes into the general fund yes if there's any left over yes okay thank you very good seeing that there are no requests to speak and we have a motion and a second on F2 Mr. Clerk can you please open the machine for voting councilmembers please cast your votes and seeing that all councilmembers have voted can you please tally and announce the votes madam chair motion to approve agenda item F2 passes unanimously thank you so much and once again we also have Mr. Prejesh for item F3 but actually I see Mr. Tinkersley thank you madam chair claude Tinkersley public works administrator if y'all will indulge me for a minute the project I bring you today is a result of collaboration between our engineering teams and our stormwater teams however I do want to highlight that there were two driving forces behind the intent of the project as well as the timing of the project so the driving force behind the intent of the project was a gentleman named Dan Saunders he was a senior professional engineer with the city was with the city for 49 years before he unexpectedly died almost exactly a year ago during Dan's tenure with the city he led the efforts on many of the stormwater drainage initiatives that we rely upon today including our 40 year history with backflow preventers in our stormwater system during the 2005 through the 2014 period Dan led the program to install the latest generation of backflow vaults this was the third generation of backflow vaults that we have in use today Dan's experience with the city stormwater backflow preventers led him to begin to planning for the replacement of those existing units that have reached their expected lifespan in 2022 Dan started working with his engineering and stormwater colleagues to begin this project as I mentioned Dan spearheaded the intent of the project as for the timing of this project we had intended to bring it to council on April 4th 2024 which is just a little over a month from now however after the resilience community listening session two weeks ago we decided not to wait until April 4th to bring it to you the resilient community listening session was the driving force behind the timing of bringing this to you today given that madam chair we thank you for allowing us to bring this through the accelerated process to bring it to council today administration requests approval of 3.75 million dollars for a guaranteed maximum price contract with PCL construction Inc. for the construction phase of the citywide backflow preventers replacement program 746,568 dollars of that GMP will provide for the original 14 backflow preventers that Dan Saunders envisioned the remaining 3 million dollar allowance will allow the contractor to evaluate up to an additional 56 backflow preventers and replace those units with new units as necessary administration believes that this project is a vital first step in addressing the feedback we received from the public at the resilient community listening session it is a happy coincidence that we bring this to council on the same day that we proclaimed the flooding awareness week with that administration asks for council approval of this GMP contract approval second everybody was excited for this one councilmember Montagnier thank you well this is this is a great great news and it's going to provide a lot of relief to people in neighborhoods that are prone to flooding especially shore acres that has been through a very difficult time and when I mentioned earlier today when councilmember Gabbard brought forward the resolution on flood awareness week that my family lived in shore acres when we first moved here and the house next door to us my parents lived on the water the house next door to us back in like 1978 the city put in a drain water pipe with one of the first backflow preventers in it and I think Claude you called it like a flap valve or yeah it wasn't like a it wasn't a backflow preventer at the time but it was like a just a flap on the end of a storm water pipe and being being young we'd be out in the water all the time that thing was always stuck I mean it was stuck open half the time sometimes it would close I mean the sea we would get in it and so I know the technology keeps getting better and better and better and one of the big problems that you have in shore acres when the when the neighborhood was developed it was marshland and the developer over 100 years ago put fill in but not very much and it's it's one of the lowest lying neighborhoods in the city is it is the lowest lying neighborhood in the city of St. Petersburg and these backflow preventers prevent water from backing up through the stormwater system to flood the neighborhood so this is going to create a it's going to replace a lot of old backflow preventers and I'm very thankful that we're bringing this forward at this time so thank you thank you council member Gabbert thank you chair and Claude thank you again I know I thanked everyone this morning for all their work but I just I want it to be mentioned that this didn't just come out of the resiliency listening session even though maybe you escalated it a bit because of that also I haven't had a chance to thank you all publicly but thank you for your participation in that evening it was a powerful evening and you know one that I think was long overdue but I want residents to know that this was something you guys were already working on we had even discussed this in a neighborhood meeting that we were in back in December so this is something that has been in the works for quite a while it is not a knee-jerk response but as you mentioned with the other 56 that will be evaluated this is just the beginning of the work and I know you all are committed to continuing to see that through so thank you so much on behalf of not only you know the residents that you serve councilmember Montaneri but these needs also in my district and I know that you're looking at evaluating some areas in Riviera Bay specifically and so I just want to thank you and I'm very very excited to have this item here today thank you so much and seeing we have no further requests to speak can you please open the machine for voting for F3 council members can you please place your votes now that all council members have voted can you please tally and announce your votes madam chair motion to approve agenda item F3 passes unanimously thank you now we're going to move into our new ordinances and attorney Williams we have G1 has an A and B do we need to vote on those separately or can they be voted on together you can read and vote on them together okay thank you thank you ordinance number 574-H an ordinance of the city of St. Petersburg Florida amending its land development regulations amending section 16.40.050.3.1 to update the person officially designated to perform the duties set forth in the floodplain management ordinance amending section 16.40.050.9.4 to update the definition of market value amending section 16.40.050.13.4 to update general elevation requirements for manufactured homes in the coastal high hazard area providing for applicability providing for applicability providing for severability and providing for an effective date the public hearing for this item is March to 21st March to 21st move of approval AMB second second I have to read second I know you're trying to get out of here okay go ahead Claire ordinance number 573-H an ordinance of the city of St. Petersburg Florida amending chapter 8 of the city code amending section 8-36-C3 to make a local technical amendment to the Florida building code FBC to rescind previous amendments to the city code FBC to rescind previous amendments to the city code to the FBC related to the FBC related to flood proofing providing for applicability providing for severability and providing for an effective date the public hearing for this item is March the 21st and we do not have any cards thank you we have a motion and a second but I also see we have Ms. Liz Abernathy we're here if Council desires a presentation since it's flood du jour day we're also happy to wait until our traditional public hearing so it's at your discretion thank you I move approval of AMB second so we do have a motion and a second for G1 A and B can you please open the machine for voting council member please cast your votes now that our council members please tally and announce the votes Madam Chair motion to approve agenda item G1 A and B passes unanimously great now we're moving on we're moving on item G2 can you please read the title for that as we're joined by Scott Bolliard our deputy zoning official ordinance ordinance number 1165-V an ordinance approving a vacation of two street corner easements generally located at 1000 1st Avenue North setting forth conditions for the vacation to become effective and providing for an effective date the public hearing for this item is March 21st move approval second now that we have a motion and a second can you please open the machine for voting it is open council member cast your votes all council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes Madam Chair motion to approve agenda item G2 passes unanimously thank you so much now we're moving on to our new business items beginning with council member Gabbard and H1 alright this is an item respectfully requesting a referral to HOUT to provide an update on namaste homes and an upcoming amendment to their CRA agreement and this is a staff request and I so move second I'm having a motion and second can we please open the machine for voting for H1 council members please cast your votes all council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes Madam Chair motion to approve agenda item H1 passes unanimously thank you moving on to H2 council member Gabbard respectfully requesting a referral to HOUT to provide an update on ERA 2 funding and any program outcomes this is also a staff request and I move approval second seeing that we have a motion and a second can you please open the machine for voting for H2 council members please cast your vote now that all council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes Madam Chair motion to approve agenda item H2 passes unanimously thank you moving on to H3 council member Gabbard respectfully requesting a referral to HOUT to provide an update on down payment assistance in the CRA and proposed amendments to the program this is a referral and a staff request and I move approval second I have a motion and a second can you please open the machine for voting council members have voted please tally and announce the votes Madam Chair motion to approve agenda item H3 passes unanimously and H4 also council member Gabbard respectfully requesting a referral to HOUT to provide an annual update on housing for all and employee rental assistance this is a referral and a staff request and I move approval second thank you Vice Chair Gerdes thank you Madam Chair I just wanted to know if council member Gabbard did something to staff to have four of those in a row no something got done to me and I'm now the HOUT chair just saying they had them lined up ready to go for the new year yeah that's right lucky me they put your right to work lucky me thank you Madam Chair it is moving can you please open the machine for voting phase two I mean H4 I'm sorry all council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes Madam Chair motion to approve agenda item H4 passes unanimously thank you now moving on H5 and that will be council member Driscoll thank you this item for this item I'm respectfully requesting a referral to the budget finance and taxation committee to discuss a request to reallocate the wikiwachi funding for the science center back to the wikiwachi fund I have attached a copy for you all of the original resolution that that made the the allocation for the science center the terms for the property have changed and therefore this funding is no longer applicable to what's being discussed and negotiated for the science center and therefore since it's not needed I'd like to move it back and I'll move approval I was wondering sorry now that we have a motion and a second for H5 can you please open the machine for voting council members please cast your votes now that all council members have voted can you please tally motion to approve agenda item H5 passes unanimously thank you and our last new business item is H6 council member Hanwitz thank you chair respectfully requesting a referral to the PSNI committee for a presentation on the known capital improvement needs and associated costs over the next 30 years broken down into the following categories water wastewater and reclaimed water stormwater streets sidewalks seawalls sanitation alleys bridges city facilities port airport marina libraries parks pools recreation centers and other anticipated capital improvement needs that may not fall within the above categories and I so move second council member Gabbert thank you chair and Tom I'm glad you're sitting here today because I have a question for you so when I was looking at this list pretty extensive list was curious I mean what kind of timing it will take administration to be ready to prepare a report like this and is that possible to be done in a PSNI meeting for the timing that is allowed in a meeting and then I have a follow-up to that thank you for the question and you know certainly some of these we have long-term plans on and like water storm water we we have our hands around those and and I think that that information has been shared with PSI and with City Council and the cows so those are are completed so to speak the the the other ones you know we can't we don't have the same level of kind of condition asset on all of those different pieces of infrastructure but we can do some forecasting based on you know the current CIP program and extrapolate out like for example the five-year CIP adopted in 24 to 28 is roughly it's just a touch under a billion dollars so you know just using simple math you know a 30-year forecast for absolutely everything would be in the six billion dollar range for a CIP program but it wouldn't have that same level of detail associated with the water and stormwater plans right and I'm sorry to interrupt but the other thing to cover all of that in one committee meeting would be extremely challenging but we could phase that in over a series of meetings so Councilmember Hanowitz I actually after I read this was hopeful that you would be agreeable to a friendly amendment to actually move this to a cow because anything that of this extensive conversation regarding our budget specifically our CIP budget in my opinion should be a conversation that all of City Council gets to participate in which we can obviously do in committee but if there were to be any action I don't know that there would be but if there would be any action that might come out of that I would want all of City Council to be a participant in that so it would be my preference that this go to a committee of the whole and if it is to stay in PSNI then I would be a no vote on it and if I may um so my first of all I have reached administration back in January on this so I've been having conversations with them on this and it's just known capital improvement needs and associated costs there's no need to go into a report like we did into this today it's just what we know that's all it is it says known capital improvement needs and associated costs so it's a report that they provide there's no need to figure out anything else that's what I asked for it was very simple and he can do the the numbers that's all we need okay well I feel like it is a committee of the whole discussion right um so unless it goes to committee of the whole then I'm a no okay I understand the reason I asked for this and to be clear is I want to make sure we had this information in terms of the numbers before we have conversations about taking out 30-year bonds okay so do we have a motion and a second on H6 we do we do okay we have a motion and a second on H6 and can you please open the machine for voting council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes madam chair motion to approve agenda item H6 passes 6 to 2 with council members Gabbert and Gerdes voting no council members Driscoll Fick Sanders Floyd Hanowitz Montaneri and Mohammed voting yes sounds good so now we're going to move on to our council committee reports action items and we are back to the ever so popular council member Gabbert ever so popular H-O-U-T um so this is a uh council report action item respectfully requesting approval of the mayor's reappointment of Mr. Derrick Keyes to the office of commissioner for housing authority of the city of St. Petersburg for a four-year term and approval of the detached resolution and I so move okay having a motion and second of I-2 can you please open the machine for voting what did I say oh you're right I won I'm sorry I was looking at that too I won now that all council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes Madam Chair motion to approve agenda item I-1-A passes unanimously that's good I'm trying to look and see if there's an I-1-B because I don't have an open form no ma'am okay very good so now we're going to go ahead and move to open form do we have any cards no cards all right do we have any announcements I-2 we did I-2 earlier that's quite all right we have no announcements no announcements meeting adjourned thank you oh man