City Council - Jan 18, 2024

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, Lisette Kanowitz, District 5 and Council Chair, Deborah Figg Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, John Muhammad. And District 8, Richie Floyd. Good afternoon, everyone. We are about to call to order the January 18, 2024 City Council Meeting, beginning with the roll call. Gerdes? Here. Gabbard? Montenari? Here. Kanowitz? Here. Dick Sanders? Here. Driscoll? Here. And Floyd? Here. Thank you. We will now have our invocation. Hey, Mohammed, I'm sorry. Here. We will now have our invocation by Bishop Manuel Sykes of Bethel Community Baptist Church. And following that, we will have the Pledge of Allegiance. Will everyone join me in standing, please? Good morning, everyone. Happy New Year. Let's pray. We thank you, God, for this day. It truly is a day that you've made, and we are joyful and glad to be in it. We come now asking for a special blessing upon these elected officials, on whom we depend, O God, to carry out the daily duties that govern us, from the greatest to the smallest, from the oldest to the youngest, from the richest to the poorest. We ask that you'll bless their families, bless their going out and coming in, give them wisdom and understanding as to what your will is for them and for us. We ask you, Heavenly Father, to bless everything that's being done and that shall be done to make this city a better one. We ask that you'll have mercy on those that are poor and struggling. And we ask, O God, for the heartfelt compassion from those who are fluent. We ask now, Lord, that this meeting will bear good fruit and that everyone, both here and in the audience, will leave satisfied that goodness and mercy shall prevail. We ask these blessings now in the name of our Lord and Savior. Amen. Amen. Amen. Of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Bishop Sykes, for that wonderful prayer, and we're so pleased to have you in our presence. Council members, we have before us an agenda with the addition of CB14 and CB15, resolution confirming council and mayor appointments to intergovernmental agencies and city committees. I'll entertain a motion for approval for the agenda with additions. Now that we have a motion and a second to approve the agenda, clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please test your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve the agenda passes unanimously with Council Member Gabbard being asked. Thank you. Council members, now we have a consent to do for us today. Do we have any? No cards and no speakers in Zoom, Madam Chair. On Zoom. Move approval. Second. Now that we have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda, seeing that there are no requests for discussion. Madam Chair, I request to speak. Oh, okay. I did have one comment on CB2 before we vote, and it's just a good news item. This is part of our tree planting program to plant trees in both the Child's Park and around our city, and I'm glad we're moving forward with this. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Monteneary. Seeing that there are no other discussions, clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, can you please cast your votes? Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve the consent agenda passes unanimously with Council Member Gabbard being absent. Thank you. Next, we will have open form. Clerk, can you please read the rules? Yes, ma'am. If you wish to address city council on subjects other than public hearing or quasi-judicial items listed on the agenda, please sign up with the clerk. Only the individual wishing to speak may sign the open form sheet. Only city residents, owners of property, business owners in the city, or their employees may speak. All issues discussed under open form 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 form 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 your three-minute time limit, you will be muted. All raised hands will be lowered after each agenda item. Regardless of the method of participation used, normal rules apply, including the three-minute time limit on comments, the requirement that any presentation materials must be submitted in advance of the meeting, and the rules of decorum. If live public comment is disrupted by violations of the rules of decorum, the chair is authorized to accept public comment by alternate means, including by email only. And, Madam Chair, we do have speakers. So, as a clerk, he's going to call the names two at a time, and we ask that you go to either podium, and before speaking, we ask that you identify your name and your address when you have three minutes to speak. Madam Chair, first two speakers, Don LeGrone and Ron Dinner or Diner. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and you have three minutes to address city council. My name is Don LeGrone. I live at 2620 13th Street North here in St. Petersburg, and I appreciate the opportunity to come and talk to the council. Mayor Ward's stated priorities of providing below-market-rate housing and avenues for intergenerational wealth creation for descendants of the historic gas plant neighborhood are both lofty and appropriate. I do not believe that the currently negotiated agreement with Ray's Heinz accomplishes either of these goals. The primary mechanism for creation of intergenerational wealth in our society has long been through home ownership, through appreciation of home values over time. Residents of the gas plant neighborhood and their descendants have long been denied access to home ownership through redlining, restrictive covenants, and other mechanisms. The current Ray's Heinz deal proposes a building of 1,200 housing units at below-market-rate rentals, yet less than 50% of these would be designated for residents making less than 100% of the city's average income. What's more, none of the units would be designated for purchase. After 20 years, the developer could sell the units at market rate, reaping the increased value. The units would thus fail to provide an avenue for wealth generation to low-income occupants. Since Ray's Heinz is not obligated to provide the housing during the early phases of construction, it thus fails to address the city's acute need for low-cost housing. It should be amended to demand that below-market-rate housing be constructed at the beginning of the project, not over its duration. It should also provide a mechanism for home ownership by all occupants. What's more, none of the units should be available to those making more than 100% of the city's AMI. The current agreement allows Ray's Heinz to opt out of building any or all of the affordable units, instead paying a paltry penalty of only $25,000 per unit not constructed. That penalty should be set at the actual cost of construction. The current proposal thus fails to meet the needs of St. Petersburg for low-cost housing, nor the mayor's objectives, and should be renegotiated. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Ron Diner. I live on Brightwaters Boulevard. I'm here again as a concerned member of our community, concerned for our best interests. I think it is crucial to revisit the key points of the Ray's Heinz deal. I am concerned that there's a misconception circulating, including among some city council members, that this deal is a $1.3 billion agreement with the Ray's paying half, leaving the city and the county responsible for the difference, implying this is costing the city $300 million. I believe it is essential to clarify that the actual cost of the city is $1.6 billion of taxpayers' funds and $800 million of the county funds, $2.4 billion. The city is borrowing with interest, and it's also offering free real estate taxes, which is going to cost us $411 million, and it's providing free use of the property. And to further attract attendees, we're selling the balance of the land for $105 million, which is conservatively estimated to be worth anywhere from $700 million to $900 million. It all adds up to $1.6 billion in St. Petersburg taxpayers' funds, resources that would otherwise be available for so many other high priority needs in our cities. I think it is essential to recognize that one of the other goals that we had was to honor the legacy of the gas plant and affordable housing, which was central as well. And in the proposed deal regarding Raines-Hines, they do not have to build one unit of affordable housing. Instead, they can buy their way out of the deal for $25,000 a unit. While baseball is undoubtedly a civic asset, and we want to keep it here, it can't come at any cost. Does anyone think that having a stadium in this location creates more than $2.4 billion in value, a cost of more than $25,000 per St. Pete household? How on earth can civic pride be worth that much? This deal needs to be renegotiated. And if you think the public is in favor of it, read what's in the Tampa Bay Times today. There's an opinion piece along with letters to the editor. The public does not want this deal, and I feel strongly that your responsibility is to do what is in the best interest of the public. Thank you. Thank you. Next two cards, please. There's two speakers, Robin Davidov and Peter Kintz. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record. You have three minutes to address city council. Good afternoon, Chairperson Fig Sanders and counselors. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Robin Davidov, 4830 Osprey Drive South. My name is Robin Davidov, and I am a member of the Social Justice Action Team at the League of Women Voters in St. Petersburg area. We have studied this project and consulted with community partners for the past 12 months. We have read economists, interviewed journalists, and studied other cities with private stadiums financed by public dollars. I have included a copy of our published article in the catalyst in your packet. We are not opposed to a new stadium. We support the creation of a vibrant new neighborhood where our parking lot now stands. But after studying the term sheet and finance plan, we are deeply concerned with the consequences of diverting public dollars belonging to the 114,000 families living in our city to pay for the current plan. And while some argue that TIF's tax, increment financing, and bed taxes are not public assets, economists disagree. Mr. Hippler writes in the Florida Bar Journal, TIF benefits private sector development with the use of public revenues. Private development should not be supported by investments of public funds. TIF can boost economic growth, but at a cost of higher taxes to meet their rising costs. Professor Zimbalist, and I included his article for you, at Smith College writes that, The fact is that diverting taxes, including property tax, TIFs, and bed taxes, create a fiscal hole that has to be filled, either by lower spending on services or by increased local taxes, each having a depressing effect on local economic activity. Here is the critical problem. Families working two jobs to pay rent and seniors on fixed income cannot afford to fill this hole. Higher taxes for them means not being able to buy a house, not being able to build generational wealth, or for seniors giving up other necessities. Does our city have other demands in the next 30 years? Well, according to the city's stormwater plan, and I'm quoting, If chipping in is a euphemism for paying more in taxes and fees, then we need to be cautious in committing large amounts of public dollars to non-essential activities. We urge you to carefully examine this lopsided deal and work to make it better. There is no hurry. The Baltimore Orioles just signed a 15-year lease extension to give the city council in Baltimore and the Baltimore Orioles time to work out an equitable development deal. St. Petersburg can extend the lease on Tropicana Field and do the exact same thing for their taxpayers. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead. I'm Peter Kent, resident of the Academy Way in St. Petersburg. I'm grateful for this opportunity to discuss the Ray Sines deal with you. I've had five discussions on the Tropicana Field redevelopment issues with about 50 of my aspect colleagues at Eckerd College over the past three years. Last Wednesday, at the end of a fifth talk, I asked the attendees to pretend that they were city council members and to vote yes or no to accept the Ray Sines deal. 92% voted to reject it. I emailed you my slides for that presentation last week. Let me summarize their key reasons. Number one, corporate welfare to billionaires and return on investments. There's a perception that a proposed deal is essentially a $1.6 billion corporate welfare to the Ray Sines billionaires from the city with minimal return to the city taxpayer. Two, the land appraisal. With recent land sales, there's a need for new land appraisal, accounting for the current zoning and the surrounding demand, and expected to bring the 86-acre land value to between $600 million and $1 billion, not the $105 million that Ray Sines is paying. Three, the Ray Sines low stadium investment. While the Rays are nominally putting $700 million into the investment for the stadium, it is reduced by the expected $600 million that they'll receive from the stadium naming rights over the 30 years, meaning that their net investment is $100 million versus the $600 million from the city county. Four, the economic impact. There's a lack of historic employment or housing demand spinoff from the current stadium, which is supported by research on 130 similar stadiums. Legal considerations. The CRA extensions require that the downtown district be considered to be slum or blighted. There's no way that the downtown can be still considered slum or blighted. So there's no way that the district can be extended. This means that there's $243 million of downtown TIF taxes that are aimed to paying off these bonds are not going to be available because it's not going to be legal. The city is acting as a master developer. The city continues to own the land and it sells the parcels to the Hines one at a time when and if Hines needs them. And then it also is paying $130 million worth of infrastructure on this project, which is normally the developer's expense. The city is the developer, not Hines. And yet Hines is walking away with half a billion dollars of developer profits on this. Public opinion. We got the aspect that 82% are voting against it and other polls are showing an equal, a similar dislike for this project. And I'd like to speak on the housing, but I'll have to do that another time. Thank you. Next two speakers, Madam Chair, Peter Flink and Catherine Filippelli. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record. And you have three minutes to address city council. My name is Pat Flink, not Peter Flink. My address is 1201 86th Avenue North. I go to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in St. Pete, which is a member of FAST. In St. Petersburg, we have an affordable housing crisis for families earning under 80% AMI. Families who make less than $65,000 a year can't afford to live in the city anymore. Every week, I hear about another member of my church who has had their rent raised between 50 and 100%. They are making the hard choice to leave St. Pete. Every year, FAST holds a big gathering that we call the Nehemiah Action. This year, it will be in St. Pete at the First Baptist Church on Gandy Boulevard on Tuesday, April 30th at 7 p.m. We have invited Mayor Welch, and we'd like to also invite all the St. Pete City Council members. Please be present to show that you want to be part of the solution to the affordable housing crisis. At the mayor's event night out in Charles Park on December 5th, he told multiple members of FAST that he was willing to meet with us about the affordable housing crisis. Since then, we've sent him a letter on December 21st suggesting two dates to meet with him. We called his office. We were asked to fill out an official meeting request form. We did all that. We've called and emailed him and his assistant multiple times. No reply. We even went in person this week and was told that the mayor's assistant was not available, and we left another message. No reply. Mr. Gerdes, we'd like you to be our representative, since the mayor is not here today, to help us secure a meeting with Mayor Welch. We have offered two dates that he told us he would be willing to look at, but no reply. So, we'd like to give you a call after this meeting to follow up so you could help us secure a meeting with him. Please do. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is really interesting. Oh, I'm sorry. Good afternoon. I'm Catherine Filippelli. I have lived in St. Petersburg at 5836 30th Avenue North for 30 years. I have lived in St. Pete for 44 years. When I came as a Catholic school teacher making only $10,000 a year, my rent was $150 for a furnished little apartment across from Admiral Farragut. If I were not to sign the entire lease, I would have had to pay $300 during in-season just for my internship. Those prices do not exist anymore. I am a member of FAST. For the past 19 years, we'll be celebrating our 20th anniversary. My congregation is St. Matthew's. Even though it's in Largo, I drive across parish boundaries to worship there. We have been a member of FAST since its beginning. All of us have heard and know we are in a crisis state for affordable housing. The mayor appeared at St. Joseph's Catholic Church before he ran for his office to be elected. Mr. Gerdes was there present. We asked him, will you commit to a number of affordable housing and have it in perpetuity? He said, you know, the former mayor, I think he said $2,500. I'm going to double that. Well, that would be $4,000 or $5,000. We have yet to see it in writing or confirm in a meeting that he is willing to stand by that. That's why we are again here asking for your influence, your pressure, your awareness, your stamina to make things happen. Mr. Gerdes, those dates again are February the 15th and February 20th. One is a Thursday night, one is a Tuesday night. That is February 15th and February 20th. We were going to do it after hours, so at Bethel Community Baptist Church at 7 p.m. Again, that letter was sent to him back in December, and we have tried numerous ways, both in person, electronically, to meet with the mayor. I understand he's the decision maker, but I also know that you are decision makers as well. We need you to stand up and to advocate for affordable housing, 80% AMI for the penny money that has been allocated, and that the building is in perpetuity. We expect you to rise to the occasion and make this happen, and I look forward to seating you at the Nehemiah Action on April 30th. God bless. Thank you. Next two speakers, Madam Chair, Dylan Dames and Jeremy Tallberg. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address city council. Hey, council. My name is Dylan Dames. I'm at 1201 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street North. I'm with Faith in Florida here on behalf of progressive people of faith and rent burden residents in the city. Thanks for a chance to use open forum, to use our voices. I spoke last week about the Community Benefits Advisory Council and the good opportunity we have. I just want to come back today and say that I'm a little bit worried about the application of this project. I think we all know that the four members that were chosen for the ad hoc committee isn't quite a representation of people that might have lived in the gas plant when it was originally raised and people that live in the area now. And I also want to bring up that the Community Benefits Advisory Council can't even speak to community members right now. I understand there's some obstacles with that as well. And so many council members don't understand the deal very well or understand what they're there to vote on and express fears that most of what they're talking about is already baked and set aside. And also funding for the stadium is being, like, barred from discussion at these meetings, even though construction jobs and other benefits from the construction of the stadium are being considered community benefits. So it's just I worry that, like, the last thing we want this to look like to the rest of Florida is performative, right? We're the only, I said this last week, we're the only city that has gotten something so precious and special entered into our municipal code, and I worry that we will squander it if we don't, if we're not careful about process. So I'm not a lawyer, but within whatever constraints y'all are in, please be creative in the following two things. First, take into consideration the input gathered in December and the major critiques from your advisory council that overwhelmingly lean against the currently proposed impact reports when you vote on the historic gas plant redevelopment this spring. Secondly, the CBAC is being urged from within their council to revisit a set of bylaws that might prevent them from talking to residents. Should any of you be involved in this process or voting on this process, I urge you to consider that without information from the community, without grassroots research and the narrative truths of people that live in this city, the advisory council will continue to do the same thing that they've been doing for the last two Tuesdays, which is sitting there confused. They obviously have a lot to read and a lot to learn, and if we can't talk to them, we're going to spend four Tuesdays in those chambers with them asking endless questions about these impact reports. You've heard from us on the mayor's tours. You've heard from us here on the stand for about a year. You've heard from us in rallies and protests outside, and you still found it important that we pass this project through an advisory council. If residents are going to come into chambers again after months of making it clear where we stand on this deal, I would really hope the city takes it seriously and you do all in your power to vote in favor of the people when it comes to this redevelopment. Thanks for your time. My name is Jeremy Tolberg. I live at 417 Leadoway in Snell Isle. Ladies and gentlemen of the council, in hopes of revitalizing a downtown, this area took a huge leap of faith. We built a stadium without even having a team to occupy it. Some will claim that the effort was a success. Downtown CP has gone through a huge transformation to become a city known for its arts, its food, and more. However, the team has also profited immensely, growing from $200 million to over a $1.6 billion in valuation. The proposal in front of you now disregards all of that goodwill and effort made by this area and its citizens. Before the current stadium is even fully paid off, the city is being asked to go into even greater amounts of debt for 30 more years. This team wants even more money to be diverted into their profits. They want exemption from paying taxes. They want exemption from paying rent. And they want huge discounts on city-owned land. An honest and reasonable proposal would be one that requires the team to now pay their fair share of the building, the taxes, and the land being asked for in this proposal. And an overwhelming amount of the people who would be paying for this new building agree that the current proposal is in no way a fair deal for them. A stadium will spend almost its entire life vacant and empty. The busiest stadiums in the nation might host 3 million fans a season. That's roughly the same number of customers that Walmart Supercenter serves in a year. And while we can debate the value of a stadium in the community, it's absurd to seriously maintain that it's an investment that deserves billions of taxpayer dollars. I strongly urge all of you to stand against approving this proposal as it's been put to you. And that's a decision that safeguards all of us who would call St. Pete home. Thank you. I don't think Madam Chair is Pastor Manuel Sykes. Please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. Have three minutes to address city council. Good afternoon once again. I'm here to just talk about a few things that I hope will just be common sense. First of all, many of you were elected by people who lived here for most of their lives, generationally. And now those people who voted for you are not being represented fairly and justly. And so they're being forced out. I'm not certain if the people who are moving here at the expense and expediting of the city will even care about your service going forward and that they'll elect more who will rubber stamp everything that's going on. The second thing is, I'm one of the founders of FAST. So that means for more than two decades, I have been a part of trying to get the city to be fair to the poor and to grant housing for people that were in need more than 20 years. And yet, we've seen no results. One of the sit-downs with the mayor and with the commission was to ask for pennies for Pinellas, some of it to be set aside along with land for future building. Think about the irony. Pennies for Pinellas. Hundreds of millions for billionaires. That's got to be one of the biggest mistakes ever made. And remember, billionaires are in business to make more billions. They really don't care about this city and the fate of the poor. Another irony is the city owns the property. Now, we know how they got it, but they own it. And rather than using that to meet the vast and growing need for housing for people who live here. We don't have the industry to support the kind of jobs that the buildings are now going for, now being created. But just think, there is a glut of luxury apartments and condos, a glut. They're building it at all deliberate speed. And yet, the poor, those persons, 16,000 on the housing road, are having to wait and see just what their future is going to hold. The last thing I'll say is this. I have never refused to allow a candidate to speak at Bethel because we are a voting church. Imagine how I feel now, allowing people to get up and make promises and renege. That makes me look incredible. Thank you. Thank you. We will now close open forum and move to our legal items, beginning with items I-1 and I-2. And joining us is Assistant City Attorney Ken McCullum. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm here today. I've got two items for you. These are both settlements from the legal department. The first one, I-1. This is a settlement involving a workers' compensation washout claim from former employee Marouz. Mr. Lenuski was a police officer with the St. Petersburg Police Department. And he was injured on the job back in November of 2021 in a struggle with a suspect where he ended up injuring his back, resulting in surgery. He later was determined to have a service-connected disability that was granted in March of 23. He no longer works for the police department. He has since relocated overseas and has had to come back to the States on at least four occasions for further treatment. And under the workers' compensation rules, ultimately, we may be responsible for that. But it's estimated he will need at least $289,000 in future medical treatment. I should add, Mr. Lenuski is in his 30s. And furthermore, he's going to need a lumbar effusion, it appears, in which case permanent total disability is likely to be granted by the courts, which would be over $1 million in future exposure over the course of his life. We've been able to resolve this case for a washout settlement of $75,000, which encompasses attorney's fees and getting him off of our books going forward. Move approval. Second. I'm doing a motion and a second for item I-1. Seeing no further discussion, clerk, would you please open the machine for voting. Council members, please pass your votes. Seeing that all council members present have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes. Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item I-1 passes unanimously with Council Member Gabbard being absent. Thank you. Thank you. I'll move on to the next item, which is I-2. This is the case of Harry Powell versus the city of St. Petersburg. This is a liability case. It is set for trial in March here in St. Petersburg in Circuit Court. Mr. Powell was a 64-year-old gentleman who was on his way to work at 3 in the morning, 16th Street, 30th Avenue North. Unfortunately, one of our police cars appears he ran a red light, and this was a high-speed impact. We previously had forwarded both photographs and video surveillance from a neighboring business, which caught the accident on film. Mr. Powell has suffered significant injuries to his spinal column. There was a traumatic brain injury, concussions. He's had subsequent strokes, which are unlikely to be related to the accident. But ultimately, this is not a case that we think is wise to try in front of a jury. After mediation and numerous negotiations, this case has been resolved under the sovereign immunity cap for $125,000. Move approval. Second. Now that we have a motion and a second for I-2, I see no request to speak. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please cast your votes. Seeing that all council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item I-2 passes unanimously, with Council Member Gabbard being absent. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Appreciate it. We would now have item I-3, with the Assistant City Attorney, Joe Patner. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Council. I'm here to seek resolution in the case of Janderlin-White v. the City of St. Petersburg. This was an accident occurred back on February 2, 2020. A police cruiser struck Ms. White at the intersection of 15th Avenue South and 28th Street. It was a big impact. I forwarded the photographs to you all. $60,000 in medical bills out of pocket. We could settle it for $59,500. Both drivers were hospitalized. I can answer more questions if you wish. I'm approval. Second. Having a motion and a second for I-3, with no request to speak, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please cast your votes. Now that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item I-3 passes unanimously, with Council Member Gabbard being absent. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Council. Thank you. We will now move to our report items, beginning with F that has an A and B, and we are asked to vote on A and B separately. And joining us is our Capitol Improved Miss Department City Architect Manager, Mr. Raul Quintana. Good afternoon, Council. How are you? I ask the Clerk to prepare the PowerPoint. So I will be presenting both F-1 and F-2. Both of these are, these resolutions are related to the same project. This is the Ducey's Rising Townhome Development. And just to orient the public on this and the location of the site, as you know, and we've been involved on this project for quite some time, the parcels is about 2.7 acres in totality, fronting on 22nd Street South to the east, Fairfield Avenue down the middle, and 23rd Street South on the west. So within that, there's two developments that we were designing, one townhomes, which is on the western half, approximately 1.6 acres, both north side and south side of Fairfield, and then the commercial side along the frontage on 22nd Street South. So just to give you a little bit of background and where we've been and where we are today, a project started several years ago where we went out for solicitation of a design builder. Horace Construction was awarded the work. In April of 21, we approved, had City Council approved the first step of this, which was the partial design phase for pre-construction services, conceptual design, schematic design, and constructability review. As part of that, we were also focused on developing construction documents for the first GMP, which was the roadway improvements, the right-of-way improvements on Fairfield. That first amendment was brought to Council in December of 21. That proposal was approved. That work has since been completed. All those utilities serve both the townhomes and the potential future commercial, and all that work was done in coordination with the 22nd Street South redevelopment project. So a lot of work went into that phase, and effectively, the site hasn't been touched since then. We've been working on the balance of the design. And so the second amendment in May of 2022, Council approved the balance of the pre-construction services. So with that, we were off and running on the full design services for the combined project. At the time, it was both the townhomes and the commercial element. So early on in the process, we received an initial GMP that really caused us to pause and really consider, you know, where we're going with this project. The initial GMP proposal came in significantly over budget, and I don't think I need to go into detail in explaining why that's happened, and it's happened throughout the construction industry in Tampa Bay. There's a number of reasons for it, the escalation in cost, the availability of labor. So there was, you know, a lot of concerns. And then in February of 23, we received direction from administration to let's just focus on the townhomes. Let's move forward with that element of the work. Let's not pull the commercial completely off the table, but let's get the residential started. So with that, we focused on completing those drawings, receiving a GMP proposal, which also came in significantly higher. And for most of last year through the fall, we've been working very diligently with Horace and our team and James Jackson, our project managers here as well, to try to understand what caused those increases and try to come up with, you know, just level set this project and make sure that we're doing all the outreach that we needed to do, look at the submarkets and all the reasons why these numbers were challenging to us and getting into the cost that we can reasonably recommend to move forward, which is where we are today. So the GMP proposal, I'll step through that in a second. So this resolution, there's two parts to this resolution. The first is the approval of the interfund loan in the amount of $5,980,000 from the Economic Stability Fund and our supplemental appropriation to the Deuces Commercial Project. And the second part of this resolution is the acceptance of the GMP proposal for the 24 affordable workforce townhome units in the amount of $13,126,098. A part of that resolution is, again, approval of this third, which will be the third amendment to Horace. And there's two funding items associated with this second resolution. One is a rescission of $750,000 from the general fund and supplemental appropriation to the project. And the second is a rescission of $1.3 million from the South St. Pete Redevelopment District, the Southside CRA, and a supplemental appropriation to the project as well. So just to orient you to the project and exactly what we're building, the 24 townhomes, as you can see in highlighted in yellow, these will be fee-simple home ownership townhomes, mixed bedroom makeup, two bedrooms and three bedrooms. So of the 24, 12 will be two-bedroom, and the others will be three. The three bedrooms are about 1,700, almost close to 1,800 square feet. The two bedrooms are about 1,600 square feet. And so you can see the layout of the site with frontage along Fairfield. The rear of both of the parcels is where the parking is going to be. Each unit has two spaces for parking. Our retention is vaulted under the parking lot. So all of this has been now fully designed. We're in for permitting. Here's a layout of the units themselves. Just to kind of step you through on what are in these units, these are designed as open floor plans. As you can see on level one to the left, all the units have two-and-a-half baths. There's a half bath on the ground floor, impact-rated windows. It's designed to current code. It's got residential fire sprinkling. There's a walk-in pantry in each of these units. There's a convertible closet that is provided there to allow for a future lift, an ADA lift, if ever is needed. That was a request from the ADA community. There's an enclosed rear yard, open front yard. There's all of the appliances are Energy Star, laminate flooring all throughout. And all of the, as I said, the windows and the doors are all hardened. And so we feel like this has been, you know, the effort in the design with Mr. Howard, the architect, and the team really has resulted in some units that I think will be very, you know, successful. This is an image looking to the east on Fairfield. And you can see kind of the profile of what would be the commercial in the background. Here's an image looking to the west along Fairfield from the front. This is an image directly, you know, right on Fairfield, looking directly at the units. And the mix, each building, there's 12 buildings. Each of the buildings have four units in them, two, three bedrooms and two bedrooms in this building. So you can see what that looks like. And then a street-level view and then a view from the back. So the rear will be fenced, the parking associated with each of the units. So just to step into the GMP itself, the GMP is comprised of a number of broken-down elements of the project. So the cost of the work itself is about $9.8 million. Then the general conditions, which is the cost to support the work from the contractor, their labor, the cost of, you know, the setup of trailers and all those elements, the superintendent inspections, that's added. And then the contractor's contingency. So there was a subtotal of $11.2 million. And then the balance of the factors were the negotiated fee, the insurance, professional liability insurance is required because of the design-build component, and then the performance bond for a total, a subtotal of $12,326,000. And on top of that, we've got a city contingency that we put in all of our projects for in unforeseen conditions of $500,000. And to that, we also have $300,000 as an owner's contingency for the soil remediation. And I'll go into that a little bit more in the second report item. But we made the decision to go ahead and include that work itself with Horace's team. We've got a contractor that we've already established a relationship who's a remediation contractor who's qualified to do the work, and we'll step through that as well. So the $13,126,098 is the total sum of the GMP. And how do we get to the funding on this? The project appropriations to date, $4.6 million has been appropriated. And then just below that, you'll see what the available other sources are. The general fund ARPA, $6.5 million is available. The requested fund transfer, $750,000 I mentioned as part of the first resolution. The requested transfer from the South St. Pete CRA of $1,300,000. And then the requested inter-fund loan of $5.98 million, a total of $19.1 million. And the fund uses to date, we've spent about $4.5 million. That included all the work on Fairfield, included all the design, both portions of the project, obviously. And then you add to that the Horace GMP. And then there's a number of items that we still have left in the forecast, which we do on all of our projects. We've got some utility work to still resolve, both with Duke Energy and some of the other servers. Our inspections for the soil monitoring, the city's cost for our own project administration, our inspections, permit fees, and then overall a contingency for the project in its entirety so that we can make sure we don't ever come back and we can cover all the unanticipated costs here. So here's the plan of finance, and Tom is here to answer any questions as we get into the Q&A section. But effectively, this establishes the method of how to cover this loan from economic stability. And there's quite a bit of information here, but as you can see, based on the loan repayment from the sales at the bottom, based on an assumption of what those costs could be on a per-unit basis, there's about a net proceeds of $6.2 million after the commissions that could, as anticipated, would offset the loan from the economic stability. So this is just a real quick summary of that, and we'll have plenty of time to go through it in any detail if you have questions. Also, I just wanted to kind of move moving forward on the project and how we are going to ultimately sell the townhomes where we are today. Obviously, we're asking for approval of GMP number two. The next step is to execute the agreements, get all our bonds and insurance, which we expect to do fairly quickly, pre-construction meetings. We've already had certain meetings with the construction manager and our remediation contractor. So the very first step is the remediation. And we're only going to remediate the soil that's contaminated on the residential. We're not touching any of the commercial. The residential soil remediation is going to be done completely. We're going to haul away the contaminated soil, bring in new clean fill. All of that is going to be done before the contractor steps one foot on the site. And then construction looking to start in the March or April time frame with the completion sometime in the next summer. On the sales of the homes and the HOA, the homes will be sold to qualified first-time homebuyers. Again, the split anticipated is 50% at 80% AMI and 50% of the units at 120% AMI households. The city's already contracted with a realtor who has already made some outreach within the community to pre-screen buyers. The final outcome and qualification and underwriting to be performed by the city. The sale price is anticipated to be the lesser of the actual cost or the appraised value. And down payment assistance or subsidies will ensure that affordability. There will be resale restrictions that will be in place to ensure the long-term affordability and the recapture of the investment. And, again, we have staff, both Amy and Mark, that can kind of go into the details of that. And then a homeowners association will be required. So we've got City Illegal has retained an HOA attorney that's been assisting us with this, and so that will have to be developed and established as we go forward. So the next item, Report F2, is an amendment to the Fifth Amendment to the Stantec Agreement, effectively for the monitoring services associated with this remediation. It's $80,590. This is continuation of a number of proposals and amendments that we've already had with Stantec over the years to do all of the sampling, all of the negotiations with the FDEP. The project has been submitted to the FDEP and is going through that process of approval. We've gotten an interim source removal plan approved from the FDEP for the residential. They're aware that this is a phased remediation. A lot of cooperation, a lot of discussion with the FDEP has been going on, and the intent is that at the end of the remediation, they're going to give us a certificate saying that we've got a clean site, effectively. So we're doing all this the right way. We've got a qualified subcontractor. Again, and as I mentioned, that is the amount of the allowance, which initially we feel very strongly that would be within that for the residential, is now in the Horace GMP. And we've also been working over the last year on the Brownfield Site Rehabilitation Agreement. We have up to October of this year to enter into the agreement. I think we'll get there well before then. But all of the costs associated with this effort from this calendar year forward will be eligible for this Florida tax credit reimbursement. The tax credits are something that is in the statute with the DEP, and it provides the city and any other developer an income tax credit that could then, for purposes of our project, it would probably be something that we would go back to the secondary markets and find a buyer for those. However, it does, in the case of this project, provide us up to almost 100% of the expenditure because there's ability to take into account the fact that this is an affordable housing project. So there's a lot here. We've got a lot of folks that can answer a multitude of questions. Myself and James have been working on it on the design and construction side. We can answer all the questions about the project itself. So with that, happy to entertain questions. Thank you for the presentation. We do have a request to speak. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you, and thank you for the presentation and the update that has so much detail in it. It really helps us to understand where we've come up to this point and where we need to go from here and why. If this had been, if we had known from the beginning that the cost was going to be at this point, now we may have worked on a different strategy from the beginning, but here we are. When I had my meeting with city staff to go over this and was given this change and the need was explained, I suggested that rather than borrowing over $7 million, that we look at the South St. Pete CRA to see if there is funding that would make sense to move over into this so that we wouldn't have to borrow as much, if any. I'm glad that there was some that was identified. So I appreciate city staff taking my suggestion and looking at that because this certainly aligns with the mission of the South St. Pete CRA. So I feel comfortable with this. I have a couple of questions. How much funding do we need? How much do we need for the commercial component of this? So we did not proceed to finalize the commercial documents. Okay. By the time we started, we were into schematic design and we had that initial cost estimate and I don't have the numbers exactly in front of me, but it was significant as well. And the fact that we were said, look, and Rob could weigh in, we really needed to focus on what was most critical at the time. I could go back and see where we were on those numbers, but it's been over a year now. Yeah. And the numbers likely will change. So I don't have a really good answer for that just yet. Yeah, council member and good afternoon, city council. And if I could just kind of comment on that generally. I mean, I think as you know, and we heard from our speakers this morning, how important affordable housing is to everybody, right? And so that was the priority and that's why we set it aside. At this point, related to the commercial, I think there's a couple things to consider. One is the cost, which we'll have to come back to. The other is I think we really need to wait and see what happens at the gas plant. There's been some discussions with the community and the Ray's Heinz team about maybe a minority incubator on the site at the gas plant. So that could impact, you know, what might happen here on this site related to the commercial. So I think we're going to have to wait and see a little bit how those discussions go forward before we come back to council and talk about a potential second part of this. Okay. Thank you. I know that the proceeds from the sales of the townhouses are supposed to go toward helping to fund that commercial component. So if we are going to stick with the original plan, I'd like to see what that's going to look like because we're not going to be pulling in quite as much. So we'll need a game plan eventually. But I agree that it's important to focus on the housing first. It is the greatest need, and these are beautiful. This is – we're creating a micro-neighborhood that I believe people will be proud to live in. The commercial aspect is important in the affordable housing game as well because it helps to build wealth. It helps to create jobs that allow people to afford things like moderately priced housing. Also, with our ongoing and upcoming discussions on transit-oriented development and changes that I hope are going to be coming soon to the zoning for this general area in the Warehouse Arts District, that puts this development in the middle of the next great St. Pete story. And it gives that access to transit. It gives the access to jobs. And once you – once, as we see that area build up and develop into a more complete neighborhood, then the folks who live in these townhouses will have access to even more jobs as well as services and entertainment that don't exist there today. So this is one of those rare instances where the city is a bit ahead of the game and looking ahead to the future and making sure that all residents have an opportunity to take part in it. With the soil – the remediation – and again, I understand that there's kind of a question mark on the commercial aspect, but is there ever a case when that soil contamination is a factor in any type of commercial activity like food and beverage or anything like that? Is there ever – I mean, I understand why we certainly – we need clean soil for residents. But for commercial activity, you've got people who are there for long periods of time as well. So we're going to remediate the commercial. It's not that we're not going to do it. We're just not going to do it as part of this phase. It's still part of the FDEP submission. We've gotten a very clear understanding of the limitations and how far the commercial contamination has spread. The remediation standards for residential are much higher than commercial. So on the residential, we have to do certain things that – that on the commercial, there may be other ways to handle it based on parking lots that would pave over certain sections. So we will – once we know that the commercial is going forward, it will help us understand that section of remediation. And let's say for whatever reason the commercial doesn't go forward, we would still need to be committed to remediate that portion of the parcel for whatever use it will ultimately have. So it's just not part of the current process. Got it. Thank you. Lastly, for legal – the resolutions, can they be taken up together or do we need to vote on them separately? Separately. A first, then B. Okay. Thank you. Then I'll move approval of item F1A. Second. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. I got a couple of quick questions. First is about the resale restrictions. I was just wondering if anyone could speak to that. Good afternoon, Council Members. Mark Van Leeu, Housing Development Manager with the housing team. We are – we haven't fully worked out the sale agreement terms for these units, which will include the affordability restrictions. But these units are intended to be restricted long-term. A minimum of probably a 30-year term of affordability restriction would be included in those terms. Okay. And I assume that's like resale to someone at 80 or 120 percent of AMI based off of – Yeah, it would have to be resold to another qualified buyer. Or if it's sold, usually what is included in those terms is if a unit is sold on the open market, it would – the investment by the city would be recaptured at that point. But typically we have a first right of refusal so that we can ensure that is resold to a qualified buyer if that's what the city wants to do at that point. Okay, cool. Thank you for that. I want to ask something else about the – has this property been assessed recently, like for the value of the land there? I know it's – we've been a lot of utility updates and rehabbing. No, it has not. Okay. Okay. We can get that information to you, Councilman. It's been a little while since we've had the assessment. And to be honest with you, I don't want to speculate off the top of my head on what it was. That's fine. But we can get you the last appraisal. Okay, yeah. And a lot's changed since then even, but it'd be interesting to see that. So, you know, without any land value, it looks like we're going to spend about $800,000 per townhome. It's a pretty significant price. I know you all are doing the best you can with this project, and I understand the need for it. Going down that line, is there any information yet about what sale price would look like? Yes, Councilmember. I worked up a full spread of – the sale price will ultimately depend on the income of the buyer and the household size. And so we'll ensure that for each buyer, each qualified buyer, the purchase price that they will pay will be affordable to them, meaning 30% of their income or less for their housing costs. And the subsidy will be adjusted to make that happen. So we don't ultimately know until we sell the units exactly what each unit will sell for. But what we did is ran the spread of, you know, one-person household up to a several-person household, what those income levels are and what a sale price would look like. And then we picked the basically middle of the road of that to demonstrate the numbers that state that the revenue from the sale of those units will be enough to repay the loan from the Economic Stability Fund. So it could be slightly north of or slightly south of that. Also, we're using today's numbers, today's income numbers. But by the time we sell these units, we'll be into a new year, so those income limits will likely go up, meaning that the sale price would also go up and generate more revenue. Mark, could you remind us or Raul what those price estimates were on the spreadsheet that we showed? And while Raul's looking at that, Councilmember, and Mark, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it also depends, Councilmember, on the interest rates. So if interest rates go down between now and the time of the sale, that can also impact the sales price. Okay. So the 80% AMI with $60,000 down payment assistance, $223,000. Is that correct? And the $120 AMI with $60,000 down payment assistance, it'd be $317,000. Okay. So I'm sorry, what was the first one? $223,000. $23,000. $23,000. And $317,000? $317,000. Okay. Yeah. I mean, those are reasonable prices. I'll just tell you, though, like the thing that I struggle with is that, like, it looks like a subsidy just on the cost of construction is going to be potentially $500,000 per unit. And, you know, that could be, that could subsidize five other affordable housing units on a different project. And so we talked about this ahead of time. So none of this is a surprise for you. But it's like I'm struggling to say, is this what's most impactful for our money? And I support, like, the project generally in that I think it was a good idea to put townhomes in this area. And the way the project's gone has been admirable, honestly. But I really, like, have to just look back and say, like, is this the most effective use of our money to get affordable housing in the city? And that's where I'm hung up right now. And I know that's not a surprise to anyone. If I could just respond to that, council member, just for all council members and for the public or anybody in attendance, we certainly understand where you're coming from. This is a significant subsidy, more significant than what we would typically do. I think there's a couple reasons for that. You know, first of all, 22nd Street South is the historic heart of the black community in St. Petersburg. There's been some progress made there, but not enough. This particular property has a history of failed development. For these reasons, we feel that it's important enough for us to step in with taxpayer money to make this happen and that this can be a real catalyst on the deuces. And so based on the location and the failed attempts in the past, we think that the subsidy is worth it, although we certainly understand your argument and your concern. Yeah, I get that. I'd like to see us, like, we've been committed to this plan for a long time, and it came back to us with the higher-than-expected price. You know, I mean, I would have liked to see us maybe pump the brakes, see what else is possible at the site, because I do agree that development at the site is important, and this is the kind that we would like to do. But, yeah, I'd struggle with the cost right now is really how I would like to leave it at this point, and I'd like to hear from the rest of my colleagues. So thank you for answering my questions. Thank you. Councilmember Hanwitz. So, first of all, thank you for the presentation and for the one-on-ones before this, because I know that I want to thank you first for bringing the cost down from that $33 million. I can only imagine the heartburn. It's heartburn for us now, the $33 million. It must have really been shocking to see that number. So I thank you all for being diligent and trying to bring this down to something that's more digestible, even though it's difficult. For those that don't know, this has been going on since 2007, I think, is when we bought this land, right? I mean, my understanding is it was purchased with CBDG money for $2.2 million back then. And nothing has happened. Is that correct, or am I? Yeah, there was also, I think, some Job Corps revenue and some CDBG money. But, yes, generally that's accurate. Right. And then we had to pay that money back because the jobs that were supposed to be created were not created. And I'm just curious, the total money that we're putting into this $19 million, does that include the cost of the land that was paid, or it doesn't include that? It does not include that. So the subsidy is higher per unit. And I'm glad Council Member Floyd said what he said because that was exactly my reaction. And we had this discussion. It's 24, and the impact is 24 townhomes. And that's a lot of money. And how can you, there's so much need, and how can you spread the need to more people? Density would have been, more people there would have, I think, been great if you want to create an environment that is going to help commerce and businesses. And as we were talking about what's happening, you know, further down south on 22nd Avenue with the density and the growth in that area. So, you know, having more than 24 townhomes would probably have been a good thing to reduce the cost. But the subsidy is higher than even the $800,000 because it's not even including the land cost and whatever has been spent. I mean, from what I'm looking at, the numbers that are here. So, I mean, I just want to make sure that we're, look, at this point, and some of us are late to this dance. We've only been on this for the last couple of years. And that's what you do. You inherit things, and you try to make the best of what you inherit. But this is not something that can be replicated anywhere. You couldn't run a business like this. You couldn't, you wouldn't have money to pay for anything if this is how we paid for things. It would be impossible. So, this is an anomaly. I get the reasons, and I'm going to support it. But, you know, it's something that I think we all have to be conscious for. We want to do the greater good for everyone and provide affordable housing, but we can't do it at this cost. That's just unsustainable. And I want it to be clear that, and I think everybody in city council probably when they saw the numbers were completely shocked, but we're at a point where we have to do something with this. And we're lucky, actually, we have the ARPA money. The ARPA money is helping us. We don't get ARPA money all the time, and that's making this much easier to do. So, thankfully, we have $6.5 million of federal money that's coming in because otherwise I'm not even sure how it would happen. So, I'm going to support it, and I think it's going to be great. I want to see that area flourish, but I don't think it's an approval of this is how we do business all the time. I just want to put that out there. I think that we all, and I think that's what Council Member Floyd was saying, we agree on the purpose and the goal, but there's no way you could get anything done if this was a cost every time. Your point is well taken, and I want to assure you that we see this as an anomaly, too. You know, another property that could be similar is the St. Pete College property. We're already working on an alternative route there as opposed to the route we've taken here. So, I just want to say we do agree with you. And I know, and for the record, I know that when we had the one-on-ones, I mean, administration was, you were having a hard time with it, and I get it because I know that it's hard to justify. I mean, the private sector, there's no way they're paying $800 to $1 million per townhome. No way, because townhomes are going up in my neighborhood for less than that. So, you know they're making a profit, so they're not paying that for the townhome. So, anyhow, that's my two cents. So, thank you for your work on it, though. Thank you. Council Member Montaneric. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Raul, for the presentation. I'll just start off where Council Member Hanna was left off because this just isn't in the wheelhouse for me to get there, just from a financial point of view. I do have a lot of questions, and let me just start off by saying we all understand the affordable housing crisis that the City of St. Petersburg is facing right now. But the math with this deal is just so far out of the ballpark. It's not even in a gray area. It's just in the private sector, this just would never be done. Let me start off with the Interfund Loan because BF&T back in 2021 had a long discussion about this Interfund Loan. And I was Chair of BF&T, I was Chair of City Council, when this Interfund Loan idea came up. I was hesitant to do it. We passed a resolution in February of 2021 on this item, and we capped the Interfund Loan at $5 million. So why don't we start off right there with the Interfund Loan, and does the resolution need to be addressed first before we even talk about this? Because looking at the current Economic Stability Fund, if you take the $5 million that the City Council approved back in 2021, we've got two loans outstanding, one for $1 million, one for $750,000. So I see $3.25 million available. So maybe we can start with the legal question. I could try to take a stab at just generally speaking. Thank you for your question, Council Member. You're absolutely right. We created that liquidity or credit facility within the Economic Stability to address affordable housing needs and investments. We have committed to three different projects, totaling of about $4.5 million. Not all of those resources have been contributed to the development yet. So that's issue number one, and that is a cap at $5 million, and we're very near that cap. What this action does is creates another loan from the Economic Stability Fund, just like we've done in the past to maybe the airport. We've made loans to golf courses. So we've made loans from the Economic Stability Fund in the past outside of that affordable housing credit facility. So that's what this would do. It would create another loan in the amount of $5.98 million. Is that the right amount? And there would be two sources of potential repayment, as we talked about previously, from the sale of those townhomes. $6.25 million will be generated from the net proceeds to repay the loan. So in the worst case, that would be in, we expect closings in 2025, 2026. So it would be a short duration. And or there are some certain land that the city owns that we may be selling in the not-too-distant future. If we sell on a, if we have land sale proceeds, we could immediately use those resources to address this short-term loan from the Economic Stability Fund. So there are two potential sources of repayment for this new loan from the Economic Stability Fund. Okay. Yeah, I didn't, I wanted to just, since it was a policy matter back in 2021, and city council studied this in committee, took action in committee, brought it to city council for approval. I'm questioning, should we just disregard this resolution that we took back in 2021 and just proceed like this resolution doesn't matter? Based on what Mr. Green said, that, what he indicated is consistent with our recollection of that as well. We could, you know, continue to look at that as, as you continue your discussion, but we're not aware of any disregarding of that resolution that would be required or anything else that is needed other than what is in the documents before you. Well, I've got the resolution in front of me and it says, uh, in, in a, uh, the combined amount that we can borrow from the Economic Stability Fund is $5 million. And it's, it's, it's resolution 2021, 105. So just from a policy point of view, I don't want us as a body to just disregard a precedent in an action that city council took when it comes to borrowing from our Economic Stability Fund. Understood. We'll, we'll look at that as, as you're continuing your dialogue. Okay. Um, so I, I looked, uh, in my, my colleagues talked about the numbers. Uh, I, I just look at the, the benefit that whoever can purchase one of these, uh, townhomes, uh, receives. And, and I just think in, in terms of, uh, a basic fairness, because I, I see, uh, my, from my calculations, uh, the subsidy per townhome is over half a million dollars. So, you know, how do you, as, as a city fairly sell one of these properties? I mean, who, how do you, how do you do that? That's, that's, you know, that, that's fair to people. Um, council member, the, it's a good question. The, the sale price of the units obviously needs to be affordable to the AMI levels that we're projecting to, to sell the units to. And the subsidy would need to be provided between the difference between the cost of, to produce the unit and that sale price. Um, and then because these are for sale units, that money coming in from the proceeds of the sale would offset, you know, part of the cost to produce that unit. Um, uh, in response to a couple of the comments and questions that have been raised, um, I too struggled with the, you know, overall cost of these units and, and, um, how we got here and what we might have done or do differently. And a couple of factors that gave me some peace with this is the fact that, you know, as a city and as a leadership, uh, team, we've committed to, uh, more equity in the community. And this project is addressing a lot of those, uh, elements with the inclusion of minority owned businesses and the, uh, a lot of the work that's doing to provide opportunity, provide training to entities that will help build these and bring them to completion that will build those, those entities to be able to grow and do more work in the city and with the city in the future. That requires investment that the private sector is not going to do unless they're absolutely forced to, and often falls to the city to have to make that investment, to create that equity, to build those entities, to be able to grow that portion of our city. And, and, uh, another piece in this is, you know, the cost, the total cost to ready this site does include a lot of infrastructure work that would be applied to the commercial side when it does come to fruition. So I don't know that it's a fair thing to put the entire cost to date, uh, all on the residential because, you know, the infrastructure that was put in place, the underground electric and, and sewage and all the other things that are, are, had to be paid for, uh, probably a bigger chunk of that's going to go to serve the commercial once it's in place than what is needed to serve the residential. So that mitigates some of this, uh, investment, uh, as well. And so, you know, the bottom line is, you know, what are the units costing us to build? What can we sell them to the targeted AMI buyers, uh, for, and the difference is the subsidy that will need to be provided. Part of that will be from the down payment assistance program. Uh, so that will also offset some of the subsidy. And finally, the, I think it's really important to remember these are homeownership opportunities. And so that always typically comes with a bit higher cost and investment. Um, these units, when you're talking about homeownership, these units are larger than we would typically see built for a rental unit. Um, because in a rental situation, you know, the goal is to maximize the return per square foot, uh, from the rent. But in a homeownership situation, you want to ensure that you're providing a unit that is going to have and hold market value in the longterm to help build the wealth with these 24 home buyer families that are going to be in these homes. So we're also investing, uh, with this project in the longterm generational wealth building, uh, for 24 families. And yes, that's not a high number of units, but for those 24 families and their generations to come, it's going to be life changing. So that's a lot, but there's a number of different factors that have helped me, uh, reconcile the higher cost. And as has already been said, you know, this was a model that was tried and tested. And I think we've all learned that this is not the way we would proceed the next time around. Um, but so much has been invested to this point that I think, you know, we're at a place where we want to get this done. We want to get these homes built and these families in these homes. Um, and it is a bit of a pill to swallow, but we're ready to go there. Councilmember Montaneri, if I could add, I think, um, I'm going to try to take a stab at your question in a different way. What I, what I think you're concerned about is the possibility of, um, there being any nepotism or anything else with who receives the unit. And so we have, um, Mr. Mo and Sam Franklin, uh, here with us today. They are the realtors selected so that there's a arm's length transaction from the city. Um, this project would be very similar to the habitat projects that you've approved in the past, um, where, you know, we, we are building it. We are a part of the process, but we're not going to be selecting the homeowners so that there, um, is a third party involved in that process. And hopefully that gives you some, um, you know, takes away some of your fear around that. Okay. Well, still trying to figure out how, even if we have a third party, how, how does it, it would work very similar to the way it works with habitat. People sign up, they go through home ownership programs. They go through the process that is required in order to receive down payment assistance and who's ready in time, um, would go through approval processes. And it would depend on their credit and a number of other things to see who is, who is ready at the right time for those particular units. Um, so it wouldn't be any different than what's happening right now with Namaste. There's 11 units at Namaste. There's 20 people in that process and it's on a first come first serve basis based on who is able to purchase the unit, um, and able to qualify through the requirements of the program. Okay. All right. Thank you for trying to get me to look at it from a different point of view. I still have my, my, my questions. Uh, let me, let me move on, uh, to the Sankofa vision group. Do they have any, any part of this transaction? No, sir. We still have a lease with the Sankofa vision group related to the commercial component. Okay. Well, and I believe on the retail, they were supposed to, they made a commitment to, uh, try to raise some funds for the townhomes. Did, did any of that happen? Um, it did not come to fruition. They, they did make attempts. Um, and they, I think have helped with some marketing attempts. They helped with a public outreach meeting, uh, that we had at one point related to the townhomes. Um, I will say though, that, that, uh, representative Kathy Castor, who's been very supportive of the city, um, does have a request in for funding. Um, that is in the works at the federal level that could also help subsidize the development. And I think that's 750,000 Tom, is that, is that accurate? It's, uh, currently 850,000. Um, and what we, you know, I, I'm not sure I can project when the federal government will pass all those appropriations bills. But that is the current amount as of today. Okay. While you're at the podium, Tom, thank you. Thank you for your, the answers to my, my questions. The down payment assistance, the $60,000, where, where does that come from? I'll say Pete CRA is my understanding. Okay. And Mark Van Lee was giving me the yes signs. Okay. And then the, uh, commission for the, uh, the realty company is that that's 3% a year and is what, what's that or 3% for the transaction? What is that number based on? Is that the sale, the sale price? Correct. I just took the, uh, 97% of the aggregate, uh, assuming 3% would be the, the commission on the sale. Um, so the 6.285 million is 97% of the gross sales of those 24 units, assuming a 3% closing costs or commission. Okay. And, and then it was also stated that the homes will be, uh, held in fee simple home ownership. But then there's going to be some affordability period. It like, tell me like the title, like, I, I don't quite understand, like, how are you going to guarantee the, the home ownership? So somebody, let's say somebody purchases one of these properties and something, something happens to the family. They decide they want to move away. How do we, how, how's that going to work? I, you know, it's going to be the shared equity model and I'll let Mr. Van Lee walk through that. Yeah. So council member, if, uh, when someone purchases one of these homes and are qualified to do so, um, it's no different than you or I buying a home. If they're there for one year, five years, 10 years, and they need to sell, want to sell for any reason, they have the right to do that. And we'll have a few mechanisms in place. Uh, typically we'll have a first right of refusal. So, uh, the city can either, uh, exercise our first right to, uh, bring in a qualified buyer to purchase that home directly from the original buyer. Um, the city could actually purchase the home back from the original, uh, buyer and then resell to a qualified buyer. So there's a couple of ways that that transaction takes place. And the, the seller, uh, the original buyer, when they sell the home will obviously get, uh, the difference between what they owe on their mortgage, you know, whatever they've paid down on their first mortgage, uh, will be part of what they walk away from, uh, in that sale. And then we will develop a, an equity sharing agreement so that over time, the city will share with the original buyer, uh, increases in the value of that home so that it helps them build the wealth like any of the rest of us would. But because they bought that home with the help of subsidies in the, originally we mitigate how much of that equity that they actually get. Uh, but that really only comes into play if the home is sold on the open market. If it's sold to a new qualified buyer, then, you know, they would get their portion of an increase in the appraised value of the home from when they bought it. Um, and then the new buyer would purchase the home and we would get a new first mortgage for that property. So there's a few mechanisms in place and that is protected by a recorded, uh, lien on the property so that it's impossible for them to sell. That unit, uh, without us knowing and just walk away with all the money. Okay. What you said earlier about the, the, uh, different difference in sub subsidy, because you all gave us two numbers. You gave us the $19 million number. And then you gave us the $13 million. I calculated it both ways as subsidy per townhome. And it's, it's, uh, roughly half a million with the 19 and roughly 285,000 with, with at the $13 million figure. Uh, and so somebody purchases one of these properties and then wants to sell it like three years down the road. Like how much of that 200, if we're using the lower figure, how much of that $285,000 they're going to have to pay? Well, the, so whatever the purchase price is based on the affordable amount for that original buyer. Um, you know, they're going to get a first mortgage for that much money or a first mortgage plus any down payment that they provide. And that's what the city will get at the time of closing on the original sale of that unit. Um, when the unit is sold later on, it's going to be sold to another qualified buyer. Uh, likely at that point in time, the income levels will be higher. So the second buyer of that home would likely be able to afford a higher price for that home. And so that is part of what goes into the calculation of what, uh, the original buyer might receive in, in equity. In addition to whatever they've paid down on the balance of their first mortgage. So, um, they do not only get whatever they've paid down to date on their mortgage, but they get a portion of the increased value of that property. And I've seen it done two ways. I've seen it done based on the appraised value. So if, if, if that property appraised when first bought at say $500,000 market value, and then when they go to sell it appraises at $600,000, then there would be a $100,000 increase in equity. And they would get a portion of that based on the equity sharing agreement. I've also seen that based on an increase in the, uh, affordable purchase price. So, you know, if when they bought the home, um, the affordable price for them was $285,000. Uh, they go to sell it some period later. And for a comparable buyer, that price is now $300,000. Then that $15,000 difference or growth in, in equity based on affordability, they would get a portion of that. So those are some terms that we have to work out about how we sell these units, how we protect the equity, uh, and that sort of thing. But it will allow them to not only gain whatever they've paid down on their mortgage, but also share in some of that increase in, in equity in value. Okay. All right. Thank you. And before I give up the floor, Madam Chair, I wanted to see if legal had an answer to my question. Yes. Good afternoon, Council. We've had an opportunity to look at the 20, the 2021 resolution. And that resolution appears for a different purpose than the Interphone Line resolution before you today. That was a resolution with Council supporting this credit facility for affordable housing, um, development in St. Pete. and to move money from the economic stability fund to the affordable housing fund to invest in units that third parties were building and to have a resource to assist in that development. And I think we've done a few projects wherein you've approved an interfund loaned agreement followed by a grant agreement. This is a, a different loan, which is going from the economic stability fund to the city's housing capital improvement fund for this project. The city is developing. So legally, I don't think that they both cannot, they both can exist. I don't see, um, I see them as different purposes. Um, and would, and if for some reason council believed them to be in conflict, we could add something to this resolution as we've done in the past that to the extent of a conflict with the 2021 resolution, this resolution would supersede it. If, if you're concerned that there is a conflict between the two, then we can address it as we normally would, if that was the will of the body. Okay. I'll, I'll, I'll just, let me just, and I'll just wrap up on, on, on this. Uh, like, like I said earlier, back in 2021, when this was, when administration approached me, and, uh, talked to me about this possibility and taking it to BF and T, I was hesitant then. I was hesitant when it came to BF and T I ultimately approved it, but we had the $5 million cap. And now it seems like there's not any cap and we could be tapping into the economic stability fund for any reason. And that's my, that's my concern. Uh, and, uh, I want us to be financially, fiscally, uh, smart when it comes to our reserve funds. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council member Curtis. Tom, did you want to reply to that quickly? Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to, uh, point out that, um, in our fiscal policies, we have, um, an outline of the process and procedures through which we can make an advance or a loan from economic stability fund. And we've, uh, we've accomplished those through this resolution. We have to, it's gotta be a loan to a different fund, which it's going from economic stability to the affordable housing, uh, uh, capital improvement fund. And there has to be a method for repayment. So we know where the resources are going to come from. It's one of two sources. It's either the sale of those townhomes by 2027, or it's the sale of other land proceeds or land holdings that we have currently. So we've addressed the issues that are laid out in our fiscal policy to make an advance from the economic stability fund. I just wanted to, you know, share that with council as context. Council member Curtis. Um, Raul, thank you for the presentation. I quickly have a question on, um, the Brownfield site rehabilitation agreement. So you talked about recouping, um, 75% of the remediation costs plus an additional 25 because it's affordable housing is. And I think in your presentation, and I just want to get some clarification, you talked about expenses up to that point. Is that the $4.6 million or is that a different number? Or is that a different number? No, it's a different number. Do you know? Yeah. So of the 4.6, it's been about 380,000. We've spent over three years on consulting services mostly. Yep. We haven't done any remediation. Those dollars, had we had the, the Brownfield agreement in place then or prior to this year, we would have been eligible to, to recover those costs. But it's only beginning in the, in the, in the fiscal year that we enter into the agreement. So it'd be for 24. Those are sunk costs at this point, not eligible for the credit, credit back. It's about 380 of the 4.6. That we're not eligible for? We're not eligible for. No, we're not eligible for. So we're eligible for. Anything from here for, we're eligible for only the remediation costs of roughly 300,000 plus the 80,000 that, uh, is the Stantec amendment. The amendment. The amendment. Yes. That amendment. 380,000. 380,000 at this point. Yeah. And anything like remediation for the commercial site, once we have the Besra on, in place, we would be eligible for that as well. Okay. And then I know you talked about, we'd go to the market with those tax credits. Do we know what the, I mean, it's obviously not dollar for dollar, but. No, it's not. And I think Brian Caper can just answer that question. And I don't need an exact number. Yeah. I don't want to get, you know, an idea. Good afternoon, counsel. So the voluntary cleanup tax credit program, uh, would issue, uh, they are Florida corporate income tax credits. We would go to the open market to sell those. The last time we did this, we received about 72, 73 cents on the dollar. Okay. Thank you. Um, when I first heard it and I heard all the previous costs, I'm thinking to myself, cause that's kind of what I was guessing was around 75%. I'm thinking, okay, well, 75% of $4.6 million. That's a, that helps on this number, but it's not, not that much, but okay. Um, I, I, I, I'll just make a couple of comments and again, Raul, thank you for the presentation and the detail. And then Tom, thank you for the one-on-one. Um, I, I agree with both, uh, council member Floyd and council member Hanowitz that, you know, this is, this is tough. It's not, it's not fun. I do, I do think, um, in the last two years and one month, this is really the only one of these that has come before us. I hope, frankly, that it's the last one like this that comes before us. Uh, cause it, cause it, it isn't, but a couple of comments on that, Mark, I'm really glad you talked about, um, the creation of equity. You know, we worked really hard, uh, over the last, uh, two years talking about, uh, you know, minority and women owned businesses, you know, that this is moving the needle there. Uh, the 10 year housing plan, 150 units over 10 years of home, home ownership. We're going to knock out 6% of that, of that goal, just on that, on this project, almost 7% of this project, you know? And then most recently we talked about the lack of lots, single family lots. And so we're going to continue to have to have projects like this, but again, we're going to have to make sure that they're, they're fiscally responsible. I don't, I, I do believe that if this came before us, uh, again, having known this, this would have never gotten that far. But I, but I also believe in the very intentional investment, uh, on 22nd Avenue or 22nd Street South, very intentional. And to me, uh, the, the juice is worth the squeeze there. Um, I, I, again, I think we would all love for the numbers to be better. Um, and, and there's a lot of what council member Montaneri talked about that, that I agree with too, that it's, this is, this, this is tough from a money standpoint. But being down the road this far where this location is, it being home ownership, which is, I just think such a huge deal. Having been at the grand opening of the Namaste project, uh, Amy just talked about 20 applications in for 11 units. That's, you know, when I, when I am meeting with my clients, the first thing they talk about is home ownership. That's the first goal. The first, one of the first questions I have in client meetings is what do you want to accomplish in the next three years? 80% of them, I want to buy a home. And so, uh, for, for all of those reasons, again, I, I, I, I don't like the math of it, but for all of those reasons, I'm going to support the project. And, uh, I'm, I'm very excited to bring some intentional home ownership on 22nd. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council member Muhammad. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, everyone. I can't call everybody's name at this point for the presentation, or I would thank you for you, for leading the conversation. Um, most of my questions have been answered, and even questions that I didn't know I had were answered. So, um, it really speaks to the, the brilliance of my colleagues, and I appreciate that. Um, so, so I'll just go with the one that's left. Uh, how did we come up with the AMI split, um, knowing that the greatest need for housing is at that 80% mark? Thank you, council member. That's a good question. It's really, uh, through conversations with the community, um, conversations with the mayor, and also conversations with the Sankofa. Um, you know, we certainly understand, um, the numbers that are involved here. Many council members have talked about it, um, to do all the units at 120% AMI would make the numbers easier on this, frankly. Um, but we do have a commitment at 80% AMI, so we thought a fair split, 12 and 12, uh, was the best way to go to balance the financial concerns, um, and the concerns about serving 80% AMI families. I got you, and so I know we talked about it in previous projects where we looked at 100% and just sort of understanding it properly. So it's, we're recouping the cost with the sale, and of course, if you sell it at 120, you get more of the money back that we're investing. It's kind of the thought process, is that a layman's term? Yes. Thank you. Um, again, all of the other questions that I had, you know, have been addressed, but I do want to thank you all for your commitment, um, to this project. From the outset and the commitment to see it through. Um, you know, as someone who worked as, you know, community member on conversations around this when we were talking about the extension of Commerce Park and. Having facilitated and led community conversations and meetings where, you know, the community wants acres and ownership and not just, you know, square foot, square feet and rents. And to see you all committed to that, even if we can't have the commercial piece. Disappointed, of course, but we understand the cost because the point of the commercial was to help to drive, you know, the incubation and the business incubation and creating those opportunities. All of the things that come with that, not that it's off the table, but understanding just, you know, times have changed, seasons change. Um, so I appreciate that aspect of it as well. And then, um, looking at, you know, the, the potential for what it's going to do in the impact in the area, the shot in the arm of morale, because you're right. I think it was mentioned that there has been a lot of, um, delayed or stalled and outright failure of projects in this corridor. And so being able to see that we're going to close a cycle, um, that is community led community driven. Um, those who are participating in it, um, you know, being able to see this thing all the way through as much appreciated. And again, anything else I say at this point will be redundant. So I thank you, madam chair for the time. If I could chair, I just want to follow up in a comment on that because council member Muhammad, I think you made a really, uh, exceptional point there. One of the things that I hear the most is Rob, we need more affordable single family homes. And what we really need to do is build new subdivisions, uh, that are affordable for families. And I get that, but it's extremely difficult in St. Petersburg to find locations where we could build a brand new subdivision for a middle class family. Right. But this is something we can do. And I know these prices are high, but it's 24 townhomes. But I think even a bigger example of what we're trying to do is the five acres at the St. Pete college site, uh, which will be much more significant and a different process. Uh, and council supported the acquisition of that property, which we thank you for very much. Um, but from our perspective, those are really huge wins on moving the needle on single family home ownership. And so I just really appreciate the point that you made because I hear it all the time. So thank you, council member. Just last thing, not the last, last thing. Thank you for that, Rob. And the other, other point that I had in my mind was seeing the numbers, knowing that there's advocacy around city owned development, city owned property. And again, this is one of those, when you change hats, your perspective also changes when you, when you're in a, in a different side of the room, because we've been advocating for, you know, this idea of social housing and the, the, uh, city being the developer of the, of housing. Um, but when you look at the numbers and what it takes for us to do that as a city, I can have, I have a better appreciation for why we're not in this business and why we don't do this consistently. And I heard about the unknowns. And so I also appreciate the fact that we were willing to move forward and find out what those unknowns are, because if we do have future projects that come before us, um, or that are initiated, these are lessons that we are learning because we're taking this leap and really making our work bond with this commitment. And I appreciate that as well. Thank you again, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council member Floyd. Thank you. I have to do is disagree with council member Hamid. This is not social housing. Yeah. This is not social housing or any example of it. This is sale. It's ownership is what the key aspect of it is over the longterm. I just wanted to make sure that was clear because I know this has been an example of something as to why we didn't want to do that because this went so poorly. So they didn't want to, uh, risk anything else like that in the future. And I, I just don't think they're quite the same thing. And I want to make sure that's emphasized. Um, although I get, got your point. Yeah. Um, but I, I do just have two quick questions. I wanted to get clarified first on the sale. Are they, um, are the units open to just anyone? I know council member Montaneri started with this. Are they, we gonna, I know in other times like this, we've prioritized CRA residents. What's, what's the deal with, uh, this project though? I believe in this case, these are open to anybody who feels they're qualified to, you know, apply and seek, uh, to purchase one. Okay. And I'll just, I'll just add to that. You know, of course, according to fair housing, um, for sale units are always open to everybody. But frankly, that's one of the reasons why we were so happy to, uh, hire Mr. Mo and his wife and his team, uh, because of the connections and the sales experience they have in the CRA. And it's my understanding that they've been building an interest list, um, that, you know, is predominantly of CRA households. Um, and so through that waiting list, we anticipate that we will be able to serve a significant number of CRA households in this process while still adhering to the fair housing rules and regulations. Okay, great. Thank you for that. That's great to hear. Um, the last thing I wanted to ask, and I'm, I'm sure y'all did this, but what was the consideration when the, when the, uh, max price came in? Like, were other alternatives explored? I know we'd have to go back to the drawing board to a certain extent, but just what was that thought process like within administration? I think that would be enlightening. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question too. And actually Tom and I were talking about this, uh, today, um, depending on what happens with this vote, you know, and I'll just be honest with you. I think that, I think this has been five years for me, um, on this project, you know, and we're not even talking about the commercial. We're just talking about the residential. So if it doesn't pass and then we go to plan B, there's probably community conversations. There are, there's RFPs. Um, you know, we could have a, if, if this is approved, we have a shovel in the ground in three months. If we have to go a different route, it could be another three years, uh, before we're back in front of you. So that's, you know, part of the consideration. I think the other thing that is, you know, frankly, a little bit hard to deal with is the gas plant in the sense that we're not sure what's going to happen with the museum. Right? Right? So the property next to this is reserved for the Carter G Woodson museum. If the gas plant doesn't happen, doesn't get approved, we're going to continue to focus on the Carter G at that location. If the gas plant does gets approved and it looks like the Carter G is going to move, right? Then the Carter G could release us from our obligation on the property next to this. And that might impact what we might do with a future RFP. Right? But of course we could be waiting a year to see what happens with that. Then another year with an RFP. So, I mean, the point I'm obviously trying to get at is we've done a lot of work on this. We feel like we can be a catalyst right now. Yes. We've thought about other opportunities, but four or five more years of the property sitting vacant just breaks our heart, to be honest with you. Okay. You know, I'm not so sure that I believe that it would be four or five more years. I think we've done a lot of the groundwork at the site, literally and figuratively, to get it prepared for development in a way that we hadn't four or five years ago when this started. So, I'm not sure that's the case, but I guess where I'm at right now is like, I want to see a development at this site. I want to see us do it. But yeah, I just wonder what the breadth of possibility would be outside of this is all. Thank you. I'll leave it there. Thank you. First of all, thank you for the presentation. And I know when I had my one on one, I think I may have been one of the easiest sales on this. Because when I was asked what I thought about the subsidies, my response was, well, we subsidize everything else. So, why would we not want to concentrate on providing housing for this particular area that's going to bring us just maybe a step closer to providing? And we use the term affordable, but you know how I am about affordability. I want accessible. So, when we have 20 on the waiting list for 11 units, if I wrote that correctly, that's because they found out about it. A lot of my questions have been asked, but what was the marketing done? How are we going to move forward now that other people may find out that this is happening? That list of 20 is going to grow. It is truly going to grow now that they hear that we're moving forward with this. But my first response to this is that if we're going to subsidize some of the projects and some of the financials that we've seen here on the dais, if we can find the dollars for those, we can find the dollars for affordable housing. Is this our most prime example or method that we want to use? No. It is not. But every project that we've had has been unique in some way. And that's one of the advantages of being in this process prior to being elected, because I remember having the initial conversations about Sankofa. So I'm glad that we are finally here. Like I said, it's not the premier way that we wanted to get here, but like everything else, the costs have gone up. And we're going to subsidize something. Let us subsidize those 24 homeowners being able to experience a homeownership experience. So with that, we have a motion and a second for F1A. We have a motion. So can you open the machine for voting? Council members, can you please cast your votes? Now that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item F1A passes 5-2. With council members Driscoll, Fig Sanders, Gerdes, Hanowitz, and Mohamed voting yes. Council members Floyd and Montaneri voting no. And council member Gabbard being absent. Thank you. Now I entertain a motion for F1B. Move approval. Second. Having a motion and a second, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please cast your votes. Now that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Just one moment, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item F1B passes 5-2. With council members Driscoll, Fig Sanders, Gerdes, Hanowitz, and Mohamed voting. Council members Floyd and Montaneri voting no. And council member Gabbard being absent. Thank you. Now I entertain a motion for F2B. Move approval. Second. Having a motion and a second for F2B, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members Tapp, cast your votes. Now that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item F2B passes unanimously with council member Gabbard being absent. Now we'll move on to item F3 and F4. And bringing that to a presentation, the Special Project Manager, Beth Herodine. Yes. Did I say that correctly? You did. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, council members, Administrator Gerdes, and staff. I am Beth Herodine, Special Projects Manager, and I am so pleased to bring you these good items regarding to Sunken Gardens and the Sunken Gardens Forever Foundation. As I believe you all know, Sunken Gardens is in the process of building a new animal care center, which is expected to be completed this spring. So you'll be invited to that ribbon cutting, of course, and the animal care center will become the new nighttime home for our avian collection. And we'll meet all the new welfare standards for birds that were recently put into place by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Previously, birds were not under their standards, but they are now. So the city is funding the construction of the facility through our CIP budget, but the Sunken Gardens Forever Foundation has generously voted to donate $83,500 to fund custom bird enclosures needed inside the building that will allow each bird to have a permanent nighttime enclosure built to their specific or their breed specifications. So for a little bit of history for those who may not know, the foundation was loosely formed several years ago when the gardens needed to restock our flamingo flock. And they led the charge to raise $60,000 to acquire our 20 new Chilean flamingos. But since then, they've grown into an official 501 C3 and they have funded a number of projects and initiatives at the garden, including over $35,000 to fund Sophie and Zach at Sunken Gardens, which is a book program, giving up printing the book and giving it to all title one third graders in St. Pete. They raised $100,000 for our history center, $18,000 to deliver and install some new exterior aviaries in our garden, $15,000 for an archiving project. And we recently kicked off a joint business partnership program to help continue to raise funds to preserve the garden and enhance the guest experience. So I've only been here about a year next year, but I can tell you that the foundation's commitment to the garden is, I think, stronger than ever. So that is part one. And then agenda item F4 also pertains to our animal care center, and it's a supplemental appropriation in the amount of $69,500 from our fund balance. And that will allow us to install a new gate, security cameras, alarm panels, and purchase a few small miscellaneous furnishings for the center. So with that, I would respectfully request your consideration of both items. And I'd also like to point out that we do have some representatives from the foundation here. We've got founder Robin Reed, current president Lori Ann Gorey, and the head of their community engagement initiative, Ted Mallon. So thank you all, Council. Thank you. Councilmember Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair. And first of all, thank you for that wonderful presentation. I was the one that pulled this as good news because when I saw it, I said, this is something that has to be highlighted as something that is very special in our city, the work that you do. I will tell you that I have taken my daughter since she was a baby to Sunken Gardens. We used to go see Paquita, the parrot, and who's no longer with us. But it was, it brought so much joy to bring her into Sunken Gardens to see the animals because even like a two year old or three year old, it's very accessible to walk around. And she takes so much joy going in there and I just have such wonderful good memories of when she was a baby taking her and I still take her there. But then seeing all the things, the exciting things that are happening because of the work that you all do is fantastic. I had to point out that I just got the Northeast Journal and there is a great article of the book that you mentioned that they are doing. And I will say it's great that you are partnering with our title one schools. It's not just the book, but it's providing the field trips and sponsoring the field trips so the kids can go over there and have that learning experience and see the animals. And I think that's just, that's the type of partnerships that we love to see here. So thank you so much for doing the work you do, Robin. It's great to see you. Thank you, Lori and Ted for the work you do. I know Chris Balestra is here. Chris, if you want to say anything in terms of the project. I think that's covered it. Well, thank you. Chris Balestra city development. And again, I would echo your comments to thank the foundation, which has been supporting the gardens for not just many of years, many years financially, but in all types of other support in terms of guidance on how we run the gardens. And so that most recently was displayed with Robin in particular articulate detail and guidance on the history center, which we opened last year and continues. And we look forward to again, a long, long term relationship. That's a great public private 501C3 partnership that continues to bear great fruit for the city. Thank you, and just a plug there for those that don't know, membership yearly is very accessible to families. It's not expensive, so if you want to join, join Sunken Gardens. Thank you. Approval. Second. Now that we have a motion and a second on item F3, Mr. Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members cast your votes. Well, no. You got to press again, Brother John. Thank you. Now that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item F3 passes unanimously with council members Floyd and Gabbard being absent. Move approval F4. Second. Now that we have a motion and a second to approve F4, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, can you please? Yeah, wait a minute. There you go. Now that all of our present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item F4 passes unanimously with council members Floyd and Gabbard being absent. Thank you. Now we'll move on to F5, and we're going to welcome our Engineering Director, Bridgette Freyman. Chair, could we possibly take five by track down, Mr. Freyman? Okay. We will. It's just here. Yeah, he is. Unless you want to move to another item. Oh, there he is. There he is. There he is. There he is. Because this is the last one. There wasn't anything else before public hearing. I was a little. Hi. Engineer Freyman, how are you? Good day, council. Always a pleasure. First time for the start of the year, so I would like to wish you all the best to you all, as well as congratulations to the new chair and first chair. Thank you. So with that, I'd like to talk about the Shore Acres Watermain project. This is part of a larger vision of upgrading our infrastructure. These are localized and specific locations that need to be replaced. During times of extreme events, we're starting extreme temperature changes. We're starting to see failure on some of these older sections of pipe that we have. It gives us an opportunity. Again, it's a very isolated section at Overlook and Shore Acres. We'll be looking at designing that, and then there will be supplemental contracts that will come forward for the construction of it, as well as the amendment to the task order for professional services to handle the construction for your services. I will also like to mention that we'll also look at whatever operational improvements we could include as part of this project. And with that, we'll ask for approval. Council member Martiniere. Thank you, and I'll go ahead and move approval. Second. Thank you, Brej, for the update, and thank you, Claude and John, for being here. So this last storm that we had, we had some different problems. We had a water main break, but I believe it was a reclaimed water main in this same area. And I just wanted to bring this forward just to assure the neighborhood that these two things aren't connected, but I did want to kind of bring this in front of city council to have just a little presentation because I got some calls and some text messages on the water main break. So John, can you talk a little bit about that reclaimed water break that we had at the last storm? Yes, and so during the last storm, we had a service line break on our reclaimed service. So it was an irrigation service going to a customer, and the challenge was with the water standing over the roadway, getting to the valve, and fully shutting down the valve. We did end up being able to shut down that valve once the tornado passed and we were safe to get in there. And so that was the difference between like this project, which is a potable water main project, and the reclaimed water leak that we had during the storm event. The reclaimed week was not a result of the storm event. But it was the re the response to it was hampered by the tornado and the storm event. Okay, and I think I texted Claude right in the middle of that because I had received a text from some residents. They saw our crew come out and then the tornado warning came and they had to evacuate to a safer location. And some of the residents were going like they were just here. Why did they go? So when I saw this, I know it's a separate situation, but it's in the same vicinity. So I just wanted to have it come explain be it be have it explained to the city council. Well, thank you all for the information. Thank you. So we have a motion and a second for item F5. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council member, can you please cast your votes? Seeing that our present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item F5 passes unanimously with council members Gabbard and Hanowitz being absent. Thank you. And now we're going to recess council meeting until 5.01 p.m. when public hearings begin. Thank you. Thank you Madam Chair. We now call the meeting back to order. And we will now take up item J1 of our public hearing. Clerk, can you please read the title? Actually those resolutions, so you have J1 through 3. Move approval J1 through 3. Second. We have a motion to approve J1 through J3. Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Now that all present council members have voted, Clerk, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda items J1 through J3 passes unanimously with council members Driscoll and Gabbard being absent. Well, thank you Mr. Wall for being present. Now we're going to have item J4 and we're asking for our transportation, well would be presented by our transportation and parking management director, Evan Morin. How are you Mr. Morin? Madam Chair, I'm going to read the title. I'm well. Yes, read the title please. I'm sorry. We have the ordinance 567H. An ordinance amending city code related to parking enforcement for domestic and commercial equipment. Amending the definitions of domestic equipment and passenger motor vehicle. Clarifying commercial equipment parking for consistency throughout the code. Providing for servability and providing an effect if they can get it out. And we have one card for this item Madam Chair as well. Do you want them to do the presentation? Okay, go ahead please. Thank you, Evan Morin, Director of Transportation and Parking Management. I'll take you through a few slides here for background and what we're proposing to implement. So beginning early last year, the city began to receive repeated complaints about an increase in oversized vehicles parked primarily along the waterfront on 5th Avenue North, Bayshore Drive and North Shore Drive, adjacent to waterfront parks and a mix of condominiums and single family homes. These vehicles would park for long periods of time and not participate in normal vehicular turnover. Staying for quite some time then departing to make that we would normally see which would have vehicles depart and make room for other vehicles depart. Most of the vehicles in question were either RVs or vehicles that had been modified to have the characteristics of RVs. Education and enforcement action was successful in having the large RVs and buses abide by time limits that are imposed on domestic equipment. However, many of the vehicles were not subject to time limits based on the passenger van exemption that exists in the current city code. After the initial complaints were validated by staff and city council members who had received the complaints, a referral was made to the PSNI committee on March 2nd to initiate a discussion on updating the city code related to domestic equipment. That conversation occurred at the September 14th committee meeting and a motion was passed referring certain changes back to city council for consideration. On November 30th of last year city council approved the first reading and setting of the public hearing for today. The city has been regulating domestic equipment for a very long time. In fact, it's been over 75 years. This establishes a long history of the city having parking and storage restrictions for certain vehicles and items on the street or in the public right-of-way adjacent to residential property. Although there have been updates over the years such as jet skis were not popular in the 1950s, but the storage of trailers has been an issue for a long time. In addition to boats, jet skis, and trailers, additional named items have included other vehicles intended for camping and temporary living to include motorhomes, mobile homes, campers, travel trailers, recreational vehicles, pickup campers, tent trailers, and pop-out campers. However, there was an exemption for regular passenger vans 22 feet or less in length, which was intended to allow longer term parking for full size vans used for everyday driving. It's important to note that the code does not prohibit the parking of domestic vehicles or equipment, I should say, adjacent to residential uses or zoning. It only sets a time limit for such and that's generally four hours Monday through Thursday. So any vehicles that meet that definition can still park for four hours or on the weekends beginning Thursday and ending Monday morning. They could park for the whole weekend. So the primary purpose of the domestic or the amendment under consideration is to modify the definition of domestic equipment so that the original and ongoing intent of the longstanding ordinance remains in place. Specifically, if a vehicle has been modified in a way that essentially converts it from a regular vehicle to an RV or camper, then it is subject to the four hour limit when parked adjacent to residential uses. Such alterations or modifications would include the installation of a raised roof, exterior air conditioning units, deployed tents or awnings, clotheslines, generators, water tanks, and other aftermarket solar panels. So here's a couple of pictures that were taken earlier last year of several vehicles that were long-term occupying spaces along the waterfront. Here are pictures of two different modified vans that would need to abide by the time limit if the ordinance changes are passed today, but they would not need to abide by the regulations that are in place as we speak. Their YouTube videos published advertising St. Petersburg is a great place to visit and camp on the street is an example. There's even through Airbnb, you can experience van life in downtown St. Pete for one night for $59. It sleeps four and there's zero bathrooms. Another person who has a YouTube channel has advertised people to come here from other places as a great place to camp on the street adjacent to condominiums. As we discussed in the committee meeting, the issue of domestic equipment being stored on street is not just an issue that's occurred in downtown and north of downtown. But also other areas of the city. This picture is taken a few months ago in South St. Petersburg adjacent to apartment buildings near 34th Street South. And here's a couple of examples of vehicles which were found parked in the areas frequented by other RVs and modified vans, but they would not be affected by the code change because they have not been modified for camping purposes. We're also recommending a small change to the commercial equipment definition that will improve code consistency and clarity, as you can see here. And in alignment with the recommendation of the PS&I committee and vote at first reading, administration recommends approval of the item before you today. We'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you for that. Councilmember Floyd. Oh, I do have a card, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yes. Nick Bell, please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. And you have three minutes to address City Council. Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chairperson and members of the City Council. My name is Nick Bell. I reside at 106 14th Avenue Northeast in the Old Northeast. I am President of the Board of Directors of the Old Northeast Neighborhood Association. And I'm here today to speak on behalf of the Board, as well as concerned citizens in our neighborhood, along with our Vice President, Anna Brashears. I had the pleasure of coming here before you last November, when Mr. Morey introduced the ordinance we're considering today. I'd like to commend him for his presentation this afternoon, as I believe he did a very good job of illustrating the issue that we're addressing today. Specifically, vehicles that have been modified for living conditions and then parking essentially full-time on residential streets and avenues. I would like to once again comment on this proposed ordinance that would amend the definitions of our domestic equipment and passenger motor vehicles. Currently, there is no parking limit on streets in the Old Northeast, north of 10th Avenue Northeast, or on North Shore Drive or Beach. As Mr. Morey noted in his presentation for some time now, van lifers have taken advantage of this and have been using North Shore Drive specifically and other streets and avenues as permanent parking for their live-in vehicles, including modified vans to the school buses that Mr. Morey noted that were essentially turned into mobile homes. These live-in vehicles often involve makeshift camps around the vehicles themselves with cooking equipment, lawn furniture, sound systems, etc. Oftentimes, they also park halfway up onto the curb, the right-of-way, because it creates a level situation within the vehicle for sleeping purposes, so they're not sleeping sideways. We have no issue with anyone taking advantage of the wonderful facilities at our waterfront parks, from swimming pool, outdoor shower, to restrooms, the beach, etc. But we do not believe that these vehicles should be allowed to park full-time on the residential streets that border our parks. It's not legal for campers to camp or park overnight in our parking lots at the parks, and they cannot camp overnight in the parks. So we don't believe these vehicles, which essentially are camping vehicles or live-in vehicles, should be allowed to park on the streets. Mr. Morey pointed out, our city is getting a reputation online as a haven for van lifers. The board is concerned that we could be facing more and more of these vehicles if we don't take action to restrict the parking access. For that reason, the Old Northeast Board highly recommends that we pass this ordinance. Thank you. No more speakers. No more speakers. Council Member Florian. Thank you. I've got a question, one clarifying. So this makes it to where commercial equipment can't park on the street in residential areas. But I'm sorry, this makes it to where we are classifying something as commercial equipment, which means it won't be able to park on the street in a residential area. But doesn't it mean that you also can't park it in your front driveway as well? Is that the case too? So it's going to be subject to the same requirements as domestic equipment. And right now, domestic equipment is subject to the same time periods, whether you're in the road or in the front of your property. So on the weekends, yes. And that was for cleaning, maintenance, loading and unloading. So there was a discussion of maybe lessening those requirements for smaller vehicles. And that is scheduled to come back to PSNI. And so we can talk again about allowing that in the front. Right now, it has to be in the side yard behind a six foot fence or in your legal rear yard. Does anybody know how many properties in the city don't have side yards that they can access or alleyways that they can easily park their domestic equipment in? That's one of the so generally all of the neighborhood traditional. There are a few exceptions, but generally a neighborhood traditional zoning district is platted neighborhoods with alleys and they all have alley access there. Again, there are exceptions generally neighborhood suburban were later developed and they are platted without alley. So most of your neighborhood suburban neighborhoods do have front loading driveways or the circular driveways is usually a typical development pattern. Yeah. And neighborhood suburban is a significant chunk of the city. So, I mean, you own a passenger van that has a solar panel on it or a air conditioner attached to it. And suddenly we pass this and you're not able to park it on your driveway for extended periods of time during the week. That's, you know, could be a concern for people. Let me ask as well. I know y'all considered a lot of different things. What did, you know, just the idea of like timed parking in the problem areas like two hour parking or whatnot, three hour parking come up during this conversation? I think I'll let Mr. Morey answer that. I think that was something that they looked into. And I do know one of the concerns was potentially if we did that, it would just push it further into the residential neighborhoods. That's exactly correct. You know, if you use the example of North Shore, if we posted North Shore with the time limit, then you'd see more vehicles moving interior to the neighborhood. And at first we thought, well, maybe that won't happen because the desire is the waterfront view. But what we've come to find over time is that even though we haven't posted time limits on North Shore, there have been some vehicles that have chosen to park on the avenues within the neighborhood. We don't want to exacerbate that. And the good thing about the domestic equipment ordinance as it is today is that the citywide restriction that doesn't have to be posted by sign. And we don't want to put signs everywhere and we don't want to chase the problem by putting signs in here and then having to put in signs there like and just keep more and more and more signs and more and more restrictions. And we'd have to decide how many hours and so forth, but four hours during the day and then all weekend seem pretty reasonable to implement and in keeping with what the city's done for a very long time. Mm hmm. OK, well, I understand the concern and like I do think we should be looking for a solution to this, but I'm concerned about like, you know, it's wild that I will say this, but the property rights of people who are going to not be allowed to park like anything like this in front of their house. And I mean, I bring it up exactly my neighborhood does not have an alley and I live in neighborhood traditional and like there are a lot of things that I can't park at my house. There's no way to get it into a side yard of a very narrow property. And so, yeah, would like for us to continue to work on this. And I really hope that my colleagues are open to us having a conversation about fixing or, you know, some modifications to this in the future so that it does allow people in neighborhood suburban and places without alleys to be able to park things. But I would have hoped for a different outcome today. Thanks. Move approval. Second. I've received a motion and a second for item J4. Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please place your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item J4 passes six to one. With council members Driscoll, Fig Sanders, Gerdes, Hanowitz, Montaneri, and Muhammad voting yes. Council member Floyd voting no. And council member Gabbard being absent. Thank you. We'll now move on to item. Thank you so much, Mr. Morey. We'll now move to item J5 and we would like to welcome event recruitment and management director, Mr. Tony Leno. As he comes forward legal, we have two parts to J5, the resolution and the ordinance. Can we vote on those together or should we do those separately? We need to do those separately and do the ordinance first. Okay. Thank you. Good evening, Chair. Can you read the ordinance, Madam Chair? Yes, please. Proposed ordinance number 571H. An ordinance designating a portion of the downtown as a clean zone in order to regulate commercial activities during WWE Royal Rumble event. Designating geographic boundaries for the clean zone. Regulating temporary outdoor uses and temporary structures. Prohibiting certain portable structures or vehicles and signage. Providing for inspections and permits. Providing for increased penalties. Providing for conditions and restrictions. Prohibiting commercial activities in the right of way. Regulating locations for the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Providing additional regulations for existing businesses in the clean zone. And providing an effective date and we do not have any cards. Move approval. Second. J5A. They have a motion and a second for J5A. Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, can you please cast your votes? Just one more. Okay, we'll wait on J5A. Seeing the note present, Council members have voted. Council members have voted. Can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item J5A. Passes unanimously with Council member Gabbard being absent. Move approval J5B. Second. Having a motion and approval for J5B. Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members please cast your votes. Seeing all present, Council members have voted. Can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item J5B. Passes unanimously with Council member Gabbard being absent. Thank you so much. Thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you, Council. Next, we will have J6 and J7 presented by our deputy zoning official, Scott Boylan. Boyard. Did I see that correctly? Thank you. Good evening, Council Chair. I'll read the title for J6. Please read the title. Proposed ordinance number 1158V. An ordinance approving a vacation of the southern 30 feet of 40th Avenue North between 73rd Street North and 74th Street North, generally located at 3801 74th Street North, setting forth conditions for the vacation to become effective and providing an effective date. Madam Chair, we do not have any cards for this item. Move approval. Second. We're doing J6, correct? Okay. Have a motion and a second. I'm sorry. That was J6. We do have one card. I'm sorry. Unless. I'm sorry. I have one card. If needed. John Gottwald, if needed. I'm going to go ahead. If you need him to speak, he says he'll speak. Do you want to speak? Okay. If you don't want to, we're good. All right. Thank you. Thank you. You're not going to? No, it's okay. Thank you, Chair. Okay. So, I have a motion and a second for J6. You've already opened the machine. Council members, could you please cast your votes? Seeing all present council members have voted, can you please tell and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve J6 passes unanimously with Council Member Gabbard being absent. I'm going to entertain a motion for J7. We need to read the title. Oh, we need to read the title. We're trying to get out of here. Is it obvious? Yes. Is it that obvious? Okay. We have two ordinances. Can I do these back to back? You may, Clerk. Yes. Proposed ordinance number 1159V, an ordinance approving a vacation of five feet of right-of-way on the north and south sides of 87th Avenue North, generally located at 420, generally located at 420 and 429 87th Avenue North, setting forth conditions for the vacation to become effective and providing for an effective date. Proposed ordinance number 1160V, an ordinance approving a vacation of five feet of right-of-way on the north side of 87th Avenue North, generally located at 429 87th Avenue North, setting forth conditions for the vacation to become effective and providing an effective date. And we do not have any cars on this side. Approval of J7A and B. Second. I have a motion and a second for approval of J7A and B. Does he need to correct the title? Okay. Council members cast your votes. Now all present council members have voted. Please tally and announce the votes. Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda items J7A and B passes unanimously with Council Member Gabbard being absent. Thank you, Mr. Boyard. We appreciate it. Thank you. Now we will have open forum. Any speakers? Not on Zoom? Not on Zoom as well. Not on Zoom. Okay. Well, we will move on now to announcements. Does anyone have any announcements? Yes, we do. Council member Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. This weekend is the St. Petersburg Boat Show, so I just wanted to thank the city team for putting that together. I've been, I think, the last five or six years, and it just shows off our waterfront. It's a beautiful event, and I just wanted to say a big thank you. And if you can get out to see it, I think what our team here at the city puts together is just an amazing boat show, having been to a few across the state. So I just wanted to say a big thank you. We also have two birthdays coming up. Council member Hanowitz's 21st birthday is on January 20th. I think it's happening again. And council member Driscoll's legislative aide, who's on a plane to Hawaii right now, probably to get away from my singing, Brian Casanas Garcella's birthday is also next week. So let's sing happy birthday to Council member Hanowitz and Brian. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, everybody. I like everybody. Happy birthday to you. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council member Monteneary. Thank you, Chair. A couple days ago, the chair of the Holocaust Museum's board, Mike Eagle, was awarded the Tampa Bay Lightning, Community Hero Award. And with that award came a $50,000 donation to the Florida Holocaust Museum. And I wanted to congratulate Mr. Eagle for his work with the Holocaust Museum and his representation to the Jewish community here in St. Petersburg. Congratulations. Seeing no other requests for having announcements, we will officially adjourn. Be safe, everybody. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. .