City Council - Jul 20, 2023

Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1, Copley Gerdes, District 2, and Council Chair Brandi Gabbard, District 3, Ed Montenari, District 4, Lisette Hanowitz, District 5, and Council Vice Chair Deborah Fig Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, John Muhammad, and District 8, Richie Floyd. Good afternoon, everyone. We will call to order the July 20th, 2023 City Council Meeting, beginning with a roll call. Muhammad? Here. Floyd? Here. Curtis? Here. Gabbard? Here. Montenari? Here. Hanowitz? Vic Sanders? Here. Driscoll? Here. We will begin our meeting today with an invocation that will be given by Council Member Gina Driscoll, and followed by that will be the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand. Good afternoon, everyone. Please join me in prayer if that is your custom. Lord, we stand before you full of thanks and praise for this magnificent day and for all that you have given to us here on earth. We humbly ask for your blessing upon our city, all of its employees and its residents, so that the sun will continue to shine on all, reflecting the light of your love that touches each and every one of us as we are all created by you. Today, in these chambers, guide our hearts and our minds in the spirit of fairness and cooperation as we conduct the business of our great city. Impart your supreme wisdom upon our activities, so that we may serve you through our service to others. In your name we pray. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. You may be seated. Thank you, Council Member Driscoll, for that invocation. All right, Council Members, we have an agenda before us today. I'll entertain a motion to approve. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second to approve the agenda. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council Members, enter your votes. Seeing as all present, Council Members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve the agenda passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. Okay, and next we have our consent agenda before us. Do we have any public comment for consent agenda? We have no cards, Madam Chair, and there are no hands raised in Zoom. Okay, and seeing no request to speak, I'll entertain a motion. All right, we have a motion and a second. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council Members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, Council Members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve the consent agenda passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. All right, we will move on to open forum. Clerk, can you please read the rules for open forum? If you wish to address City Council on subjects other than public hearing or quasi-judicial listed on the agenda, please sign up with the clerk. Only the individual wishing to speak may sign up, sign the open forum sheet. Only city residents, owners of property, business owners in the city, or their employees may speak. All issues discussed under open forum must be limited to issues related to the city of St. Petersburg government. If you are speaking to an item on the agenda, you may only speak once during the open forum or when the item comes up on the agenda. In order to provide an opportunity for all citizens to address Council, each individual will be given three minutes to speak and after which the microphone will be muted. If you wish to address City Council through the Zoom meeting, you must use the raise hand feature button in the Zoom app or enter star nine on your phone at the time the agenda item is addressed. When it is your turn to speak, you will be unmuted and ask to state your name and address. At the conclusion of your comments or when you have reached the three minute time limit, you will be muted. All raised hands will be lowered after each agenda item. Regardless of the method of participation used, normal rules apply, including the three minute time limit on comments. The requirement that any presentation materials must be submitted in advance of the meeting and the rules of the quorum. If live public comment is disrupted by violation of the rules of the quorum, the chair is authorized to accept public comment by alternate means, including by email only. Madam Chair, no one has signed up for open forum and we have no hands raised in Zoom. Okay, we will close open forum and move on to our legal items and we will begin with item I-1 and I believe for all three items, we are joined by Assistant City Attorney Ken McCollum. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm here today. We have three different settlements to present to you on different cases. I'll just go in order that they are on the agenda. First up is Deborah Thompson. This is a case that involved a woman who was injured by one of our trucks down at Tropicana Field during the COVID era, at a COVID testing site. Essentially, one of the garbage cans ended up striking her in the head. The case was tried in front of a jury a few months ago. The jury put the majority of the liability on the city for this accident. So we are now into a damages phase, some pretty significant medical bills and wage issues because this was the nurse that was running the site. We have worked out a settlement agreement with plaintiff's counsel for $162,500. We do feel that this case if we were to try this damages section in front of a jury would be over the sovereign immunity cap. So we think this is a good resolution, and we're asking for a positive vote on this. Move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Seeing no request to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda I-1 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. Okay, and I-2. Okay, second item, the plaintiff's name is Zuhair Abdallah. This is also an automobile collision. This involved one of our fire department vehicles. It's a rear-end collision liability. It's clear in this case. The plaintiff has some fairly significant back and neck issues with a lot of treatment. It is set for trial in about four weeks. We reached a resolution with plaintiff's counsel on this for $75,000 to resolve the case going forward and seeking approval on that. Move approval. Second. And we have a motion and a second, and seeing no request to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item I-2 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. And I-3. Okay, final item is a little bit different. This is a workers' compensation washout settlement that was negotiated by our outside council that handles this. The former employee's name is Enrique Cipolo. He was a captain in the fire department for a number of years. This is a first responder cardiac presumption case. He has a number of different cardiac issues going forward. He is 55 years old, so the life expectancy is significant. It has a total exposure of over $250,000 if we were to take it to a hearing. It was resolved for a grand total of $50,000, including attorney's fees and costs, and it removes them from the workers' compensation rules for the city, and so we're seeking approval on it. Move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second, and seeing no request to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item I-3 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. All right, very good. Thank you, Mr. McCollum. Thank you, everybody. Appreciate it. Okay, we will move on now to a few of our report items. We will go to item F-4. This was an item that was pulled to reports, an agreement regarding artistic sculpture at the new sanitation headquarters site. We are joined by our arts and culture and tourism director, Celeste Davis. Celeste, I believe we also have the Public Arts Commission Chair, Laura Bryan, with us as well. No, we have the chair of the committee for the sanitation selection. Got it. Okay, wonderful. And you'll introduce her at some point. Okay, wonderful. I believe, Council Member Gerdes, was this the item that you pulled? Would you like to say any words before we start with the presentation? Thank you, Chair. No, I had a good one-on-one with Celeste and was able to get a lot of my questions asked. Really, my pulling of this item was twofold. One, I think it's exciting that this is moving forward. And also, I just thought it was important we heard some of the feedback from the sanitation department. And just kind of a discount double check. So, I appreciate it. And thanks for being here, Celeste. All right, very good. Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to report on the Public Arts Commission's recommendation to city council for the new sanitation building. Joining me today is Stacia Schrader, Chair of the Committee, and Willie Joseph, Director of the Sanitation Department. I will begin with the process that the Public Arts Commission, PAC. Thank you. This is my first time reporting, so thank you. I will begin with the process that the Public Arts Commission, PAC, followed in the selection of the work. And then ask Stacia Schrader and Council Member Floyd, who sat on the committee, to talk about the process and deliberations. PAC asked the Sanitation Department workers to name the piece, and Willie Joseph will be sharing about the naming process. This slide is the timeline. Discussions of the project began in December of 2020. By December of 21, 2021, more specific information was available regarding the project. March 2022, PAC is engaged to begin the process of recommending public art for the new building. I've included here a rendering of the beautiful new building, and on this slide is a detail. The yellow square indicates where the public art will be placed in the garden space in front of the building. Section 5-58 of the Code of Ordinances stipulates the committee make-up, and this slide shows the members of the committee and the compliance with the code. Jack Crooks served on the committee, representing the Sanitation Department. Mr. Crooks is on vacation and can't attend today's meeting. I asked him to email his experience on the committee, and that email was shared with city council. I'd like to read it now. Good afternoon, Celeste. Per our conversation about a year ago, I was asked by my director, Willie Joseph, to be a part of the Public Art Project Committee for the Sanitation Building. I was honored. Not knowing what the process entailed, I felt that the committee was a well-represented cross-section of St. Petersburg residents and businesses. Each stage and process to assess the artist was agreed upon by the committee and ran well by the chairperson. There was a lot of thought, time, and effort put into the decision to make oneness the art selected. The artist's proposal for oneness was the best representation of sanitation's history, innovation, and character. Thank you to Frank Lattimore for naming the piece, and thank you for following me, for allowing me the honor of participating on the committee. Sincerely, Jack, Environmental Sanitation Services Manager. Here is the RFQ with the criteria. Stasia Schrader and Council Member Floyd can share more about the criteria for the RFQ. The Sanitation Department Public Art Committee met over six months, beginning in May, to go through the 100 submissions and selected the proposed public art for the new building. October 24th, the committee narrowed the selection to three artists and asked those artists to create a proposal for the January 23rd meeting. And it was during that meeting that Donald Gialonella's piece was selected. Approved the selection in March of 2023, and also asked the Sanitation Department to participate in naming the piece. June of 2023, the name Oneness was approved. And here we are today, July 20th. We are submitting this for approval by City Council. Here is the piece that was selected, Oneness. It sits on a plinth because part of the requirement is that it's elevated out of the garden. And then here is the artist's statement. And I'll ask Stasia Schrader to come up. Thank you, Celeste, and hello, everyone. So I've been on the Public Arts Commission for seven, maybe eight years. And as a committee member, I have learned over the course of being the City of the Arts that there are two things to always keep in mind. One is we are shepherding public funds. So on the Public Arts Committee, as well as within our collection, there are certain regulatory pieces that we need to ensure that this art ticks off. It's got to last 25 years. So I know that we are the City of Murals right now, too, but murals don't last 25 years. So we have to remind our committee when we form that as to what we really are purchasing with our public funds. The second side is the creative process. And art is highly subjective. My husband and I can't even figure out what we want to put on our mantle at a given holiday. I have a favorite, he has a favorite, and that happens with our Public Arts Commission, as well, and our public arts. So in order over the last seven to eight years to really get a streamlined process that is inclusive of our community, we have a pretty strict initial committee. You will see that there are three Public Arts Commission members on that committee, so that we can keep the process moving forward with the process that we have put in place. We have a committee member at large. That can be anybody from St. Pete. We generally have somebody that is going to work in the building, if it's a city building, or maybe someone from our Parks and Rec that may have to keep up the piece. Someone that is going to be experiencing this art on a daily basis, hopefully. We've got a committee member that is an artist, an arts administrator, so that we are keeping the creative side of our process in place. And we generally try to include someone in the architectural realm. We were fortunate enough to have one of the actual architects for the project tell us whether or not what we were bringing in board and really our passion was picking was going to be able to sit atop the area in the way that they know is being built or potentially changing where the art would be in the final rendering. So once the committee is in place, we have open discussion. I think that there was one more arts administrator, the architect, sanitation department, and a neighborhood representative. We have someone that lives in that neighborhood that's also going to maybe not work in the building, but will become a part of oneness in this regard. The committee, once they're formed and accept to come in as volunteers to go through the process, the committee members explain that, hey, what I've just told to you, it's got to last 25 years. Where do we want to find the artist from? We have a great passion in St. Pete to keep things local, but when we're spending public funds, we may have to cast a wider net to get the best piece of public art to tell the story that we are asking this art to hopefully tell. So this committee, when we got together, we chose to not just go St. Pete, but go Florida, go beyond, because of the story behind this. They weren't quite sure of what the story was, so we had Frank Peterman, who was our historian, invited in by Kimberly Jackson, to tell the story of the sanitation strike. We were educated with his telling of the story. His mom was a Times writer for the St. Pete Times and was able to really give us a historic, very passionate story of what happened. We were also given items to read from history to really understand about Mr. Savage, what his story was. And everybody on the committee learned something. I've learned something from every single piece of public art that I've been involved with that I bring back to my community. It's a wonderful learning experience for us. Along with Mr. Peterman, Jack Crooks was able to explain to us about the innovation with the sidewinder of the trash trucks, that that was a patented process that our sanitation department was able to develop. They were able to be paid over time. I did not know that. I think it's pretty cool. My trashmen think I'm pretty cool that I now know that. So it's something, again, that we want to make sure that we understand what this piece is. The innovation, the recycling piece is something that St. Pete takes near and dear to their heart as well. So once the committee had that information, then we cast the net nationwide. And we have a couple different ways to get out to the artists to ensure that we get enough submissions to have enough to pick from. And so we used the cafe platform, and we had 100 submissions come in. And the 100 submissions is a good number on these committees. That's a very good number for our budget. There are certain things within that RFQ, which is qualifications, that are covered. That's when it comes back to us. We need to ensure that the artist is able to create a piece of artwork that will withstand hurricane winds. Do they have someone on an engineering pipeline that can help them understand what the material is to make sure that it can last 25 years and our son? They also should have had public art already. We have programs within the Public Arts Commission for new artists. The West Side Projects is part of that, to team them with an existing public artist to give our newbies, our new artists, a chance to have public art. But we need to make sure that these artists have done something publicly if we're going to be spending the dollars. So within our 100 RFQs, we had a lot of murals. I would say maybe 20 to 25 percent of the first submissions were not eligible for the 25-year rule, or they maybe didn't have the history. The 100 first applicants, we were all, again, the volunteers were sent home as a committee to look at those one-on-one. We didn't have discussion about those, but we all came and had a voting process to figure out the top ones that we were going to bring through to the next level. So within the RFQ, there are pieces of artwork. There may be, we have some public artists that have a piece in Chicago that Chicago doesn't want to buy. And so they're trying to shop it out to other cities that have a budget to buy public art that might be something we want to put somewhere in our city. But this particular piece had a story behind it. So someone's piece of public art that they were just trying to find a home for may not have been accessible. And it's pretty apparent when you're going through the RFQ and the applicants that some of these pieces are just a piece of art in their collection they're trying to sell. There is also a written word part of the RFQ, and that's where the three finalists really came home on the RFQ side. They told the story. We knew that they had read what we were asking them to put forward. That didn't mean, and I cautioned the committee, to not poo-poo somebody because they didn't take the effort in the first time. They may have the skills to tell our story, but make sure that you're really looking at both the story that they're telling us as well as the art that they can put forward and bring those into consideration for the final. The artists, because it is a business for them, the RFQ, you do have people applying for everything. Once we get down to our final three, they're given a stipend. At that point is when they really start thinking about our story and how they're going to come forward with the piece of art that we would then commission. So through the process, we narrowed it down to 20 at one of the meetings. We got to go home and rethink about those 20, and then came back and had a creative discussion about the final three, who would be given the stipends to come back and present one-on-one to our committee. The committees that I've been on here in St. Pete have been engaged. This one was very easy to work. We had processes in place, and the members were highly engaged. We were never worried about a quorum. People showed up. We organized that. We were able to get everybody to move this project forward. We knew that we had a time frame of roughly 15 months to hope that the architect could get this piece built and up while the building's being presented. So if there are lighting, there may be lighting that has to be embedded into the building of the actual structure. The piece came down to the final three. We had Donald Gialanella, who happens to be from St. Pete. He's a prolific public artist that other cities collect. We just haven't had him in our collection. That was exciting to us, but we didn't pick him for that reason. But people were proud that he was a St. Pete artist. The other, we had another artist that was a welder, and he had a very passionate story. He's a Florida artist. The piece didn't tell our story enough. It told part of it, but the committee just felt that this sort of, it hit the innovation side, the strike and the strength of our city, and the healing of the circular ring. The other piece came through that was a very interesting piece, and it was really an international artist that St. Pete had come into our midst, and we gave them a chance to present the final side. They were a big, big group of public artists that when they presented to us, the final result was not apparent. We would have brought something to you to vote on that we didn't know what the final art was. It was too open-ended. They didn't really give us exactly, it might be a book, it might be a bench, it might be something that was not finalized, and we could not really steward, again, spending the public funds on an idea. We wanted to have something that was concrete. Throughout the process, the committee had great discussions in that engagement. Nobody felt that they couldn't speak up. We had, again, the architect there in the room that was able to help us determine whether or not the piece would play. One thing about the area. So, this is right behind, as you know, Home Depot that gets all the traffic. And then you come down, I think it's 28th, yeah, 28th Street. And this is going to be set back where the new building sits. So, it's almost a block off of 28th. And the committee wanted something that you could see from 28th, that you're going to notice. This is almost two stories high. Oneness is a huge piece. He is triumphant. I have goosebumps when I think about this in that spot. The metal that's used on his body will not change, really, over time. It can withstand our weather. The ring is metallic. It's stainless, so it will shine bright. The artist is also, he's got a video that he's made while he's making this piece that will be available to maybe put into the break room so that it will be on a loop, so that we understand the story of this piece and the two pieces of history that really were, that he was tasked with telling. He's extremely excited about that side. And, of course, we'll have a plaque to recognize the artist, but also the story behind it for those newbies that may come through that don't know. But the creative side, I think, was, again, it's subjective. We have to try to find the best piece of artwork for a final presentation to you. And I truly think that what we were presented became through strong. So I thank you for listening. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Floyd? Yeah, I'll just add, I think they've covered it really well. Just to summarize, we went through what I was very impressed with. It's my first time being on a selection committee. It was a very thorough process. We had people come in and speak to us about the sanitation strike. We had a history lesson. We put what I thought were very thoughtful messages into the RFQ. And the artists that we actually chose, I keyed into very early on in the process, because they spoke straight to what we were looking for right off the bat. I'm very happy that we were able to get someone from St. Pete. I'm sure you've all heard it. They always wanting, constituents always want to see artwork in St. Pete from people in St. Pete. And it just happened that this fell that way. And then the piece of art is really going to be incredible. It's going to be huge. I mean, I could misspeak, but I can't think of another thing off the top of my head that's this large, this tall, for sure. So it's going to be really exciting. You'll be able to see it from the road, even though it's pretty far set back. And the message, you know, I like. It's about solidarity and how the sanitation workers came together to fight for better jobs, better working conditions, better pay. And I think it symbolizes it pretty well. So I'm really excited to have this move forward today. And I'll move approval. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Do we have any cards on this item? Or Council Member Montaneri, go ahead and start us off. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Celeste, for the presentation. Ms. Schrader, thank you for your leadership. And you did a very, very nice job of talking about the process that you all went through. And so let me just start off by saying I want to be very careful in my remarks. But I want to say what I need to say, because we have a lot of committees that do great work for us in the city. And if something comes to city council, we're like the last stop when it comes to things. But I want to respect the work that our committees and commissions do for the city. But I also think there's times to speak your mind on something. I have to say from a personal point of view, I think we could do better for our sanitation department. Just my, as long as I've lived here in St. Petersburg and my time on city council, my knowledge of the sanitation department, there's been two giants here in our city that have served in our sanitation department. Joe Savage is one of them. And Mr. Ben Shirley was the other. And from my point of view, I don't want to create a piece of art that you need somebody to explain what you're looking at. I imagine, and where my mind goes, is you've got two people that you could make a sculpture of that were giants, not just in our sanitation department, but in our city, and that were true pioneers and leaders. And I could see a sculpture with the two of them in some form, and the name could be leadership, because that's what they were. They were pioneers. They stepped out in very tough times. Mr. Savage led our city through a very difficult time. Mr. Shirley came to our city and spent decades in our sanitation department and reorganized and led. And he was just such a natural leader. I got to know him while he was still alive. And he was just somebody that, he was such a strong leader, you wanted to follow him. And I think of, and I wrote a note down here, I think of the statue that we made of Elder Jordan, that's just south of the Manhattan Casino. Yes. It tells a story about another very important man in our city. And that's where my mind goes. I think we could do better than what is presented before us. And I'd like to, my question is, what were the other two finalists? What were they, you know, how close did they come? Was it a unanimous vote by the committee? Can you tell us a little bit more about the number two and the number three? The number one piece was, and maybe Stacia should come up, or Councilmember Floyd, was a metal sculpture as well. Both of them were interpretive, so nothing was a statue, but that was not part of the request. The request, the proposal and the request asked the artist to interpret the story, not to be representative of two figures. And so that's what we received. Okay, all right. Well, I find, did you say Mr. Shirley was here? Some? Joseph. Mr. Joseph. Joseph, I'm sorry. Good afternoon, everyone. Hi, Willie, how are you? Thank you. So can you tell us, have you received, tell us the feedback that, has your department weighed in on this? We were part of the, as Celeste mentioned earlier, we were part of the naming process, which I was so glad that it gave us the opportunity, the sanitation department, to name the piece. And with the employees that participated, they really took the thought and the part of the, what it represented, to come up with that name, that they took a lot of time and thought process to come up with really good names for that piece itself, to the point whereby Celeste and myself, Celeste and myself kind of had to narrow it down. There were so many different names that really fit the piece very well that I think we narrowed it down to about what was the total number about? I think we narrowed it down to five, but I also would like to note that we had to take out, I had to go to Google because a lot of them were Greek God names and they were just very insightful. insightful and we talked about how thoughtful the names were that the workers actually shared. Okay. All right, so the members of the sanitation department that were part of the process, they were just part of the naming process, not- Yes. Did they give any feedback on- And we had Jack Crooks. Yes. Spoke about earlier, was actually a member of the committee himself, so. Okay. All right. And, Ms. Schrader, when you made the comment that sometimes you and your husband don't agree to, you know, what goes on the mantle, I understand art. You know, some people have different tastes in things. I just wanted to verbalize, I have a very high standard for our sanitation department and I know the people involved do too. And, I just want something that really reflects, especially those two leaders that I talked about. And, just so you know, I was on the Elder Jordan committee. Mm-hmm. So, I understand that that was a piece that was commissioned as a sculpture. Mm-hmm. So, when you commission out for art, that would have been through the committee's processes of what type of art, you know, we're requesting on the RFQ. So, we could have thrown a call out for just sculpture as a style of art. I understand we did get a few, you know, come through that were considered out of the hundred. Mm-hmm. Correct, Richie? Yes. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say there was at least one that I remember, artists that responded that wanted to do a sculpture. Mm-hmm. And, I did rank them quite high, but they didn't make it to the finalists. And, that's pretty much it. I mean, there was other people who did things that were maybe not a sculpture, but maybe spoke to what you're saying, like were very direct, like pictures of events and whatnot. But, they didn't make it to the finals either. It was voted on by the group. I voted for some of them, didn't vote for others. But, I would say that, you mentioned earlier, I don't think it was fully covered, but you asked about the last vote and the winner won significantly over the other two finalists. It was not close. I think, out of the three that were picked, this one really stood out the most. But, again, from my perspective, there was others that I voted for that didn't get chosen, but that's sort of just how it works, you know. Okay. And the other thing, we've got a couple of different ways to rank the art in the picking of that. So, you know, there are, the committee sort of picks how they want to, you know, to point system it out. And the one that was chosen, there's one that's more of a medium range, like, okay, we're going to get a piece of art, but it may not have as much emotion attached. Mm-hm. And the committee chose the process that it's either going to be the number one or the number five. It's going to be the one that elicits the most emotion, and that's what I think this, you know, to your point, there were a lot that were good. This one had, you know, the higher, I think the average number of higher votes is how it did. So, but I fully understand your view. Being a part of it, I think, I look at it and I see Joe Savage. I see, you know, I see him represented in that and I know it doesn't look like him. But to me, he represents his struggle and the stories that I know about our city. And he is a very important person in my understanding. I respect him a lot. So I would hope that this piece could be respected as much as he, but he's the man. And I will have to do my history on the other name. I know the name, but I don't know the story. So now I will go to my St. Petey in history. All right. Thank you. Thank you again for your service. And I want to thank all the members of the committee. And thank you, Council Member Floyd, for your service on this committee too. And thank you for hearing from one Council Member. And I did want to get something on the record of how I feel about this. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. It was really helpful to hear from everyone on how the process worked. And it sounds like it did. Um, I appreciate knowing that this was, um, can we fix the audio working on it? Okay. Yeah. Thanks. Um, it was, it's helpful to know that, um, this was like above and beyond the others. And, and that there wasn't something that was close because I was going to ask for images of, or renderings of the other finalists so that I could see for myself what, what was chosen. Um, I think in this case, what's most important to me is that, um, the members of our sanitation department like this and want this. Because this is truly about them and, um, the, the legacy and the history that created, um, the environment that they work in today. And that, that does speak to, um, Mr. Savage and Mr. Shirley. And when Willie stands there and says, you know, we, we got to take part in this and, and that means a lot to me. I remember when I was on the public arts commission, my first year on city council, we were selecting the artwork for the new police headquarters. Uh, and the sculptures that would be in the lobby and outside, those look nothing like police officers, but they were amazing. The reason, well, they're amazing. And our, the members of the police department who were there weighing in, that was what they liked too. So I said, if that's what they want, then that's what I want. And once it was installed, I got a call from, um, another elected official on, uh, in, uh, on, on the state level and said, uh, why is there a pineapple on the corner by the police, the new police station? And I said, it's not a pineapple. Go look again and look at the, look at the words. And then I want you to, I want you to go at night. And then I want you to stand outside and look in the window at that wing that's there. It's called shielded. And here's what it means. Um, a lot of people like to have art be, you know, very plain spoken and, and, um, and, and quite literal. Um, I tend to like, um, the symbolism that goes with it. I do like the, um, the ring. Um, the ring once I understood it, um, I hope that others will that once this is built, um, I hope that it will make members of the public curious because not only my, will they learn what the artwork means, but they might learn part of the history of our city and what led to that artwork. So, um, I, I was, I was a little unsure about it at first, but now I understand it much better myself and I do support this. So thank you for taking the time, um, to bring us into this a little bit more. Thank you for the opportunity. Vice Chair Fick Sanders. Thank you. I know that this had to be difficult. Trying to accommodate the requests and perspectives of so many people in regards because this truly is a lasting endeavor. It's going to be there for years to come. Um, I have to say, I do agree with Council Member Monterey knowing the sacrifices and what Mr. Shirley and Mr. Savage actually meant to our sanitation department. And I love the creativity of art and the retrospect and looking this, what it means. But when it comes to history, I don't want us to lose it. And for those that don't know what that time was really like for our city, it's just going to be a pretty statue. Right. To others, but it's not going to commemorate what that time really meant to the St. Petersburg, but it's pretty and it's nice. Um, but I do agree with count. And when I saw it, so I'm glad you brought it up. When I saw it, that's the first thing that came to my mind is it's nice. But to me, it didn't reflect that time, the moment that so many people lost so much for. I mean, it was known nationally, the endeavors of Mr. Shirley and Mr. Savage. Um, I'll support it, but again, that was my first thought when I saw it. It's okay. It's nice. It really is nice. But I was just looking for something just a little different. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Clay. Thank you. There was discussion of like some sort of plaque or something. There will be a plaque. Okay. Okay. In front of the piece. With like a description of history. Yes. Okay. It will tell the story. Thank you. I just wanted to get that confirmed. Okay. Yes. Okay. Thanks. All right. So we have a motion and a second. Seeing no further requests to speak. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all present council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item F-4 passes unanimously with Council Member Hanowitz being absent. All right. Thank you, Ms. Davis. Thank you, Ms. Schrader. Thank you for your service. And thank you, Council Member Floyd for your service as well. All right. We will move on now to item F-2. We have our F-DOT major projects update. Joining us today is Transportation and Parking Management Director, Evan Morey. And also, I believe, some folks from F-DOT. So go ahead and turn it over to you, Mr. Morey. All right. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Council. Thank you for this opportunity to bring you up to speed on several FDOT projects. By way of quick introduction, Richard Moss is, he has a really long title, but we'll call him the Planning Administrator. For District 7. And then Brian Hunter is here also. He's Government Liaison Administrator, for short, also. First off, I'd just like to thank F-DOT for their collaboration and for their investments in St. Petersburg. We are at a time when the investments coming in from F-DOT are relatively unprecedented. These amounts of dollars and projects were not coming to St. Petersburg five or ten years ago. And so I'd like to thank them for that. What you won't see on the screen today, I wanted to mention too, is some other investments that have been made and are being made by F-DOT. So the Cross Bay Ferry F-DOT is putting operational money into that right now to make that more affordable to the local governments. They are helping to fund the downtown looper circulator right now. They have contributed funding, major funding to the 40th Avenue Bridge replacement, even though that's not a DOT bridge. They are contributing major funding to the ML King Bridge over Booker Creek, even though that's not a DOT bridge. And last but not least, they put in $10 million towards the Sunrunner to be able to bring that to St. Petersburg. So the projects besides these that are going on really help us with increased mobility. Also, you're going to see capacity project increases, things that help with traffic flow and reducing congestion. And also very importantly, safety. So it's hard to balance all those things, but I think they're doing a good job and we'll walk you through those projects. Thanks, Evan. Good afternoon. Like Evan said, my name is Richard Moss. I'm for short, I'm the Plimo administrator with that. I'm here to talk about some of the projects that we've got going on in St. Pete and some of the really centric other projects you'll see that are centric to getting people to and from St. Pete. This is the big one right now. Everybody, as you drive across I-275 on the interstate, going to Tampa or coming back to Pinellas County. We've got the Howard Franklin Bridge. It's a $870 million project. A lot of things are going on with this project right now. As you can see from the photo there on the right, you can see part of the deck that's been poured. That side of the bridge is, I believe, about 20 feet of that bridge is being retrofitted with additional steel. So we can meet our commitment to putting rail on that bridge in the future if it does become part of the transportation system. That was a commitment made to Pinellas County and the Tampa Bay region by FDOT so we could do that. And there will be some things that we do if that does become available to the existing bridges to make that happen. The size of this bridge is very big. It's 170 feet wide. It's 15, it's five miles long, or excuse me, three miles long. And the contractor right now is on schedule to complete this project in late 2025. And what that is, is he will complete removing the 1959 span. And when he's done with that, we will be done. The new bridge is looking good. They're moving forward. I've been told that they're going to be out of the water, which means that they will have all of the substructure, which is the supports for the main new bridge by late summer, early fall of this year. So they're moving well. Got a lot of things going on with this bridge. One of the unique things too, whenever you'll see, whenever we put new traffic on the new bridge, we will close down the current southbound lanes and do maintenance on the bridge without traffic on it. Which is a very safe thing with the new bridge will allow us to do that. And then after that, we'll switch the traffic into the permanent condition and then demolish the existing 1959 bridge. This is Gateway Expressway in Northern Pinellas County, connecting us 19 over to 275. And then that connection from the Bayside bridge down to the airport and over to 275 construction started. I believe five years ago, it's about a $600 million project. It's getting close. We've had some issues over the duration of the construction with COVID. So it's been delayed a little bit, but the contractor is working really well on that. We did do a supplemental on this project to put in a connection to I-275. So whenever we come through with the managed system on I-275, it will be set up for that. So we won't have to do a whole lot of retrofitting on that. Currently on scheduled to be mostly completed by the end of the year this year or early in 2024. Sneak this one in. This is the West Shore interchange. This is a regionally significant project. Whenever the Howard Franklin Bridge comes online, we will be putting the bottleneck back in for a limited amount of time until we can get the West Shore interchange built. We've fixed the problem and we understand with the widening of the Howard Franklin Bridge that we're going to have to come back and make sure that we get that done. And that's within the West Shore interchange. Looks like we're going to start construction probably in the fall of 2024. We're currently working with the design build team to get the plans ready and moving forward with that. This is the I-275 capacity improvements for Pinellas County. I-275 from the Howard Franklin down to 54th Avenue South, I believe, is the endpoint of the purple section. It's part of the northern section. The pink section is on the My Florida Moving Florida Forward list and we're working with to get that ready for that. It's not currently funded. Right now we've got the design, the length, the right of way. We have one or two parcels on that to be able to have that ready for the design build team. We'll be ready whenever the funding does become available. It is the number one priority of the district on the interstate system to get this going outside of the West Shore interchange. As you can see, we're starting to, you know, grow our managed system from the Howard Franklin, both east and or north and south. Excuse me, 275 North South corridor. So this section is moving forward. The next section is down to 375 and this is a typical section of what it'll look like. We have two managed lanes in each direction with the general purpose lanes of going north and south. It's currently not funded, but we're in design and it'll be ready whenever funding does become available. And the southernmost section is from 375 South to 54th Avenue South. This is the lane continuity project in Pinellas County. We're working hard to get some, the lanes to where you don't have to move over going south, going north from the skyway up to the Howard Franklin. It's currently in design and construction cost is about $98 million. So we're working to get I-275 completed through Pinellas County. So we don't have any, hopefully any major congestion through there. It's a critical, it's a critical connection for Pinellas County and the city of St. Pete over to Tampa and Tampa International Airport and the West Shore connecting West Shore with the gateway. Two very big business centers, so it's very, it's very important and we're moving forward with them. We're, we're in the process. I think we're in a good spot to be able to get these things built in the, in the near future. This is a State Road 687 up in 4th Street from 30th Avenue North to 94th Avenue North where we've gone in and put in some pedestrian crossings and extended some left turn lanes and converted some meeting opening to directional meeting openings for safety. Um, trying to direct traffic a little bit more to where they, um, don't have the, the, the opposing movements. And, and that looks like we're going to be done mid mid year next year in 2024 working on that. This is a project that we completed in April of this year. Um, partner with the city on this working on pedestrian safety on 5th Avenue North from 4th Street North to 6th Street North. Um, put in some pedestrian and construction was completed, like I said, in 2023 April. We're going to continue on 5th Avenue North going, going west from 4th over to Tyrone Boulevard. Um, resurfacing with safety improvements and new pedestrian crossings. Um, we got a little bit of right away. We got a, um, procure to be able to do some of the construction work on the sidewalks. We'll be starting later this year on that corridor. We've got us 19, um, from 34th, excuse me, 34th Street South from 54th Avenue South to 22nd Avenue North. It's a complete street project with bat lanes, sidewalks and crosswalks. Um, we're going to do some lane repurposing as you can see in that typical on the outside lane for the bat lanes. And, um, put in some cross crosswalks with signals at 3rd Avenue South. Um, it is the PSTA Route 34. Um, we have a little extra pavement out there. So we were able to do some, um, repurposing out there. Construction should be completed late in 2024. And with that, I will be open to questions. All right. Thank you so much for the presentation and for being here with us today. Yes. No problem. Council member Montaneri. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, thank you, uh, Mr. Moss for the presentation. Yes, sir. And I forget your name, sir. Brian Hunter. Oh, thank you. Thank you for being here. And thank you, Evan, for introducing this. I, uh, went to, uh, Evan maybe six months ago and asked for an update of Interstate 2. 75 and, and what was going on because there was a couple of things that I noticed. One was the traffic volume, uh, through, uh, St. Petersburg. Uh, we just had a lot of traffic, uh, that was backing up. Uh, and, uh, there was, I also noticed, uh, traffic signals on some of the on ramps and wanted to know how those were gonna work. And, uh, Evan explained to me a little bit about the, uh, I believe a future BRT route that's gonna be running on shoulders is the purpose is the reason for those lights. It's actually for, um, an existing program where the buses can merge onto the shoulder if traffic's backed up. And those lights only come on if there's a bus traversing the shoulder to make that safe passageway. So it's activated very infrequently and only when needed, but that program's going on right now. They're, so they're, they're operational? They are, but you've probably never seen it on because it barely ever happens. Okay. All right. And then, Mr. Moss in your presentation, did I understand you correctly that none of the capacity increases through on interstate 275 through the city of St. Petersburg have not been funded? At the current time, they are not funded. Okay. I don't know if I can go back and go back to the presentation, but, um, they had the three sections we have are not currently not funded. Okay. But they are on our priority list. Like the, the pink there is one of the projects that we submitted to the governor's office for moving Florida forward. It did get chosen, but when we, now we're just working on, um, procuring the funding currently though, right at the, at the moment it is not funded. Okay. All right. Um, and then, uh, the other question that I had was the ramp, uh, if you go westbound on, uh, across the Howard Franklin into St. Petersburg, one of the first exits is the fourth street. Yes. When, when do we expect that ramp? Fourth street and the big island gap bridge there, there, they will more than likely be a late summer to, um, early fall opening. We're just, they're both bridges are about the same schedule, but we got to get them completed of this year. Yes, sir. Okay. Um, good. And then the, my last question, and I don't know if this, uh, pertains to you, but we used to have a marker that was funded by a private entity, uh, that had to be removed. Uh, uh, up there adjacent to, uh, 275. What's, what's the status of, of that? Uh, I believe the, the St. Pete marker was removed. It was there by permit. So we removed it and it was, it's gone. Okay. All right. Um, I mean, I take it that's not an FDOT or a city issue because it was privately funded. We considered the cost to relocate it as a potential city expense, uh, FDOT expense or the donor's expense. And the cost of relocation was a, a very large number that none of the three entities wanted to move forward with. So it was chosen for removal. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for the update. I appreciate the, uh, the information. Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you. And, uh, thank you for this update. It's really so refreshing to have an entity, um, like FDOT and specifically District 7 as a, as a partner with so many of these projects. Um, you're really, you really keep Tampa Bay moving. Um, and I love seeing how with the current projects, you really have an eye towards the future. Um, and you're building in those things like the potential for adding rail to the Howard Franklin Bridge if we can ever get voters to agree on that. Um, and then we'll, and then we'll worry about funding it. But for, for now, everything from the, the sun runner to helping us make pedestrian safety, um, improvements. Um, you guys have, have really been there for us as a city and, um, as a board member for, for PSCA. Um, I, I've seen such a great partnership that you guys have had with that agency to help our public transit really, uh, move forward and, and be, uh, looked at with quite a bit of respect, especially, uh, since we launched the sun runner last year. So really just wanted to thank you for that. Um, it seems that the, the relationship that, that we have is stronger than ever. And as our region continues to grow, that becomes even more important. Um, I know it's, uh, a little easier when you get to work with someone like Evan. Uh, cause he's pretty awesome. And, um, and he, he is, I want to thank you too, Evan, for, uh, being such a great communicator with FDOT in things that just smaller things that come up in our committee meetings and so forth. Um, so I'm just really proud of the work that we're all doing together and I can't wait to see what we do next. Yep. Thank you. One thing I, I, I, I forgot to mention on the Howard Franklin bridge, we are putting a bicycle path across the bridge, so it's going to connect, um, uh, both sides of the bay. But it also is, we mentioned the four street bridges. It will go over the four street bridge and over the big island gap and be coming into the four street. Mm. So just want to get forgot to mention that when we were talking about it. Yeah, that's excellent and I know, um, you've also, it wasn't in the presentation. But, um, I appreciate the conversations that you've had with everyone about, um, the, uh, redevelopment of the historic gas plant site and our district and what, um, what our streets need to look like as that moves forward. And I look, I look forward to continuing those conversations as we get some real plans into place on that. Um, so thank you. Yeah. Thank you for being open to new ideas. Yep. No problem. All right. Thank you, Chair. Well, I just personally want to thank you. I mean, so many of the projects that you talked about, um, especially those big high dollar projects, the Howard Franklin, Gateway Expressway. Those either connect or run through my district and, I mean, those projects are so critical to the residents that I serve. So I just want to thank you on their behalf. Um, and to all of the businesses, the people that move in and out of my district every single day for employment. Uh, those are critical projects to making sure that they can get home, get home faster, get home safer, and that their commute is a little bit hopefully more enjoyable. So thank you so much, um, on their behalf. But it's not even just those really big projects. Um, we, my office has had a fantastic working relationship with everyone at FDOT. Um, and it's the little projects too, right? It's the safety light at the Station 2 firehouse that you all worked with us on. Um, there was, you know, a resident concern at that 94th Avenue, 16th Street, Gandy kind of interchange area. And your team administratively jumped on that, made changes to that signal, have started to work administratively on some small tweaks that you can all do. And those little things make such a difference to people and to the overall safety. And so I just want to say, you know, from my personal experience working with you all working with your staff, it comes all the way from the top though. Uh, because back in, I guess it was March, um, the mayor and I went and met with Secretary Perdue and District Secretary Gwen in Tallahassee. And these same conversations were happening there. And the commitment to St. Petersburg, the commitment to safety overall for all of our residents across the state of Florida, incredibly apparent in those meetings. And so very excited, um, about the future, about more projects that we can do together, especially what's happening on 4th Street up to 94th, um, in that corridor and all of those safety improvements. You guys have heard the need, you have seen the need, and you are addressing it. So I just want to thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, and thank you for being here, both of you. All right, thank you, Evan. All right, we will now move into our new ordinances. And at this time, we're going to take up item E1. Clerk, can you please read the title? Proposed Ordinance 548H, an ordinance of the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, removing Chapter 20, Article 7 of the St. Petersburg City Code, known as the Tenant Bill of Rights in its entirety. Repealing all ordinances which codify the Tenant Bill of Rights to comply with state law. Making findings and providing an effective date. The public hearing for this item is scheduled for August 3rd, 2023. And we do have one speaker, Madam Chair. I believe we are joined by Assistant City Attorney Brad Tenant. And did you have a presentation on this item, or? I did not have a formal presentation. I was just going to give you the background if desired. Okay. Yeah, sure. So, this past legislative session, House Bill 1417 was passed and signed by the governor. It went into effect on July 1st and provides that the regulation of residential tenancies is preempted by the state. And so, we have here an ordinance repealing it, and happy to take any questions. Okay. First, we'll go to public comment. Madam Chair, first speaker and only speaker is William Kilgore. Please go to the podium, state your name and address for the record. You have three minutes to address City Council. Hi, everybody. Thanks, Chair. William Kilgore. I reside in the Ponce de Leon neighborhood and organized with the St. Pete Tenants Union. Yeah. So, I sent out an email yesterday. I don't know if you all got a chance to take a look at it. Just to clarify kind of what we're saying. You know, we want to see a motion to put this into the HLUT committee for further discussion. Because, obviously, when this was happening and 1417 was being discussed, you know, you're not looking at the specific parts and what may or may not be preempted. And there's been some discussion, I know, in Orange County in terms of things like source of income protection. They're saying that it's, you know, it's a fair housing issue, which is separate. This governs things under Chapter 83 of the Florida statutes, tenant landlord regulations. Fair housing is covered under Chapter 760 of the Florida statutes. So, they've actually, Orange County has opted to keep their source of income protection. And so, our, you know, obviously, this Tenant Bill of Rights, some of these noticing requirements, stuff like that, obviously, those are going to be preempted. But the source of income, there's actually two sections in the Tenant Bill of Rights. One of them, like, codifies the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act of 1968. You know, it says you can't discriminate based on race, sex, et cetera. And then, of course, the source of income in a separate section. So, it needs to be sent back to a committee for discussion on that. Legal should do some research on that. There's another thing that's interesting that's not included in this is also the Tenant Notice of Intent to Redevelop, which is found in a different chapter of the City Code. You know, it doesn't seem like this was, like, thoroughly researched. I'm not trying to throw shade. It's not any of y'all that's trying to throw shade on Mr. Tenant. But I'm just saying, you know, it should be, you know, it should be discussed and they should be looking into, you know, the possibility of keeping some of these things, maybe taking this ordinance. Let's say, you know, yeah, we're going to delete the Tenant Bill of Rights, but, you know, at the same time, we're going to create a new article that addresses fair housing, you know, and replace it or put it wherever else in the code. So that's what we're asking for. As far as I know, and I did go and look on all of the agendas and the codes for all these other municipalities with the Tenant Bill of Rights in the state of Florida, and none of them have made any moves to remove theirs. They're likely having that similar discussion because there's things, what do we have in our Tenant Bill of Rights that we can keep? What do we need to get rid of? You know, so we're asking that, you know, there's a motion made or an action taken to put this into the HLUT for further discussion. So, thank you all. Councilmember Floyd. Thank you. Yeah, I want to ask legal a few questions about some of this stuff that Mr. Kilgore looked up and said, looked up and sent us. So, the first, I mean, is just, what's your opinion? We've talked about this for a while now. It seems like the source of income stuff is not, could potentially be located in a different state statute, or just give us your thoughts on the discussion. Sure, absolutely, Councilmember. So, the short answer is, yes, absolutely, discrimination remains unlawful in Florida. And under the Chapter 760, including the Florida Fair Housing Act, that remains applicable to landlord-tenant relationships. I would also say that there is potentially an opportunity to look at what can be done there. As I stated, discrimination remains unlawful, and that is covered through a different section. And doing an ordinance specifically addressed to that should absolutely be researched and considered. As far as what we have in the Tenant Bill of Rights, what we have as written, I would say, is preempted. And that's because of the Tenant Bill of Rights includes multiple cross-references to Chapter 83 in defining what a residential tenant is. If we were to look at doing some ordinance specific to discrimination, we would make sure to address it differently to avoid those preemptions. Okay, excellent. Thank you for that. Does that qualify? There's also, you know, the codification of the civil rights language. Should that be handled the same kind of way? Is that in the same realm? Sure. Potentially. So the city of St. Petersburg previously had some of this language codified, and it was removed some time ago when the county took over enforcement of it. So currently Pinellas County Office of Human Rights is the primary entity researching discrimination. And I would say that if the city was going to do anything specific to enforcing that, we would just want to coordinate, look at the existing agreements with the county, and try to ascertain who's doing what. Because right now the Office of Human Rights would still be enforcing your classic discrimination in landlord-tenant relationships. Okay. So it does sound like some of this is worth further discussion. Any suggestion as to how we make sure that that discussion happens? Should it be a new business item motion? I mean, I see. I'll jump in there. Yeah. I would say for something like this, it's most typically a new business item. Okay. That way you can specifically outline what you're looking to achieve at the committee. Council can consider that and then make a vote. Okay. Okay. Well, I'll go ahead and promise that while we're here. I'll get that in as soon as we can because just my feeling on the Tenant's Bill of Rights was, you know, there's a lot of good things in it. But the source of income stuff, I saw with my own eyes how much it helped people in my life and I'm sure beyond. So I'd love for us to at least have a discussion about that. And then I have just one quick complaint about this in general. This is thanks to the lobbyists and our friends at the Apartment Association spending the last legislative session trying to claw back the little bit of things that we were able to give people here. And this really applies to something that's sort of going on in our country as a whole. We have rampant inflation and I think a report came out this week that our city was, or our region, metro region was number one in the state. Something like 55% increase in housing costs in the last two and a half years. It's really frustrating when you have organizations lobbying to pull away the last little bit of sensible regulations that we have in our city. I don't know, I guess because their profit margin's not high enough and anything that stands in their way is unacceptable to them. And so I think when I speak about inflation, specifically in housing, it's becoming more and more accepted that a huge reason why we have inflation is because of the greed of corporations and lobbyists that are at the top raising their prices and trying to eliminate regulations at every chance they can. And we have a prime example right here, we have something small that can help tenants and people that we interact with regularly are constantly trying to claw back and it's very, very frustrating to me. And quite frankly, embarrassing that I have to, that people would be so brazen. And so, you know, I hope we can continue to have a discussion about how we can protect tenants. But I'm disturbed by the situation that we're in right now. Thank you. Councilmember Mohammed. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation. Somewhat. The overview, Mr. Tennant. And a lot of the questions I think were answered, so pardon any redundancy in what I want to say here. You actually just inspired something that made me think about our conversation earlier, Councilmember, where in 1968 we're talking about the sanitation strike. And that was also the year that home rule was approved in the state of Florida. And we think about what was happening in 1968 in local municipalities trying to address and combat racism and discrimination and all of those things. And the state said, you know what, localities, you all know what's best for your area. So fast forward, we're having a conversation about discrimination as it relates to removing home rule and preempting us. So I just think that's interesting to be here at this time having this conversation. I want to do refer to the email and the conversation about the chapter. So just for me to be clear, the two sections in there, they are not preempted by HB 14, 17? So if you're referring to the two sections currently in the Tenant Bill of Rights, I would say the subject matter is not necessarily preempted. So those come from another chapter. They're protected in Florida by another chapter. Chapter 83 is specific to landlord-tenant relationship. Chapter 760 is related to civil rights in Florida. So because those two things are generally regulated under that separate chapter, we would say there's definitely an opportunity to look at what could be done, that they are not necessarily preempted insofar as they still apply. As I said before, Chapter 760, the Florida Fair Housing Act, is very specific. It is still unlawful to discriminate in landlord-tenant relationships. And still in the books, still viable, it's a Florida statute. So because of that kind of idea, there are some opportunities to look at where we can use our home rule power to be more specific to discrimination as opposed to the Tenant Bill of Rights, which is very specific to the landlord-tenant relationship. Gotcha. And in that conversation when we talk about, again, how we got here was that we knew that there were certain protections, but we enhanced those protections to include other things, right? Correct. And so the current protections that are covered under other statutes, our Tenant's Bill of Rights, specifically like Source of Income, was an enhancement to that, making that more broad, I guess, or to apply specifically to certain cases that we found just from our work in the community. Is that fair to say that? Yes. So that's the difference between what's currently there and what we did. So it's not like what we did was already there and now removing it was still covered because it's somewhere else. So absolutely. So maybe to clarify, Chapter 760 will have some traditional protected classes, race, sex, national origin. Our Tenant Bill of Rights included additional classes. Okay. Pregnancy, sexual orientation, for example. And so we enhanced those. Okay. Absolutely. But just to kind of clarify, we did it in the context of landlord-tenant, which is what is now being preempted. If we were to look at having further discrimination ordinances, it would likely be more broad, you know, more discrimination in the entire city like we have. Okay. So just to be clear, I'm not saying we just take it out and move it somewhere. It would be, you know, have to fundamentally look at where are we protecting from discrimination. Okay, got it. That's helpful and I appreciate that. Because that was one of the things that I wanted to clarify for myself to make sure that we're not, you know, going to throw the baby out with the bathwater with this, you know, move today and by repealing it and taking out those things. Knowing that they're not somewhere else that we do have something that's unique and specific to what we're experiencing in our community as it relates to discrimination and hearing the stories, how applicable it is. So there's value to that and merit to have to continue in the conversation. So in order to keep it within our code and really show that we're doing what we need to do, let me say it this way. So I'm thinking we're having a cow next week, right, to discuss the impacts of this recent legislation. Is there a mandate for when we have to make these changes that are being presented today? I'll cover that, Council Member. This took effect on July 1st. As you know, there's a relatively lengthy process for us to provide notice of a public hearing, have a first reading in a public hearing. I don't, it's my opinion that we cannot delay the repeal process. I think we had to do it as expeditiously as possible while still complying with those notice requirements. Like Mr. Tennant indicated, it's certainly fair game to have a new business item to consider other options. But I would recommend against pausing on the repeal of this in order to accomplish it. Anything else that potentially could be considered has to be outside of this context and not focused on the landlord tenant relationship. So there's really nothing within the structure as currently written that I think is not preempted. It's just that we can consider the discussion kind of looking at it outside specifically landlord tenant matters. Okay. Got it. I got it. And so, yeah, just thinking about that timeline. So it's not a requirement. It's more of like a preference and we're not required to repeal it now? I think we are. Okay. So we are required. We're required to do it. I think we're required to repeal it now. I don't think we can wait. Until we have the further discussions. Right. So I think from a legal standpoint, the repeal has to happen, in my opinion legally, as soon as possible. Okay. And that's on the timeline that we have now. If you want to continue the further discussion, that's perfectly fine. But I think they have to be separate. I think the repeal has to travel on the current course in order to comply with state law. Okay. And I think all the other questions were addressed by Council Member Floyd. So let me just look and make sure. Yeah, that's it. Thank you, Madam Chair. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. And thank you for clarifying what can be done. And thank you for clarifying when it should be done. I think it's important that we don't leave any questions as to whether or not we are in compliance with this preemption. And starting something fresh, looking for what makes sense and where it would be good. I would just not want the new business item or a committee agenda item to look like the exact same thing but with a different name on it. So if it could be, I would prefer that it be narrowed down to the things that we actually can do or, and without including anything that we expressly cannot do. I hope that I hope that makes sense, but I would welcome that conversation because it sounds like there are some ways that we can sort of re reimagine some of some of the ideas and look at different ways to meet the same goals that we had by putting these in place. So, I am in favor of that. Do we have a motion? I'll move approval. Okay, we have a motion and a second. And I don't see any further requests to speak. So, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your vote. Seeing all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item E1 passes unanimously with Council Member Floyd and Hanowitz absent. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tennant. All right, we will move back now to item F1 of our reports. This is our FY24 budget, setting the proposed millage rate and setting dates for public hearings. And we are joined by our budget manager, Jen Chisholm. Hello, good to see you, Jim. All right, good afternoon. Today we will take the first official step in, there we go. We'll take the first official step in the process to adopt the FY24 budget for the city of St. Petersburg. Today you'll be asked to take action on two resolutions. The first will set a proposed millage rate and the second will set the date and time of the two public hearings. The first public hearing will be scheduled for September 14th and the second on September 28th, both at 6 o'clock. These hearing dates are in accordance with Florida statutes and will not conflict with either the school board or the Penelope County Board of County Commissioner dates. By Tuesday, August 1st, the city is required to provide the trim information to the county property appraiser's office. The proposed millage rate is the rate that will appear on the trim notices. So what you approved today will be on the trim notices. The millage rate can be reduced after that, but it cannot be increased without the city incurring additional cost. Too far. Too far. The proposed millage rate for FY24 is 6.4675 mills, which is a reduction of .0575 mills from last year's, from the FY23 millage rate. This rate will bring in $197.791 million in ad valorem revenue, which is an increase of 11.2% or $19.943 million over the adopted FY23 budget. The general fund operating budget increased by $27.2 million or 8.09%. This shows how we calculate the millage rate. The property values received from the property appraiser's office as of July 1st were $31.856 billion. We used 96% of the total property values to get to $30.582 billion, which is letter A on the slide there. Then we look at the general fund operating requirements. The total general fund recommended budget for the general fund is $363.843 million. We subtract out the non ad valorem revenue of 166.053 million, which leaves us a need of ad valorem revenue of 197.791 million, which is B on the slide. B divided by A gives us a millage levy of 6.4675 mills. Over the last 12 years, the city of St. Petersburg has reduced its millage rate from a peak of 6.7742 in FY23 to the proposed rate of 6.4675 in FY24. The truth in millage legislation requires that the calculation and announcement of a rollback rate at public hearings in a newspaper publications. The rollback rate is the millage rate that would bring in the same tax dollars as the prior year with an allowance for new taxable value added to the city's tax base. The FY24 rollback rate is calculated as 5.9152 and would generate $180.9 million or 16.889 million below what is currently in the FY24 recommended budget. The proposed millage rate of 6.4675 results in an increase of 9.34% over the rollback rate. For FY24 property values in the city of St. Petersburg overall increased by 12.36%. State statutes allow for a maximum millage rate with a simple majority vote of 8.7047 mills and with a two-thirds vote, a maximum millage could be 9.5752 mills. All of the information for the city's recommended budget is posted on the city's website and that concludes my presentation. All right, Council Members, we have two resolutions. We do need to take them both separately. And Clerk, do we have any cards on this item? No? Okay. I'll move approval of item F1A. Okay. Second. So we have a motion and a second. Council Member Montaneri. Thank you. I just wanted to state that I'm in support of this millage rate. As I mentioned last week, I would have preferred a higher reduction and this does not preclude us from cutting the millage rate further. So I am putting in a new business item just to inform Council to have a meeting on the budget in August. So I wanted to let everybody know that. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Seeing nothing else and we have a motion and a second. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council Members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, Council Members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item F1A passes unanimously with Council Member Floyd and Hanowitz being absent. All right. And Council Members, F1B. Move approval of F1B. Second. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second and no request to speak on this item and no cards, I presume. So we will go ahead and open the machine for voting. Council Members, enter your votes. Seeing all present, Council Members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item F1B passes unanimously with Council Member Floyd and Hanowitz being absent. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chisholm. Good to see you. All right. We will move on now to F3. This is our FY 24 utility rate update and we are joined by Senior Public Works Manager Angela Miller. Good afternoon. Angela Miller, Senior Public Works Business Manager for the Public Works Administration. I believe this is our fifth time meeting on the utility rates with some of you. So I know by the end of this process, you're all going to be utility rate experts on all of this information. But what we are doing today is kind of the bigger picture. We're not diving too much into the analytics like we have in some of the committee meetings. What we'd like to do is focus really on the big picture and simplify some of this moving forward. We have a couple of more meetings. We have our first reading as well as our public hearing. We'll do a more in-depth presentation on the rates. But today we just wanted to start communicating where we're at in this process and where we're going to be moving into with our proposals. So at a big picture, our basic city utilities, so if you are a City of St. P customer, you receive utility services from the city, sanitation, water, sewer, and stormwater. So for those basic customers, you get that utility bill every month for services that are utilized. Those customers are going to see a 5.6 increase on average. If you are a Reclaim Water customer, your increase is a little bit higher. You're right around 6.2%. So if we wanted to look at some typical bills for different types of customers, these bills can be, of course, looked at in a number of ways. But we put together a couple of examples to kind of show you the dollar amount impact of what this would look like for different types of customers. A low usage customer that's a resident with one to two people living in their homes, on average, they utilize about 2,000 gallons of water and wastewater usage. In this example, we have them in a stormwater tier one. That's 15% of our customers utilizing trash and recycling. We can just draw your attention to that green bar. Again, that's that 5.42% rate increase upon approval of these rates, which is about $5.60 per month on this customer's bill. A typical customer, this is the family of four. So on average, the family of four in St. Pete is about 3,500 gallons of water and wastewater usage. 51% of our customers are in that stormwater tier two, utilizing the same services of sanitation and recycling. They're looking at about $7.40 impact on their bill. Again, 5.62% between that 5% to 6% target rate is what we're really trying to strive for for this customer group every month. The higher usage users, this is an example of a 5,000 gallon of water and wastewater usage. Stormwater tier three with trash and recycling looking at a little under $10 per month with their 5.76% increase on their bill. And then we have a higher, higher usage user. We kind of use this example to kind of focus in on the stormwater tier four group. That's 10% of our customers. So this is a 6,500 gallon of water wastewater usage monthly. They're just under that 6% at 5.91% net increase or about $11.50 per month. Every year we focus in, we try to focus in on new initiatives that we may not have looked at or brought forward to you in some time. This year we focused on our water closet fee. So I guess the simplest way to think of a water closet is when a new development comes in and adds in a new bathroom to a new property or commercial development. So this is a impact fee for development specific projects. There's a lot of names that water closet fees go by. They're also called impact fees, capital charges, capacity expansion fees, or system development. But ultimately they're designed to recover the cost of that backbone infrastructure needed to serve new development. So this is the mechanism we use by which new development kind of pays its own way. It's specifically for growth related projects. It cannot exceed full cost recovery and it captures different costs and is separate from the typical utility rates that we look at as well as connection fees. This is not a new fee. We've had this for many, many years. Currently that fee has been $350. It has not been brought forward for updating in some time. It is no longer meeting its cost of recovery. So we've done that analysis and completed what we feel that rate should be, that fee should be. Due to statutory limitations, we're required to phase this in over the next four to eight years. So we're proposing a 12.5% increase from now until fiscal year 27. So for fiscal year 24, you'll see the rate change being proposed from $350 to $393.75. Here's kind of an impact fee survey. So what are other communities doing with this water closet fee? If a typical single family residential home has three restrooms installed, these numbers represent the $350 per water closet. So it would be three times 350, which brings us to the $1,050. So you can see that's where St. Pete is right now on average for what our customers are paying for this fee. Kind of at the bottom of the chart here. In fiscal year 27, upon approval of proposed rates, that would put us at $525 per water closet, which brings us to the $1,575. So that'll put us kind of more in the middle of this survey. So just to do a quick recap again, big picture, 5.6% increase on average for our customers. If you have that reclaimed water, you're looking at about 6.2% on average. And then we have the water closet fee proposed at 12.5%. So what are some of the primary reasons for these increased rates? So in general, as we're all undergoing those increased inflationary costs, our systems, unfortunately, are not immune to that as well. On average, we have about 5% per year since 2020, which is about 15% overall of what we were paying in 2020. Materials and equipment have been a big impact, asphalt and chemicals specifically. Asphalt has been increasing 9% per year, so 30% increase from 2020. Chemicals also have been a big impact for our departments, 21% per year since 2020. So it's a 77% increase on our expenses. Construction, machinery and equipment, heavy trucks and vehicles, all of these things are causing impact, increased costs. And then the electrical equipment as well, which is the 10% increase every year since 2020, which is 33% more. For each of our utility programs, they kind of each are kind of having their own impact. Sanitation is going to include those capital vehicle purchases. So they are dealing with the supply chain issues, but they have been accelerating some of their capital improvement program to kind of circumvent that. They also have their new facility, which is up and coming in the next 12 to 18 months. But that does increase their costs every year with that series 2022 facilities note. And then the big thing for them also is the Pinellas County tipping fee that is scheduled at a 6.8% increase for the next two years. So with that inflation cost as well, the increased cost for vehicles and containers, it's just a significant impact to their expenses. On the stormwater side, we have the major capital infrastructure program. That's going to include those large master plans that we've continued to bring forward to you for approval. Fiscal year 24 through 27 is when those master plan projects start to hit the budget. So for this next five years, we're looking at the 91.5 million. The departments are working really hard to continue to find alternative funding through grant sources. And we do have some announcements that we're going to share here momentarily. But great news for them this year, they did bring in 8.6 million in grants. So that was able to offset some of their capital costs for funding and revenue requirements. But we are going to have long term capital project requirements needed moving forward into the future. On the water side, same story. They're just a little bit ahead with their master plan and getting some of these projects completed. Their five-year program has the 10-year CIP program is $126 million. In fiscal year 24 alone, they have $88.6 million in capital projects. So just really heavy impact on their capital program. We have been doing shifts for them on the Penny for Pinellas. Reduce the Penny for Pinellas transfer by $2 million in 24. But again, just inflationary costs impacting all the services and needs for their labor or materials. Both water and stormwater have that 50-50 cash to debt. So that is included and something we continue to focus on every year moving forward. So this is the timeline for the rates with the rate study. As you can see, we have our first reading in August and then we'll come back to you for the public hearing in September. If there's anything in particular in addition you'd like us to bring forward, please let us know. But we're going to kind of stick to that regularly scheduled calendar. But before we turn it back over to you, I'd like to actually have Claude come up very quickly because we have a quick announcement for you. Hello, Mr. Tinkersley. Hello. Thank you very much, Angela. As Angela mentioned, one of the positive impacts on the proposed rates that we're proposing this year is that we had received $8.6 million in grant funding for some of our stormwater projects for fiscal year 24. So that allowed us to keep the rates lower than we would have had to otherwise. We just got yesterday word that we've received some more grants. Yay. So these, while they won't have an impact on the fiscal year 24 rates, they will have an impact on the fiscal year 25 and 26 rates. And so for a total of about $20.5 million. Wow. Yay. And we have four projects. Two of them are stormwater projects. So approximately just under $10 million for the two stormwater projects. I'm sorry, just under $12 million for the two stormwater projects. And these are the two projects related to Salt Creek, the Salt Creek outfall pumping station and the Salt Creek conveyance improvements. Yes, I knew you'd be happy, Councilmember. I was hoping you would say that. Yes, yes. So $12 million for those stormwater projects. And then another $9 million for wastewater projects for making some resilience improvements at our northeast and southwest plants for their operations and maintenance buildings to make them more resilient. $9 million for those two. So, again, we're really excited. We received this word yesterday. I do want to thank, obviously, all of our teams that worked on this. Water Resources, our stormwater team, engineering, Angela, our grants team, our budget team, and also Laura Boehmer from the Southern Group. Y'all met with her this morning in the Layer Committee. They helped us with this. We actually submitted these applications a year ago. That's how long it takes for these things to work through the system. So we just were really excited to be able to announce that to you today. So thank you. Love it. Thank you. And if nothing else, that was worth the presentation. Thank you. Thank you. And I do just want to take a moment and thank you for putting this presentation together. I know that you guys do a great job presenting it to us and having these conversations inside of our committee structure. But for me, I think it's just incredibly important for transparency's sake and for making sure that residents know not only what is coming in the way of utility rates, but also the things that we are trying to do, not only to keep our city moving forward, but to mitigate that impact on them as well. So I just want to thank you for doing this extra work and that extra lift. And like I said, it was all worth it to hear about the grant. So thank you so much. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you. And thank you for the work that you did to put in for those grants and congratulations. Very exciting. Can't wait to text with Brej about it. The water closet fees and that plan to gradually increase those fees. Sounds like it's long overdue, so I'm glad that we're moving forward with that. But I wonder if we're doing enough because you've got a plan for like four years from now. We'll be in the middle of what everyone else has today. But even in one of the footnotes here, you state that Clearwater is currently evaluating their fees. I'm sure others are as well, especially as the entire Tampa Bay region is growing by leaps and bounds. This is something everyone is probably looking at or will be looking at. So we could very well end up still at the bottom four years from now. When you talk about the limits, are you talking about the statutory limits? Is it on how much we can increase per year or is it that we have to do it over a certain number of years? Great catch. It is how much we are allowed to increase every year annually. So 12.5% is the max? The max, yes. Okay. Okay. Council member, if I may say something? Yes. So we definitely intend on continuing to monitor this and then come back in four years and let you know where we stand. But yeah, we are limited by the amount we can increase at any one time and then we're limited in how quickly we can increase it. And so I believe the statutory limit is that you have to phase it in over a four year period. Do you know how long that has been in place? No, ma'am, I don't. I'm so sorry. I wonder if they're due to look at that again as well. Very recently, I believe. Oh, it is recent? Okay. All right. Well, it didn't hurt to look and I'm glad that we have this. This really, it makes sense considering that it has been quite some time since we increased ours. Thank you very much for the presentation. This is a wonderful way, not just to show us, but to show our residents what their bills mean and what happens with the money that we receive from that to keep our city going. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. All right. Well, thank you again. Thank you for being here and thank you for the presentation. All right. We will now move to a couple of other items that were pulled to reports, item F5 and item F6. These were both pulled to reports and I believe F5 was pulled by Councilmember Montaneri and then Councilmember Mohamed wanted to also pull F5 and F6. So what I'd like to do is for us to take these together if that's possible since they're related. But before we go ahead and move into our presentation by our procurement and supply management director, Stephanie Swenson, Councilmember Montaneri, did you want to speak to F5 and why that was pulled? Sure. So I, it just caught my eye and I wanted to get a little more information on PERC transporting minority youth and I just wanted to know a little more about who, how are we going to, who's going to be doing the transporting, how are the people going to be screened? I've got questions like in that area. Perfect. Okay. Well, before we go to the presentation, Councilmember Mohamed, did you want to add anything to that? Not that specifically, but just around F6. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, just knowing that we're approving the proposal and I understand that there were some changes to the process and also to some of the deliverables. I just wanted to be able to hear and have the stakeholders be able to hear how we ended up going with PERC because I know it was some, like an RFP was submitted and it was withdrawn and then resubmitted. And so just those changes and then being able to just be transparent and like how we landed here and chose this particular organization. All right. Very good. Good afternoon. So these two solicitations were solicited three times. It has been going on since last year. The first time they were combined and it's been combined with the transportation and the career readiness component of the proposal. So we canceled those bids because there was a change in leadership. We wanted to rework the scope, really make sure that we're getting what we are asking for in our scope of work. So we canceled the first one. We put it back out for solicitation the second time, this time splitting them. We separated the transportation costs and the actual career readiness proposal into two separate RFPs. That time there were some communication issues going on during that that I did not feel comfortable with continuing with those solicitations. So they were canceled and we put them back on the streets for solicitation. Again, this third time the transportation one being a hard bid lowest cost and the career readiness being an RFP evaluation committee evaluated them. So for the transportation, we rewrote that scope completely. There was no component. We are transporting youth minorities of this program, but we now have level two background screenings within the scope. So they must present us a list of all employees that will be transporting any of the participants of this program as well as they had to submit the vehicles. They will be transporting them in that will be inspected and we have the opportunity to inspect them as well. So Pinellas X vendor reentry coalition was the lowest bid. They will be rewarded. They will be rewarded the transportation. If in any capacity they cannot handle that, we have a secondary vendor, the second lowest bid that we will go with, which is the boys and girls club. So that was the transportation. The RFP for career readiness evaluation committee, a completely whole different evaluation committee was selected. They evaluated all the proposals and they ranked the top two, which was Perk Pinellas X offender reentry coalition and the, sorry, I'm looking at the other one, and the speakeasy media. So the three evaluators felt that those two were the top. There was a third. However, they did not provide a best and final offer that was within the grounds of the scope. So they were, they kept pricing in there. They included transportation. That was not part of this scope. So that's why we only awarded to the two, the top two. Thank you. Are you, you done? All right. I saw them. I didn't know how we handled that. Are you, are you good council member? Because I have some. Okay. Because I know councilman Montaneri was on F5 and we combined them and you went to F5. Right. And so I was just speaking. I want to speak to him after councilman Montaneri, if he had any other questions. Okay. Any other questions? Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Stephanie. So when you talk about there was a change of leadership, what are you, what are you referring to? Ms. Foster came in as the administrator and would like to take another look at the two proposals, or the solicitation. Okay. All right. And you said, you said there was something that you weren't comfortable with. Explain that. There, during the second solicitation, there were some violations of the prohibitive communications policy that we have in place. When solicitations are published, city staff and vendors cannot communicate. They cannot lobby. There were events leading up and brought back to my attention that I needed to cancel to preserve the integrity of the solicitation process. So we decided to cancel, we put all new evaluators on the evaluation committee, and we had them reevaluate after the solicitation was closed. Okay. All right. Then you, you mentioned a level two background check, and then vehicles. Speak to me a little bit more about both of those. What's, what, describe a level two background check, and what are they going to use for transportation? So they submitted, the level two background check is used for when you're, for schools, children, Jessica Lundford's Act, that was passed. So they have to present us a list of all the employees that will be transporting these students, and we have the ability to verify that. The vehicles, they provided the make, model, then number of those vehicles. We had certain criteria that they needed to meet. They can't have an old vehicle transporting students. They also had to have communication, cell phones, money on hand in case it breaks down, which was not part of the previous scope that had been solicited years before. So we really tightened up the, the qualification, or the criteria for the vehicles to make sure that we're transporting them safely. Okay. Councilmember Montaneri, to answer specifically, a level two background check requires fingerprinting and a national search. So the type of search that is done when you're working with children requires that type of fingerprinting to ensure that public records are searched and fingerprints are searched for any type of activity that may be inappropriate to work with a child. Okay. Okay. So PERC is going to be making, doing the background checks, and then if they pass the background check, then they can transport these youth. Okay. Talk to me a little bit about vehicles. And the other respondents, it just seems a little odd to me about transporting kids in personal vehicles that we're contracting out for. So you said they need to be newer cars. Describe, I wanted to have, I want to feel good about voting for this. And I'm a little uncomfortable with what I'm hearing. So they're not private vehicles. The program can have 50 youths participating. So they have to be bus, not school buses, but buses that can transport up to 50 participants. Okay. So they're not personal vehicles. You made it sound like it was a personal vehicle. No. Like this doesn't make any sense. So it's a larger type van bus that has to be able to accommodate up to 50 participants. Okay. So we're going to have one driver in a bus. Perhaps. And how this is. Now you're making me feel more comfortable. Okay. I was uncomfortable. When you said you were uncomfortable, I was uncomfortable too. And then I'm glad you're starting to clarify this a little bit because you said vehicles, the level two background check, I wasn't familiar with that. So they're going to have a bus or some bigger vehicle to transport these children. Correct. And part of this process is they have to be able to route where they're picking them up in the locations. So they have to be able to accommodate a large group of students. Okay. And, and just so if the public's watching this, I mean, we got, we have one page for, for this program. And if we're going to be signing off on transporting somebody's child, I want to make sure that that child is safe. And that's, that's where my, my mind goes when I, when I saw this. So I'll leave it right there. I want to hear from my colleagues. Thank you. Council member Muhammad. Thank you, Madam Chair. And, um, thank you for clarifying the scope. I was going to add a question about the scope of work, not specifically for transportation, but, um, has there been any changes to the scope of work in the education and training piece? Did that, and if you could just speak to some of the modifications that were made to the, to the, uh, deliverables, I guess, around education and training. Thank you, council member Muhammad. So when Ms. Swenson spoke earlier about there being a change in leadership and that requiring a change in scope. One of the things I discovered, um, with cohort of champions was the same provider perk is currently providing the transportation, um, not only the organization, but the person. So the same person was transporting the youth was providing the afterschool curriculum and the case management services for the families, which is not an appropriate model to serve high risk youth. So that is why we, um, took the scope, broke it apart. Transportation requires one skill set, right? Um, and we have one set of things we need to be looking for when we have somebody transporting our children. When we're looking for curriculum for workforce development and career readiness, that would look different. And then the, um, scope of services around case management, we actually, um, eliminated from the program altogether. Not because we're not going to have it, but because you funded $8.5 million for our community, um, support hubs. And those are licensed professionals, um, who will be able to provide case management services. So that is why the, um, scope change council member Muhammad. Um, there was some tightening around the, um, language of what was required to be provided as backup for curriculum. So for example, speakeasy media does some great conflict resolution curriculum with our youth teaches yoga, but teaching yoga wasn't going to be enough, right? We needed to understand how they were going to, um, get kids ready for careers through that programming. And all of that was required to be a part of the backup material and the, um, evaluation for the committee to review. Excellent. Thank you for that. And while we're there, that actually is one of the other questions. So, so this funding specific, this does not include case management for the participants. This is just the educational then, okay, got it. Um, and then the last question that I have is, is this a continuation of services that they're currently providing? Um, so are they currently providing these services and this is a continuation because I, I may be confusing the two, but I know we did some extensions with them to provide services. Is this a, is this a part of that continuation or is this something new for them? This will be a brand new contract. We had to extend to allow us to solicit this properly. So we will enter into a brand new contract with them upon approval. And then, uh, is the funding for new participants or is it for, like, are these, are we getting new, yeah, new participants in the program or are these existing participants? Good question Council Member Mohammed. So there are participants who participate year after year, and then there are also new participants. So we kind of break the programming up into semesters. So if a youth is involved with football, which is typically a fall sport, they may take the time off from the fall and come back in the spring. Um, somebody else may have a summer job and take the summer off and come back just for fall and spring. So there is a mixture of both. There are some youth who've been involved with cohort of champions from the inception. And then there are new youth who come into the program every year. One of the things that we've been working on in the last year that I'm really proud of is a partnership with PD. Um, where every month we sit down and, and I call it case conferencing. Look at the families who have had some type of intervention with the police department. Um, what kind of assistance those families may need to get their youth involved in, um, positive activities and, um, then wrap those services around them. And so, um, in some cases we haven't been successful with that, but we are looking to really have an intervention that keeps kids out of trouble. Uh, and we're really excited to continue that relationship with the police department. We're also looking at the family. So we have a kind of cohort of youth where maybe older brother, older sister is involved in stealing vehicles. Um, maybe younger siblings haven't gotten involved in those activities yet. And we're trying to intervene with those siblings prior to, um, them ever having any interaction as well because the family is known to the police department. Thank you for that. And with that, is there a requirement in the programming to get new youth to identify others so that we can expand the impact? So we are, the city is responsible for recruitment. Okay. Um, not the providers. The providers are just providing the curriculum. Okay. So we are constantly, um, focused on recruitment. And how many does this funding cover? How many? 50. Okay. The 15th. All right. I think that handles, it was something else, but I didn't write it down. So thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Amy, for those questions. Thank you, Stephanie, for the presentation. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. So I want to, I just have a question about the transportation and, um, with, you know, contracting for a group to operate a bus service for, um, for this program. You mentioned that there was a communication issue regarding the prohibited communications and, um, a lobbying issue. So was that, um, was that violation committed by one of the bidders? Or was it an evaluation committee member who did something that, I need to know a little bit more about that. It was on both sides. Okay. So why not just disqualify that bidder? Because there was more than one instance. So just to make it clear and fair to all of the participants, we decided to cancel and re-solicit. There's more than one bidder that violated? Correct. Okay. Because with the, I mean, everyone is made aware of the rules when something like this starts. And so when someone breaks the rules, they're usually just disqualified. And if it's two entities, then two entities are disqualified. Um, just canceling it and starting over could give the impression out there that one of them is the one that we wanted. But rather than disqualify them, we said, well, we'll just start over and just be quiet this time and don't talk to other people, which, which doesn't look good. So can you help me make, help me feel better about that? So there was instances brought to my attention that I could verify. And in that case, a letter was sent to the vendor warning them of this prohibited communications policy. And they were not to speak to anybody at the city during this time. The other instances, it was a little harder to verify. And so therefore just to make it clean, we canceled the whole entire solicitation. And we, um, had new members of the evaluation committee team. We do go over the process. We do go over the rules, but you still have people that are new. And so we made it clear that this rule is in place. And if they do it again, if the vendor does happen to, um, submit a bid, they will not, they will be banned from bidding from the city if they continue to do it. So we did send a letter and warn them. Okay. If this was, if this violation was done by, um, by, by someone once and they knew the rules, and they knew the rules, I wonder how we could select them if they were. I don't know who it was, but it just makes me a little uncomfortable that, um, there were violations. And yet in the end, it could be that the person or entity ended up getting the contract anyway and basically got a mulligan. So, and when we're talking about a, a program that involves children, I want to make sure that who we're choosing is someone who knows how to play by the rules the first time. So tell me that that's who, that we are, we are. The vendors that were in violation did not receive any of these awards, or will not receive any of these awards. Okay. In fact, they did not submit the third time, so. The third time? This, this current one, after the second round, they did not submit a proposal for us to consider at all. Okay. All right, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Okay, so do we have a motion? Nope. Yeah, do we have to still separately? You can do these together. Mm-hm. Move approval F5 and 6. Second. All right, now we have a motion and a second. So seeing no other request to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda items F5 and F6 passes unanimously. All right, city council will now recess and then convene as the St. Petersburg Community Redevelopment Agency and take up item CRA2. I believe we are joined, urban design and development coordinator, Adriana Shaw. Hi, welcome. As I've been introduced, I'm going to just say it again. Please do. All right, good afternoon, Adriana Puente Shaw, urban design and development coordinator with Development Review Services. We're here today to discuss a project located at the northwest corner of First Avenue North and 11th Street North. And reviewing the plan for consistency with the in-town west redevelopment plan, also referred to as the IWRP. One of the objectives of the redevelopment plan is to establish a cohesive development pattern and visual identity that creates and reinforces visible and intensive activity nodes of retail along Central Avenue and the First Avenue corridors. The subject property is 1.06 acres. It's within the Edge District and is zoned DC1. The project is valued at $100 million, consists of a 21-story mixed-use building with 310 dwelling units, 6,766 square feet of new commercial space, and 351 square feet of new office space, as well as a 360-space parking garage. The applicant is proposing to keep 24,649 square feet of existing office space and 8,177 square feet of existing commercial space. The properties are currently developed with offices, commercial spaces, and surface parking lots. The applicant provided a survey including all the properties for the development. Highlighted in yellow are the properties, sorry, the structures that are going to remain. And highlighted in red are the structures that are proposed to be demolished. The new development is centralized on this property and is proposed where the existing surface parking areas are, as well as the demolished structures. This redevelopment will help achieve many of the goals in the IWRP, specifically the focus on new residential development and the desire to reduce or eliminate surface parking lots within downtown. Shaded in gray are the existing structures that will remain. You can note that the vehicular ingress and egress for the parking garage will only be from Arlington Avenue North, and the loading area will also be accessed off of Arlington. By concentrating vehicular traffic on Arlington Avenue and by providing widened pedestrian connections on First Avenue North, the development contributes to the walkability and the mixed-use retail multifamily characteristics of the Edge District. Pedestrian access to the residential lobbies and the commercial spaces are provided from both First Avenue North, as well as Arlington Avenue North, providing this connectivity of the use between Arlington and First Avenue North. The residential lobby is highlighted in blue, and the retail space is highlighted in purple. The south elevation is a view of the development from First Avenue North, and as designed by the project architect, the proposed project is designed with a modern architectural style. The design provides variations in depth and projections and incorporates different window sizes and patterns, promoting visual interest. The east and west facing elevations above the adjacent structures remaining on site, and the north elevation is a view of the development from Arlington Avenue North. The garage is designed with a screening pattern that's consistent with the rest of the development and promotes the vertical lines of the design. The overall design incorporates clean, simple lines and forms with the exterior of each of the buildings using much of the same finishes. As proposed, a mixed use development with a floor ratio of up to 7.0 is allowed in DC1 with bonus approval by the Development Review Commission. Should this development be found consistent with the IWRP, it will be heard at the August 2nd DRC meeting. The proposed building will fit in with both older and newer developments, and improvements to the pedestrian level include ten foot wide sidewalks, street trees, landscaping, and bicycle parking. Making the project consistent with the pedestrian oriented goals of the IWRP. Staff is recommending approval of the attached resolution, finding the proposed plan to be consistent with the in town west redevelopment plan. Thank you. Thank you, and I just want to make mention, I don't believe that city council was provided with your presentation. Does anybody up here have it? Okay. So just going forward, we need to make sure that we have those presentations, if you could. Because we're all sitting up here flipping through looking for them instead of paying attention. So wanted to make sure that we just put a pin in that for the future. But with that, council members, questions? Council Vice Chair Fig Sanders. Thank you. Just a question. They're going to be 310 units with 306 parking. 310 units with 360 parking spaces. 360. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. And just to clarify, there is backup material in here. So that we did receive, just not the presentation. So, yeah. That's what I meant. Right. I didn't know if she knew that, so. Sounds good. Yeah. But what you gave with the backup was great. And hello, Mr. Mastery. Thank you for representing on this. It's a great project, and I'll move approval. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Council Member Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Can we go back to the presentation for a second? Just so I can quickly understand. Can we go to page five, please? Oh, actually, that'll work. Yeah. Is that page five? Dim the lights back. That'll work too. So what we're looking at is in between 11th and- 13th. 13th. Okay. So the parking lot that's currently there, that's what's being built on? Am I understanding that right? Okay. So the center gray area is the existing parking lot? Yep. The yellow building all the way to the right, or to the east, is the existing cannabis store with a parking lot. And then there's another commercial building that's going to be demolished. And then the next one on the other side of the parking lot will also be demolished. So the new development is going from the parking lot next to the cannabis all the way to the other side of the red. So from east to west, it moves from next to the cannabis to the remaining western building. So where Zubrick is is staying? Correct. I'm just trying to understand the scope of it. Sorry. Okay. So the white building at the top. Yeah, the white building at the top next to the Zubrick is being demolished. And then, so it's that large three white parcels are tangled to the west. Okay. All right, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Chair. All right, we have a motion and a second. Seeing no further requests to speak, do we have any cards on this item? All right. Clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve CRA2 passes unanimously. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Shaw. All right, we will adjourn as the St. Petersburg Community Redevelopment Agency and reconvene as city council and take up new business. And we will go to item G1, Councilmember Montaneri. Thank you, Madam Chair. Requesting, respectfully requesting referral to the Committee of the Whole or other relevant committee for an update of the Integrated Water Resources Master Plan. Move approval. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Seeing no request to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your vote. Seeing all council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to pass agenda item G1 passes unanimously. All right, and then we will go to G2, Councilmember Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair. Respectfully requesting a referral to the Public Services and Infrastructure Committee or other relevant committee to discuss a potential residential parking permit program for areas outside the current downtown boundaries outlined in city code section 26-168. And with that, I move approval. Second. All right, motion and a second. And seeing no request to speak, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. Seeing all council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Motion to approve agenda item G2 passes unanimously. All right, well, council, that concludes all the business we can do for now. We are going to be having dinner brought in at 430-ish so that we can eat before we take up our public hearing at 501. So for now, meeting adjourned. We'll take up our public hearing, item J1, which is a quasi-judicial and clerk. Clerk? All those present who are wishing to sign, you swear or affirm that the evidence that you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Thank you. Okay, thank you, everyone. We are joined this evening for a presentation by administration from Housing and Neighborhood Services Administrator Amy Foster. Good evening. Okay, so we're here tonight to present an affordable housing site plan review under Chapter 17.5 at the former Raytheon property. Before you, you have an aerial image of the subject site. You've gone through this process two previous times, but I wanted to take a moment to remind you of some of the items that are included in this process. You most recently, back in March, approved the Palm Lake Christian Church. Notice was also posted at the subject property and mailed to all property owners within 300 feet. And also a reminder that the approval tonight is valid only for the specific site plan that you are seeing here and any conditions of approval. So in order to qualify as a property under this section of the code, there are certain criteria that must be met. This property is an industrial suburban, is 29.11 acres, and consists of 1,058 units with 318 proposed affordable or workforce with half at 80% AMI and half at 120% AMI. And for this subject property, we are proposing an affordability period of 30 years. This is a little small, but hopefully you can read it a little bit better in your backup. This is just an overview of all of the site plan statistics. The site is currently vacant. You can see that the gross floor area that's proposed is 0.9 FAR. The building coverage will be approximately 26% of the site. The impervious surface will become 80% of the site. The open green space just under 20% of the site. And there is a substantial amount of parking provided. And the building height will be 59 feet or four stories. One thing I want to mention here is that Senate Bill 102 was passed this spring. We started this process, I know it feels like it's almost the end of July, but we started this process with Raytheon back in December. And so under Senate Bill 102, there are a number of changes that we're going to review with you in a committee of the whole next week. But I do think it's important for you to know this information tonight. Senate Bill 102 requires that local governments must authorize multifamily zoning if 40% of the units will be 120% AMI or lower. We also may not restrict density use or height. The specifications around this is the density would need to be below the highest allowed density on any land where residential is allowed. So in our city, that's 82 units per acre. We also may not restrict the height of a proposed development located within one mile of the proposed development or three stories, whichever is higher. And so for this subject property, the allowable height would be 72 feet. So what does that mean for this property? This is not what you're reviewing tonight, but I do think it's important for you to know that this is what could be done without any council hearing should this not pass tonight. They could develop 2387 units at a height of 72 feet with no public notice and all of those units could be provided at 120% AMI and what you have on the table includes some 80% units. So the standards for review that we look at, you might remember that once an application comes in, we route that to a number of different city departments and staff. Many of them are here tonight to provide testimony and answer your questions. We look at ingress and egress. We look at off street parking, traffic impact, drainage, signage, the location of the buildings, the compatibility, setback screens and buffers, landscaping, and is this unit type needed in our market? I have a couple of slides to show you what the elevations would look like of the subject property. So this is one elevation. This is another and another. So I know that there are questions about this site related to the environmental concerns. And so we added a few slides at your request to share some more information about the historical overview and context of this site. We do have Brejesh Preyman here to answer environmental questions for you, as well as the applicant has subject matter experts with them this evening as well. So there was a DEP consent order in March of 1995. It identified soil and groundwater contamination that indicated elevated levels of multiple industrial contaminants. That included VOCs, both from Raytheon and the predecessors that had been on this property. Remedial activities were conducted between 2008 and 2014, which included pump and treat. There was also a groundwater recovery and treatment system in near continuous operation since December 2014 south of the site. A monitoring well network indicates declining concentrations of target things of concern. And Raytheon is the responsible party for cleanup and will be until there is no further action issued by DEP. You did receive some information in your public comment materials that were provided throughout last week and this week. One of them was a letter dated July 17th from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. I think you received that Monday or Tuesday, so I would also draw your attention to that. So what is the city's role in this process? The city is not nor has it ever been an authorized entity for improving any environmental rehabilitation orders or corrective actions mandated by the state on this site or other such sites. And that's because we're not the regulatory authority in this case. The Department of Environmental Protection is the regulatory authority for cleanup and it is the sole entity that can determine when site rehabilitation is achieved. The city, however, can bolster and support the Department of Environmental Protection's requirements through our conditions of approval to this site plan approval and through our permitting process. And then more particularly, the city suggests that the following conditions can help support the Department of Environmental Protection's efforts to address ongoing soil, groundwater, and VOC concerns on the site. I'm not going to read to you word for word, but these are some conditions of approval of permits that the environmental team would include whenever permits are submitted. So you have those outlined here, the right of way and building permits, including site and foundation permits will only be issued once the applicant has submitted proof of all necessary DP clearances and approvals. Those are things such as a soil management plan. I do know that Mr. Praman mentioned that some of that work has begun with DP already and some of the materials were submitted to DP earlier this week. If there are requirements by DP to require transport of contaminated soils from the site at any point during construction. The applicant will have to ensure that that transport occurs in sealed containers or best practice as approved by DP. Any groundwater dewatering activities that will require contaminant and disposal shall do so without use of the city's stormwater systems. We already talked a little bit about compliance with DP requirements as a condition. And then any notice of non-compliance with DP regarding construction monitoring activities shall be promptly reported to the city. So these are the special conditions of approval that we would be looking for on this site. If you approve this request tonight, there will be a restrictive covenant placed on the site that it will remain affordable for 30 years. There will be 159 units at 80% AMI or below and 159 units at 120% AMI or below. There's a number of other conditions of approval that I think I'm running out of time to go through. So I'm going to scan those for you. Those are the same that you've received in your packet over the last two weeks. We will require an updated phasing document as well as sources and uses document to ensure that they have replacement reserves for the entire period of affordability. More around DP guidance, coordination with PSTA. And so tonight we're asking that you would approve this site with special conditions of approval. Okay, next we will have a presentation. Chair, if I may, I'm sorry to interrupt, but just a little add on there with respect to these conditions of approval that were listed. The additional ones for the environmental issues there, 18 through 22, those would require additional, like an additional motion by the city council to add those on to amend the existing special conditions of approval that are in the report. So, and as Ms. Foster kind of spoke, there was a little, a couple of tweaks to that language that she stated in her presentation. But when we go back to take action on that, I'd like to pull that slide up and make sure that that language is clearly delineated. Okay. All right, so just a little preview, that's all. Okay, very good, thank you. And that'll need to be a separate amendment before the final, or? That's correct. Okay, all right. Okay, now we will move to a presentation by the applicant. Thank you, Madam Chair. Before I start my time, I did want to put into the record, I provided the council with the resumes of our expert witnesses tonight. We have Robert Pergilizzi, AICP PTP. Is this part of his presentation? I just want to get them qualified for the record. Yeah, I mean, kind of do that as we run. Okay. Yeah. We'll go ahead and start. Thank you, Madam Chair. Brian Angst on behalf of the applicant. After decades of dormancy, the time has finally come to revitalize this historically blighted, problematic property and return it to a community asset. I first spoke those words to this council or to the council in February of 2021. That night, the council unanimously approved moving forward preliminarily with a land use amendment and a development agreement to construct 150,000 square foot sports complex, 10 acre public lagoon and over 400 units of apartments, actually 500 units of apartments, including 30% affordable. As Ms. Foster said, the law has changed significantly since then and you have tools that allow you to approve mixed rate affordable housing on this site. As Ms. Foster said, the law has even changed since we filed this application and now as of right, without a public hearing and without council review or approval, we could construct 2,387 units as long as 40% of those units were at 120% AMI. There is no requirement for 80% AMI. Why are we here? Why are we still doing this? Because we don't think that's a good idea. We think we should keep our promise to give the city at least 159 units that are 80% AMI. And we think 1,058 units is much preferable to the community than 2,387 units would be. Tonight, I have Mr. Robert Pergolizzi, AICP PTP, as a planning expert and transportation planning expert. We have Mr. Sean Cashin, PE, and LEED certified PE as our civil engineering expert. And we have Mr. Greg Schultz, PE from Stantec, who have over 30 years of private and public sector experience in environmental remediation and working on sites like this. I'm going to ask Mr. Pergolizzi to give us his testimony at this time. Good evening. My name is Robert Pergolizzi. I'm principal with Gulf Coast Consulting, AICP certified planner, and a professional transportation planner. We conducted a detailed traffic analysis of this 1,058 unit apartment complex. Did a detailed analysis of area roadways, intersections, and driveways for both the AM peak period and the PM peak period. Under existing conditions, all intersections are operating at level of service D or better, and all roadways are operating at level of service D or better, many of them at level of service C. That also corroborates what's in the Forward Pinellas level of service report for 22nd Avenue North and 66th Street. Our main access would be to 22nd Avenue North directly aligning with Anvil Street, which is on the north side of 22nd Avenue, which is sound access management that your staff has recognized and mentioned that in their staff report. We are proposing three driveways to 72nd Street. On the other side of 72nd Street is Azalea Park, a very large park. Our southernmost driveway to 72nd Street aligns with 16th Avenue North, which again is sound access management that your staff has recognized in their report. Per ITE trip generation, 11th edition trip generation rates, this project would generate 391 AM peak hour trips, the highest hour in the morning. And 413 PM peak hour trips, the highest hour in the afternoon evening. We analyzed future conditions with our project's impacts and all roadways we continue to operate at level service D or better, and all intersections we continue to operate at level service D or better. We are proposing some minor intersection improvements at 72nd Street and 16th Avenue to promote flow. Staff has reviewed and approved the findings of our traffic study. I'm here to answer any questions regarding traffic, and I'll ask Greg Schultz to talk about environment. Thank you, Mr. Perglizzi. And Mr. Schultz is the environmental director for Stantec with 30 years of experience in environmental remediation and projects like this. Thank you. As I said, Greg Schultz, Stantec, 3800 Park Place Boulevard, Clearwater, Florida. I understand environmental issues are scary. The contamination's there. What we've done is being proactive. We've worked with FDEP. You can see by the letter that FDEP issued based on review of our soil management and dewatering plan that we're working hand in hand with the department. They've acknowledged that we're doing everything in accordance with the rule. We started the process by coming out and doing due diligence on the property to see if it was something that Mr. Porter wanted to acquire. Found a minor amount of soil contamination. The groundwater contamination is well understood. It's chlorinated solvents from the former Raytheon facility. In general, mostly deeper contamination because coordinated solvents tend to sink. So as part of that due diligence, you know, we've identified areas of soil contamination. The plans are basically to mitigate the risks of exposure to any of those contaminants. Under the soil management plan, it details how we handle those during construction and what we're going to do with any soils, you know, that need to be excavated. That soil will be managed under what's called an engineering control. In this case, it will be impervious parking lots or building slabs, those kind of features, things that will prevent any kind of direct contact with that minimally impacted soil. And the soil impacts that we're talking about are not hazardous waste or, you know, anything extremely significant. It's a class of compounds called PAHs, and they're from combustion, from asphalt, all kinds of things like that. Now, the levels we found on site are consistent with anthropogenic background in urban settings. They come out of the tailpipes of cars. If you sample by many parking lots, you know, in the city throughout the county, you would be expected to find similar concentrations. So it's not something we want to export off-site and dispose of, but something that can be easily managed to mitigate risk with those engineering controls, basically putting it under impervious cap. Mr. Schultz, let me ask you a couple questions. In your opinion, is what your testimony today- Hold on one second, Mr. Alk. It's eliciting direct testimony, Chair. It's an unusual way of doing it, but it's not cross-examined, so it's permissible. I'm not allowed to cross-examine my own witness. Exactly, it's permissible. Okay, all right, thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Please proceed. Mr. Schultz, when you say that there's not going to be any exposure, that means that you're going to cap it, and you're actually going to improve the environmental conditions. Yeah, well, that's the intention, is not only are we going to mitigate any risks to the limited amount of soil contaminations there, but right now the site is unpaved, largely. And all the rainfall that's falling on that property is percolating down into the groundwater and pushing that plume. So every time we get a heavier rainfall event or a tropical storm, that water that's percolating through the grass is adding to the pressure on that plume to go further out into the neighborhoods. Just a simple fact. So when we build this development, we're going to containerize 100% of that stormwater. Everything's going to be impervious with surface drains in the parking lot. They're going to be routed to subsurface drainage structures that have no interaction with the groundwater for preliminary treatment before popping off into the city stormwater sewer. So all that water that was percolating into the ground and causing plume movement will no longer occur. So in my opinion, the project vastly improves conditions out there. And, you know, any risks from the chlorinated solvents in the groundwater, we're mitigating those and installing passive vapor venting systems in the buildings. So every angle and risk that is perceived by the data, we're doing things in conjunction with DEP to mitigate those risks, to make sure that, you know, no one out there is adversely impacted by any of the contaminations on the site. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have regarding that. Mr. Schultz, is the plan actually in excess of DEP requirements and applicable law in terms of the environmental remediation that is planned for the site? It's very consistent with DEP regulations. I think what's in excess of that is the fact that we're putting in the vapor venting system out of an abundance of caution. We're over-designing it because we recognize that people are aware of the long-term, I mean, it's a well-known site. Everybody understands that it's contaminated. So we want to make, give an extra level of comfort that there's going to be no concerns of potential vapors accumulating in the buildings. And that's where I feel we're over-designing to put those vapor systems in so that vapors can't accumulate in the buildings. And Mr. Schultz, there's no fracking. I saw one of the neighborhood letters said there was fracking. There's no fracking, right? Absolutely nothing to do with fracking. No. The dewatering process, basically, we're going to extract the groundwater when they're putting in utilities and subsurface construction. Pump that into a series of what's called frack tanks. They're just big metal tanks that'll be manifolded together and that knocks out the sedimentation and then we test that groundwater. Determine what's in the groundwater and then we've got a treatment system planned to treat that water before discharge to the planned discharge to the city sanitary sewer. So the water is being treated and there is no fracking? Correct. Thank you, sir. And one of the other neighbor concerns I saw was this issue of waivers. We're not asking anybody to sign a liability waiver or waivers. Under Florida and federal law, we have to, under Florida and federal law, we're required to give disclosures of environmental issues. Just like you would see in a normal lease or purchase agreement for wood destroying organisms, we'll be providing disclosures to the tenants. But we're not asking neighbors to sign waivers, we're not requiring tenants to sign unusual waivers. We're complying with the law, which is to disclose the condition of the property. I think the unrefuted testimony and evidence today from the staff and from the applicant is going to be that this will be an objective improvement to the environmental condition of the property, and it's a lot less impactful than the applicant can do as of right. And it provides the city with a significant benefit of 159 units at 80% AMI or less. The Palm Church property only had 72 units at 80% or less, and the Fairfield property had 118. So this project of your three will provide you with the most at 80% or less. And we'll also have another 159 for 318 total at 120% or less. Thank you. Thank you. And before we go to the opponent, just make sure everyone's cell phones are silenced, please. We would appreciate it. All right, so next we will do the presentation by the opponent. We got to get there. Oh, okay. We need the clicker. Okay. To retain custody of that. I'm not good with stuff like that. Don't worry about it. I don't think I'm going to have time anyway. It's okay. Ready? Hi, my name is Joelle McClure. I live at 7234 13th Avenue North St. Pete on Azalea Park. Traffic and parking are a major concern for our neighborhood. The traffic study submitted by the developer estimates 4,800 trips per day by vehicles coming in and out of the complex. The complex's proposed size includes 1,058 units with only 1.7 cars estimated per unit. Hard data from the 2020 census of Pinellas County shows an average of 2.2 vehicles per household. 2.2 vehicles per apartment would be approximately 2,328 vehicles. The complex will be short on spaces by at least 400. Based upon this hard data, we could expect 6,000 trips per day with 7,000 being a possibility. It is the belief of some that residents who need affordable housing often don't have their own vehicles and, therefore, won't need a parking space. This thinking, in my opinion, is faulty. How many teachers or nurses do you know who ride the bus every day? Extra parking spaces will still be needed for visitors, deliveries from organizations like Meals on Wheels, home health aides, and different maintenance workers. The developer has suggested that since so many people now work remotely that there will be less trips per day than expected, but that also means the parking lot will be full 24-7. This is why the developer wants parking spaces on 72nd, because he needs them for his tenants. The safety of the school zone is another issue. The developer is insisting on a driveway directly across the street from 16th, half of which is inside the school zone. 16th was never meant to handle heavy traffic. It doesn't even have double yellow lines. There is no crosswalk across 16th on 72nd, and there are multiple bus stops on each corner. I have asked repeatedly for a buffer around the school zone and have requested this driveway to be moved north of the Azalea Rec Building. I have heard in multiple meetings how no one will be using 16th, so my concerns are unfounded. If no one will be using 16th, then why the refusal to move the driveway? 16th is a short street that ends in a T at 74th, right across from the front doors of Azalea Elementary School. There are about 600 students at this school. The dangers of having thousands of vehicles emptying directly into a school zone are many, especially a school zone that wasn't designed to support that kind of traffic. Twice a day, 74th is impassable due to drop-off and pickup at the school. Afternoon pickup is especially hazardous as parents park all along 16th in the grass on both sides and fill the rec building parking lot. Many kids cross the street unaccompanied. Furthermore, the principal of Azalea Elementary, Michael Reibman, did not know that potentially thousands of people could move into this complex. Azalea is at capacity, and children from this complex would not be able to attend school there. Walter Fuller rec before and after school programs and their camps didn't know either. They are also full, and no children from the complex could attend their programs. There is a busy playground on 72nd. It will get much busier when thousands of people move into this complex. They will have to cross 72nd to reach the park. I've asked for a lighted crosswalk to be installed, but the developer wasn't willing to compromise and pay for this. The average lighted crosswalk costs about $22,000. The developer is willing to pay $1 million for parking spaces on 72nd. They insist are for the community and not their complex, yet they won't pay for any crosswalks or other traffic calming measures. If the city doesn't insist on traffic calming measures and crosswalk be paid for by the developer, all of these costs will fall on the taxpayer. The residents of Azalea Park are being unfairly characterized as against affordable housing. Our neighborhood is made up of the kind of people who need affordable housing. Nurses, teachers, firemen, and police officers, for example. We are against a huge number of units in this proposal and that it is to be built on contaminated property. There is a parcel for sale directly across the street from Azalea Park. That would be a good spot for an affordable housing complex like Skyway Lofts and the property isn't contaminated. I question why the city would take the risk of the plume growing in size and spreading, especially in regards to Phase 3. Raytheon is most concerned about the land that is Phase 3, which is why it's deed restricted. There are many complexes in the pipeline in St. Pete, as well as many residents utilizing NTM-1. Rental choices are increasing and will continue to climb. With renters having other options to choose from, many will forgo this complex for fear the property could make them ill. I'd like to discuss the safety plan for the potentially contaminated soil. According to the soil management plan by Stantec, soil they dig up that cannot be reused in the excavation will be moved to a location beneath the asphalt parking lot or the building slabs. The developer plans to move contaminated soil around the property and place it beneath asphalt or buildings. How can moving contaminated soil around the property and placing it beneath asphalt or buildings be an acceptable remediation technique? The same report also states that if suspect materials are seen or smelled by anyone working on the property, like chemical orders or a sheen on the water, drums or containers, all construction activities must immediately cease. Who is going to oversee this and make sure that any of these suspect materials do come up during excavation that the construction will stop? The developer wants to get this land developed as quickly as possible. Can we trust that they will implement the proper protocols which allow for any worker to report a dangerous situation? The safety plan also says they will monitor the air quality by doing a visual evaluation. How can they visually evaluate the air when these chemicals are invisible to the naked eye? If wind gusts are expected to be above 20 miles per hour, they're supposed to stop all construction and cover all the loose dirt so it won't blow into the neighboring properties. Who is going to make sure that happens? A gust over 20 miles per hour could be a daily occurrence. Will they actually cover the dirt piles in appropriate liners with appropriate liners at the end of each day as outlined in the soil management plan? What about workers who will be working on this project? Will they be informed that they will potentially be exposed to toxic chemicals? Even though they are putting vapor barriers and passive vapor venting into the new complex, the chemicals are going to redistribute when the rain comes while they're excavating the land. The surrounding homes and condos do not have either of these safeguards in place to protect the existing residents. Since this is deed restricted land, will the disclosure to the potential residents be one microscopic sentence at the end of a 20 page lease? Or will this be clearly emphasized to keep the future workforce housing residents informed? Will there be an early termination clause in the lease to allow tenants to leave the property if they unexpectedly get ill? I would like a compromise. I would like phase three to be struck from the proposal and for the land to be used as a parking lot. This will greatly reduce the health risks to the community as well as reduce the number of vehicles and trips per day. There would still be over 600 units built. I think this is a fair compromise if the city is insisting on moving forward on building this site. Finally, there's no support for this proposal by the Azalea Park neighborhood or association or any of the neighbors on the adjoining streets. I've spent hours canvassing and speaking to my neighbors, almost all of whom have signed our neighborhood petition. We're now at close to about 1,500 signatures. We have kept our petition very localized and have only posted our petition in one online group that serves West St. Pete only. It has come to my attention that Mr. Ungs has submitted a letter stating that the Azalea Park Association supports this proposal. That letter is a misrepresentation of the facts. It was written on the letterhead of the association and signed president of the association, but it is only the opinion of the writer. After we reached out to the writer of this letter, he denied ever stating that he was representing our community and said he is not responsible for Mr. Porter misleading the city staff and the council on this subject. Your constituents are hoping you do the right thing and help us come to a compromise in regards to this property. Thank you. Okay. Before we go, there is no applause. There is no applause in the chamber. So before we go to public comment, we're going to do a couple of housekeeping items. One, I need to read into the record what has been received to city council via email. There were 13 for and 61 against. And then we also received a online petition that had 1,408 total entries, 700 of which were St. Pete residents and 708 who were outside of the city limits. And then we also have some people who have filled out cards since the swearing in at the, you know, the swearing in at the beginning. So if you have not been sworn in, please stand and the clerk will swear you in now if you have filled out a card. Okay. All right. We will begin public comment. The clerk will call two names at a time. When the clerk calls your name, go to either podium and we will go ahead and begin. Madam Chair, the first two speakers. Geneva Nelson and I think it's Mahin. Can pre. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record. Maureen, I'm sorry. Maureen. Go to either podium, state your name and address for the record and you will have three minutes to address city council. My name is Geneva Nelson. Can you hear me? Yes. My address is 1049th Street North, Unit 106, St. Petersburg 33710. I'm a volunteer with FAST, Faith and Action and Strength Together for Pinellas County. We have several thousand members who care about this issue, the issue of affordable housing. We urge you to approve this project because of the 159 affordable housing units in it. Why do we care about affordable housing? The Schoenberg report from the University of Florida reports that 95% of the dire need for affordable housing in St. Petersburg is for people at 80% or below of AMI. By dire need, what we mean is they are spending 50, 60, 70 or more percent of their total income for housing or they've been priced out of the housing market. There are many families, two and three generations living in one house that it's too small for that many people, often with several adults working full time in it because they can't afford housing. Or many have moved out of the area because they can't afford the housing. Why should we care about these 80%? As you know, many of them are essential workers, firefighters and nurses and teachers and police officers. More and more wealthy people are moving to St. Pete. More and more luxury condos are being built and they're often tearing down older buildings that had affordable housing in them. What are we going to do when we are so full of wealthy people living here that we have no police officers or firefighters or nurses or teachers? I want to tell you my story. I moved to St. Petersburg in 2006. No, I came here for temporary work. I did not move here then. I had no intention of moving here, but the company liked my work. They eventually offered me a full time job and I had fallen in love with St. Pete. So I decided in 2009 to stay and I was renting. Four years ago, I was priced out of the rental market. Now, I worked in computers for 30 years. I have Social Security. I'm semi-retired now. I don't have any retirement because I didn't work in one place long enough to get vested. But I saved my money 401Ks and I have a substantial amount of savings. Four years ago, I bought an older, very modest condo and I had enough savings to put my entire down payment on it and I have a mortgage. Today, I'm told if I sold my unit, I could sell it for 157% more than what I paid for it. If I had to buy now, I couldn't. I would have to move. How many people in four years can afford an increase of 157% in their housing cost? I only could because of my savings. I doubt if there are many people in this. Good afternoon. Thank you all for the service to our wonderful city. Can you hear now? Okay. My name's Maureen Campfire and I live at 835 26th Avenue North. It's in the Crescent Heights section neighborhood. My husband and I came here 12 years ago. We retired. And we bought what we thought was a sort of expensive house for us. It was $275,000. Now you can't touch a house hardly anywhere in this city for that amount. So I won't repeat all the problems that Geneva mentioned, but just I am with FAST also. And I know you're all aware of the urgent crisis for affordable housing. And I just want to repeat and I urge you to have more housing for those folks that are making 80% and less. And I know the workforce people need housing desperately. The other people have mentioned, but there are those that make less than that 80% of a family of four is $65,700 a year. And 50% of the AMI is $47,050. It's nearly impossible to live on that. I'm also a volunteer at Daystar Life Center. And we help people with their utilities and there's a food pantry there. And I speak to people every day there where I go twice a week. And just yesterday there was a woman who hadn't paid her gas bill for a couple months. Gas hot water. She's taking cold showers, which is okay in Florida, I guess, in this time of the year. But because she and many people are behind on their utilities because their rent is the most expensive thing. And they know they have to pay the rent or get evicted. We also have many people coming to Daystar that are facing evictions, three-day eviction notices. So again, I want to find a problem, but we're looking for solutions and we're looking for more housing for those people making 80% of the AMI or less. Thank you. Next two speakers. Next two speakers, Madam Chair, Greg Haltzwart and Elizabeth Howlett. Please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. You don't want to speak? You don't want to speak? Okay. Ms. Howlett is against, Madam Chair. Okay, thank you. Next speaker. Greg Haltzwart and Barbara Kraft. Please go to either podium. Aye. Barbara Kraft is against. Okay. Define, I can't really last name, but please go to the podium. State your name and address for the record. You have three minutes to address city council. Please, sir. Okay. Good evening. My name is Greg Haltzwart. I live at 6801 14th Avenue North in St. Petersburg, Florida. My neighborhood is Crossroads Estates. We're on the east side of the bike trail. And east of the Raytheon property. And part of the toxic plume that is originated in Raytheon is in our neighborhood. So I'm speaking from the perspective of my neighborhood. But what I'm going to talk about is the elephant in the room, which nobody mentions, Raytheon, one of the world's largest corporations, one of the most powerful corporations in the world. They were willing to vacate this property. And then after they vacated and confirmed that it was toxic and that it was part of their responsibility, they went to great effort and great cost to do three things. They put test wells in our neighborhood on every street and avenue. And they regularly test these wells, take water samples through Arcadis Engineering. They also installed two underground wells and pumps systems in our neighborhood that constantly take groundwater from our neighborhood and bring it to the third thing that they did, a two story building that they built on 13th Avenue and 72nd Street, whose purpose is to clean the water in the ground from our neighborhood and from the Raytheon property. They distill it, they distill it, they evaporate it, they treat it with chemicals. The fact that they've gone to all this trouble to do this and spent millions of dollars and have told us officially that this is a 20 year cleanup period just tells you that the simplest thing to think about this property is that until it's clean, it shouldn't be eligible for any kind of development. I'm not saying it's not going to be developed, we're not naive enough to think it's going to be a green space or a park or something like that, and it will eventually be developed. But until it's safe, 100% safe, you can guarantee that nobody that's working on this property is going to be injured or become ill from being exposed to whatever that property might have on it. Or anybody that's going to live there has any kind of chance at all of being injured, harmed, or become ill. Until that can be guaranteed, you have an obligation as the city council to protect the citizens of St. Petersburg, whether they're workers or residents, and not allow them to have any chance at all of being injured or becoming ill because of what's on this property. Okay. There's nothing wrong with developing the property, but it just isn't the time. Whether the property can be cleaned up faster than 20 years, that's an issue that the developer, the city, Raytheon, and the DEP can work on. You can perhaps accelerate the cleanup. But until this land is clean, nothing should be allowed on it. It's just that simple. Okay? There is no comments from everyone, okay? Thank you. Thank you, sir. Please. Good afternoon. My name is Steven McGee. I live at 7300 11th Avenue North. My concern is, a lot of my neighbor's concern as well, is the pollution. If we tap into this site, which is full of pollution, there's no real guarantee that they're going to be able to control how that pollution is filtered through into the neighborhood. I live in the plume. I don't have a lawn. I don't have any plants because they all die because I can't turn on the pump. It's the fear of getting cancer, which is what these carcinogens have. So that's the primary concern. And then also, if you're going to approve a site that's going to have children living in it. I hope that you guys have deep pockets because the city could potentially be sued. If they are aware that there's pollution in the soil, and then you guys go ahead and approve housing for children, that's not going to look well in 10 years or whenever they start growing tumors or whatever it is that's a result of this cancer. So that's the biggest concern. We know there's a demand for housing. Everyone who has property understands the costs have gone up for everyone. And we're applauding your decision to try to find affordable housing because it is a pandemic through the whole country, not just this city. But to put kids in a worse situation and adults who have no choice. Yeah, I go to this contaminated site. I sign a waiver saying that, yes, I agree that I'm living in a contaminated site, but I have no choice. I have to go there because this is the only option available to me. That's not an option. Putting people in bad housing is almost as bad as no housing. Maybe even worse if they're going to get sick from it. And children don't have a voice. So who's going to be their voice? A developer? Okay, thank you. Next two speakers. Next two speakers, Madam Chair. Sylvia DiNardo and Chris 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. I'm Sylvia DiNardo. My address is 1230 Russell Drive North. I'm opposed to the multi-family housing project on Raytheon. This is just not the right location. It has nothing to do with, I understand that we have an affordable housing issue. My son is a fireman and has to live with another fireman because they don't make enough money to be able to afford to live on their own. So it's close to my heart. Children will be playing outside on contaminated grounds as stated. I can't even imagine the thought coming to somebody's mind that you want to build uncontaminated property. There are going to be approximately 1,100 apartments. According to the National Multifamily Housing Council, it is estimated that 27 to 35% of those residents are going to be children. We don't have room in our schools. They're already overcrowded. Was there a plan set forth as to what you're going to do with these children if they have to live on contaminated soil? Pinellas County has several cities, over 3,700 residents. The Pittsburgh Housing Survey Association estimates that on 1,100 apartments you could possibly have 3,700 residents. You can imagine taking the entire city of Tera Birdie and placing it right on that piece of property. That's a lot of people that you're looking to inflict in our neighborhood. A city, not just a few homes. That's a lot of people. According to a 2017 study, an FBI study, apartments in higher density housing types have higher emergency call volume. The most dangerous cities are the neighborhoods that have apartments mixed with single family homes. Perry, it's an FBI study and I cited that in a report that I sent to the city. Also, traffic. I absolutely do not agree with what the gentleman is saying about the amount of cars that are going to be put on that property. The traffic is probably going to be trouble triple what he estimates it's going to be. Also, the height of the buildings are people at the surrounding homes going to be able to get proper solar on their homes because of the heights of it. Our landfill has already reached maximum capacity and you want to put another 1,100 residents in this neighborhood. Again, I am proposed opposed and thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. Yes, good afternoon. My name is Chris Bell. Thank you all for allowing me the opportunity to talk. My address is 1111 Jungle Avenue North and I've been in the jungle since 1972. I am against this proposed development because it will dramatically and drastically alter the neighborhood from 22nd Avenue North to 9th Avenue North and from 72nd Street and all the way west to Park Street and above into Walter Fuller. I'm also against this proposed development because the developer has failed to provide enough parking as has been adequately pointed out by a number of people for all of the 1,054 units that are to be built. I'm against this proposal because of the impact that it will have on all the surface roads surrounding this area from 22nd Avenue North and 72nd Street. And although the applicant alluded to 16th Avenue is one block long, it doesn't go anywhere except dead ends directly into the school. It will have a dramatic impact on the school. I'm very appreciative for the diligence of the city staff, but I would also like to request that if this project is approved that the developer be responsible to allow only ingress and egress from 22nd Avenue North. In that regard, the developer to install Excel and diesel lanes on 22nd Avenue North adjacent to their property from 72nd Street to Pinellas County Trail. I would also request that the developer have a DEP-approved environmental consultant on site at all times and require testing of ground soils to be conducted to ensure no cross-contamination occurs. The idea that this could be done by moving dirt around is ludicrous. I would request also that a significant landscaping buffer be required along the entire length of 72nd Street. I would also request that the developer be required to pay for the widening of 22nd Avenue North from 72nd Street to Park Street from a two-lane road to a four-lane road if you all approve this. That there would be specific traffic control be instituted during any phase of soil, asphalt, concrete, or other remediation or removal which requires large vehicles entering the property. That no above-ground construction be taken place until all infrastructure drainage and piping be completed, inspected, and approved by city engineering. That no on-street parking be allowed on 72nd Street, 16th Avenue, or in any area where the current neighborhood is between 10 PM and 6 AM. And I would also take exception with the expert witnesses with regard to the 391 day trips. That's not going to happen. It's going to be way more than that. And also, there is no showing on your drawings of where the drainage is. Thank you so much for your time. Mr. Speakers, Madam Chair, Diane Schmidty and Shannon Miller Lutz. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and you have three minutes to address city council. Please. Hi, my name is Diane Schmidt. I live at 2002 75th Way North in St. Petersburg, Florida, and in the Azalea neighborhood. I have great-grandchildren that attend Azalea Elementary. This concerns me greatly with them trying to put traffic in there. I have lived there since 1985, something like that. Anyway, we've lived there a long time. And we've always moved there because it's a very safe neighborhood for the kids and for all of us. But you put that in there, and I'm concerned about my great-grandchildren. I don't want them hurt. I don't want them put in harm's way. And this concerns me very much, so I'm totally against this. And I understand that if you guys don't approve this, he can go ahead and just blow it all up and make more. But I would hope he would understand that this is not something that should go there. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Hi, my name is Shannon Miller-Lutz. I live at 1234 74th Street North, just on the south end of Azalea Park. We've lived in our home for two years. We were never told about the contamination when we bought the house. The first time we heard about it was when we had a landscaper come to our house and told us that we were not able to put in irrigation system because of the contamination. So it was a shock. I've been a real estate agent in Maryland, where we moved from three years ago, since 2006. And I was really shocked that this was not disclosed to me as a potential home buyer. Everything that everyone has said so far, I am in agreement with as opposition. You know, the traffic, the contamination. It was beautifully stated by Ms. McClure, so I am opposed. Thank you. Thank you. Next two speakers. Madam Chair, C. Olsen and Tony Satterfield, please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record, and you have three minutes to address City Council. Yes, sir. Hi, Tony Satterfield. I live at 7318 13th Avenue North, ten houses from this proposed development. I don't want to repeat everything that I've heard so far, but just a couple things. I'm in total agreement that this nationwide study that is being referred to with all the traffic. I sat on the Tourist Development Council for 17 years, and I watched them talk about the traffic patterns in Clearwater on the beach, and it was all going to be fine. Ask the people that live on Clearwater Beach if the traffic is an issue. It's a major issue. So, 400 cars? Come on, guys. It's going to be more than that. The other big concern that I have is that you're allowing three exits and entrances onto 72nd Street North, which is a two-lane road. You're going to add parking to that. So, what's going to happen? If you have not gone up to this site, if you make a left, you immediately, on the 22nd Avenue, you immediately hit a traffic light. About another hundred yards, it goes from four lanes to two lanes. And a mile, it hits a school district. That traffic is going to back up. So, what's going to happen? What's going to happen every morning? People are going to look for an alternative other than 22nd Avenue North. They're going to take one of these three exits, and they are going to start to drive down very quiet residential streets. They are going to start driving around Azalea Park. Again, I encourage you to go on any night of the week or any Saturday and look at the thousand kids who are going out to play sports, to use the recreational facilities. These kids, the cars are parked everywhere. These kids are wandering out. You're asking for trouble. With all due respect to that traffic study, it's garbage. It's not true. And I assure you that you are going to find within a very short time after this is built that this neighborhood is going to decline. We are already looking to move. Unfortunately, statistically, when I have talked to real estate agents, apartment complexes by nature reduce the value of homes by up to 10%. Now, before somebody says, well, the houses keep going up in value and saying, yes, they do, but will they go up as much? I can't afford 10%. So it sounds like this is a done deal. I've sat on an awful lot of councils over the years, but this is a mistake. It's a huge mistake. And I understand the need for workforce housing, but this is just way too big for a very quiet neighborhood that I've lived in for 19 years. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. My name is Chuck Olson. I'm a developer out of North Florida. I'm very familiar with attenuation and everything. Your address for the record, please. Pardon me? Your address. 68th Street North and 14th Avenue. I've lived there 20 years with me and my son. Anyway, I've been working in North Florida. I'm very familiar with attenuation. This attenuation formula isn't going to work on that property. That's my opinion. I'm against the development. I think a much nicer development could be developed there rather than so many units. In other words, just being overbuilt. Thank you. Thank you. These two speakers, Madam Chair, Melanie Goodman and Linda Bablin, please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record and you will have three minutes to address city council. Ma'am. Please. Hello, my name is Melanie Goodman and I reside at 6916 Stone's Throw Circle North, Apartment 9302. I don't know if my words will influence your decision today, but I want to be on record when in a decade people are sick and dying and the class action lawsuits begin. You know what kind of a disaster this could become. The residents surrounding the old Raytheon property have some serious concerns about the chemicals that are still present in the ground and their risk of exposure due to this construction. According to the 2022 remedial action status report from the FDP, there are 52 contaminated wells located on almost five and a half million square feet of the chemical plume. To put the size of the contaminated area in perspective, Tropicana Field is 1.1 million square feet. The current plume is five times the size of Tropicana Field. Each well is contaminated with at least one or more chemicals that far exceed the allowable EPA limits. Of the 52 wells currently contaminated with chemicals way above the EPA limits, 12 of them have chemical levels that are actually increasing, not decreasing. The most persistent toxic chemicals in the wells are trichloroethylene, vinyl chloride, 1,4-dioxide, and they are thousands of times above the EPA limits. In 2023, the EPA determined that trichloroethylene presents an unreasonable risk of injury to human health. Repeated exposure to this chemical has been associated with effects in the liver, kidneys, immune system, and central nervous system. Additionally, it has the potential to cause cancer in humans. Prolonged exposure is associated with Parkinson's disease, kidney cancer, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. In fact, this is the chemical that increased the rate of Parkinson's disease at Camp Lejeune by 70% compared to the surrounding populations. No one has been or currently is tracking the residents that live in this area to see if the incidences of disease and cancers associated with these chemicals are higher compared to the general population. Without even taking a canvas, I personally know of residents in the contaminated area surrounding the property that have reported various types of cancer associated with exposure to these chemicals. I have been diagnosed with a rare kidney disorder, and my doctors believe that the kidney damage is from exposure to these chemicals. The Phase 2 Environmental Assessment Report from 2020 states that the vapors on the entire property represent an elevated carcinogenic risk. The well on Stone's Throw property next to the maintenance shed has the highest level of some of these chemicals, and Raytheon has not done vapor testing surrounding this well. Why aren't these levels being monitored? Don't the lives and health of Stone's Throw residents matter? We've been told that construction can cause the chemicals to migrate and potentially make the plume worse. What about all the residents that live in buildings without vapor barriers and without passive vapor venting? Don't our lives matter too? Please consider the best interests of your constituents and reconsider your decision to prove this development. Thank you. Please. Hi, I'm Linda Bablin and I live at 1514 70th Street, North and St. Pete. I'm not going to regurgitate a lot of what's been said, just maybe reiterate a little bit more relating first to the traffic study. I also agree that this seems ludicrous at best. But even if we took those numbers at face value on a single, as stated, that was a two lane road, but it's one lane in each direction and there's, I think it's 30 miles an hour with speed humps. I can't imagine even 300 cars, never mind anything above that, going in even one direction on a 30 mile an hour road with speed humps at 15 miles an hour. And how that's not going to back up probably all the way from 22nd Avenue down to 9th. If they do have to find an alternate route, they're going to go down south through 9th Avenue. And that will, again, as stated, be in a residential area that has right now very minimal traffic around also a roundabout. That is a very tiny roundabout. And there's really virtually no other way out of there, so that's going to be an issue. There's one thing that was concerning to me at previous meetings listening to the developer and related to infrastructure with sewer and water. And it was stated basically that the approval has to come first and then we'll deal with the infrastructure. I don't know, and maybe you folks do, whether the sewer or the water can be sufficient to accommodate the size of a project. Again, with the traffic parking on 72nd Street, the parking that already exists there when people are at the playground, cuts down obviously on the side of the road, or the size of the road, thus slowing traffic even further. Lastly, well actually, not lastly. So with the movement of the soil and the proposed plans for if something should happen. What if something should happen? What happens if contamination does take place and it's noticed? Does everything just stop right there? And if it does, is it stopped with land exposed? What are we going to do to remediate that problem as is? How long will that delay this project? Are we going to have an opportunity for multiple months, perhaps years, before these things are remedied? And then just have basically more of an eyesore than just vacant land right now? And probably most concerning to me is what the opening statement of the woman about this new change in the law, that as long as certain criteria are met for AMI or whatever the wealth indicators are, that as long as you meet that, that you could put anything on without city approval. Does that mean that you could have a Superfund site and just because it meets these criteria that the city doesn't have any input into whether that is even taken care of? That is a very scary thought to me. Thank you. Thank you. Next two speakers. Two speakers, Madam Chair, Diane Birdwell and Matthew Freeman. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and you have three minutes to address city council. You can go ahead, ma'am. Hi, I'm Diane Birdwell. I live at 1842-74th Street North. And it's pretty funny that the last person that, funny, not ha-ha, but mentioned, you know, I don't know if you call it a thinly veiled threat in my opinion, that not just the first person but the first two people mentioned that if that 1,058 unit apartment complex four-story is not approved, that they can build not only a 2,387 unit building with a 72-foot height, and that could go up as it just has, which was mentioned, without approval. I just can't even wrap my head around that. How many parking spaces are substantial? Substantial is not the same as ample. And in this case, if you have over 1,000 units and you have less than that in parking spaces, I can't wrap my head around that either. How can that be ample? In 15 to 20 years, how many potential birth defects or unusual cancers will show up in residents and former residents? Would you want your grandchildren living there? And contaminated dust in the wind? Okay, you can say that we'll just cover everything up, but it's Florida. You know how wind kicks up and rain kicks up without any warning. And that wind's going to be blowing over playground, elementary school, the club sports. They're at the field every Saturday morning all through the school year. You know, the original 500 units would seem to be way more palatable. Obviously, I'm not silly enough to think that that land will never be developed. But wow, this is just really a building of that magnitude in a local residence just seems absurd to me. Thank you. Thank you. Sir? Hi, my name is Matt Freeman. I've been a resident at 1650 Robinson Drive North for seven years now in the Azalea neighborhood. As previously stated, and is one of my concerns as well, we've heard about the carcinogens, which include trichloroethylene in the soil and groundwater, as well as vinyl chloride in the groundwater. As mentioned as well, these are some of the same chemicals, carcinogens that were involved in the Camp Lugine lawsuit. That concerns me for current as well as future residents. When we think about that site and the residents not only on the site and those nearby, we have cyclists and pedestrians on Pinellas Trail, people who visit Azalea Park. We have teachers and school children at Azalea Elementary who should be considered in terms of any adverse impacts to their health. Camp Redbird also holds events at Azalea Park, which is a summer day camp experience for participants six years and older with a physical, intellectual, or developmental disability. Construction on the contaminated soil will create dust and that will be airborne and will affect all the individuals I listed. I and my fellow residents in the Azalea neighborhood understand the need for additional housing, including affordable housing in the city of St. Petersburg. However, this is not the appropriate site for that. Lastly, I'm disheartened of the threat of St. Bill 102 being used in an attempt to force the hand of the state council to approve a project that could endanger the health of the residents. And I plead with the state council to consider the ethical and legal ramifications of approving this project. Lastly, on a personal note, I just turned 42 on Sunday, and I was diagnosed all of two weeks ago with cancer. So personally, this concerns me, the threat of additional contaminated soil being in the air and how that can further impact my health. And I know several neighbors who have children with health disabilities. There are elderly populations in this neighborhood. So I truly ask the state council to please consider that. If you are in our shoes, your children, your parents, grandparents, relatives, please consider that. We're not against affordable housing. This is a contaminated site. Thank you. Thank you. Next two speakers, Madam Chair, Warren, Willingham, and Madison Rice. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address city council. Ma'am, you can go ahead. Hi, I'm Madison Rice, 3245 Jackson Street North, St. Petersburg. I'm here in support of constructing the multifamily homes on the site in question. It is my opinion that this location is absolutely perfect for multifamily housing, being between Azalea Park and the Pinellas Trail and within walking distance of Tyrone Square, a big employment opportunity. I appreciate everyone's concern for the children, but honestly, if I was a kid, I would be absolutely stoked to be living here. To not have to ask my parents to drive me to a park would be so nice. If you actually want to reduce traffic, which it sounds like everyone does, you give people the opportunity to live places where they don't need a car to get their daily needs met, like going to a grocery store, going to see a movie, going to a park, getting to school. And when it comes to issues of contamination, I would trust the scientists and engineers who have been working on this site since I want to say like 91 or 95. They've been remediating it for a long time. If DEP says that it's safe to be doing construction, if they're doing the permitting, if people are doing their due diligence, I feel comfortable with it. I feel safe. And if at any point in time, I trust that if something comes up, it'll be brought to the public's attention and handled. But yeah, thank you. I'm here in support. Thank you. Sir? Warren Willingham, 3245 Jackson Street North, 33704. I'm very much in favor of these apartments. I'm just kind of jealous that they're not in my neighborhood. Hearing, but there would be so many more cars from people in the most car-centric housing type. Complaining about one of the least car-centric housing types is a little bit goofy. But if you're actually worried about car speeds, fair. Advocate for lane width reductions. Plant trees to narrow the field of view. And don't just fight against housing. It's misplaced. Street parking does also slow down drivers, by the way. If you're actually against car congestion, though, just advocate for transit. Anyway, this being between a park and a bike trail and near a public's is unbeatable, especially if the apartments have trail access and tons of bike parking. If the trail is integrated well, it could eliminate tons of short-run trips, which the primary number of trips are just short-run, less than one-mile trips, to public's barbershop, et cetera, that are typically done by a car. I got rid of my car because we live right next to our daily amenities, like a grocery store, all of the above. So there's one less car for you if you need that. More important than any of this is we will be able to increase our anemic housing supply. We need as much as we can get. I've had far too many friends leave to cheaper cities due to our lack of housing affordability. If this will even help a tiny amount, go for it. There's always advocating against this. Where will you or your grandkids live, or your kids or your grandkids live? Thank you. Next two speakers. Next two speakers, Madam Chair. I believe it's Joe Dorski, if I'm pronouncing it wrong, I apologize. And Evan Skowicz, please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. You have three minutes to address city council. This is going first. Sir, please go right ahead. All right, 1215 Russell Drive is my mom's Joe Dorski. The house has been in our family since 1955. Probably any of y'all are alive here. My background is I'm an honored graduate at the University of Florida College of Architecture. I'm fully aware of all the developments. That's what I've done my whole life. In that neighborhood, I remember when they did additions to what used to be called ECI. It was not eSystems, then it was Raytheon. They did a huge addition. I can remember when Tyrone Mall was nothing but palmettos and pine trees. They used to hunt snakes and frogs behind that place. But I also witnessed all the huge chemical tanks leaching chemicals out as they corroded and rusted, with nothing done about it for years. And I also watched what was kind of a viable creek die to the point to where, when you all saw the train derailment up in Ohio, these oil plumes come up and you get these oil slicks on it. And that's exactly what happened. So they dried the creek out and just left it. Now, that's one issue. But the other issue is a lot of people have brought this up. And these guys paint a pretty picture in all these studies. I've seen, I've done all that type of stuff. But some have mentioned this site to put 1,058 units on that site, which is probably doubling the size of the occupancy. This city was never designed for that type of density. What's going on downtown, the city was never designed for that type of density. The infrastructure's not there to support what they're approving now. And the sewage, et cetera, et cetera, the traffic, what happens, you have a nice little neighborhood and it turns into, look at Brandywine, right across the other side of the tracks. Well, I used to remember the train went down that track, you know. And Brandywine's turned into a hell hole. Drugs, cops are there all the time. That's just 50 feet away. So, you know, the affordable housing thing, I get people, you know, I understand it and there's some empathy, but the same token, you have to have the proper place to do it. And that site is not ready for that type of density. Not in any way, shape, or form. I originally came up here thinking if these guys were going to do a small town home project, I looked at buying that property with some other guys years ago before, and Ken Heretic from Vector got it. And I just figured the contamination was just too severe. It's like Chernobyl, you know. And if you're not living there, it's great, but it always happens to the other guy. You can, oh, you read it in the newspaper, the other guy, that's a shame. He got in a car wrecked, but there's two perspectives in life. Witnessing the car wreck or being in the car wreck. And when they start just digging and doing all that stuff, I've done it for 35 years. So I get it. And there's no way you can develop that property as they're present and doing with foundations and all those types of vapor barriers. You can sell that to somebody else. I might have fallen off the turnip truck, but it wasn't last night. So thanks. Yes, sir. Good afternoon. My name is Evan Sokolowitz. I live at 7235 10th Avenue North. To kind of go along with what we've been talking about, I actually, I don't drive my car. I ride my bike to work. I was a manager at a shoe store directly across the street from the Raytheon complex for three years. And what I can tell you is, is the Pinellas Trail already with the indicator that they have at 22nd Avenue. I've seen lots of people get hit by cars, people not paying attention or the heavy traffic flow. So if you, if this complex gets approved, not only will that traffic get worse, but it'll get more congested and more people will get hit and there'll be much more accidents. What people don't realize is Tyrone Square Mall is a major hub for the busing system for Pinellas County. And also there is an industrial park directly across 72nd over toward Tyrone, Tyrone Boulevard that has a lot of employees that during certain parts of the days, you'll see large trucks and large amounts of vehicles turning left onto 22nd Avenue. So if there was an entrance to be put on 22nd Avenue, there would be major backups. So on top of that, the 74th Street location or the, um, openings to the complex that opens up a whole nother, um, a bunch of problems because five days a week, you have youth sports, whether it's football, lacrosse, soccer. There's a lot of parents driving their kids to go practice. So people are getting off work and you have the people that are going home from practice on top of people coming home from work. That is already congested. So if you add this amount of apartments on top of that, it's going to get much worse. Um, I personally go to SPC right down the road, uh, the college. And a lot of the students that go to class with me use 70, uh, 72nd to get to their jobs after, after a class. So, um, that would create a huge problem. Um, as far as like the drainage, um, if you haven't seen the pumping station on the south side of the, uh, the, uh, lot, it isn't very big. Um, I'm not confident that that size of a pumping station will be able to get all the contaminants out of the ground on a continuous basis. Even if you run it 24 seven and, uh, you know, as far as drainage goes, where would it drain? Would it drain onto the, uh, Pinellas trail side where if it's heavy rain at a ready floods or would it leak into the bay by Admiral Farragut? So I'm opposed to the, uh, project. Thank you. We have one more that needs to be sworn in. Mr. Chair, James Shatman, before you speak, we need to swear you in. Please raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm that the evidence that you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I do. Please state your name and address for the record. Sure. Hi. My name is James Shatman. I live at 6800 16th Avenue North. I've lived there for 41 years and I used to be the president of Crossroads Area Neighborhood Association. So I'm a little familiar with this stuff or with the stuff that's at 1501 72nd Avenue North on the Raytheon property. Um, that's several points but basically I remember the toxic pollution. I remember in 2008 when the Tampa Bay Times and the Tampa Tribune rather and Channel 8 did an expose to what was being poured. Three chemicals, vinyl chloride, dioxane 42 and trichloride ethylene, which I can never go through, uh, into the ground in a pit, which flowed then into the aquifer, which flowed out around it. The class actions, uh, uh, suit lawsuit was heard up in federal court in Tampa and then in the 11th circuit of, uh, uh, court of appeals. Uh, Florida EPA got involved. They did, uh, they took Raytheon, which knew about this all the time and they took it to, uh, they, they took them in and they made them clean up stuff, clean up the grounds, clean up everything or as much as possible as they could. And Raytheon spent millions of dollars, 10, 20, 30 millions of dollars. I don't know. Um, but I, I did get to view the plant when they were cleaning it up with, uh, with the president of Azalea. And we walked around and we were impressed with what we saw. However, there are still doubts as to the safety of what's out there. And as, uh, my friend said over there, um, basically, uh, this problem is not gonna go away. It's still there. It, they have a radiation plant on 72nd street and 16th Avenue, which they built, which activate, which, uh, water from the surrounding areas, 16 wells goes into it. It's cleansed and then it goes back out and it's gonna continue to go for ad infinitum. Um, there is a possibility that this may go on for 50, 60, 70 years, right? How long, we do not know. That's going to be dependent upon what the plant says. Now, skipping forward on the problem, the traffic on 72nd street and 74th is two lanes. It has a 25 mile per hour speed limit for the reason that the park is there. Thank you, sir. Okay, sorry. I'd love to go on, but. Thank you. Okay, very good. We will end public comment and go into our cross-examination and we will start with cross-examination by city administration. City administration waives. Cross-examination by the opponent. You can waive if you have no one that you, okay. And cross-examination by the applicant. We waive, thank you. All right. How about closing comments? City administration, the opponent, and finally the applicant. Five. So I'll ask Mr. Pergolizzi to come up and just provide about a minute of testimony in anticipation of some questions we might have and in response to some of the traffic issues we've heard. Robert Pergolizzi for the record. I think there may have been confusion about the numbers I stated. 391 AM peak hour trips, 413 PM peak hour trips. Those were not daily figures. I think the residents were stating that I was saying 390 trips for the whole day. That's not the case. It's over 4,000. Regarding parking spaces, we have over 1,700 parking spaces on site at about 1.7 per unit, which is pretty standard. The city code requires 1,093, a little bit over one per unit. So we have a lot of excess parking spaces. The on-street parking spaces we proposed for 72nd Street, we proposed those because we understood that there is sometimes a parking problem at Azalea Park. Those parking spaces can be used by the public. They're not for our residents. As far as Azalea Elementary School, it's on the other side of Azalea Park, over 500 feet away, along 74th Street, which has an unsignalized intersection at 22nd Avenue. Our access points to 72nd Street lead us directly to a signalized intersection at 22nd Avenue, which operates at level of service B. So no backups and no need for people to be driving past Azalea Elementary School. Finally, we're providing three crosswalks from our project across 72nd Street to Azalea Park. We are having multiple connections to the Pinellas Trail for bicycling and walking. And as you know, we have a PSTA transfer station at the mall across the street. Thank you, Mr. Fuglisi. I also want to add, and it's contained in the staff report, we have over 1,000 bicycle parking spaces for the residents. So I think that one of the persons who spoke in favor of this said that would be an added bonus if you're worried about transportation, you're on the Pinellas Trail. And we have adequate multimodal transportation with the PSTA transportation hub right down the street. So as you all know, this is a quasi judicial hearing in February of 2021. The council at that time unanimously approved moving forward preliminarily with a development agreement. And with a land use amendment for the sports complex, the lagoon and about 500 units, which included 30% workforce. That was a legislative decision. All you needed was a rational basis to say, I think this is a good idea or not. As you know, under the quasi judicial standard, we have to go by competence, substantial evidence. And obviously, Mr. Dima is much better than I to give you advice on what that is. But I just like to read from some case law here. This is Catherine Bay, LLC versus Fagan. It's out of the first DCA from 2010. And it talks about in a land use hearing that lay witness speculation about potential traffic problems, light and noise pollution, and general unfavorable impacts of a proposed land use are not, however, considered competent substantial evidence. Similarly, lay witnesses opinions that a proposed land use will devalue homes in the area are insufficient to support a finding that such devaluation will occur. There must be evidence other than the lay witnesses opinions to support such claims. So respectfully, that doesn't diminish the concerns, but the concerns have been addressed. They've forced us to not just do our work, but show our work. When you look at the competent substantial evidence and the approval criteria of Chapter 17.5 of the code, those criteria are very objective. Are we within a certain distance from a school? Are we within a certain distance from a PSCA transportation hub? Are we within a certain distance of the Pinellas Trail? Are we an underutilized, economically disadvantaged property? No one has suggested that this property is not that. I think everyone in this room would agree that this property is that. And also respectfully, as the staff has indicated, the city council and the city staff is not the arbiter of environmental remediation projects or the appropriate environmental engineering controls. However, in this case, the city staff has drafted special conditions of approval that are over and above any, probably any other project in the history of the city to ensure that the city has the authority to check the work of the FDEP and make sure that we are doing all of that work. Mr. Porter and his team have been working with FDEP for over three years on this project. We just got a letter in SMP saying that the proposal meets and exceeds the requirements and that FDEP will continue to work with us on that. We're also agreeing to get the national permit for the stormwater management and all of the other conditions of approval. So, I understand the environmental concerns. Environmental concerns are not part of chapter 17.5. And I think that all of the unrefuted confidential evidence demonstrates that this application should be approved and the opposition has not met its burden to deny. Thank you. All right, so at this time we will close our hearing and go into executive session. No, there's no more. Hearing is closed. We will go into executive session. Council members? Council member Driscoll. Thank you. First, let me thank city staff, the applicant, and all of the residents who came here today to be heard. And I do appreciate all of the communication that we've received via email ahead of time and here today. It is no matter what happens tonight, it really makes me proud of our city to see people who are so proud and protective of their neighborhoods because that's really what makes St. Pete what it is. This particular project is intriguing because it helps to move the needle on our affordable housing needs and our housing needs in general. And it also could be a very productive use for a site that has been vacant for far too long. There's a lot to read in this. It's pretty technical. I'm feeling kind of sciencey after looking through all that. But I do and I do have some some questions. And this could be I'll go ahead and and start with the reporting on the environmental issues and the assessment that was that was done. There was there was a statement in that that referred to the Western portion of the site. And if you give me just a second, I'll get to that page. It was on it was actually part of the report that was done in September 2020. So I'm wondering if some things have changed by then it says that the Western portion of the property was heavily overgrown at the time of both the geophysical survey and the assessment were done by Cardno. Nowhere else in the report did I see and maybe I missed it. I didn't see where anyone ever went back. And so I was concerned that there was this part that was hard to get to before and skipped. I hope we went back to it at some point. So actually that that section of the report has been amended. That was a holdover that got into it from a prior. There's no overgrown areas on the site. If you go out there, it's pretty much wide open trees, grass and asphalt pavement. That was that was a descriptors error in that report. And that referred to a prior report so that that area is not overgrown at all. And we had complete access to assess the property and we did soil borings and testing across the site with no restriction. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Since that was older, I was thinking that that might have an update to go with it. So thanks. And speaking of growing things, let's talk a little bit about the landscape. We heard from some residents tonight that they have trouble just doing common landscaping in their yards because of the area that they're in and presumably due to the site and the environmental issues. Are you is there any concern that there could be challenges with doing the landscaping that's that's planned? And it's important, not just because it looks good, but it provides a buffer visually and for noise provides all kinds of benefits for us. So it's important to point out that all of the irrigation and water use on the site will be city water. I think the issues that some of the residents are having with with their landscaping and, you know, things like that are due to inability to use their well water that they may have been using. But everything on the site will be city water. There will be no use of the contaminated groundwater, no exposure concerns from that. So it'll it'll all be city water. So no issues with landscaping, keeping it green and all that. Okay. And then and if at any time you're not the right person to answer this, it's okay if you hand it off. Regarding the drainage on the property, there was a response given that the the drainage retention on the site. This is in regards to the impervious surface and where the drainage would go. And it says that it would be handled in underground vaults under the parking lot. Yes. So basically, rather than the prior existing conditions where it either runs off into the joining roadways or percolates down and potentially spreads that plume further, there's going to be, you know, the drop inlets in parking lots like you see when you're driving through the grates. Those will connect to subsurface sealed vaults that have no interaction with the groundwater. And those vaults will contain that first flush of water and then will discharge into the city storm sewer. So there will be no contact with any contaminated media. The rainwater will be collected. It won't run off into the streets and it will be routed to the city storm sewer. Okay. Brej, if you have anything to add to that, it just perhaps it was just the way that it was worded. But storing things in vaults on a contaminated site just sounded a little bit. So before we make any more comments, I just want everyone to be clear. There is no comments from the chambers. And so we need everyone to be quiet and listen. This is Council's time to ask questions. So please, everyone, keep all of their comments to themselves. Thank you. Thank you, Council. Rajesh Premon, Engineering Capital Improvements Director. Yes, the response provided by the developer is appropriate as far as providing a seal system to treat that first flush or that contaminants. Have it treated before discharging within the stormwater system. It's typical and we do that on many projects throughout the city. I would also like to mention because there was also that discussion as far as how the hydraulic grade line underneath the subsurface operates on far as dispersing of that plume. No, there has been shrinkage from that 2010 study to the 2022 analysis of that plume because of the extraction wells around the site. But further reducing the amount of concentration at that central point and forcing that plume out is beneficial towards helping to reduce it in the future. So I think that will help. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. That helps me understand how that's all going to work. Regarding the traffic, the traffic study that was done. I mean, we see these a lot. It was good to see that based on this study, the increased volume would not degrade the level of service there. It is not, I think we could probably do better. And it might be that once, if this development moves forward, once it's done, we see what does better look like and go from there. I am very excited to see something happening along the trail and near a PSTA bus stop. This is the type of development that we want. My concerns have been more about the site that it's on and the environmental aspect of it. I look forward to hearing more about that. And I look forward to continuing to look at the traffic issues and how people are getting from point A to point B once this is in place. And then see what adjustments we need to make as far as crosswalks or, you know, other traffic measures to address any issues and make it even hopefully even better than it is now. That's all I have for now. I look forward to hearing from my colleagues. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Curtis. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I echo my colleagues, Councilmember Driscoll's comments about everybody being here and their comments and both the applicant and the city and all the work. It's very much appreciated. I'm going to dive right in. I have a lot of questions. If you knew me growing up, the one thing I wasn't going to be growing up was a scientist. So on the science questions, treat me like a kindergartner, please. You'd probably treat me like a kindergartner anyway, but which is perfectly fine. I think a lot of these are going to be for Mr. Schultz or Mr. Angst. Let me just start here. So there's a lot of permitting that's happening. FDOT, SWIFT MUD, FDEP, Pinellas County, I'm sure with us. So can you just kind of walk us through those layers and why so many? Because this is unique to where all of them have some permitting process, or at least it's unique to me. So could you just kind of walk us through quickly those layers and some of those controls that are being put in place? I'll take a stab at it. Okay. I'm not a permitting expert. Fair enough. So with that said, any of the work that's being done is being done through DEP. Normally on a site development, water management districts would have, you know, purview over the permits. But since it's a contaminated site, DEP needs to look at what we're proposing and make sure it's, you know, protective, doesn't cause spread of the contamination, things like that. But, you know, we'll need a permit for dewatering, for discharge of that effluent. You know, we've got the soil management plan and dewatering plan that have been submitted preliminarily. And it's a preliminary plan because we recognize that aspects of the development had not been set in stone yet. There may be some adjustments to, you know, exactly where one of the subsurface vaults goes or something like that. And the plan accounts for that so we can adjust and do additional sampling as things change. And I think DEP acknowledged that. But as far as other permits for the civil development, Sean can answer some of that. Thank you. Sean Cashin, Gulf Coast Consulting. This development will go through a City of St. Petersburg final site plan review. It will also go through a review with the Southwest Floor Water Management District, SWIFT MUD. Those are the two primary agencies that we'll be reviewing. They will both review stormwater. They will review the site plan design, the infrastructure design, which is the water in the sanitary sewer. So there are some questions regarding capacity for water in the sewer. And those will be reviewed, you know, during those review processes. There will be DEP reviews for the water and sewer, as well as the MPDES, which is another permitting process where the dewatering will be reviewed under the MPDES. It's a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, I believe, is the acronym there. So there are various layers of permitting and reviews that this project will be going through. And different agencies that will be reviewing it. Hi. Hi, Council Member Gerdes. I'll just mention we certainly have permitting staff here as well as Mr. Preyman that can answer it. But I wanted to draw your attention back to slide 13, which was added earlier today, since I kind of rushed through that. And wanted to mention that these special conditions of approval for the environmental engineering were added to give the city some additional oversight, right? So even though FDEP is the regulatory body, this is a way for us to ensure that if FDEP isn't doing its job, we would still be able to issue a stop work order and monitor the site as well. And I know there was some question about how often that's happening. And I know we probably can't put an exact number on it, but we talked generally about how often we're checking in and making sure that they're doing what they're supposed to and FDEP is doing what they're supposed to. I'm going to turn that over to Mr. Preyman. So I just wanted to also supplement what was mentioned on the staff report on page 13. Comment number one specifically outlines compliance with FDEP and Florida Administrative Code or Permit World Requirements. As well as that is regarding on and off site contamination and remediation actions. Also that is further supplemented by staff reports, comment 10 and 11. Now to further supplement that as well, the entity, the process that they're in right now with the environmental FDEP, they're developing that remedial action and operational maintenance of the remedial action. That's a monitoring process that they will have to have the construction action plan. They will have to do reporting, so that is part of that discussion that they're doing right now. As you mentioned, they just, as mentioned by their team, their soil management plan was just submitted on the 17th. And I believe they've already had comments back from DEP as far as a thumbs up on that. But all that put together and once the permit is issued, that will outline the reporting requirements, the compliance requirements, whatever type of documentation. So it's a little presumptive for me to actually say all of it right now, but that will be outlined in the permit. I will also want to give some reasonable assurance to Council as well. If you, within our existing city code, when you point towards Article 11, Article 2, water pollution, it gives us specifically that ability when it goes towards any person's violation, restore the water and properly including. So whether it be a direct or indirect discharge of soils, contaminants or hazardous material within the stormwater or such. Okay, thank you. Okay, my next question is, I know some of this is special conditions from the city, which if approved, you have to do. But then Cardno has some recommended subsurface soil mitigation. I assume you're going to be doing all of that, both of them. Yes, we'll comply with all the special provisions and then all the details in the soil and groundwater management plan. And as we've previously discussed, you know, capping of contamination in accordance with 62780 requirements for conditional closure on sites. The conditional closure using engineering controls is common practice throughout the state when developing on contaminated sites. We do it on thousands of sites across the state regularly. So yeah, we'll be following all that. Okay. And then the air quality report we got, I think was done in 2009. Do you know if there's been another one done since 2009? And are you planning on doing another? The air quality report, are you talking about the soil vapor testing that we did as part of the due diligence? There was an air quality report in our backup material, I'm pretty sure. It was a Department of Health report from 2009. We're not doing any air quality similar to what the Department of Health did. Okay. Other than monitoring for, you know, dust emissions during construction and things like that. Okay. Okay. So you're doing passive and active vapor methodologies, right, on site to remediate. And then can you talk about does that impact surrounding areas at all? No. Basically, if you think about it, if there's solvents in the groundwater, and I think someone mentioned that there were VOCs solvents in the soil, and we have not found that in any of our sampling across the site, and we sampled completely from north to south. The only thing we found were semi-volatile PAHs. But recognizing that there is that solvent plume, we're putting in or recommending you put in passive vapor vending systems. Now, those systems are designed so they can be converted to active. And what they can do is they monitor those after they're installed and see if there's any accumulation of vapors that would cause the need for actually putting a vacuum on the system to increase the protectiveness. But in general, those systems just don't allow vapors to accumulate under a building, similar to radon or something like that. If there's an enclosed space built over something that could potentially vapor start coming up, they start building up under the slab, and then they could find their way up through pipe perforations or cracks in the slab. The systems are designed to have a vapor barrier, but also a more permeable zone that's gravel that allows that vapor emission to travel out and then uprisers to dissipate. So it mitigates any concern for occupants of the buildings. And mitigates occupants of surrounding buildings, I'm assuming, as well. We're not talking significant. If it was in an enclosed space, but at the height of the buildings, it's insignificant amount of vapor that would be coming out. Okay. There was a question about the level of service of the dewatering activities at the site on the 72nd. Can you talk about that? I believe that comment was related to the Raytheon treatment system. Yeah. I just didn't know that you wanted to comment on it. So it is capturing the plume. You know, much has been said about the 20-year cleanup time frame. These chlorinated solvent plumes are very difficult to treat because, like I said earlier, they're denser than water. So they sink, and they can impact multiple aquifer zones as they migrate. They find cracks in the clay layers, and they go down even further. And it's really challenging. So the sites are typically 20, 30-year-plus cleanups. But that's Raytheon's issue that they're dealing with. I would imagine that DEP, you know, in their review of the Raytheon's cleanup plan in progress, would suggest additional wells or treatment if they thought that was warranted. All right. I'm going to ask a relatively direct question, and then I'll just move on to a couple of comments. And rather than use anyone that's spoken, I'll use me as an example because I live about 550 yards from this site. And so I guess first question is, should I be concerned today? I don't know what the levels of contamination are near your house or, you know, the depth of the contamination. It would be really hard to speculate on concerns relating to the historical discharge from Raytheon. Should you be concerned relative to the proposed development and the activities that will go along with that? No. That was my next question. Should I be concerned during construction on this site? No, no. The levels of soil contamination that have been detected out there, number one, are semi-volatile. They're not, it's going to make a lot of fumes. They would be adhered to dust particles as a primary mechanism of transport. They're very relatively low levels of contamination that are found typically throughout urban settings. So in my experience, this is one of the least contaminated sites from a soil perspective that we've redeveloped. So let me ask a follow-up to that. I told you it was the last question. I lied. Sorry. So there was some concern about, you know, you redevelop the land, there's soil, we get high winds. How do we make sure that we're mitigating that as best possible? Can you talk about, like, what that looks like? Sure. I mean, there's a lot of options. Right now, we're starting, you know, at level one. We're going to, you know, monitor the site, you know, visually for dust emissions. But, you know, if dust becomes an issue, you know, we can do things like water trucks that routinely wet the surface so that, you know, it doesn't contribute to dust generation. Of course, the stockpiles will be covered. We're also doing, we'll be doing best management practices regarding stormwater runoff, having construction entrances. So the soil is not tracked out into the roads, things don't wash off into the adjoining streets. So there's a lot of things, but it's an iterative process. You start at the lowest, you know, number one is there dust. And if there's not significant dust being generated by the type of soils and the activity, then nothing further is needed. If you see that there is starting to be dust emissions, then we can react to that and add additional measures like water trucks and things like that to mitigate those concerns. Okay. I think that's it. Oh, okay. Ms. Foster. Councilmember Gerdes. Councilmember Gerdes. Mr. Preyman does have an example of a similar site where this type of work has happened in the past, and I think that may be helpful. Great, thank you. Council, just by example, back in February 2021, City Council actually approved a contract where we cleaned up six city lots. And those contamination levels, in some cases, based on the, I'll give an example, the benzopyrines, was higher on those city lots in a neighborhood than on this site. So just a matter perspective, and also to take that step back, this is a highly regulated process. It's coming from the Florida Administrative Code towards the Florida Statutes and then executed by FDEP. We've done it on city projects. We've brought it towards council as far as our projects which we have to adhere to and implement improvement plans, remediation plans, or mitigation plans for the sites. So just want to give that perspective. Thank you, Reg. Just the last comments I'll make is, I don't know how my colleagues feel about this, and I'm interested for the rest of my colleagues to comment. Obviously, living so close, you're close to it. And so I'm interested in all of your perspectives, and Councilmember Driscoll, thank you for leading us off. I wouldn't be against moving the 72nd egress that aligns with 16th. I get that. I walked that. I walked it this morning. I don't know what my colleagues feel about that. I wouldn't mind adding it to an amendment to this of not having that or moving it a little further north so it's not in alignment. Maybe the better thing is, and I don't know if traffic has looked at this, but maybe adding to where you can only go right to 22nd Avenue rather than go left towards 9th. I'd be in favor of those. I don't know if the developer has any comments to that and being willing to look at that. But I want the, if this is approved, I want the residents to be able to go to the little food mart and to Pesky Pelican and to patron those businesses. But I do understand the concern of going up 16th or going left towards 9th. So I'm interested in my colleagues comments, but I'll leave it open if anybody from the developers team wants to comment quickly on those comments. It won't be quick. All right. So if you come up and there's a related question, maybe hit on it. But otherwise, thank you for answering all my questions. All of you. I appreciate it. And I'm looking forward to my colleague comments. Thank you, Madam Chair. Council member Montaneri. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank everybody that's participated. And this has been quite the large amount of information to try to process and understand and kind of come up with a just an understanding of what we're trying to do here. Let me start with the city legal. I've got a questions on the standards of review. That's on slide seven. Michael, can you talk to us a little bit about how are those how are those standards? Who comes up with those standards? The standards were adopted by council a couple of years ago as part of our implementation of HB 1339. And then later with the amendment to have 30% affordable housing, which it was SB 962 a little while later. This section was pursuant to that state legislation. And most of those standards for review are co-opted from our LDRs. So these are the same standards of review that we employ for a standard site plan review under that under that section of the code. There are some differences, primarily criteria 13 and 14, dealing with some of the affordability aspect as well as kind of the current status of the land, the underutilized land vacancy, that kind of thing. We wanted to make sure that if we were going to be converting industrial uses that we looked at some of that to make sure it was a good candidate and that we wouldn't be losing a prime job creation creating piece of land. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you. And then Administrator Foster and any other staff member can answer this. The level of service standards that we have in our comp plan, does this development abide by those standards when it comes to everything within the comp plan? We did find that they abide by the level of state. Well, we have level of service standards within the comp plan. I'll have to defer to Liz to answer that question. Good evening, Elizabeth Abernathy, Director of Planning and Development Services, and I have been sworn. I don't believe we did our typical evaluation because essentially this process is exempt from our comprehensive plan. We try to follow closely the same standards as Mr. Deema mentioned that we have in our LDRs kind of as a way to evaluate against criteria that we have used in the past for similar scale projects. Generally, the LOS, there was a review for traffic, so that was included in the report. And the applicant's team or our team can answer a little bit more about the LOS analysis that was done for traffic. Water, sewer, the other capacities have to be demonstrated to be available at time of permitting. Generally, we have available capacity for our proposed growth in our city. We do our CIE update every fall that we bring to you to evaluate whether or not we are at a 25% capacity that would trigger some additional review. So, at this point, we have not triggered that level for the city. So, capacity for these type of projects has been planned and, again, will have to be demonstrated at time of permitting. Okay. Did that answer your question? It comes close, but I see Brez is standing there. Do you have- We're gathering a line right now. Thank you, Liz. So, yes, with regards to water and wastewater, that level of service is provided. We do a concurrency review of our system based on the capacity needed and then demand, and then we issue that concurrency approval back to the permitting. So that will be conducted as part of the final permit review. Okay. Thank you. While you're at the mic, Brez, I'm sure you're familiar with this letter from FDEP dated July the 17th. And maybe Mr. Ox might want to weigh in on this also, but there's a sentence in here about the reported concentrations of semi-volatile organic compounds. Can you define what that is? Because in the phase one review that Cardinal did, they were very specific about what was in the ground. And is this just another way of stating the same thing? I'm going to have to defer that because that communication was with Cardinal, Albert Stantec, the team. So I'll defer to them. So you heard me speak before about PAHs, which are ubiquitous in the environment in urban settings. Those semi-volatile compounds are the PAHs that they're referring to. He just used another term to describe them. And rather than their chemical group name, they're semi-volatile contaminants. So that's just, he was talking about the same contaminants that we're talking about addressing under that soil management plan. A limited area of the PAHs that Prejesh talked about being typical on other city sites. Okay, thank you. And then I just had one other general type question. And some of the correspondence we received, and we received a lot of emails on this. There was some people that talked about ground floor apartments. Are there, is there any ground floor apartments in this development? Councilmember Montaneri, yes. The apartments are four stories. So in some phases, there are ground floor apartments. In phase three, I believe, the bottom floor is parking. And then the three floors above it are the living space. Okay. All right, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmember Hanowitz. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you again for everyone who's been here. It's a long day for everyone. I want to start off, first of all, with the standard of review. I know that Councilmember Montaneri touched upon it. That is in our LDRs, which is basically what is in our LDRs, and these are the things that they have to show. But there's another standard of review that was mentioned by the attorney, and it's competent substantial evidence. And I would like our attorney to explain, it's always good because it's very confusing for those who are not in the legal world. We're sitting as a legal body, like judges, and we hear evidence. And we have certain criteria that this evidence is supposed to fill those boxes, this is a fax. But then when we make a decision, we have to make sure that we're making that decision based on competent substantial evidence. So can you talk about that, talk about the case he mentioned, which is the second DCA case, talking about late witness speculation and all that? Because that could be very confusing because we're talking about the standard of review, and then, right, thank you. I understand the question completely, sure. So the standards for review, that's what we would call, those criteria is what we would call the essential requirements of the law. Should this, whatever decision you come up with, should that be challenged, a quasi-judicial decision of the city has to meet some standards to be upheld in courts. And that's, did you follow the essential requirements of the law, and was it supported by competent substantial evidence? So you have the rules with the criteria, and then you need to apply the evidence that you receive through the backup and all the testimony that you received today. And you apply that, those facts, to the law and come up with your decision. Competent substantial evidence is an evidentiary standard that speaks to basically being fact-driven. Observations are certainly admissible, expert analysis, of course. What, so in a quasi-judicial setting, we don't have evidentiary rules like there are in court. But as Mr. Onks did point out, the admissibility or the reliability of lay opinion is something that, you know, you have to be able to sift through. Lay testimony that's based on observation and kind of the lived experience in a neighborhood is, of course, very competent substantial evidence. Lay opinion, however, that's speculative in nature, is not something that would meet the competent substantial evidentiary standard that we have to abide by. Okay, thank you, I appreciate that, I understand it. But in terms of, I would like their expert Greg Schultz to come up. I know we covered their various reports, environmental site assessments, right? There's a phase one and there's a phase two that we have in our packet. The phase two says, an environmental professional should evaluate whether generated data are appropriate for any subsequent use beyond the original purpose for which it was collected. So this was back in 2020. So could you please put on the record whether this is still sufficient? You see what I'm saying? The information that's in this and what other factors should we be considering besides this? Yeah, I think the information that was generated in the phase two is the basis for all the work that we've been doing. It informs us of what the potential risks are on the property, you know, the vapor testing that we did, the soil sampling, and that's used to craft our approach to mitigating those risks. Will there be more data needed? Quite likely. And the soil management plan accounts for that. You know, it says that, you know, we can, we can collect additional samples to characterize soils in areas where there may not have been sufficient soil sampling because early on the sampling for the broadest suite of parameters focused on where we knew the biggest amount of excavation was going. Some of that's shifted. We're no longer putting it in the lagoon, things like that. So we'll, once the plans are finalized, we fully intend to do some additional investigation as needed to support our decisions going forward. And who's the regulatory authority that overviews all this? It's a FDP Southwest district, and we've, we've been working hand in hand with them. We approached them early in the process. We've had regular meetings with them all the way up to the district director for Southwest district. She's been involved in the, in the meetings as well. So it's not just a lone project manager there. There's a team of people at DP that are also working hand in hand with us to evaluate this. So what happens if you don't comply with any of the, their requirements? What are, what are the tools basically in their box in terms of these sites? Unless say you have a bad actor and they have certain requirements and you're not fulfilling those. Well, I think to some respect, they rely on the professional engineers, you know, ethics and, you know, observation and what, you know, as, as eyes and ears, but they can come out at any point and inspect, you know, we inform them when certain things are going on. You have to provide notice of actions that we're taking. So they have every opportunity to come out and inspect, um, whether they do or not that, you know, that's, that's up to them and their schedules. But, um, you know, really it's, it's, we can't, as, as professional engineers do something that's gonna, um, pose harm to the public. You know, that's an ethical obligation and, you know, so we're doing, there's no reason why we would potentially design something that would cause adverse risk to, to the people that are gonna be living there. And, uh, you know, I, I think I even said in, uh, some of the, uh, HOA meetings that we've had, the intent is once all these protections are in place, the vapor barriers, the soil barriers, um, you know, everything is designed. I have three kids in their twenties, you know, that are looking for affordable housing and I wouldn't have any problem with them living in the structure once we design it appropriately. Cause it will be protective. Those risks will be mitigated. And I appreciate that. I know that you have a professional license, just like many other people have professional license in their fields and, and they have certain ethical requirements. Um, I would like to project. He also is an engineer. So I would like you kind of, um, answer that question. Cause I know that you have experience. Yeah. Yeah, um, and I think, um, you know, every, just to, um, strike back on that professional engineer reference. Every two years we take a, we renew our oath essentially. And sign a seal for our professional engineer license. And one of the primary elements we focus on in our ethics is health and welfare. So, um, you know, it is something that if, if another engineer or another entity can report us to the board. And we can go under disciplinary action for violating our, um, oath and requirements to, um, health and welfare. So I just want to clarify that. As it relates to the process, um, I believe it generally goes through. And, and this is one time I'm actually happy not to be on the side of implementing a project for the city, to be honest. Um, because I think, um, in previous projects when I brought it, we've been asked, when is this going to end? You know, we keep bringing an amendment, an amendment to task order. I always look at environmental projects as, um, I used to joke around with Carlos back in the day. Um, those projects are semi-colon projects. They're not, I can't find a period where that project is going to end. It's always like, okay, here's a semi-colon, here's the next clause. Here's a semi-colon, here's the next clause. And that's what they'll be going through with the, um, FDEP. Ultimately, once they have the action plan, there's always that engagement process. But also, there's reporting, and there's post-monitoring, post-construction compliance. Sign and see reports from an engineer who've done their due diligence submitting that to FTP and certifying the site is clean. And also, again, that post-site monitoring does exist. Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you. We talked a little bit about the soil, which is where the reason we have these vapor barriers is my understanding, right? They're, you know, the vapor comes from the soil, and that's why you have to, the soil has, um, um, contaminations. And, and, and that's where you, you need those vapor barriers. Let's talk a little bit about the water, because I know there are lots of the emails talked about the water issues. I believe the, uh, property owners saying that they're going to use city water. Um, questions I have. Number one, I want to put on the record where our water comes from. Okay, let's talk about potable water, where it comes from, because I want this to be part of the record. The other thing I want to understand, I believe reclaimed water is close by. Is there a plan to tap into the reclaimed water system in there in terms of irrigation? Because that didn't come out either. So they have indicated yes. I'm sorry? They are indicating yes. Yes to what? Reclaimed. They are going to be tapping into the reclaimed water, which is going to be doing the irrigation. So can you talk a little bit about our reclaimed water system and, um, and our potable water? Okay, good. Just big picture. So big picture is our water system. Potable water system comes from miles and miles away up in the Odessa area. It is extracted from wells, um, deep wells, and then treated and then pumped by a 36 inch and a 48 inch, um, main transmission lines towards, um, the central and northern part of St. Pete. And then forms part of a distribution system. So the water that the potable water we drink and in some residents who don't have access to reclaimed utilize it to irrigate their lawns, um, come from an area that is waste way north of here. Um, and a location that is deep into a confined area that is of a clean aquifer level for creating that potable water. And that is also part of, we're also part of that entire Tampa Bay water, which I know council members do sit on. As far as the reclaim system, so again, so the water that any resident within the city is drinking or utilizing, whether the pool, the irrigation system, or to fill a little pool for the kids to play in. Um, if they're using potable water, it's coming from way north of here and very deep as well. Now, well, with regards to reclaimed water system, um, that is waste water that goes through that entire treatment process to a level that we actually apply it to our irrigate, um, our lawn as far as, um, irrigation systems. So I believe some of the residents who may have, um, raised concerns as far as not being able to utilize, um, water to irrigate their, um, lawns, is because they may be utilizing that well water. And if you utilize that, you know, um, aerating that system. So, um, going back to that whole discussion as far as, you know, how that vaporizing of the system operates. You do not want to aerate it, put it in an aerosol system. So the reclaim water, wastewater, treat it through the process. Um, we apply it through, um, irrigation. We do it on many facilities, many commercial residential properties throughout the city limits. Okay. Thank you so much. And so those are my questions for that. And then we can go back to the transportation thing. I know, uh, my fellow council member did not have a chance to get an answer to that. So I'll be happy to hear, um, the response regarding changing ingress and egress, I guess, from. Thank you. Mr. Pergolizzi prepared to answer that now. Hi. Robert Pergolizzi for the record again. Um, when we selected our driveway locations, we did it for access management purposes and sound access management purposes to align the driveways. Now, um, our main driveway to 22nd Avenue North in the staff report, it states the main driveway to the site will align with Anvil Street on the north side of 22nd Avenue in accordance with sound access management practices. The same holds true for 16th Avenue for, for our drive, our south driveway to 72nd street to align it with 16th Avenue to answer your question, sir. Um, Mr. Porter has no problem if you would want to move that driveway further to the north or further to the south on 72nd street. But it's our recommendation to keep it aligned with 16th Avenue because that is actually a safer thing when you're, when you're putting driveways to, to a roadway, our two northern most driveways would be opposite the park. So there's no roadway across the street, but the southern most driveway, the reason to align it with 16th Avenue is because when you're exiting the site, if anybody is coming from the opposite direction, you want them to be directly in front of you in your line of sight. So you can see that and it's, it's for safety purposes. Okay. And I believe staff would agree with that. It's mentioned in the report that that sound access management practice. Okay. So that's why we prefer and it's our recommendation that you keep that southern most driveway aligned with 16th Avenue North, but you're the boss. Well, thank you. And Amy, I see you behind there ready to answer. Yes. Council member Hanowitz. Um, I believe that staff would agree about the alignment issue. We do have mistakes here. Um, certainly they would be willing to look at it again if the applicant agrees to it. But the, the current site plan is what staff have reviewed and agreed to based on access management practice. I think we have Ms. Stacks who says we're taking testimony and this is a quasi judicial. I want to get her on the record in terms of your position, um, and just give a little bit background of who you are and what you do for the record. Excellent. Thank you so much. Good evening, Cheryl Stacks, city's transportation and parking management department. I have been sworn in. I am a licensed professional engineer, certified planner and have my certification as a professional traffic operations engineer. I've been working in the industry for a very long time. Um, it is, uh, safer, um, to have the intersections lined up across the intersections. Cause we tend to see, uh, safety challenges with turning vehicles, um, at intersections if they're not lined up. So if we weren't going to align it, we would need to move it so that was outside the influence of the intersection so that they're sufficiently far apart. Um, so that could be an opportunity for us to take a look at if that's desirable. But, um, you either want it perfectly aligned or further away so that they're not influencing each other. Okay. Thank you so much. And that's my questions for now. Thank you. Councilmember Muhammad. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'm definitely trying to be brief as possible. I don't have a lot of questions. Just thinking out loud and maybe legal can help me with some of these thoughts and others. Um, I also want to thank those who sent the letters who, you know, showed up and who came out participating here today. Uh, really think staff did an excellent job in the negotiations around this project. Um, all of the special considerations that have been made, um, in light of the fact that they don't have to like follow this because of the law, the state of statute. Uh, for those who scoff and shake their head at the, the fact that that is a law, I say WTF, welcome to Florida. Um, because it's a, it's a real thing. Um, and, you know, we have our hands tied in a lot of ways that, um, are unbelievable these days. Um, but what I'm thinking and just as a part of the decision making process and hearing the quasi judicial and knowing the format that we in, I just want to again to those who have, who are participating, this is a very difficult decision because I grew up in the neighborhood. I lived in neighborhoods that, um, receive present time studies and data and stats and all of the well-intentioned plans. It's only to receive apologies and see lawsuits and things filed and then, oh, we did mess up. Now we're trying to make it right 25, 30 years later. That's not lost on me here. Um, also the work that we've been doing in Child's Park around environmental and, you know, we have an active industry and pre-industrial core that we're looking to address. And it's difficult because things are grandfathered in because of the decisions that were made by people before us. And so this is a really tough one for me because it's feeling like, and I don't know if that's competent substantial, but the risk is outweighing the reward in a lot of these cases. Because again, I don't think I have to talk about my commitment to affordable housing and the work that we've done I think really speaks to that. Um, and the need for affordable housing and I know this might get me in trouble with, you know, some of my friends, but I'm convinced that the what's on the other side of that semicolon, you know, is going to be healthy for the residents and the people. Um, because it sounds like a lot of work to try and remediate this and it's going to be ongoing and consistent work and the construction. And we know, again, a lot of the plans are great, but the implementation and the execution, that's where we lack. We get things presented to us a lot of times where, you know, well, we planned for this and now we have to change it and we have to do that. And so, I'm still in that space of consideration. I want to continue to hear from my colleagues, but I just want you all to know that this is a really tough decision, especially. And I also thank Council Member Hanowitz for clarifying that competent, substantial evidence piece. Um, and I'm also happy to hear that lived experience is also considered when we talk about competent, substantial evidence. So, it's not just opinion, but if you're there every day, you're walking it and you're seeing it, then that is competent and substantial because you've observed it and it's a part of your lived experience and it can be considered as a part of the decision that we make. So, those are my thoughts, and again, I'm going to continue to hear the dialogue, so thank you all. Thank you, Madam Chair. Council Member Floyd. Thank you, and I'm going to continue along the line, like Council Member Mohammed actually was echoing some of my thoughts exactly. You know, when it comes to site plan and fitting into the neighborhood, I understand the concerns. But I think this is a great piece of housing and would significantly contribute to the work that we're trying to do in the city. But I am nervous about the environmental considerations for the exact same reasons. Not myself personally, but family members, friends, lived in locations like this that had been remediated and had health issues. So that's where I get tripped up, and again, it's nothing to do, I don't think anybody would question my commitment to affordable housing at all. But I guess I want to start with some of the things that have been mentioned throughout public comment section. Actually, let's not even go to the environmental thing first. First, I want to talk about the on-street parking, so I think it was a representative from the developer said that it was for public use. Is this going to be, I'd like some info. First off, how, just general information about it. It's not meant for the people who live there. It's meant for the public. It's someone from parking here to talk about this. Robert Pergolizzi for the record again. The proposed on-street parking spaces on the east side of 72nd Street would be open to the public. The residents of the apartment complex could use them or visitors could use them, but we have more than enough parking on our site to take care of residents and visitors. So they were put there simply because we understood and we understand that there's sometimes a parking problem with Azalea Park, particularly on weekends. So they could be used by the public for people that are going to the park. Okay, and so they were sort of to assuage concerns that we wouldn't be contributing to anything. I guess it's sort of a give to help out the community. Correct. Yeah, okay. Okay, well I just wanted to get that cleared up. Now there's a few things about the sort of environmental considerations that I have here. The first is if someone could talk about the non, I'm sorry, the disclosures that were mentioned at the beginning. Because it seemed like residents were saying that there were waivers to be signed, but it was stated that no, that would not happen. It would be disclosures. The disclosure is for people who are moving in to the place to know what's going on. Yes, Councilmember Floyd, Brian Unks. The reason I brought that up is because, you know, obviously we have been listening to the neighborhood and we have been communicating. We've had dozens and dozens of neighborhood meetings where our experts have actually met with the neighbors and answered their questions. We've answered questions via email, so we've been seeing the emails and the flyers and the things, and one of the flyers or letters that was received recently claimed that the developer was requiring waivers to limit its liability so that people could come in here and get sick and then they couldn't sue the developer and the developer was going to run away with all the money. And that could not be further from the truth. What we're talking about is legally required disclosures in a lease so that when a tenant or a purchase and sale agreement, just like I said, if you see a wood destroying organism disclosure, a WDO disclosure in a lease or in a purchase and sale agreement, we have to disclose that. And so that way the person knows when they're moving in, if they want to ask the questions about what have you done to remediate it, what is happening with DEP, they can ask that question or they could choose to not live there. But it in no way limits the liability of the developer, and frankly, you know, these leases will probably be done by some other management company or, you know, once the buildings are operated and owned, that's going to be down the road. But those are legal requirements that are typical and common for any lease or any purchase and sale agreement. Okay, thank you for that. Thank you. I have one more sort of similar on the topic. There was mention about phase three and a deed restriction. Can that be spoken to? Yes, sir. So the property in phase three has a deed restriction that was restricted by Raytheon that said there would be no residential on the first floor, and so that's why we're abiding by that. There's no separate environmental reason to do that, but simply because it's a deed restriction. Okay. Okay. That's interesting. I'll just say, also, for the benefit of my colleagues, I have a relatively scientific background and was overwhelmed by the amount of information we were given. Yeah. So I just wanted to let you know that. Like, don't feel bad at all. It's a bit overwhelming for me as well. Okay. Let me try to understand the two, what I heard was two sort of environmental concerns. One is the soil, which what I heard was it's no worse than any other urban environment, the chemicals there, what you would expect to find anywhere else in the city. And then the second one was groundwater. And that's what seeps deeper and creates a more lasting issue in this location. Are those the two main concerns? Is that accurate? Yeah. And I think it was misspoken that the reason for the vapor barriers is because of soil. Really, the soil is a semi-volatile contaminant that has minimal potential for vapor intrusion. The reason that we're putting that in is out of an over-designed abundance of caution because of the solvent plume in the groundwater that could emanate vapors. So that's the distinction between that. The soil, really, we find these levels consistent, you know, throughout urban areas. There's been studies that I could submit to council that show, you know, urban pH levels across Florida significantly higher than what's on site. And we typically manage these, you know, as opposed to doing costly removal where you haul it off and put it in a landfill. Standard practices to do an engineering control and cap it to mitigate any exposure. Once it's, you know, below four inches of asphalt, no one can touch the soil. It's really not an exposure concern. You can't get sick unless there's exposure contact. So that's really what we're doing is we're mitigating those exposure pathways by all the things we're doing so that future residents, you know, can't contact. We're not, we're not having drinking water that's contaminated. We're not having contact with the soil. The vapor issue is being mitigated by passive vapor venting. So the systems are all designed to eliminate that exposure pathway. So there is no future risk of a disease or illness from that. Okay. And you spoke exactly to why I asked the question because I was like, if the ground, if the soil, it was about the soil and the vapors and it actually leads me to think like this housing that would be built on the site is probably going to be safer than the housing that exists in the surrounding area if it's the same underground water concerns and there is vapor mitigation in place. So I think a lot of my concerns start to spread out into the surrounding areas. So on that note, there was a comment from the public about potential for spread. I think they said plume spread from construction. If you could just speak to that a little bit. So as I mentioned before, the site right now is largely unpaved. All that rainwater is collecting and percolating down into the into the system. So, you know, as we're developing to one thing to bear in mind is the entire site that has been shown on the exhibits is not going to be developed at one time. There's initial phase on that on the north end and then another phase and then a subsequent phase. So the surface cover that's in place will not be disturbed on on phases. If we're working on phase one, phase three and two will still remain as they are. So, you know, potential for dust emissions, you know, rain exacerbating any rainfall absorption or anything like that's not going to happen. The short term, you know, when we're when we're excavating into small small pits really is not going to have much effect on to on the on the groundwater because, you know, Raytheon does have that system where they're actually pumping groundwater to capture it. So there's groundwater withdrawal going on. So any limited effects during construction, I don't see as having any significant potential to, you know, be beyond what that system is controlling because it's basically drawing groundwater back into the site for treatment. So the amount of water that would have to enter during construction would have to overwhelm that system to push to push that further out. And the short term construction activities, you know, if we have a deep pit, you know, that's the amount of water is not something that's going to overpower the whole remediation system, in my opinion. Okay. So, okay, that's that's clear enough for me. I want to go back to the soil a little bit. So when people are talking about dust and construction, we're talking about soil spread. What about the chemicals in the groundwater? Is that a concern when it comes to dust spreading or is it so if it's if it's not a concern, then what we're worried about when it comes to the dust is the typical levels of contaminants that you would find in an urban area. So it'd be no different than when we're developing in any other site in the city. Not not every site has, you know, the same levels of contamination, obviously. But, you know, in my experience in 30 years of working and in literature studies, pHs are often found, you know, at elevated levels throughout urban settings just because of vehicle traffic from from asphalt from, you know, all kinds of things like that. So they're they're they're one of the things that, you know, I was just at a conference. They were talking about ubiquitous chemicals, you know, arsenic pH is things like that. And, you know, we deal with those in the same way, you know, across across all of our redevelopments that we do. And, you know, managing them in places is a standard practice with a with a cap and cover. Okay, so you'd say as far as dust is concerned and the soil issues is just so I know you've said it again. I'll just get you say one last time this site's not exceptional in that way exceptional. As I said before, it's one of the cleaner sites from a soil perspective that we're having to manage. Another thing that I'd like to point out, too, is our current data only shows a limited area of pHs towards the southern end where there was a historical parking lot. And, you know, the the the conceptual site model is that, you know, they never used pHs in any of their processes there. And those chemicals are related to the asphalt. A lot of times you'll see them spray an underlayment down when they're putting that down. That's loaded with pHs. So that chemical compound group is isolated in that area. So much of the work that's being done that could potentially generate dust is not even in an area that's been shown to be contaminated. So it would just be regular dust. Okay. Well, all of that leads me to believe we have some deeper problems in society when there's urban environments of contaminants in the soil constantly. I want to ask legal directly something that I think's been danced around a little bit. It's quasi judicial and we have standards for review that we have to consider. And in our standards for review, I do not see anything about environmental considerations or pollution. Um, maybe that's an oversight, but, uh, you know, we, I don't think any of us anticipated being presented something like this when this ordinance was made. Right. I, I think that there it's, it's not silent in my opinion. Um, in particular to this affordable housing site plan review 14 C does state locate, you know, that one of the things you're considering is the location and the surrounding land uses will not cause any adverse impacts to the health of future residents. Um, so that's, that's very clear in there. Um, the natural environment, uh, of the site and compatibility of the use there with is also part of the criteria. Okay. Okay. All right. So then it's, it's my word. I'd say implicit in there, um, to an extent, uh, that that is a consideration for us. Um, all right. I've got one last thing, uh, to cover and I think it's for the, um, applicants lawyer. Probably. Um, I do this occasionally. Um, Mr. If I could just add one thing. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Brought up a good point. Um, which is in, in particular Benzo a pyrene, which is what they kind of some, the carcinogenic pH is up into a total Benzo a pyrene equivalence. Mm. That is also formed from grilling meat from charring, uh, stuff. So you can find this in your backyard barbecue. Mm. Um, so it, I mean, when we say it's ubiquitous, it really is all over the place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That connection, but as soon as you said it, I was reminded of it and it can cause all sorts of things like inflammation. Yeah. Um, I don't expect you to have an answer. I just want to see, you know, what your thoughts are. But, you know, I mean, y'all have been working on this for quite a while. Um, if you weren't, uh, approved today, you're in a situation where you can build in the site, um, more than double the amount of units. Uh, uh, significantly taller buildings, um, much more than four stories and, uh, less really affordable housing and more workforce housing. And, uh, there's nothing we can do to stop you at that point. Um, I just wonder, um, what your considerations will be going forward if you weren't, uh, allocated this or allowed to do this today. Just if you could speak to that at all. Sure, um, Councilmember Floyd. First, I want to let you know that once the Live Local Act passed and was signed into law, we actually had a lot of conversations with, uh, Director Foster and Mr. Dima about the fact that we could just stop this process. But I think both the city staff, the administration, and the applicant determined, as you can tell, because we're here and we're still spending a lot of money on this, that this proposal was superior. Number one, because we promised the 80s. And if we were to go to 40%, we probably wouldn't be able to afford to do the 80s based on the pro forma. Uh, and also we started this process, as you said, it's been very deliberately designed. If we were to go to 40% at 120% AMI with 2000 units or 1600 units or 1700 units, we would have to completely redesign the site plan, which is going to take time, cost more money. And again, as I said, I think objectively be more intense and less compatible with the neighborhood than what you've been proposed today. Um, and so your question is, what would we do if we were denied? First off, we hope we wouldn't be denied because we met the burden of competence, substantial evidence. And respectfully, you haven't had any competing expert witness testimony in any category of your approval criteria. So it's a it's a burden shifting. Once we meet our burden, the opponent has to then also meet the burden. And so respectfully, I don't believe that this record will show that. So one of the options we would have would be to appeal, which we really wouldn't want to do because that would cost a lot more money. We don't want to be adversarial with the city. Um, so the answer is we're hopeful that we met our burden and that we've, we've assuaged your concerns. And that the fact that we've worked so hard with the city over the years and the neighborhood and that we're going to continue to do that with DEP and the city and the additional conditions. That all of those things answer those questions and those concerns for you. And that the, that the, that you would agree that the less intense, the less height and the more 80% units would be much preferable to the alternative. Okay, thank you very much for that answer. I know it's always, I tend to ask that occasionally and I don't want to put you all in a hypothetical situation, especially we're on record and whatnot. Um, what I heard though, I am convinced by, I mean, the fact that I would feel skeptical towards the work that, uh, F, uh, or DEP might need to do, um, does not necessarily mean that y'all have not met your, uh, the burden that you need to meet. And so, uh, I understand where you're coming from there. Um, for the same reasons that I started off with that, uh, council member Muhammad mentioned, I find this one of the most difficult votes that we've had here. Um, and, uh, you know what? I'll just, I'll just leave it there. Thank you. Council vice chair fix Sanders. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um, there's a lot of conversation and, and I originally, I took, I wasn't going to speak because a lot of people were actually asking a lot of the same questions. When was Raytheon built? Yeah, I believe it was in 1985 and, uh, we, we actually had deed restrictions between Raytheon and the city that we had to come back to the council to, to terminate. And those deed restrictions were all from the Eisenhower administration and the Kennedy administration. And they closed their doors when? I don't know the answer to that. We think early 2000s, 2006 maybe. Okay, and I guess the first thing came to mind because of our lived experiences in Childs Park, where I grew up, they built around things that were considered environmentally unsafe. And I always question those that buy around things that are already identified as environmentally unsafe. And so I, I just tried to consider what that intent was and what would make this, um, issue any more difficult now than it was back in 55 to 2006. It is not, um, silent and using that term that housing is a huge priority, but I still have that kind of pause about knowing what the potential long-term outcome could be. Now, in my neighborhood there's housing being built all the time. I love it because somebody is getting a home. In my neighborhood, I remember we fought because we were getting all of these digital antennas. I have one right, a house down for my house. And that was our huge argument is that everybody that's within two, you know, blocks, we're going to get cancer. Well, we're living with it. I'm, I'm torn, right, with providing the housing, but I'm concerned with the health issues of it. Um, we, none of us would be here 25, 30 years from now. Lisa? Well, we, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Listen, I won't be on this dais. We're here. No, we won't be here. We're here. We're here. We won't be on this dais. Let me clarify that, um, 25 and 30 years from now. So we won't be able to answer for anything. But then again, I'm also one of those that really don't like to live in the what if? What if? What if this happens? And what if that happens? And what if this happens? So I'm comfortable that the city, our administration, and the communication that they've had would not put us in a position where we will be liable for any injustice to any of the homeowners that live there. That they would not put us in any position where we would be held accountable for anything that we know, expect, or not identifying anything that would be harmful to our constituents. I understand wanting to keep that quiet neighborhood. Mine is growing too. I'm not selling my house. I'm living there because it's paid for and I'm not going anywhere. So we have to come to a healthy compromise with this. And so for me, mentally, it's going to be, do I want to give a thousand whatever people homes? Or do I want to worry about something that may or may not happen? So that's why I'm kind of there with providing the housing because I'm living in those same conditions on my street. And I just want to make sure we never will know if we made the right decision. But one thing we will know is that we got some people off the streets and that is my biggest concern right now. Thank you, chair. Well, first of all, I just want to start by saying thank you all for being out this evening, for sitting through this long hearing with us, for being patient with our rules. I know sometimes that's difficult. One of the great things about being chair is that you get to go last. So most of your questions have all been answered. I came to the table and then added more as, you know, the hearing went on. And I sit here with some really smart people. So all of my questions, I mean, from the disclosure to the tenants when they move in on street parking, traffic study, the concern about, you know, the stormwater and the plume that could potentially move. I really want to thank all of the experts who, you know, and especially our city staff. The one thing that I know above all is that we have a phenomenal professional staff who, like Council Vice Chair Fig Sanders said, would not steer us wrong. They would not stand here and lie to us. And so to have that check and balance of we have the experts with the developer, but then we have our experts. And they walk us through projects that are complicated every single day. And I know that there are going to be checks and balances along the way every step of the way with this project. And all of the concerns that have been brought out this evening about the environmental concerns, none of that is lost on us. Several of us sat here when the other project came forward from the same developer, the same owner, and we had these same conversations then. And we hear those concerns. We understand if this were my neighborhood, I would feel the same way, Council Member Gerdes. I would be very concerned. But I, one thing, I'm lucky I'm married to an engineer. So I know how that kind of brain works. I know how the field works. And I know, like I said, the checks and balances that will exist throughout the development. I trust our staff, but I also trust the really smart people at SWIFMUD and at FDEP. We've been under a consent order with FDEP, right? We know how tough they are. And it's because of all of those things that I will have a lighter conscience after my vote this evening because I am going to support this project. And a large reason why, if I remove the environmental piece of it and I just look at the vacant land piece itself and the Raytheon property, I had the privilege of sitting on the industrial land study work group that the county had for the last couple of years. That brought us to a lot of the work that we have done with our legislation to be able to really redesign the need for properties like this. And Raytheon, this property was brought up continuously as a great example of a property that while when our city was first built in the 50s, it very much was an industrial property. It made sense. The rail went through there and it made sense to be an industrial property. But times have changed. Our city has changed. And that property is no longer viable for that use. If it was, somebody would have come in and put an Amazon warehouse or whatever on it. It is not the desired use for that property any longer. And we are a city that must find creative ways and creative places to put housing. We do not have a choice. We are built out everywhere else. And the only option is to create developments of a thousand some units that will get us closer to that need of getting people in housing, continuing to keep people in our city and allowing them to create a life here. And I'm going to tell you because I heard some of it. And so every time I hear it, I am always going to rebut it affordable and workforce housing and apartment communities and these sort of developments do not reduce property values. They do not inherently increase crime. And that is just not true. It just isn't. So we have to stop saying these things when it comes to how we redevelop our city because it's not true. And facts show it. What is true is that we have people who need to be in housing. What is true is that we have a thoughtful development in front of us that is going to, I believe, mitigate the dangers, mitigate and to some points I heard probably be safer than a lot of the other housing that currently exists around the site. And so for me, when I weigh the pros and cons of this, I have to trust my gut. I have to trust what I know and the people that we hire to lead us down this path to look at this development and say that this is the best use for this land. It's better than the project we had once before in front of us and it's better than what could be there in the future if we don't approve this. So for me, I am a yes this evening on this development and I look forward to seeing how this process goes forward if it does get approved. I have one question for legal because, you know, we talked about these number 18 through 22 environmental conditions of approval and that is, you know, for a synopsis on page 13 of the PowerPoint. So for legal and for council's guidance, how would you like us to proceed so that we can, if this project is approved, make sure that these environmental protections are in here? Yeah. Yes, chair. I would ask clerk to pull up that slide 13 so that we can see the language. This language was developed. I have, as I alluded to at the beginning, there are a couple of minor edits to this to kind of reflect. On number 20, after containers, we would add ore best practice approved by DEP and then on line 21, we would redact the word sanitary. So it would only say without use of the city's stormwater systems. I'm sorry, which one was that? On line 21, we would remove the word sanitary ore, so it would only refer to city's stormwater systems. Okay, very good. And I would add there's a superfluous and in 21, so it says any groundwater dewatering activities that will require containment and disposal shall do so without use. That second and there between disposal and shall should be struck as well. Okay, all right, so is it legal's advice then that there be a first motion to add these criteria? These conditions? These conditions? Yes, I would like that to be done separately. You can do all five of these conditions subject to those minor changes we just said, but I would like to do that separately prior to a motion on the whole thing. Okay, I will entertain a motion. I move that we add these five conditions of approval as modified by staff. Thank you. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion on these conditions? Okay, seeing none, clerk, please open the machine for voting. Council members, enter your votes. I believe all council members have voted. I can't see it, so that's okay. All right, seeing all council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. It with modified conditions passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you everyone for being here this evening. All right, city council, we will now go to our final open forum of the evening. Clerk, do we have any speakers for open forum? Okay, we'll give the chambers a moment to clear. All right, city council, well that does it for our business this evening. Do we have any announcements? I mean, I got one if nobody else has any. Go for it. I believe on Tuesday, July 25th, is council member Floyd's birthday. I guess it is. I beat you. My privilege just got to hit. You didn't push your button. Nobody told me. I wasn't thinking about it. I don't know. Well, my legislative aid is thinking about it. And so, council member Floyd, would you like us to embarrass you with a song? Go ahead. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear council member Floyd. Happy birthday to you. Thank you. Happy birthday, Ricky. Happy birthday. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for a wonderful day. With that, meeting is adjourned.