City Council - Mar 27, 2025

Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1 and Council Chair Copley Gerdes, District 2, Brandi Gabbard, District 3, Mike Harding, District 4 and Council Vice Chair Lissette Hanowitz, District 5, Deborah Figg Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, Corey Givens Jr. and District 8, Richie Floyd. Good afternoon. We will go ahead and call to order the March 27, 2025 City Council Meeting to order. If we could do a roll call, please. Harding. Here. Hanowitz. Here. Sanders. Here. Driscoll. Here. Gibbons. Here. Lloyd. Gerdes. Here. Here. Here. Thank you. Okay. If everybody could please join me in standing for the invocation today done by Pastor Eric Ashley from Clearview United Methodist Church, then please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Good afternoon, everyone. I bring you greetings from Clearview United Methodist Church in the heart of Lelman and Distant Heights. Let us pray. Gracious and Holy One, source of light, wisdom, and compassion, we pause in this moment of reflection, joining together as a diverse and vibrant community. We lift up the city of St. Petersburg, the Sunshine City, with gratitude for its beauty, its spirit, and its people. We give thanks for those who serve in leadership, for their dedication to the public good, for the sacred responsibility of shaping the future of our beloved city. Guide them today with clarity of thought and integrity of heart. As this council meets, may the light of understanding shine upon every discussion. For the work being done and to expand affordable housing, we pray for shelter that brings stability, hope, and dignity. For the care of our environment and coastline, may we be wise stewards of creation, protecting what gives life to generations now and to come. For initiatives rooted in equity and inclusion, help us build a city where all belong, where every voice is heard and every person thrives. And for those who keep our neighborhoods safe and healthy, grant strength and wisdom and renewal for their daily service. And for every resident of the Sunshine City, from our youngest to our eldest, from the longtime neighbors to our newest arrivals, may we live as neighbors united by shared purposes, resilient spirits, and generous hearts. Let peace fill this chamber. Let justice guide these decisions. And let love for this city shape our actions. In the spirit of unity in our shared lives, O God, we offer you this prayer. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Please be seated. Pastor Ashley, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for that beautiful invocation. Okay, council members, we have an agenda in front of us. I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. Second. Seeing as we have a motion to second, no further discussion. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Mr. Chair, motion to approve the agenda passes unanimously. Okay, next is the consent agenda. Do we have any cards on the consent agenda? Okay. Council members, I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. Second. Seeing as we have a motion to second, no one wishing to speak. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Mr. Chair, motion to approve the consent agenda passes unanimously. Okay, we'll move right into open forum. Clerk, could you please read the rules? If you wish to address city council on subjects other than public hearing or quasi-judicial items on the agenda, please sign up with the clerk. Only the individual wishing to speak may sign the open forum sheet. Only city residents, owners of property, business owners in the city, or their employees may speak. All issues discussed under open forum must be limited to issues related to the city of St. Petersburg government. If you are speaking to an item on the agenda, you may only speak once during the open forum or when the item comes up on the agenda. In order to provide an opportunity for all citizens to address council, each individual will be given three minutes to speak and after which the microphone will be muted. If you wish to address city council through the Zoom meeting, you must use the Raise Hand Feature button in the Zoom app or enter star 9 on your phone at the time the agenda item is addressed. When 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 reach the three-minute time limit, you will be unmuted. You will be muted. All raised hands will be lowered after each agenda item. Regardless of the method of participation used, normal rules apply, including the three-minute time limit on comments, the requirement that any presentation materials must be submitted in advance of the meeting, and the rules of decorum. If live public comment is disrupted by violations of the rules of decorum, the chair is authorized to accept public comment for alternate means, including by email only, and we do have some speakers, Mr. Chair. Okay, clerk. Please call them two at a time. First two speakers, Perry G. Washington and Maureen McClure. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and have three minutes to address city council. I want you to see me. My name is Dr. Perry G. Washington. I want you to get on the computer. Type in Perry-G-Washington. Dr. Washington, I need your address, please. I refuse to give my address for fear of the proud boy, a.k.a. the KUKA clan. Dr. Washington, please give us your address. First Avenue and Central. Thank you. Now, Perry G. Washington, dash, Perry, dash, G, dash, Washington. Put it in. Owner, see what you see. Over 32 and a half years at a real estate broker. On the 13th of February, I was arrested in my yard for putting concrete in my yard. What's the first thing you do when you want to make a road? You have to survey it. Guess who put the survey bunker in this state? I built this building. You don't doubt me. Count the steps on this building. Over there, behind this door, is at least one policeman with an M-16 or better. A shotgun and a rifle. Over there, there's one. I built this building. Count the rafters. Count the stairs. You don't know who you're messing with. I'm going to sue you all. I'm going to sue you all. The police are not qualified to have a survey. To determine what a survey is. I am. I'm tired of you. I come here to make you understand. Leave me alone. What you want. I got assaulted behind this building. None of you called me. I came and told you. What one man, one white man. Take your toenail. You all up. I built this. My people built this. I was here before you. Anytime I had to put on a suit, I intend to make money. I'm going to take your money. Because that's the only thing you realize, you care about. I'm a United States veteran. Mr. Washington. Dr. Washington. Excuse me. Dr. Washington. Go ahead. Dr. Washington, you've had your three minutes. I'll have you removed from the room. Thank you. Go ahead. Hi. Noreen Priest-McClure. 144 Almedo Way Northeast St. Pete. In September, I appeared before the review board on behalf of my elderly mother to the address billing issue concerns about an excess use of water. This consumption exceeded 200 gallons per hour on a vacant property over an expended period of time in two separate months in 2024. This was pre-hurricane. The unusual activity prompted me to refer to the Utilities Board established protocols, which outlined specific measures for this situation. The representatives were supposed to observe the flow indicator to determine if water activity was running. Furthermore, they are instructed to make- Ma'am, hold on just one second. Dr. Washington. Dr. Washington. That's the last straw, Dr. Washington. Well, now we're- Please remove them. What do you mean? I just have a shaking issue. I'm fine. Please continue. Can I get my three minutes restored, please? Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Okay. As I mentioned, I appeared in front of the Utility Review Board back in September for a vast amount of consumption for the month of April and the month of August in my mother's vacant home. I researched protocol, and a lot of what protocol is set by the Utility Board was not followed. They were supposed to make a best effort, good faith effort to inform the customer by visiting the property, leaving a tag on the door, and or attempting to contact the resident by phone. None of that was done. After my mother's bank informed me of insufficient funds to cover this $11,000 water utility bill, I made several attempts to resolve the issue through customer service. I encountered unhelpful and rude responses. I was only made aware of the opportunity to appear in front of the review board due to a family member that works for the city utility. My case was, as I mentioned, denied. Without further consideration or explanation, despite presenting evidence that there was absolutely no leak. The evidence included a statement from my lifelong neighbor, who frequents the house on a daily basis to bring in my mom's mail, and she utilizes the backyard to train her show dog. My multiple attempts to request a meeting with the mayor has never come to fruition. I am left questioning how such significant water consumption could occur abruptly and cease in a clear, defined amount of time in a vacant home. The utility board has offered no plausible explanation for this. An anomaly and this dismissiveness and lack of transparency is absolutely insulting. Adding to my frustration, I was advised early in this process to admit that I had a leak and that there would be an adjustment done. There was no leak. I'm not going to come and lie and tell you so. This entire ordeal has been both perplexing and disheartening, and it reflects a lack of adherence to protocol, transparency, and accountability from the utility board. It is not your responsibility, isn't it your responsibility to advocate for your residents? I do not believe you are doing so. It appears as if you do not want to seriously deal with the injustices that are occurring and advocate for your constituents. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Next two speakers. Two speakers, Peter Kent and Matt Whitener. Please go to either podium, state your name and address for the record, and you have three minutes to address city council. Good afternoon, council members. I'm Peter Kent, 8 Academy Way. I'm a retired commissioner of public works. I support council member Floyd's G3 request to discuss sunsetting the in-town community redevelopment area, CRA. Pinellas County has already sunset this CRA because it has met its obligations, its objectives. This CRA was formed about 40 years ago when the downtown was qualified under CRA rules as being blighted. It authorized the increase in CRA property taxes to be funneled back into city improvements within that CRA rather than being used for general city purposes. If extended, it gives the mayor permission to spend about half a billion dollars of property taxes collected within the CRA on his pet projects rather than on citywide needs without a citywide vote. Please support this sunset taxation without representation. Secondly, I support council member Floyd's suggestion to postpone the vote on repairing the Tropicana Field, which is expected to be considered either today or at the April 3rd meeting. As he said, the city should first negotiate a settlement price of the 27-year-old raised contract to evaluate the best approach that meets the needs of the citizens. Also, the proposed repairs do not have a written set of specifications needed for the contractors to bid, for the city to inspect against for satisfactory completion, for the raise in MLB to indicate their written acceptance or to have a fixed price contract plus change orders. I also recommend delay of this agreement. I also recommend delay until this agreement is negotiated and the written repair specifications are prepared. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Matthew Widener at 1201 Eden Isle Drive. November, December, January, February, March, April. Now, six months since the city and this body was first aware of this very serious issue regarding utility bills. Why is it very serious? Because every one of your constituents and every one of your districts, somebody's getting hit with this. But six months have passed, folks, and I don't think any one of you have any legitimate answer to what happened. I certainly haven't heard it. As far as I can tell, the administration is completely stonewalling this issue. I say they're stonewalled because I've watched the Cal meeting over and over again. It presented far many more questions than it answered. The number of adjusted bills, 6,000. The number of free flow events, 4,000 in November. That's outrageous, folks. I know that you people are getting the email from your constituents. It's not enough just to pass it along and say, talk to the administration, because the administration isn't talking to people. They're not talking to citizens, they're stonewalling the press. I don't think they're talking to you folks. You folks sit up here in an oversight role. It's perhaps the most important role that you face. Certainly with the multi-bajillion dollar stadium stuff, yeah. But for that constituent of yours that had 400 bucks taken out of his account, he can't pay for his kid's food now because of this billing issue, and we can't refund the money to him, and you folks still don't have answers. It's the core of your responsibility and the oath that you took to serve citizens. To have answers. You look at the agenda item coming forward this afternoon. That legislation is completely prospective. It avoids what happened, and it's continuing to happen right now. You have no answers. It talks about flood events. Well, what if the system was hacked? What if there's some other malevolent factor? It doesn't address that. They're giving you a cure. You don't have any idea what the disease is. Council Member Gerties, you dismissively talked about, oh, these crazy people in the flow meters. Well, we still don't have an answer, do we? Council Member Harding, you talked about the glitch in the matrix. That's about the closest we've gotten, some glitch in the matrix. You folks have an oversight role. Ask the questions. I know that another agenda item that asks to pay more consultants. Where's the staff to come before you? It says one thing in that report. 51% of the UBRC applications were adjusted. What's 51% of what? How many UBRC applications were filed? How much was refunded? What was the basis for that refund? How much did people have to pay for plumbers or for leak detectors before they got a $50 or $100 credit on their bill? So did we give any net relief? No, we didn't. Did you folks know that they canceled UBRC? Did anybody even talk to you about that? The one avenue your citizens have to talk about this is UBRC. Boom. They just deleted it. So now what do they do? Do people just got to wander on, deal with their $1 credit or whatever? Oversight. Thank you. Thank you. Next two speakers, please. Two more speakers, Mr. Chair. Okay. We'll go ahead and close open forum, and we'll move into awards and presentations. And we're going to start with D1, the CFY scholarship recipients. And we're joined by Kevin Dunbar, CFY executive director. And I think he's going to start us off. Welcome, Kevin. Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate the city of St. Petersburg affording us the opportunity today to talk a little bit about CFY. CFY is an organization that's been around for 58 years. Its primary purpose has been about making sure that every child can play a sport, regardless of their ability to pay to play. Over the past three years, we have gone out and branched out throughout Pinellas County from Tarpon Springs all the way down to St. Petersburg. With me today is a couple of our board members, our board chair, Fred Miller, our vice chair, Hoyt Hamilton. Some of you may remember him as vice mayor of the city of Clearwater. Eric Harris from our staff. For those who remember Calvin Harris, yes, that is the same Harris. That's his son. And Yolanda Fernandez is also on our board. CFY last year provided almost a million dollars in support for youth athletics, education, and Title I water safety, working with Pinellas County schools. As I said, we make sure that every child can play a sport. Last year, 11 different football and cheer programs in Pinellas County with an excess of over $150,000 to make sure every child could play and they had safe equipment. But really, the main piece that I'm here today to talk about is education is very important to us. It's one of our three pillars. And we, this year, awarded 39 college scholarships to 13 different high schools throughout Pinellas County. And it took a yeoman's effort in terms of the amount of kids that submitted into review. And I just ask our vice chair to give you 30 seconds on the process as the chair of our scholarship committee. I'll try and do it in 30 seconds, but I can't guarantee it. As you all know, I served 14 years on the Clearwater City Council, had the pleasure of serving with Councilwoman Gabbard in the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council. And I can tell you I understand the importance and appreciate your job because I did the comparable job up in Clearwater. I know how difficult and detailed-oriented it can be. But I can tell you, when you have to review over 300 applications from high school students, and then out of that 300, pick who I feel are the top 20, and then take those top 20 and rank them from 1 through 20, is one of the most difficult processes I've ever been through. It basically took up three good weekends to be able to do it. But I'll tell you, the end result in seeing these young people and being able to provide a chance to go to college, some of our recipients, they're the first members of their family to go to college, it is a rewarding feeling that is almost unmatched. So thank you very much for your time. So as our vice chair said, one of the really important things to us is going out and finding the right children to provide scholarships for. It is an easy lift, if you will, to do college scholarships. It's a more difficult lift when you're out working with the schools. You're identifying the kids where these scholarships are going to be impactful, and they're going to make a difference. As I mentioned, 39 different scholarship winners. We have four different programs. We provide a $10,000 scholarship, $5,000 scholarship. We do something we're very proud of. We do vocational and trade scholarships, recognizing that 40% of the kids are not going to go to college. And then we have a partnership with St. Petersburg College to make sure that children have the opportunity to get their associate's degree and to do so without having any debt. Today with me are three lovely young ladies that are from Lakewood High School. Lakewood Spartans, correct, Mayor? You're the right. And we are beyond excited to introduce them today to you. First, I have, in girls' waiver, whatever, okay, he wants to introduce them. Okay, then I will not do the normal, and I will turn it over to the council chair. Mr. Dumber, thank you so much. And I believe the mayor is going to speak next. The mayor is with us. Thank you. Good afternoon, mayor. Thank you, Madam Chair. Commissioner Hamilton, I've never heard you speak that briefly before. You know me well. It's always good to see you. I just wanted to thank, as you all know, that education and youth opportunities is one of our pillars, and we're so excited about this partnership. I want to honor Katrina, Melania, and Sanaya. Did I get that right? Melaina. Melaina. See, I knew I was going to get one of them wrong. Not only for being outstanding students, but to be recognized as distinguished citizens by our chair. In your packet, I believe they each did an essay, and they were so inspiring. What you want to do for your future. How you want to move forward. And I just want to thank you for the example you set for your peers, but also for our entire community. We're so proud of you. And we recognize all of our students. I know Gibbs is coming soon. But today is a day for the Lakewood Spartans, and we're so proud of what y'all do. So, God bless you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Dunbar, you know, for all the work. CFY's partnership with the city through St. PPD's Forward Together program. And council members and for the public, you probably have heard that multiple times. This is the first innovative equity project that we funded last year. And so we're already seeing this work come to fruition. I want to thank Chief Holloway and his team for fostering this meaningful collaboration with CFY, whose mission obviously aligns with ours. We're beyond excited to acknowledge the achievements of these Lakewood High seniors. Their stories reflect the core values of the city council's Distinguished Citizen Award. Courage, dedication, and commitment to making a positive impact in our community. So, it's my pleasure to go through, and we're going to go one by one and celebrate these young women. So, Katrina's story is one of perseverance and self-determination. In her scholarship essay, Katrina reflected on her initial struggles with math. I feel you there. But she knew that the score she received at first did not reflect her true potential. Katrina was diligent in her efforts to improve her math skills because she knew she wanted to pursue a career in science. STEM. Through tutoring, is that wrong? Did I get that wrong? Through tutoring and independent study, Katrina not only sought improved test scores, but a deeper appreciation of the subject. This is impressive to me, not only because I deal with math for a living, but also because Katrina's story is an example for all of us to see challenges and opportunities for personal growth and not as obstacles. So, on behalf of the City of St. Pete, Katrina is your Distinguished Citizen Award. Congratulations. Melaina. I learned from him. Melaina's goal to pursue a career in radiology, I know a company in District 1 that's hiring, already tells you that she is serious about her academic career. Her scholarship essay demonstrated a clear-eyed understanding of what it takes to succeed and what she needs to get there. But more than her motivations to succeed personally, this is my favorite part. Melaina is dedicated to inspiring and uplifting others through the power of mentorship. Melaina's self-determination and desire to give back to her community is the example we should all strive for. Melaina, it's my pleasure to give you the City of St. Pete Distinguished Citizen Award. Sanaya, three for three, is a shining example of resilience, determination, and hope for all of life's challenges. Sanaya's journey makes her accomplishments all more remarkable. Having lost her mother when she was young, Sanaya found strength in her passion for tennis. Which she's going to hopefully play at St. Pete College, right? Yeah. A sport that not only became her therapy, but also helped her build her sense of belonging. Sanaya wants to pursue a career in healthcare. As a physical therapist, Sanaya, I'm going to need you in the future and have needed you in the past. Which exemplifies her determination to help others turn obstacles into opportunities for growth. Sanaya's hope for a brighter future in the face of hardship is a lesson we should all take to heart. Sanaya, on behalf of the City, here's your Distinguished Citizen. We had one student not be able to join us today, Anaya, and so I just wanted to make sure we recognized her. Just from reading her scholarship essay, I can tell that Anaya is a trailblazer. And I love that word, and I don't use it often, and I think it's very appropriate here. Anaya wrote of her goal to be the first in her family to graduate college, a goal that has driven her towards academic excellence and a fierce determination for a brighter future. Anaya comes from a close-knit family where the value of mutual support has clearly shaped her drive to succeed. Anaya's determination to ensure her family's sacrifices are met with gratitude and hard work is an example we should all follow. So let's give Anaya a round of applause for Vice Chair, colleagues, everybody in chambers. Please join me once more congratulating these four remarkable individuals who exemplify the values celebrated by the Distinguished Citizen Award. Congratulations. Congratulations. That was just random. I don't know. I didn't press anything. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Congratulations again, young ladies. All right. We'll move on to D2. Oh, yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, Council Member Gibbons, I apologize. Go ahead. I'd be remiss if I didn't speak up and celebrate my fellow Lakewood Spartans. Mr. Mayor, you know we're a little biased, but it's all about the wood, all about the wood. Hollywood high till the day I die. I just want you to know, you know, being a first-generation college student, first-generation college graduate, I know it's not easy. Your work will be cut out for you, but I know that to whom much is given, much is required. And we, as a city, are proud to invest in our youth. We know that when we put our money behind our youth, that is our best investment. So know that wherever you go and whatever you do, the city supports you, and we are behind you 100%. Katrina, you and I had the opportunity to talk at Lakewood a few weeks back. So from former class president to a current class president, I look forward to seeing you here on this dais one day. So know that this is just the beginning. The ground starts. Ground zero, that's training ground at Lakewood. Mr. Mayor will tell you that's what Lakewood breeds success. No offense, Council Member Pig Sanders, to my fellow G High graduate, but we love what is happening at Hollywood High. We see the work. On the tennis court, I've been there. I was a former athlete there. I was not good enough to play football, but I was better, and I was well enough to play tennis. So I appreciate what you're doing out there. Know that we are 100% behind you if there's anything we can do for you as a city. So God bless you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Gibbons, I apologize. No worries. Glad you jumped in there. Okay, moving on to D2. We'll do Women's History Month proclamation given by Mayor Welch. Okay, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Honored to see you again. I've seen you several times this week already. I'm sorry. I apologize for that. But I'm honored as your mayor to recognize Women's History Month, and I think we all noticed that the four distinguished citizens are all young women, quite appropriate. As a proud girl dad, a husband, and the son of an amazing mother, I've witnessed the power and strength that women and girls bring every day. Several of you on the dais and many in the audience have broken barriers and changed the course of history, all for the better of our respective communities. Thank you all you do to advance and support women. I'm proud to have members of the Business and Professional Women's Group. The National Council of Negro Women is on the way. The National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum and Girl Bosses in the audience for today's presentation. I'd like to ask Tammy Sims, Amy DeNovo, Sandy Bean, and Mae Thatch, if they're here to join me. Good to see you all again. Yeah. All right. And the proclamation reads, whereas March is annually observed as Women's History Month and has been designated to identify the historical and significant contributions of women. And whereas women have made countless contributions to the city of St. Petersburg, the state of Florida, the United States of America, and the world. And whereas a National Women's History Alliance selects a theme each year to highlight the contributions of women everywhere. The 2025 theme is Moving Forward Together, Women Educating and Inspiring Generations. The theme celebrates women who have dedicated their lives to education, mentorship, and leadership. And whereas we celebrate women everywhere, and especially the city of St. Petersburg, and reaffirm our commitment to advancing the cause of equality and opportunity for women and girls. Now, therefore, I, Kenneth T. Welch, Mayor of the City of St. Petersburg, Florida, do hereby proclaim March 2025 as Women's History Month in St. Petersburg. And I urge residents to join with me in celebrating women's history, their legacy, and their profound contributions to our society. Thank you for all y'all do. I actually wrote it. It's on my phone. And I have to put glasses on because I'm 47 now. They make me look like an owl. Yeah, I'm sure. All right. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, City Council members. Thank you for recognizing Women's History Month and allowing me to share thoughts on behalf of the thousands of women entrepreneurs shaping St. Petersburg's future. So I'm here as the founder of St. Pete Girlboss. I'm a former educator, learning designer, a mom as well, and daughter. St. Pete Girlboss is an 8,000-strong community of women leaders, all business owners. So I'm here speaking for them. And also as a proud resident committed to supporting women and girls in the city. Now, many know women face inequality, but we often forget how recent some of those barriers have fallen. Women couldn't get credit cards without a husband or a father signing for them until 1974. They were excluded from graduate programs until the 70s. Marital rape was not criminalized in all states until 1993. And today, our Constitution doesn't guarantee equal rights regardless of sex. But here in St. Pete, women's courage has shaped our city since 1910, when the Women's Town Improvement Association formed before women could even vote. Today, St. Petersburg ranks as the number four mid-sized economic powerhouse nationally, with an environment that especially nurtures entrepreneurs. And the numbers tell a powerful story. Nationwide, women own 13.8 million businesses, employing 10 million workers, and generating $3.9 trillion in revenue. Yet women's unpaid care work is valued at over a trillion dollars annually, unpaid caregiving work. In Florida, women earn 83 cents to every man's dollar. Women of color, even less, 64 cents for black women, and 51 cents to every dollar for Hispanic women. So for generations, women have had to be visionaries before they could even be visible. People, dreaming of futures they'd never seen in boardrooms, they'd never seen in textbooks. And neuroscience tells us that mirror neurons help us learn by watching others. But what happens when there's no one to mirror? Women's leadership begins with imagination, with a certainty that says, even if I haven't seen it, I know it's possible. And the legacy lives in St. Pete's entrepreneurs and St. Pete's women, building impact-driven businesses, in mothers raising the next generation, and in city leadership elevating women's voices. Organizations like St. Pete Girlboss, My Daughter's Keeper, The Greenhouse, our city's MWBE program ensure this isn't just symbolic progress, it's structural change. We're building a city where women and girls don't squint to see their future. They see it clearly, even with reading glasses. Because it's already happening. So thank you for encouraging women who came before, for supporting those who are leading now, and creating space for those yet to come. Because we're not just honoring women's history, we're building it. Thank you very much. I have to lower this. Thank you again. My name is Mae Thatch, she, her. I am the organizing manager for NAPOF, which is the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum. We're one of the leading organizations around advocacy and power building with Asian American, Pacific Islander, women, and gender expansive folks in the nation. Specifically here in Florida, we have our office in St. Petersburg. And as an immigrant myself, being able to organize with my Asian community members in St. Pete, I'm really honored and really grateful to be in this city and have the support of the city. I was here last year about other issues that you all also supported. One of the things I mentioned was talking about language access and, you know, needing that for our community members. And I'm really grateful that I see in the city that there's multiple languages that are offered so people can look at the city and get the information that they need, especially the Asian languages that is very much needed for our community. So I'm really grateful for all that you all have done with that. Continuing, like I said, as an immigrant, the Asian population here in the city of St. Pete is still largely immigrant communities. So I just wanted to elevate and just hope that you all are continuing to protect our immigrant communities here in the city of St. Petersburg. Thank you. Councilmember Gabbard. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mayor, for bringing the proclamation today. And I also wanted to thank you publicly for the opportunity to join BPW the other evening to do the Equal Pay Day proclamation. March 25th, for those who don't know, was Equal Pay Day. And what that means, it's a symbolic day that essentially women's earnings catch up to their male counterparts from the year before. So last year, that day was on March 11th. This year, it was on March 25th. So unfortunately, we're actually getting a little bit more behind in that particular realm. So it just is a painful reminder that no matter how far we come, we still have very far to go. But luckily, we do live in a city where we have incredible women, incredible women leaders that are continuing to strive and work for that equality. And as we said the other evening at BPW, we hope that there is a day when we no longer have to celebrate things like women's history and why we, you know, no longer have to talk about Equal Pay Day. But we know that's not here yet, so we continue to fight. So thank you all for everything that you do for us. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you, and thank you to all who joined us today to recognize this month. I sit here just still so proud that I am one of four female city council members serving our city. Back in 2017, Councilmember Gabbard and I were elected, making, with our colleagues at that time, creating the first female majority on city council. Just two years later, Councilmember Deborah Figg Sanders was elected, giving us the first female supermajority on city council. And in spirit, I still think of us that way. And then, two years after that, Councilmember Vyshear Hanowitz was elected, becoming the first Hispanic city council member, not just female, but the first Hispanic city council member to serve our city. So, in some way, each of the four of us has made a little bit of history of our own, and we don't carry that lightly. I think all of us feel the weight and the responsibility of that. And I think we all feel that once we become successful in our careers or in the paths that we take. And the best way for us to honor that and to honor Women's History Month is to look around and find that next woman that you can help. There's a quote here I want to read to you, and I'm sorry that I do not know the author, but it goes a little something like this. And when you get to where you're going, turn around and help her, too. For there was a time not long ago when she was you. So, thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Chair Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair. Well, first of all, thank you so much for joining us. I loved hearing the history of where we were and where we are and how much more we have to do. I am the mother of a 10-year-old daughter. And when you look at kids nowadays, I will tell you, they have no idea. I mean, first of all, they live in an era where, I mean, if they look at a record player, now they become popular again. At one point, it would have been, what is a record player? They can't imagine a time where women would have been treated differently, and it wasn't that long ago. It's my generation. I remember it specifically. And my mom lived it. And my grandmother lived it. And so, it's something, when you talked about building women's history, we are continuing to build women's history every day. And it's still a challenge. And you still face misogyny. And you still face all these battles in the workplace that we all have these shared stories. And we were yesterday on the panel. And it was amazing, no matter from what walk that we come from, from where we lived, or what our background is, we have very similar stories that we all share. And I think women need to support each other, continue supporting each other, especially when things get a little rough, especially now. And I think that we have a city that is extremely supportive of what we do. That's why we are here, representing our city in a diverse manner. So, I want to thank you for being engaged, being a voice for women, and for being out there setting an example, because we need all the shining examples we can get. So, thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Fitzsanders. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much, Mayor, for recognizing the beauty and the essence of our nation, our women. And I also heard you say that NC&W are on their way. But as a life member of NC&W, I'm going to step in for them, because they have to be represented. And, you know, not only do we recognize the strength of a woman and her presence and the contributions that we make, there would not be a man had there not been a woman first. And I thank you for acknowledging the role that we play in that. You know, so many women organizations, and I'm also, and so is Rita Wesley. We're members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. So, you find the strength and the collaborations and the acknowledgments and the efforts and the progressions of things that deal with economic empowerment, education, health equity, and social justice from so many different facets of our community, and many of them led by women. So, am I exceptionally proud that I'm a woman? Yes. Am I exceptionally proud that Council Member Driscoll hit the nail on the head? I was the first black woman to represent District 5. So, I want to continue to make it very mindful that the struggle of being a woman is still real, very, very real. Thank you, Council Member Gabbard, for attending the equity pay event. But, again, thank you, and I agree with you. I get to the point where when are we going to have to stop making a special effort to recognize what is already given, you know, the purpose that have already been proven. And thank you, ladies, for coming and recognizing small business because, of course, we are leaders in that too, you know. But I'm a man, I'm a mother of three men, so I'm not going to take the credit from that. But, again, you know, this is Women's History Month, and I am so honored to be a part of that, to represent NCNW, who I don't know where they are, but to make sure. Yeah, I'm right there. They're right here. Just to make sure that we are keeping in mind that women help build this nation. And I want us to recognize women 365 days a year. And just because we're women, and I said this at the panel yesterday, just because they're women, still do not forget. I want my chair held for me. I want the door open for me. You know, there are certain levels that I do still expect as being a woman. So thank you so much again, Mayor, for this presentation. And thank you, ladies, for joining us today. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Just quickly, as this packet came out, and I was reading the proclamation, my mom and dad and my uncle and aunt were in Denmark celebrating the history of my grandmother. And I thought it was pretty apropos. And, you know, thinking about that, thinking about my mom celebrating and learning about the history of her mother-in-law and what a just amazing woman my grandmother was. What an amazing woman my mom is. I married a bad woman. Yes, you did. And I want my daughter to be a St. Pete girl boss. And I think if she were here today, she would say, I am one, Dad. And I would say, I know, because you're second to boss in the household to mom. But one of the things, two of the things that have been said, I just want to reiterate, that are just so extremely important to me as a dad of a little girl. And learn by watching. I am so extremely lucky to sit up here with four bad women. Yes, you are. And my favorite picture of my daughter, other than the moment she was born, is one, her sitting right there, imagining her doing this. And she gets to imagine that very, very clearly. Because in about 45 minutes, my wife will turn the TV on when they get home. And they'll be watching these women kick for St. Pete. And it's pretty special. And Council Member Driscoll, your quote, nailed it on the head. Nailed it on the head. I hope there are, and I know there are. Let me change that. I know there are so many women turning around and helping my daughter. That's the reason we live in St. Petersburg. That's the reason I'm doing this. Because we all know it's not the pay. And it's certainly not the notoriety. And so, I want her to see the St. Pete that I see 40 years from now. And my hope for her is that she listens to that. Because that means St. Pete will continue to be head and heels further than anybody else. So, thank you, ladies. Mayor, thank you for bringing the proclamation. And to all four of my colleagues up here, thank you. Okay, before I really start crying, we'll move to D3, Transgender Day of Visibility Proclamation, also given by Mayor Welch. Mr. Chairman, I was going to have him pass the tissues if you went five minutes long. Here we go. But it's a powerful day of talking about our principles and our values. And I'm honored to bring this next proclamation in recognition of Transgender Day of Visibility. Our LGBTQ liaison, Eric Vaughn, works very hard to ensure that we are informed, connected, and impactful. Eric, I want to thank you for all that you do. And you can join me up here, sir. And as I read the proclamation, I want to invite our guests, including Nathan Bremer, Jane Haskell, and Andy Satino. Join me. Any other guests that I miss? Unity. Thank you for joining us. And the proclamation reads, whereas Transgender Day of Visibility celebrates transgender representation, activism, and equality. And whereas we come together as a community to promote visibility and fairness to all transgender individuals. And whereas we acknowledge the resilience of transgender individuals throughout history and how they've contributed to the betterment of society and made our American tapestry even more vibrant. And whereas we believe everyone should be treated with respect and dignity. And we oppose unwarranted attacks on trans people that have made trans communities feel disrespected, neglected, and even threatened. And whereas we honor the bravery of the many transgender individuals who live in our vibrant city that is guided by principled progress and intentional inclusivity. Now, therefore, I, Kenneth T. Welch, Mayor of the City of St. Petersburg, Florida, do hereby proclaim March 31st, 2025, as Transgender Day of Visibility in St. Petersburg. And I encourage all citizens to treat each other with dignity and respect without exception. I don't often do this, but I actually wrote notes this year. Thank you very much for today's proclamation celebrating Transgender Day of Visibility. With me today, I've got Jane and Unity and Andy. And earlier in the audience was Byron and Darius and our new executive director for St. Pete Pride, Bior. They are here in spirit with us. The season is upon us, though. They have a lot to do. Our history, our local transgender community's history, and our city's history are intertwined. We have grown together. We have supported one another. And we have become more visible together, ensuring everything that I just heard the mayor read in that proclamation, that we can all thrive here in the Sunshine City and ensure we all have opportunities to live in a safe and healthy, prosperous way and to reach towards that future as Americans and as Floridians. And there is nothing that demonstrates this more than all the new organizations and the new events and even the new people who are coming here to St. Pete. And that is who we celebrate today. Everything that this community, our trans community, is adding to the beautiful tapestry of our life here in St. Pete. The first event, many of you know, well over a decade, we have hosted Trans Day of Remembrance. But we decided as a community to launch more events to celebrate the Trans Pride March in 2017, Transtastic in 2018, and this year celebrates our fifth anniversary of the Tampa Bay Transgender Film Fest, kicking off tomorrow in downtown St. Pete. This day, Trans Day of Visibility, is a day to celebrate our resilient trans community, all of our families, and all of our allies. That includes all of you. Our partnership with the city, the mayor, and all of you, and the amazing staff, frankly, that I have been fortunate enough to work with over the years, make this possible, make this special thing that is our home so special. And I have come before you many times over the years, and my comments have varied, some more celebratory other years, like this year, looking at a moment when our trans community is struggling more than ever, facing challenges with the erasure of our civil rights protections, and frankly, the cruelty of the commentary we see in the news cycles almost daily. But Jane and Andy and Unity and I, Jane as a leader for a local, no, not local anymore, a national nonprofit organization, Unity is co-chair for this year's Trans Film Festival and comes from a technology IT background. Andy, a small business owner. I'm just a lowly attorney. We are St. Pete, and we are proud together to be with you and celebrate this, to be visible with you, and keep in mind, we represent just a fraction, and we're honored to be here representing just a fraction of our amazing trans community who live, work, and play here in the city, but we want to continue to thank you for that support, especially now more than ever. Your bold leadership and our words, my words, cannot possibly capture how important this recognition is celebrating the trans community and honoring March 31st as Transgender Day of Visibility. Thank you all. Thank you. Council Member Gabbard. Thank you, Chair, and thank you so much, Mayor, for bringing this proclamation as well. This is always a special one to us here in the city of St. Petersburg, and this year when I saw it, unfortunately my heart felt very heavy. What we see happening at the federal level is heartbreaking. It's disgusting, and when I read the rhetoric, I see your faces. I see my friend Nathan, who I love dearly, and it breaks my heart. Just know you will never be erased from the city of St. Petersburg. You have a home here. We love you. We love all of you for exactly who you are, and I want you to know we fight with you every single day, and we'll continue to do so. So thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Fig Sanders. Hey, Nate. How are you? First of all, thank you, Mayor. I saw this, and I agree with Council Member Gabbard. It is a sombering moment, but it's not a defining moment because you all are, I see you. So we call it visibility, but I see you because you've got to look at it. We are going through that D, E, and I ratio. Who takes Jackie Robinson off of the Arlington Center? Who does things like that? So it's not something that you're going through alone, and it's something that we're going to have to step up and continue to do together. But I think the reason why I was so excited about this is because so many of us, and I'm going to speak for myself, we're not always here. You all were always very adamant in educating us with who you are, why you are, and the contributions that you make to us as a whole. And for that, I thank you for that. I'm the mother of three, and I would always say, whatever they came home and told me they were, I'm going to love them just as much, no less. However, I know what society says, but my heart says inclusion, nonjudgmental, and unconditional love. And so thank you so much for educating us. I'm going to speak for me. Educating us, loving who you are, never shying down as to the contributions that you make, and continue to let us know that you are visible because I do see you. Thank you, Mayor, for this proclamation, and we're going to continue to do this one love thing together. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. I wanted to say thank you for the advocacy and work that y'all do, particularly in our state. I know a lot of times it's easier to give up and do something else where you feel more supported, so I really appreciate it. I hate the way our state's been lately. And, Mayor, thank you as well for this proclamation. Just real briefly, we're at a time when it's easy to throw individuals and groups under the bus for political expediency, and I've appreciated that you haven't done that, especially here. Thank you. Vice Chair Hanowitz. Thank you. Well, you're in St. Pete, and you're safe, and you're visible, and you're part of us. I was just in the belly of the beast in Washington, D.C. I will tell you, it's rough, and I have to, like Council Member Floyd just said right now, your advocacy is more important than ever. I know, Nathan, that you're out there all the time. You go to Tallahassee, do it in D.C. People out there, get your friends to go out and advocate for those that need to be advocated for because more than ever we need it. And you're not alone. You're not the only ones that are being attacked. It's many of us that are being attacked, and many groups out there are being attacked, and it's horrible to see because we don't choose who we are. We are who we are, and there is nothing worse than being just attacked for who you are as a person. So we're there with you. Thank you so much, and you are a part of our city. Thank you. Thank you. Nathan, it's good to see you. Like, I feel like we've ran into each other, like, the last four times I've been out to dinner. You got to eat sometimes. I know. Yeah, right? Yeah. You're working. Thank you so much for the work that you do. I would just echo everything that my colleagues have said. It's been a pleasure working with you. It's going to continue to be a pleasure working with you, and I think you know you have a home here. And, Mayor, thank you for bringing this forward. Thank you so much for all that you do. Okay. We're going to move away from awards and presentation and move into council committee reports. And this one is mine, and I am respectfully requesting approval of a resolution authorizing the mayor or his designee to accept the proposal submitted by Brown and Brown of Florida, Inc. to provide property insurance coverage effective April 1st, 2025. We talked about this pretty good in BFNT. I just want to thank Blaze and his team and Brown and Brown. You guys did an amazing job coming off a very difficult year and just very proud of the work that we've done. And I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval. Second. Seeing as we have a motion and a second, nobody wishing to discuss. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Chair, motion to approve with genitum H1. Pass is unanimous. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Okay. We're going to move into reports in F1. And I think we are joined by Brejesh Preyman. And he's going to talk to us about, I think, one of our faves, mitigation, Seagrass Mitigation Bank. Good day, council. It was a pleasure. I can't believe when we say favorites, we say mitigation, but we'll go with it. So I am joined today by an amazing team of staff, some of them here, Michael Diemer in the legal department, as well as Julie Vogel, the project manager from engineering, Liz Makofsky, and, of course, Erica from finance as well. But this is just the beginning of the team. It's an amazing team that has been working and moving mountains to get us to the point where we are with this project. It's a great project. And I just wanted to have that introduction for the team before we continue on. So we did prepare a brief presentation, and we got some amazing feedback in our conversations. We did integrate. Julie did an amazing job integrating some of these elements into it. And also we start the planning elements based on all the discussions we've done as well. So to start the conversation for this presentation, just an updated slide outlining the cross-section of what the area is to be filled. We're looking at a total acreage of a site that will be of 178 acres. The dredge hole itself is approximately 32 acres, and the seagrass existing meadow is about 147. So in total, we'll end up at approximately 178 acres. What I do want you all to take into consideration and notice, the numbers as we go around this slide, this image, it has these are the proposed locations of the signage that will be installed. And I want you all to take note of those locations because we'll touch on that in the next slide. So obviously we did, at one of our previous presentations, we were asked by Council to investigate the opportunity of creating a higher regulation on the seagrass access, the access through this meadow, if we may say, this conservation easement that was created back in December with the grace of Council. However, the approvals that we were seeking to put higher restrictions on access were not approved. However, we did come up with a sign that was approved by all the regulatory entities, shallow seagrass area. Now also being cognizant of the signage requirements and not being going to over sign and have sign clutter, we were permitted for up to 15 signs. We'll be very selective as to where we're going to install those signs. We know where the cut-through areas are, and we'll start at those locations. And we'll continue to monitor. If we do see more impacts to the seagrass, then we'll continue to install additional signs into those locations that were permitted. And again, these signs are 36, well, 3 feet by 4 feet wide, so quite substantial signage that will be out there. So the project summary itself, you know, back in 2022, we were in conversations with Port Manatee, Manatee, and they do have to dredge one of their barge locations. So one of their new locations, as they dredge it, serendipitously, it is approximately the same amount of cubic yardage that we require, Seaport Manatee. So as part of that maintenance agreement that we have for them, sorry, project agreement, they will dredge that material, transport it to our site where they will fill that dredge hole. That is a substantial cost savings to the city that we do not have to construct that by sourcing that material, clean fill material to put into the hole. Once the seagrass mitigation bank is completed, we expect, in total, approximately 13.4 federal credits. Now, credits are generally used for unavoidable impacts from other projects, but one of the benefits of this type of project is that instead of having a .05 acre in one location of seagrass impacts, or a .25 in sporadically across Tampa Bay, we now have one mass area that can sustain itself in a healthy meadow. So again, just touching on the project construction, the intent will be to install turbidity barriers, as the dredge material is filled. As that settles, then we'll fill it with clean sand on the top, and we'll construct it in batches, essentially blocks of a section, as we accept and we move through that entire section. We're looking to go into the permitting stage right now. We've already initiated some of the permitting. However, this MBI, which will be part of the approval today, will work towards the final approval of our Army Corps permit. Once that is approved, we look to move forward into the construction by the port manatee, seaport manatee, in fall of 2025, and hopefully by that time, because we want that material to settle and actually get some stability before we get out there and actually plant seagrass in the summer of 2026 and 2027, if needed. Some of the estimated project costs, and I do apologize. I don't realize, with the context of the color, it would show like this one, but take that. I don't think anybody's worried about that, Bridget. Okay, thank you. I think you're all right, man. All right, appreciate it. So the annual maintenance costs, what we're looking towards in this approval today is setting up that initial cost for the fund, the account that will be used to pay for the maintenance by its interest over time. So that's what you will be seeking to approve. And that interest bearing, we're expecting it to be in about the $11,000 range to pay for the maintenance in the long term. And that also covers some additional costs in the event there's additional loss of seagrass just to natural or other unforeseen conditions. So we did include some contingency in that dollar value of how much we're looking to deposit. Also, once this deposit is made, the next step will be the planting, and that's what we're looking in 2026 and 2027 of approximately $1.1 million. It all depends on how much we get done in each year, but conservatively, we're looking at this estimate. The credit revenue on the other side will be released in stages throughout the project. I'll touch a little bit on that on the next slide. But we do conservatively estimate the credits at about $750,000 in today's, and actually that is an old estimate. But based on construction costs and future worth, it's projected that the value of that credit will continue to increase over time. So while we will have about 13.41 credits, of course, we're providing a few of it back to Seaport Mantee with regards to their construction. The rest of it goes towards as we sell. And we may not sell it as one full credit. There's also opportunity to sell portions of a credit over a period of time. Okay. So here's the breakdown of the credit structure. So what we're looking at is once we receive the MBI and approval and the signage that are installed, we get that initial release of credit. And as we progress, you'll see once we get to construction, we get additional credits. And then we have multiple levels of success that we have to monitor throughout the time period. So this is not just a one-time plan to move on. We're going to monitor it to maintain its continued sustainable success. And at each point, we'll have that additional credit until FY32, which at that point, we'll get a final credit release. So community engagement was one of the big items that we definitely want to move forward with. And it's going to take part in multiple stages. During construction, sorry, let me take one more step back. Prior to construction, we'll get out there with the public. There's also some stakeholders that we want to engage, as well as local communities and also the boating community. Users of the beach and trying to get as much public engagement out there because once construction starts, we want people to be aware not only of the construction out there, but also the benefits of creating the seagrass and its natural habitat. Once we're past construction, we're looking to have permanent signage installed out there as well as an educational component. Of course, we'll be working with the Parks Department, legal, and zoning to make sure we're consistent with any signage ordinances as needed. And with that, I do ask for approval. So, Council Member Gabbard. Thank you, Chair. So, Brajesh, I just wanted to thank you, first of all, for the very informative one-on-one that we had about this item. You mentioned it earlier about the feedback that we gave you, and I see that you incorporated some of that conversation. One of the things that we had talked about and potentially you all maybe thought of as well when you were speaking with them was the signage that would be at North Shore so that if people were walking by, they could actually see it, they could understand what the project was versus just being, you know, in the water and seeing the project. So, I really wanted to thank you for incorporating that. I think that's very, very important because people need to understand all the benefits of this project. Speaking of, you know, people kind of understanding, I can very clearly remember when I was running for this seat, my predecessor was very engaged in the infancy of this project. You know, Council Member Kennedy was very passionate about this, and so to think that it has taken almost a decade to do this project, and we still got a few years to go, right? And so, I mention that because I think people need to understand how challenging it can be to actually do things in the bay. There's a lot of conversation in Riviera Bay right now asking about dredging after the storm and things like that, and people don't really understand all of the complications, the different agencies that you have to work with, the permitting, all of that. And so, I say all of that not only to help educate the public about what it really means to do work in the bay as a city, but to also just say a huge thank you to you and to Michael Dima because you guys have never given up. You've continued to work. You've continued to struggle. I know how hard it's been, but this project is such a winner. It is such a great example of environmental stewardship and really what you can do whenever you put your mind to a project that's a little outside of the norm, but one that will make a huge impact for our community. The only question that I have, and I just want to make sure that I understood from our one-on-one, so the credits and the value of those credits, when you talk about the projected revenue is expected to exceed, can you remind me from that conversation, the credits, while they have a value, if you will, isn't it also kind of market value? Because it's really, if a developer needs credits and we have them, we can kind of negotiate that, right? So, I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about that so we understand that. Yes, you're absolutely correct in that. And keep in mind that $750,000 number was something that we estimated years ago. Yeah. We know how much construction costs has increased since, you know, two years, even one year ago to now. And also, it gives us the flexibility, as I mentioned earlier. I should have, and thank you for giving me this opportunity. We don't have to sell a full credit. There may be 0.05 impact from a project, or maybe 0.25 impacts, or even less than that. So we can sell credits at different values. We don't have to sell it at a specific value. So that gives us a lot. And we are, and I'll have, look for some of the help from Michael here. But essentially, we're the only one, we're the only bank in town. And Michael, can you remind me of the limits of where we will have coverage on our? Yep. So that speaks to marketability as well. So it's known as the service area for the mitigation bank. And that goes from Anclo Key down to Sarasota Harbor, or Bay, and Tampa Bay inclusive with that. So it's a nice broad geographic scope. Anybody who's going to be impacting seagrass within the service area can come to us, the only bank in town, to purchase the credits to offset the impacts that they're having with their development. So there's a fiscal responsibility piece of this as well. And it really is creating a commodity for us that will help us be able to maintain this project too. So I just think, this just checks so many boxes. It's so good. So with that, Chair, I will go ahead and move approval. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and for all the work that you've done on this so far and continue to do. Thank you. Same to you, Attorney Dima. With the sign installation, the slide that you have here, the community engagement slide had a couple of signs on it. Is that similar to what we will see? So I will actually give the project manager the opportunity to talk about this because Tampa Bay Watch is also part of the project team. So, Julie? Excellent. Hi, Council Members. Thank you. My name is Julie Vogel from Engineering. So these are just example signs of what could potentially be out there. Obviously, we would like this to be project specific. We want to include enough detail for the public to understand what's happening, not have it be, you know, super wordy, but give that, you know, the benefits of the project is along with, you know, what they can expect. So we would work with our partners to develop the signage along with our communications department. And we can, you know, get feedback on those signs before we implement those, too. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. It will definitely have look for feedback from Council Members as we put these out there. Thanks. I like the examples. On, oh, where'd it go? So what is the, it sounds like the, we've got the signs that will be out in the water and then the ones that will be on Liam. The ones in the water, do you have a time frame? It says 2025, but can you get a little more specific? I, so let me give, if I could take a step back and actually give a better picture of expectations of when this is approved, because that leads towards an answer that you're looking for as far as when we can install those signs. We definitely don't want to get out there and start putting signs down without the Army Corps permits and the MBI in our hand. So once we, this is approved today within, we're hoping to turn it around and submit it back to Army Corps within the next week to two weeks. Then the Army Corps, going back to Council Member Gabbard's point, is going to go into 45 days of consultation with all the other regulatory agencies before they issue us the MBI, which will be our permit. Once we get that permit, then we can go ahead and construct it. We did select a contractor. We're trying to finalize terms of the conditions for executing that contract right now. And it is less than $100,000. It's a minor cost to install those signs. So once we get the MBI, we'll definitely have to put them out there. So if we can get it out there probably in the spring, I'm sorry, in the early fall time frame, that's what we'll shoot for. But that will all be based on we want to get that public engagement as well. So it's almost like lining up all these dominoes right now. So I would say early fall in that time frame to have the signs out there. But once we get that MBI in hand, we'll definitely give all the Council Members a much more detailed schedule at that point of this is how all the dominoes are lining up. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Harding. Thank you, Chair. I'd like to follow up on Councilwoman Gabbard's comments. This project is outside the scope of what you expect from your city or your municipality beyond fixing roads and lighting parks. This is innovative at a different level. And I'd like to congratulate you and your team and Michael Dima and his team. As I understand, this is part of what you do at the end of a project that serves the citizens. You want to build a pier. You want to build a new port in Manatee. Then we require you to rescue another part of your area. And along the lines, you all decided, to heck with that. We're not going to build anything. We're just going to save stuff. And then, just to be a little bit more bold, you decided, forget an acre. We're going to do 130 acres. This is absolutely fantastic. You have invented something. You have designed something that hasn't been done in the United States. And I congratulate you. I would imagine that the idea of – I imagine there have always been banks, but it's just because you had a little bit left over from your project. But you literally invented the whole idea of a true bank. This is innovative. This is creative. This is phenomenal stuff. Rajesh, congratulations and thank you. I wish I could say it's all me, but as Council Member Cabot said, it was – this started literally – you know, I always say you've got to put that pen down and start that at some point right. And Council Member Kennedy started this, and it's continued on. You know, there's a great team here, Erica, Julie, Michael Dima, Liz Murkowski. I mean, it is – I would tell you, it's a true group of amazing people. And, you know, administration has been, I mean, really supportive on helping us get through this. This is truly a project to be proud of. And, of course, to Council. Nothing could have been done without your approvals. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Chair Hanowitz. Well, to join the chorus, Rajesh, what I was thinking when I'm watching all this is like, okay, Logan Smith and Mike Flanagan and their team do such a great job with videos. This would be a fantastic thing to capture on video because it would be – I mean, first of all, educational. It's something you can use for kids to learn. You have Tampa Bay Watch involved. So I really think it's something to think about to see how you can actually capture what you're doing and put it on video. And, you know, they have won awards in that department with their videos. So I wouldn't be surprised to see something coming forward in the future. He's going to make a presence. You know, he'll show up, right? Mike Dima, you'll show up and talk a little bit. You know, so I think that would be great if you could do that. The other thing I was thinking about is so we didn't get our community funding request approved, and I thought that this was one of them. How does that impact this? Do you know? In terms of the approval? Well, there was a community funding request for monies that federally that has not gone forward, and it was for $1.1 million. Do you know if that has anything to do with this? It was our community funding request, one of the projects for community funding requests. So that's going to be a different piece of this project. But it is, right. Yeah, so that's going to be part of the CIP plan, what we do for the construction, so they'll come back at a later date. This is specifically for the operating piece. Okay. The instrument to cover the ongoing maintenance costs of the project. Okay, that's what I wanted to find out. Okay, well, that's it. I'm happy to support this. This is fantastic work, and I hope I can see a video in the future. Ice Chair wants a video. I want a video. It sounds fantastic. I get seasick. The only way I can experience this is through video. Interestingly enough. I get seasick. I can't, like. Interestingly enough, because. One of the risks. House of Mama Gabbard mentioned how much permitting requirements is involved in this. Some of the permitting requirements, by example, like when we were doing a peer, we may end up with it here. We may have to have a full-time manatee watcher. So if there's anybody who basically spots a manatee, then all construction may have to stop. That's the amount of permitting regulation we have to deal with. And Michael Deeman already volunteered, just to let you all know, to be the full-time manatee watcher. I told you. The manatee watcher are the attorneys. Of course I'm going to be on that video. I'm pretty sure this video is happening. I'm pretty sure we're all in it at this point. All good, Vice Chair? Yeah. Okay. I just didn't know if you wanted to invite some more people. No, no, we're good. All right. Okay. Thank you for the one-on-one. Rajesh, Michael, thank you. Thanks for going to bat on the signs. I just appreciate the ask. I know we couldn't get there, but I like where we landed. And I think as we're paying attention, if we need to move them, no big deal. And I love the marketing. I know we talked about it on that one-on-one. I just wanted to echo that. All right. We've got a motion and a second. Seeing as no further discussion, clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all council members have voted, clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Mr. Chair, motion to approve a genitum F1 passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you, Rajesh. All right, we're moving into F2, a resolution authorizing the mayor or designee to execute amendment number one to the professional services agreement with Stantec. Claude Tankersley, welcome. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate this opportunity. Claude Tankersley, Public Works Administrator. So we are bringing this request for an amendment to the task order. This is amendment number one to the task order with our consultant, Stantec, for our utility rate program. This amendment would cover three task actions plus an allowance. And so we're looking at a billing and collections task for billing analysis after storms, a task for a supplemental to help us with our financial feasibility for the bonds, and then for the dual register meter customer analysis, and then an allowance for $20,000. The reason we're bringing this amendment rather than having this included in the original task order was due to timing. So some of these issues came up after the original task order had been drafted, and we negotiated it and bringing it to council. And then some of these other ones, particularly number three, wasn't quite ready at the time that we brought the original task order, but we need to continue to move forward with the program. So therefore, we're bringing this amendment. And finally, we are requesting the addition of the allowance so that if anything else comes up in the future, we can administratively approve it as long as it's under $20,000 to continue the project moving forward. So we ask for approval. Vice Chair Hanowicz. Thank you. And thank you, Claude, for bringing this. I just want to just double-check. So in the Committee of the Home, we were discussing the billing issues and the analysis. This is what we're doing just to make it clear. So Stan Tech, because I thought that there was a mention that we were going to have consultants work on it. Yes, ma'am. And this was it. And this is it. Yes, ma'am. Okay. They've already done the work. They took the risk of doing the work up front without having this approved. Right. Because we needed it. And so this will now allow us to pay for the work that they did. Okay. So the work's already been done. This is just to pay for that. That's what I just wanted to check. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Move approval. Second. We have a motion and a second. Seeing as no further discussion, clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present, council members have voted. Clerk, please tell you and announce a vote. Mr. Chair, motion to approve a G-9 F-2. Passes you now, Ms. Lane. Okay. We're going to move into our new business, G-1. Council Member Gabbard. Thank you, Chair. Respectfully requesting a referral to the Housing, Land, Use, and Transportation Committee for a presentation and discussion regarding the public scooter share program. And I will go ahead and move approval on that. Second. Perfect. And then if I can, Chair, I just wanted to let the Chair of H-O-U-T know that staff will be ready to bring this in May. If by any chance it could be slated for then, it'll be a presentation, but also be the agreement for the RFP as well. Yeah. I was having a discussion this morning with Courtney about what we were going to schedule for May. And we were putting out feelers to do this. But I think this is a really topical conversation. So I think we'll, I'm glad to hear that. And I think we should be able to accommodate that. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. And thank you, Council Member Gabbard, for bringing this forward. Since we were in the sunshine, I did get a request today on an update on when we might bring back universal basic mobility. And I think, given this subject matter, an update on that. I know I gave an, like, a verbal update in a couple meetings ago. But I would like to bring that back. It would be short because it would just be a discussion on what marketing would look like or on education and awareness of what we already have. So it would be, I think it would be okay to fit this in. Or, you know, May or any time later is fine. Well, yeah, I did ask because I knew you had given an update. And so I did, I was trying to find out what was ready. And that was one of the topics. And so I think we could definitely, they're very related. We could put them on together. I'll say HLUT, the last two meetings, I've tried to have two things on there. And last time went really well. The first time, everyone's really interested in it right now, it seems. So, but I think we've worked all that out. And I think we can accommodate both. Yeah. Great. All right. Exciting. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Seeing as no other council members wishing to speak, clerk, could you please enter, or open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all council members have voted, clerk, could you please tally and announce the vote? Mr. Chair, motion to approve with your item, G1 passes unanimously. Okay. We're going to go to G2. Council member Givens. Thank you, Chair. Respectfully requesting referral to the housing, land use, and transportation. Committee, or other relevant committees to discuss selling price flexibility for unbuildable, excuse me, surplus lots larger than 250 square feet. And with that, I am moving for approval. Okay. Council member Gabbard. Thank you, Chair. So, Council Member Givens, when I saw your item here, I just wanted to make sure that I understand kind of the premise behind this. So, the surplus lots actually falls within the city-owned land policy that we passed at the end of 2023, I believe. And we have utilized once from that time, putting $4 million plus into HCIP, utilizing that policy. So, when I read this, it didn't specifically say city-owned land policy, but this work is exactly what we went through about a year plus of effort to bring forward. We brought to council several times in committee. They were, you all were very helpful in building that policy. Administration has worked very hard on making that policy. So, I'm kind of confused. I don't know if that's, if you're familiar with the policy, if you had seen the memo from September 2023 about surplus lots, if that was your intention, was to bring that back. I need to know, because I worked very hard on that policy, and so, before I can have any discussion about moving this to a committee, I need to know if the intention is to look at that policy. Of course, yes. That's what the intention is. I had constituents who have approached me about unbuildable lots that are adjacent to their properties, and they are concerned that there is blight in the community, specifically in my district, District 7, where there is a large number of these. We have, so far, I did a request, a public request, that it looks like we have 21 unbuildable lots that are 250 square feet or larger, and since the policy change in 2023, there have been no sales of those lots. So, with that, again, I wanted to bring this for discussion to the council to see how we can work proactively to eliminate that blight and how we can work with these residents and those who have interest in looking at possibly redeveloping their properties, and they need that property to expand. May I, Chair? Yes. Have you worked with James Corbett and his team and real estate to talk about the process that a resident can go through to actually purchase those properties from the city? Yes, ma'am, I have. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Fix-Sanders. Thank you. Thank you so much for that, Council Member Gavrid. I think I'm still confused, and thank you for clearing this up for me, Council Member Givens, when you said that they're adjacent to other properties that want to expand on to that. So, when we say flexibility of unbuildable surplus lots, they really become buildable once the businesses adjacent to them are actually wanting to expand on those lots. So, are we going to provide requirements for that? That's the only way that you could build is if you're actually expanding? We're not trying to add, because it says generate revenue for affordable housing. So, are we selling the lot to the adjacent business owner, and the money from that sale is going specifically toward affordable housing? Is that what I'm understanding? That is what the goal is, yes, ma'am. But like I said, this isn't just for commercial. This is for residential as well. So, what happened is I have had residential property owners who have approached me to say, hey, we are interested in selling this property or allowing an opportunity for it to be built on if it is. But like I told them, I made it clear, this is unbuildable property. So, if we are to sell this land, it can't be built upon. So, they are clear that they don't have that opportunity to do that. I've made that clear. They don't have that option. What they want to do is purchase the land, make sure that the grounds are taken care of, and hopefully work out some sort of an agreement with the city to where these lands can be utilized for maybe urban agriculture or some other opportunity. It isn't specifically for building or expansion of the homes, but we would like to have that in consideration. So, yes, we would set those requirements parameters. That's why I brought this to council, so that we can have the conversation in the sunshine of what those requirements would look like, what flexibility we're willing to offer. Again, I am not knocking Council Member Gabbard. I appreciate her labor and effort in this, but it has affected at least two property owners in my district, and I'd like to have the conversation to see how we can work with them. Okay, so I'm willing to have a conversation, but I'm going to go back to something that you just said. You said that you had commercial property owners want to sell that property. Residential. Residential who are interested in purchasing the properties that are adjacent to theirs. Okay, you might not realize it, but you said commercial wanted to sell that property. Okay, thank you. So that's where I got confused. So if they're wanting to sell that property and it's unbuildable, we can't do anything to it but maintain it. Right. And we're asking the city to release that responsibility and obligation to those property owners or those who are adjacent to those property owners. The property owner has the first right of refusal, right? So what I'm asking is, if the city is maintaining those grounds, we are imposing liens on those properties, why not allow those people who live next door the opportunity to purchase that land at an affordable rate instead of market price if they are willing to take on the responsibility of maintaining those properties? Okay, so if I may, Rob, well, Rob, I know you deal with this, but now we're talking about liens and finances. If we allow someone else to purchase that at a reasonable price and we still continue to have the blight, I don't know who can answer this, and we still continue to have the blight, where does that place us as a city? Yeah, so this is a policy like the Councilmember Gabbert we worked on together, looking at all our different lot disposition policies, and this was related to unbuildable lots over 250 square feet that were adjacent to someone's private property, and how would we go forward in disposing of those? And so certainly Aaron can answer any specific questions for you. You know, we worked on this with City Council, but if City Council decides to revisit it, we can have the discussion with you, but it is part of our current land disposition policy now. And thank you. I wasn't taking anything from you, Aaron, but I knew at the end of the day it was still going to have to go through the Mayor's Office in regards to moving forward on that, and I don't mind having the conversation. I see Mr. Corbett has joined us. Would you like to interject anything in regards to this? I can. Council, if I may, and Council Chair, Vice Chair, members of Council, good afternoon. Aaron Fish, Real Estate and Property Management. To clarify one point in the policy is that all of these remnant pieces of property, as part of this program, the requirement is for the adjoining property owner, if they do acquire one of these remnant pieces, it has to be combined with their property so it all becomes one. When they can't absolve themselves of that remnant piece later on, it would have to be essentially a part of their property. Really, the intent with the program was to piece these parcels back together with the originally platted lot, because in many cases, and sometimes we don't know how it happened, but they were divided from the originally platted lot. Property taxes weren't paid. We received most of these properties through S-cheat for nonpayment of taxes. They are on the city's books. They have been declared surplus, no need for this, they're of no use to the city, so it's a way to sell property to the adjoining property owners and kind of put them back to the originally platted lot. Okay. But they can't necessarily keep them divided and sell them separately. Okay, and that makes sense. And so there are stipulations that if they acquire this at a reasonable rate, they cannot resell those plots unless they sell it. That's correct. They could resell their entire property once it's combined, but not the individual plots. All right, well, thank you for that. I'm still a little confused, but thank you for that. Thank you, Council Member Givens, and thank you. Council Member Gabbard. So, Erin, just clarify for me that there are two things. There is a process by which someone can purchase these lots from the City of St. Petersburg. That's correct. And if someone purchases those lots, that money goes into our H-C-I-P. It could go into the H-C-I-P. Thank you. Council Member Gabbard. Thank you. Thank you. So it sounds like we're talking about a couple of situations where questions have come up, but you're available to meet with people, right, if they do have an interest in an adjacent surplus lot and discuss different options with them? Yes. So we're happy to provide what the policy provides us to do, which is, in the case of any property that is 250 square feet or larger, if it's a budding residential, it can be sold at the just market value, and that value is determined by the Pinellas County property appraiser, and it's included on the property card for the property. If it's under 250 square feet, then it can be sold for the $10, which was part of a 2015 resolution that authorized the sale for all of the unbuildable surplus properties for $10. But those policies were revised by the 2023 policy. All right. And then we don't have anyone from codes here, but, James, you've got great experience, and maybe you know something about this. So one of the concerns I have here is that it sounds like these are properties that have been poorly maintained. If they are owned by the city, I would hope that the city would be maintaining them to acceptable standards. Do you have anything to contribute? So I would say the James Corbett City Development Administrator, I would say as the list or the remaining properties, these remnant properties, as the amount gets smaller, it's obviously easier to manage. There are times, there have been times, where maybe we've missed a lot or weren't aware of it. So if it's a situation where it's a city-owned remnant lot and it's not being maintained, we can certainly address that by making sure that it's on a regular maintenance schedule and we pay close attention to maintaining it. The other thing that I would say is really the distinction here is the price. So as what Mr. Fish mentioned, there is already a policy right now that an adjacent property owner can buy the property, an unbuildable property, next to them. If it's less than 250 square feet, the purchase price is $10. If it's over 250 square feet, the purchase price is the just market value. And that change was incorporated in the policy that Council Member Gabbard worked on. And the idea was that we wouldn't want to just sell off a 50 by 20 lot. That's not necessarily buildable for $10. And the other thing that we are very cognizant of is we don't want to be negotiating where we sell one lot for $10, the other lot for $5,000, which is why we use the just market value when it exceeds the 250 square feet as the benchmark is what we sell it for. Because then we find ourselves in a situation where we're selling one person a lot for one price and then the next lot is drastically differently different. So we felt like this was a good compromise. The very small lots that were unbuildable, it's a flat $10 price. For the lots that are larger, we use the just market value. That is the current policy. I believe the issue at hand, from what I understand, is that while the adjacent property owner has the ability to acquire the lot, they don't want to pay just market value. And that's really the crux of the issue. Okay. And if I could, I would just add to that. I mean, again, we're happy to talk about it in committee if that's what city council decides. But this cost issue was talked about when we did the policy. We deferred to city council on the land disposition policy, and it was council's decision at that time that we wanted to try and generate some more revenue from those larger properties. And that's why that decision was made. Okay. Thank you so much. Yeah, I feel pretty good about the process and the policy that we have in place. One more question. There's something about liens. Does the city put liens on its own property? If it's a city-owned property, we would just maintain it. There would be no liens associated. Right. Right. I'm not sure where that came from, but I wanted to clarify. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Gibbons. So to that point, my issue is not with the policy of the process, and I don't think that was the issue with the potential buyer. The issue was more so to Mr. Corbett's point, which is the price. I understand it's just market value, but for some of these properties, I believe there should be some room for some flexibility, because if not, we'll be sitting on these vacant lots forever. It was great that we made the policy amendment, but, again, revisiting that ordinance, if it's not effective, if we haven't had any sales, what good is it? So, again, I would like to have the discussion to see how we can set some parameters in place, have some flexibility, make sure that there are stipulations and regulations so that this isn't abused, but also making sure that we do all we can to eliminate blight in areas where there is blight. Like I said, I'm not faulting the city or blaming them for being negligent, but what I am saying is that we can do more, especially if you have people who are interested in purchasing these properties, but they've just been sitting there for a year and a half, if not more. So thank you. Thank you. Okay. We have a motion, but no second. So G2 dies for lack of a second. We'll move on to G3. Council Member Floyd. I am respectfully requesting our referral. It was a quick turnaround. I'm respectfully requesting our referral to the Public Services and Infrastructure Committee for discussion on sunsetting the in-town community redevelopment area, and I'll move approval, and I'll just add some context to this. There was a bill in Tallahassee that was going to, by my understanding, make it to where we couldn't make any changes, and we did just extend the CRA, in-town CRA, and so it would have locked us into that extension, and that was my reason for bringing it forward so quickly. Yes, my personal preference would be sunsetting it, but I think the discussion point is what's important for that. We just extended it 10 more years, and I'd love to have a discussion of the pros and cons of what that's like, since we don't have to use it to pay for a development anymore, and I am looking for us to have a conversation about what possibilities we have going forward. I'll also reiterate, it was the bill that precipitated me doing this so quickly. I would have waited a while, seen what was happening with the gas plant area, but the bill precipitated it. The bill, I have heard since, has faltered and doesn't appear to be moving forward, but I do think it's worthwhile to still have the conversation, because that is what I'd like to do. Thank you. Thank you. Let's go to public comment. Jason Mathis, please go to either podium. State your name and address for the record. You have three minutes to address counsel. Thank you. Jason Mathis, I am the CEO of the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership. We are at 244 2nd Avenue North, Suites 201 in St. Pete College Building. And I'm commenting to say, I think I agree with everything that Council Member Floyd said, in terms of wanting to think about long-term implications of the in-town CRA, or any CRA. I just wondered about the urgency of doing it now. I think at this point, we don't even know what's going to be in the historic gas plant district, and I would hesitate to get rid of a tool that has served us well for many years with the in-town CRA, where you're able to put things into projects and programs. It doesn't look like we'll need to build a ballpark, but we still have 86 acres of blighted area in the in-town CRA that is a parking lot and currently a partially open dome, and there will need to be some money from the CRA that will have to address that. I know sometimes it's tempting to think that all of downtown is Beach Drive. Clearly, Beach Drive is not blighted, but there are other parts of the in-town CRA that could use a little bit of TLC, and I would hate to see this tool go away prematurely. Better to wait and see what the plan is, what public resources will be needed, and then maybe sunset this even before 2032. But find out what you're going to do first before you get rid of the tools that you might need to do that. Thanks very much. Thank you. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. I have multiple reasons why I hesitate on this new business item. The main thing is that as of right now, we do have an agreement in place that involves the utilization of CRA funds over time on the historic gas plant redevelopment. That has not expired. It has not changed at all as of today. And so I have some great concerns about even moving forward with approving a discussion on making a change at this time. Regarding the bill that's in Tallahassee, doing some work on this and bringing a little bit of attention to this can sometimes be all it takes to create new energy around a bill in Tallahassee that could make it move forward. And I particularly am concerned about singling out one CRA that happens to be the in-town CRA when we have others that would certainly be adversely affected by any movement that we make or that Tallahassee makes at this time. So I think this is a great time to keep our powder dry and perhaps revisit this along with other CRAs and talk about that when it seems to be a little bit more timely, I guess, to do so. The in-town CRA has created a lot of good over the years and several years ago, there was a plan that was put in place to allocate specific dollars for the remaining term. This was something that we entered into with the county. There is a huge process that goes into allocation of CRA funds and then also unwinding anything. So, and I don't know if Michael Dima wants to add to that at all or if needed. I mean, just from a termination standpoint, the interlocal agreement with the county does not allow for termination so long as there is still debt being serviced from projects funded by the in-town TIF. And I know that Assistant City Administrator Green can speak more to that timeline, but I do believe it syncs up with the prior sunset date that was in existence prior to last summer's extension. Right. Thank you. And with the projects that were approved several years ago for allocations for the remainder of the time for the in-town CRA, it went way beyond anything about a stadium or the historic gas plant property. I mean, we have money that's been allocated for seawall repairs, and we all know, especially now, that that's needed. Money for marina repairs, money for historic preservation projects. The list goes on. But at the same time, it was very specific, very thoughtfully done. And I would hate to disrupt that, say goodbye to that, say goodbye to the county funding. But most of all, I do not believe that this is the right time to have those conversations. And therefore, unfortunately, I can't support this moving forward today. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Chair Hanowitz. Thank you. So I had these conversations with legal, as you can imagine, as soon as things started going south. And it's something that's on my mind, whether the timing is now is the issue. I want to say, for those that don't understand about the CRA, we extended the CRA. The CRA was supposed to sunset in 2032. The money going into the CRA from now to 2032, when you're thinking about TLC, there'll be $250 million. That brings a lot of TLC from here to 2032. We have a fund balance. There are projections that were done at 7% that they did during the historic gas plant process that I have here in front of me. Those numbers are clear. So there's going to be a lot of money there. The issue is whether or not we want to extend that for 10 more years. And I think you're right. That's the issue. And we have to figure out what we're going to do, because we do have a lot of needs in our city. And when we were talking about seawalls and MSC, none of that really was at the forefront when we were going to just do the stadium. So we know we need those money. And as a matter of fact, we have $500 million worth of infrastructure costs that we're talking about that we have to find ways to fund that we don't have. So this is a good conversation to have in terms of whether or not we are going to continue this after 2032, because the reality is the CRA is only worth it when you can keep county money. The county is like later, guys, after 2032. They're not there. They're not even part of it. It's only our money. So we're putting money into a CRA and putting strings on it when we don't need to after 2032, because that money, then we just go into the general fund. And you can do whatever you want with it. Isn't that correct, Mike Dima? It's our money. That's a fair characterization. Yes. So I don't understand keeping it going after 2032, because it makes absolute no sense to me when the county's not even part of it. That's the only reason you have a CRA. Now, ending it now, no. We can't do it. We have bonds that are happening, and I don't think that was what your intent was, but the issue is going forward to 2032, and we have conversations come March 31st, come the things that happen, and we're going to all see where we go forward. We have to have those conversations to figure out what's going to happen, because that's money that pays our police, that pays our fire, that pays our parks, that pays everything that goes into our general fund, that when we find ourselves in a situation where we don't have federal monies coming and all these other things happening, it's a nice cushion. And to have strings on it for no reason after 2032, that would be beyond me, because it's our money anyhow, so you have it in the general fund as opposed to the test. But the only reason for a CRA is when you keep the county money, and you can use that. So that's where I am with the CRA. I just don't think right now you have the support, and so I would rather this come back at a time where it is appropriate, because I think it's a very good conversation to have. And it's a prudent fiscal conversation that we should be having, because we should not be just keeping money in a place for no reason whatsoever after 2032, if we have so many projects that are pending. Thank you. Councilmember Fixander. Thank you. And, Councilmember Floyd, I am willing to second this for you. When I saw this, and I am more endeared to the South St. Pete CRA, and I wanted, with all the things that are going on with the gas plant area and what some of that may look like in the future, I just wanted to talk about it. I just wanted to see what the pros and the cons would be into having that conversation. And then I also understood that by referring it to a committee, you still have to have a date. It still has to be assigned, you know, a conversation date. Nothing is going to happen, especially if it doesn't come out of the committee. And one of the things that I have always admired about the council is that we're willing to talk about it, at least, to have that conversation, whether we're going to support it or not. So that's where I was with it. So what, you know, everyone has said prior to makes sense. And I don't want us to not move as a city because we want to shy away from retaliation because no matter what we do, whether we do it or not, we're still going to get retaliation from wherever. But I was just curious as to what this conversation would look like, and that's the only place we can do it in the sunshine, is in a committee. So unless you want to change your mind in regards to timing and what you've heard, you know, that's really up to you. But I just wanted to have that conversation because I wanted to see how it played out with this, looking at other CRAs that we already have. And like I said, I am endeared to the South St. Pete CRA. I was there from day one, and I wanted to see how we could possibly be impacted by looking at this one. So, you know, it's your decision. If you, you know, you realize you don't have the support for it, that's on you. But I was more of an inquisitive position on this. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Gabbard. Thank you, Chair. So when I saw the new business item, the word sun setting obviously jumped off the page at me. And so I'm glad we're having this conversation just so I can kind of understand your intention with that because I would not want to have a conversation about sun setting it today. And I'm hearing now that doesn't seem to be your intention. I think for me, where my curiosity goes is, okay, the 31st comes and goes. We no longer have a redevelopment deal going. We're going to have to make other decisions. We're going to have to have big conversations. What does it look like to unravel the extension? Because I don't disagree. I mean, Council Member Hanowitz makes some very good financial points. What is the point when this redevelopment could look completely different? So if this new business item did not have the word sun setting and was just a conversation about the CRA and a future conversation, we're not going to set it between now and March 31st anyway, right? But if it were a conversation that could give us that opportunity to talk about maybe an unwinding of the extension, and I haven't talked with legal about this, so I'm probably blowing your minds over there by even saying this. But I'm sure you've had this conversation in anticipation of what we might ask. So I would be open to that conversation. I just, the word sun setting for me, it kind of makes me back off a little bit. But if it were just a conversation about the CRA in general that maybe ends up with a piece of that, which you could work on with legal, to just have a conversation about the unwinding of the extension specifically, I'd be very open to that conversation. So I'll leave my comments there, Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. I appreciate the feedback, everyone. The sun setting, like, yeah, my intent was not for us to be like, oh, let's stop it right now. I did, I'm sorry, I mean, you could, yeah, just give me a second, give me a second. Sorry. But, you know, when I use the word sun setting, I'm like, it was ending it before its current date that it's set to end. That was what I was thinking. You know, I mean, I don't know. We all have different thoughts, and this is how we get an opportunity to do it. But, yeah, I mean, my preference would be for us to, obviously, I don't want to, and I think you all have seen me operate this way. I don't want us to do anything that's legally dubious or difficult logistically to execute. And, yeah, I do hear that it would be difficult to do before its date that it was meant to end before the extension. And so I figured we'd have a conversation, and I, you know, anticipated, but I can never tell what people are thinking. I did anticipate that it would be a conversation about not having the extension. And so I guess, yes, I'll take the feedback that it could have been written more appropriately to see that. Or, you know, sun setting at its normal date or talking about unwinding or just a future of the CRA, yeah, I hear y'all's feedback there. That's what I think would be most appropriate based off of what I know. But, yeah, I mean, all the fiscal reasons that Council Member Hanowitz are the reasons why I did put the word sun setting in there. And in addition, I'll just reiterate, I brought it forward so quickly when I knew that there was still uncertainty because I was worried, like, legal, from my understanding, was interpreting it as we would be locked into that extension if that CRA bill was – I'm sorry. I can speak to that. Yeah, I'll let you go ahead. I was – you know, so this bill, HB 991, is more specific than that. And this might give you a little bit of, you know, allow you to breathe easy in terms of timing. It's very specific in its current iteration that it would preclude new projects or the issuance of new debt after October 1st of this year. I think because the bill is existential with respect to CRAs, I think it's fine with allowing a city to terminate its CRA after that date. I misunderstood our conversation. Well, I didn't have the bill in front of me. I wanted you to understand that there was – that they were locking certain things down, and I didn't know if it included that as well. But in a reading of the – there's a committee substitute right now, and that's – it precludes those new things, those new projects, new debt. They'll still let you terminate your CRA earlier if you want. Okay, great. After October 1st. Yeah, thank you. Okay, so there was still information we were gathering. And anyway, I was concerned that we would be locked into the extension, and that's why I moved with the swiftness that I did. But I recognize there is a whole lot of unclarity. Like, it is not clear at all what we're going to do in that area right now, and I would have waited. And so I hear you, and I'll tell you what. I will wait until we find out what's going on with session before I push this any further. I do hear – I'm not sure that, you know, we do or don't have the support today. But I tell you what, because I don't feel like there's any reason we can't all agree to have this conversation in the future, or maybe almost all of us, I don't know, then I'll just go ahead and save this for the future. I'll withdraw it. I think we can come up with something that could be unanimous or close to it just in a few weeks, really, based off of language and making sure we get clarity. Just one more big piece of clarity after March 31st, yeah. Okay. All right, so I'll leave it there. Thank you for the good discussion. And I appreciate it, yeah. All right, Sherry Hanley? I just want to say, because you were referring to PSI, the earliest would be July. Okay. Okay. Also, yeah. To me, it was a rightness issue, and I think you got the feedback in terms of rightness, and so I'm happy to have it in PSI at some point in the future and have a conversation. And, by the way, all the information in terms of financials, all that work is there. So there's not going to be a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of projections for the CRA. So that's the good part. So that's it. Thank you. Thank you all for a good discussion. Councilmember Floyd, I just want to appreciate your willingness to be flexible on this. My feedback was going to be I'm happy to have a broader conversation. I don't want to have the conversation that is worded here, which I think you've gotten that feedback. But you want to have a broader conversation about the future of the CRA, happy to join that. I just think this paints a not very good picture while we're still in limbo on a few things. And so I appreciate your willingness. Yeah, let me just give you a little bit of feedback. I hear what you're saying. I mean, ultimately, like, I literally just chose the word sun setting because that was what I mean. I want to see it not get extended. But, you know, we can – I'll clarify that. And also, you know, I'll give you the grace you wanted as a chair for us to move together in as much unity as possible. So here, I found a place I can do that. Yeah. That's exactly why I commented. Otherwise, I would have just let it roll. Yeah, no, I appreciate it, yeah. No, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you for your willingness, Councilmember Floyd. Okay, moving on to G4, Councilmember Givens. Thank you, Chair. Respectfully requesting a referral to the Housing, Land Use, and Transportation Committee, or the relevant committee, to discuss creating a new single-family hybrid housing classification, limiting corporate ownership, and permitting zoning for owner-occupied homes. And with that, I move for approval. Thank you, Chair. Yes, thank you. Councilmember Harding. Thank you. Councilmember Givens, I want to understand before we vote, I don't know where the standing would come for this. I know that there's a bill at the state level right now, but currently, I don't know how you would get there. I don't think that this body has the jurisdiction to possibly do what it is that you're looking at doing. And so maybe it passes, maybe it doesn't. And, legal, I don't know if you can weigh in on. Sure, Councilmember. So what you have here is the creation of classes within single-family residential. So we've got to take a close look at that from an equal protection standpoint and other issues that might be associated with that. And at a local level, bifurcating single-family residential into renters and owners is something that historically I would be very reticent to do or to recommend my client to do. I do think that there's a potential material change if HB 401 were to pass, and the state provides local municipalities with some cover. So the proposed bill is a permissive bill for municipalities to bifurcate their single-family residential zoning into single-family residential, which is owner-occupied by entities that have three or fewer properties within a county. And then single-family hybrid zoning, and then single-family hybrid zoning, which is primarily designed for rental occupancy or governed by a rental agreement. So at that point in time, should that bill pass, a municipality may subdivided its single-family residential zoning into those two classes. Of course, having a state law to do that pursuant to would make me, as your land use attorney, a lot more comfortable. But I'm still kind of investigating the implications. This is pretty novel stuff. And this notion of single-family hybrid zoning, it doesn't really exist in a lot of other places in the country. I do believe there's a municipality in Texas that refers to it, like this Grand Prairie. But this is new. And so any time you create classes within zoning, you've got to take a tough look at it. But I think for now, I'm very interested to see what happens in Tallahassee with this bill. And so my thought is we might be premature in the conversation. I think that it's been through its first reading. It might make it. It might not. But I would entertain this conversation after it passes its first legal challenge. I think that if this were to pass, it will be challenged rather quickly. And that would give me confidence to have that conversation and look at, is this something that we want to incorporate into the city? Those are my thoughts. And thank you. Having the state, having the exposure there in terms of any challenge is attractive, I think, for us as well. Someone else. Honestly, you know, so and then if it does, you know, and to Council Member Harding's point. All, both, yes, yes. But to Council Member's point, I think that's an excellent barometer of what the long-term success and viability of, again, what I believe is a novel approach to this issue here. Anything else, Council Member Harding? No, thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Floyd. Thank you. I did just want to, like you saw, I was precipitated by a bill that could stop us from doing something, so I wanted to do something. And you're interested in a bill that could allow us to do something. We've gone through this, like, a few times. I remember in years past, proposing things that we were assumed we would have the legality to do at Tallahassee. And the thing is, is, like, we might pass your new business item, and then they don't pass the bill, and now we just have to remove it. So I do, just sort of saying, like, this happens, and so I would prefer to wait to see, like, if the bill was going to pass. But I respect, like, you wanting to have this conversation. I'll also say, though, like, I appreciate the intent behind the bill in Tallahassee, but the limiting of, there's some, like, honestly, probably legal, like, we brought up challenges. And, like, moral issues with, like, saying, like, you are not allowed to rent in this area, and so there's, yeah, it's, that's not something that I would support us doing, like, so, but, you know, there's other things in the bill as well. So, anyway, this is not abnormal us, like, having a conversation about if we want to do something that, take Tallahassee up or try to do something before Tallahassee, especially this time of year. So I just figured I'd bring that to the conversation. Thanks. Thank you. Councilmember Driscoll. Thank you. My concern on top of that is that not only might we be getting ahead of the game, but this is the kind of stuff that people like to start talking about preemptions on. So rather than bringing it up now, I would also like to wait. I would also like to, so there could be a situation where this is withdrawn. And then resubmitted after session. If that is done, I would recommend a conversation with the city attorney's office regarding each of these, because there are multiple items here. And I had some questions about the legality of some of them. I did not interpret any of this as having zoning or any kind of dividing lines between, like, homes for property owners and homes for renters being restricted and separate. There's maybe I'm hearing it wrong, but there's I have some real concerns with that. And then the limiting corporate purchases, well, that's where I feel like will be preempted, even if they pass something that's watered down in Tallahassee. But then the conversions to limiting conversions to rental properties to address that corporate ownership of single family homes, I think does get into a property rights issue. So, in conclusion, I would recommend a conversation around this. And if something is brought back at the right time with a suite of options, a suite of legal options, I would be very interested in this conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Gibbons. Thank you so much. And I appreciate my colleagues for the lively dialogue. I definitely think it's been beneficial as I try to figure out which direction to go here. And that's the purpose of this conversation, right, is to have it in the sunshine so that we can all kind of bounce each other's ideas off of one another. And I appreciate legal and your expertise, so we will definitely be having another conversation. Again, I just wanted to have the talk. I wanted to be proactive. To your point, Councilmember Floyd, we're not new to this, right? Preemption is not a stranger to us. But what I want us to do is to be proactive instead of reactive. I just hate for us to have this conversation should things go the way we want them to go in Tallahassee. Obviously, there's some good and some bad in this bill. I don't want to adopt all of the bad. I want to pick out what's good and see how it can be beneficial for our residents. Again, just looking to have the conversation to see how we can preserve that diminishing housing supply that we do have. Land doesn't grow on trees, so I want to make sure that what we have is protected, and we limit outside interest from coming in and taking what is ours. So, again, happy to have the conversation at a later date if it doesn't go forward today, but just looking for some creative solutions to this problem that we're experiencing. So, thank you. Okay. Thank you. So, I'm just at a point where I agree with some of my colleagues. This is a little early for this conversation, and so if you wanted to move this forward currently, I'd be a no. I'm open to it if the bill were to pass. I'm kind of exactly where Council Member Harding is, and so you've got a motion, but you don't have a second. Do you want to withdraw and bring it back after session? Yeah, that's fine. Okay. So, your new business item is withdrawn? Yes, sir. Thank you. Okay. All right. That's it until 5.01 at public hearings. Oh, I'm sorry. It's mine, too. How did I do that? I apologize. I've got to go to the bathroom. I was trying to get us there. Oh, why did I take this? No, no, no, no. Now that we're here, my whole body language just changed. I'm sorry, everybody. Thanks for the grace. All right. I am respectfully requesting a referral to the Budget, Finance, and Taxation Committee for a discussion regarding the City of St. Petersburg disaster short-term financing. This is a referral staff request, and I'm formally submitting this new business item as the method of informing City Council, and I would entertain a motion for approval. Second. We have a motion and a second. No further discussion. Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Everybody just yelled at me. Seeing as all Council Members have voted, Clerk, could you please tally and announce the vote? Chair, motion to approve a G5, pass this unanimously. Thank you. Okay, at this point, now that we have finished all of our new business, we will recess until 5.01. Council is in recess. Thank you, everybody. We'll reconvene City Council and go into our public hearings. We've got J1, J2, J3 confirming preliminary assessment for lock clearing, and we're joined by Director of Codes, Joe Waugh. We have no cards. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair, members of Council. Joe Waugh, Codes Compliance Director. Just respectfully requesting approval of the preliminary assessments that were provided in the backup material. Move approval. Second. Is that for one, two, and three? We can do it together, right? Yes. Yes. Okay, we've got a motion and a second. Seeing as no Council Members wishing to discuss, Clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council Members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all present Council Members have voted, Clerk, please tally and announce the vote. Mr. Chair, motion to approve agenda items J1, J2, and J3. Pass this unanimously. Thanks, Joe. All right, we're going to go into J4, an ordinance relating to utility rates and charges, amending Chapter 27, subsection 27-6 of the City Code. You want to read the title, please? Ordinance number 607-H, an ordinance relating to utility rates and charges, amending Chapter 27, subsection 27-6 of the St. Petersburg City Code, amending the water charges for leak adjustment relief, adding adjustment relief for abnormal events, adding adjustment relief for abnormal events, following a declared state of local emergency, providing an explanation of words struck through and underlined, establishing a date to begin calculating new charges, and applying new adjustment relief for billing purposes and providing an effective date. And we have no cards on this item. Okay, thank you. And we're welcoming Candace Winter. Welcome. Welcome. Good afternoon. Candace Winter, Billing and Collections Director. Today, we are here to present to you the proposed changes amending Section 27-6 of City Code, which will allow for adjustments as follows. Relief for leaks. Currently, relief is provided for the water rate charges to be calculated using the lowest applicable block rate, which is $3.79, which is also the Tier 1 rate. However, this ordinance is proposing the water rate charges to be calculated using the Tampa Bay water rate of $2.64 instead. Relief for abnormal events, such as accidents, vandalisms, or other occurrences beyond the customer's control. In these cases, the water rate charges will be calculated, as mentioned, and water and sewer relief will be provided for up to 10,000 gallons. With Council's approval of the changes, this will go in effect for the utility billing water meter reads beginning May 27, 2025. Additionally, changes were made to City Code Section 27-6, Paragraph H, to come in compliance with the City's Emergency Code following first reading, which took place on March 6th. This section will provide for similar water and sewer relief for abnormal events residents within 60 days following a declared state of emergency. In these cases, the water rate charges will be calculated at the Tampa Bay water rate of $2.64 as well, and the sewer relief will be provided for up to 10,000 gallons. Additionally, we've brought revised resolutions for the policies and procedures sections outlined in the resolutions 2025-109 and 2025-110, which were previously approved by City Council on February 20th, 2025. For background, Resolution 2025, which is the Leak Adjustment Relief for Involuntary Leak During Flood Event, as we implemented this change, we found that the policies and procedures section needed to include verbiage to clarify the time period to be used. With that, the period begins the time the storm surge or flooding event began to the flood structure and establishes the two-month adjustment period, which would include the billing period including the storm surge or flooding event and the billing period immediately following the storm surge or flooding event. And on Resolution 2025-110, which is the mechanical water meter high read in absence of a leak, there was a typographical error in the last sentence of Section 5, whereas 6 was inadvertently included after the word 3 within the three-month average being the correct number of months to be used when determining the prior average. We'd also like to present to you today some updates on our progress. As you may recall, when we first started off in December, we shared, January, we shared that there were about 2,400 delayed bills. As of yesterday, as of last evening, we were all caught up and there are no more delayed bills. Secondly, the revised applications, the leak adjustment application has been revised, sorry, to coincide with the resolutions that were passed and is currently available online. Also, we stand ready to update the application to include today's ordinance changes as well. Staff have reviewed the utility billing review committee applications, which were submitted for January and March, and have identified customers who were eligible for additional relief adjustment under the flooded structure resolution and have applied those adjustments to those accounts. Additionally, each of those customers have been contacted and a letter will be sent as follow-up. We've also worked with marketing to do some customer outreach for us, and we have updated on our webpage the storm-related utility billing update FAQs. That concludes my presentation for today. Any questions? Okay. Thank you. Council members. Council Member Givens. Thank you so much. I appreciate you, Candace, being with us, and thank you to the team. And I appreciate the one-on-one. My question is in regards to our technical errors. What solutions have we implemented to address those issues? I get the errors in reporting, but the equipment, what have we implemented in that regard? I'm sorry, Council Member, I just want to get clarification. So you're asking about the equipment of the meters. Correct. Okay, so we would have to defer to Claude Tankersley and his team with respect to the condition of the meters. But to our knowledge, those meters are functioning, and if they're not functioning, we are replacing them. Mr. Barnes, do you have anything else to add to that? Sure. Oh, here it comes. And on that note, Tom, have we been notified of any technical glitches? Has the city been aware of that? Any meters that have any technical glitches as of yet? Not that I'm aware of. Claude? Claude, would you rather talk to us? We are not aware of any technical glitches with the meters in terms of over-reading. We do know that there's always been a history as meters get older that they under-read, but that would not be an issue here. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Vice Chair Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair. First of all, thank you very much for the one-on-ones. They're very helpful. I just want to ask, like I asked in my one-on-one, how have these resolutions helped in terms of the issues that you've been working on? What have you seen improve based on the changes that we have made? Because, you know, where we were to where we are today and what this has done, some of it is going to be in the future, and some of it has already happened. So I want to kind of cover it out. I'm going to turn that over to David. Yes, absolutely. So when the resolutions were passed, we knew that they were retroactive. So we started to look at a sample of customer requests for adjustment, starting with the UBRC applicants. So we went back to the January UBRC meeting. We had 22 people applied. About 15 were approved automatically. And of the people who were rejected, we found one who qualified under the flooded structure resolution. For the March meeting, we had 42 people on the agenda. And right off the bat, we were able to apply adjustments for 21 of them. So over half. For the May meeting, I think the agenda was looking like it was going to be about 57 people. And, again, about half of those have already been applied under the provisions in the resolutions that you passed at the end of February. So it's been very helpful. And now that we've updated the application, the bill review and adjustment application and the UBRC application, now as more customers apply for those types of relief, we can review their accounts and see if they apply at the department level, which would prevent them from having to come to the UBRC at all. Okay. So then this could be taken care of at the department level, not at the UBRC, based on what has been done. Correct. The other question I have, it was mentioned today in, I think, comments in open forum regarding a UBRC meeting canceled or something like that. Oh, when the resolutions were passed at the end of February, we decided to suspend the March meeting to give us time to review those particular accounts and see if we could apply relief to some of those customers, which we did about half. And the other customers we're communicating with and letting them know that we're just deferring their case to the May meeting, the next meeting. Okay. And you're looking at these cases, obviously, individually in terms of what the issues are in each case and what you can apply to help each customer. And every case is obviously different. Okay. Okay. Those are my questions for now. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Fix-Sanders. Thank you so much. Vice Chair Hanois actually asked the question that I was going to ask because when we have constituents come during open forum and they put out information like that, I think it is really incumbent upon us to correct misinformation. So it was led to believe that UBRC was totally gone, was not available anymore. So would you please give a very brief update as to if constituents still would like to petition the UBRC, how could they do that? Go ahead, David. Yes, ma'am. Absolutely. The UBRC application still exists on the city's website. People can apply to dispute any bill for any reason. What we'd like to do is try to go through adjustments at the department level. So we have the updated bill review and adjustment form. So if a customer were to call in, for example, and say, I'd like to dispute this bill, we provide them a link to that form so that they can apply and have our adjustments team review their account and see if they apply for any relief at that level. If they don't qualify, then we would refer them to the UBRC coordinator to put them on the agenda for the next meeting. Okay. And so also I'm going to follow back up to comments that were made during open forum. So when we have constituents come and I see where it's up to 10,000 gallons, and I think this morning we heard someone say 11,000 per se. And it was an unoccupied dwelling. So residents might not know that they have such an instance for two to three months. And I see we have a time frame on this. Are we addressing uninhabited or unutilized residents that have actual water accounts? Are we looking at them differently? Because if I don't go there every month or if I'm not there in a timely fashion and I don't know this, how would we address that? Because that's the impression that I got from a presenter this morning. So if a customer applies to the dispute a bill with the UBRC, we look at their account history so we can see what the usage was with every meter reading for every month. If they have a mechanical meter, then we can look at the information in our billing system to let us know what the usage has been. If they have a digital water meter, we can actually go to the meter and pull that data so we can see exactly when water passed through it and how much. So we take all that into consideration. We present that as part of the case to the members of the UBRC, and then they review that and make a ruling. The customer doesn't even have to come to the meeting, but if they would like to, they have three minutes to speak to their case, and then the committee would make their ruling, and then it's sent to the mayor to be signed. Okay, so that would be to lead me that there was a leak if there's water running through it. But the remark today was it was in absence of a proven that there was no leak, so no water would be actually running through the meters. I'd like to address that. So I think that's one of the really important things that we're trying to do tonight is to add this section related to abnormal events. We didn't have that section in the city code previously. I've talked before about staff's hands being tied on some of these instances. We heard one this morning where we feel terribly unfortunate for the lady that was here, but under our current ordinance, there's really no relief that we can provide. That's why this is so important to add this abnormal event. The truth is situations do occur like water theft. Water theft does occur. We didn't have that in the ordinance previously. So what, City Council, what we're asking you to do tonight is to give us some more flexibility, and that abnormal event will really help with your situation. And so, well, it wasn't my situation. It was just brought to us. Yeah, that you were speaking about. I'm sorry. I just wanted to make sure that we actually addressed that, and hopefully we found out who that constituent was to help her address that particular situation. So I think that's all that. Oh, customer outreach for me has always been important. And I see that we're doing marketing communication. What is communication? What does that look like? When we say marketing communication, just putting it on our website, are we actually, because a lot of the constituents I know don't go to our website looking for information. How much of an outreach are we doing on something like this? Because every constituent in the city was impacted some shape, form, or fashion, but they don't come to specifically only for our website to get information. Are we doing anything extended to our website? Yeah, you know, and communication is always challenging in reaching the customers, but, you know, the website, social media, so those have been the primary avenues. And then also communicating through our call center and outreach to those customers that Mr. Flintam spoke about, who we identified as qualifying under those resolutions, you know, reaching out to them directly. That's the most efficient means of communicating to those customers who qualify for those adjustments. Okay, so good. That's good to know. So when you notice a regular bill amount, we actually reach out to those customers ourselves? Absolutely. In those cases that we had been talking about, that, you know, those customers who qualified for adjustments were proactively reaching out to them to share that we're modifying and adjusting down their bills. Okay, so we reach out to them, say they live up north, they don't receive the information in a timely manner, then what? We just send something in the mail and we just leave it at that? Well, I guess, you know, that's a very interesting fact pattern that you've kind of created, but we would continue to try to reach out to that customer. But the net result would be we would be reducing the amount that they owed on their bill. And the reason why I'm asking is because it's always been a thing of mine as to how we communicate to our constituents, and especially those that are hard to reach or those that are not understandably connected to local government and what is expected and what we do in regards to our services provided to, you know, our constituents and our homeowners. So I'm always going to ask those questions as to outreach and marketing and how we are doing a diligent effort in sharing what it is that we're trying to do specifically for them. So that's pretty much why I wanted to ask that. Well, thank you for answering my questions. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. I just have one follow-up question. So pre-storms, on average, how many UBRC applications on a monthly basis were we getting? There was a time when we would see between 30 and 40 per meeting. That dropped really to around 10 to 12. The last meeting that we had that really had that few applications was just after the storms, the November meeting, and then people started to get those post-storm bills, and more people were applying to dispute those high bills. So that's why we had the really big agenda in January, bigger in March, and probably bigger in May. Yeah, I mean, I'm even thinking back, like, if we just took 2023, you're saying the average is 30 to 40 applications on a monthly basis. Correct. Okay. I think just some context on comparatively what are we receiving now and the percentage that we're able to take off the books I think is important to take into account. Okay. Thank you for the presentation. I really appreciate it. I appreciate we've probably connected on this multiple times, and so just appreciate the communication, and thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Okay. At this point, I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move over. We've got a motion and a second. Seeing as no other council members wishing to speak, clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all council members have voted, clerk, could you please tally and announce the vote? Mr. Chair, motion to approve a gen item J-4 passes unanimously. Okay. Okay, and council members realize that was just J-4. We need to approve resolution A and B for F-3 as well, correct? Approval approval. Can we do them at the same time? Yes. Okay. That's A and B? A and B. Yes. A and B. Okay. Motion and a second. Seeing as no council members wishing to speak, clerk, could you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Seeing as all council members have voted, clerk, could you please tally and announce the vote? Mr. Chair, motion to approve a gen item F-3 A and B. Pass unanimously. Thank you. Mr. Chair, if I could, I just wanted to thank council for helping us bring these tools to the toolbox, so to speak, so that we can address the issues that were and help our customers. So thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. We will go into open forum. Clerk, do we have any speakers? We'll zoom. Okay. We will close open forum. Council members, any announcements? Council member Gibbons. Thank you, Chair. There will be a Jamestown community. Free food, free fun, free prizes for the family and opportunity for everyone. I thought you were going to say free fries. No. F and F. I wish, right? The trifecta. No, but we encourage everyone to come out. It's going to be a great time for all of the residents to just celebrate community. Awesome. Thank you. Council members, anything else? All right. Nothing else? City Council is adjourned. Thank you, everybody.