City Council - May 16, 2024

Welcome to the City of St. Petersburg City Council Meeting. Your elected officials are Mayor Ken Welch, District 1 and Council Vice Chair, Copley Gerdes, District 2, Brandy Gabbard, District 3, Ed Montenari, District 4, Lissette Kanowitz, District 5 and Council Chair, Deborah Figg Sanders, District 6, Gina Driscoll, District 7, John Mohamed. And District 8, Richie Floyd. Good afternoon, everyone. We bring the order to the May 16, 2024 City Council Meeting, beginning with a roll call. Rick Sanders. Here. Driscoll. Mohamed. Floyd. Here. Gerdes. Here. Gabbard. Here. Montenari. Here. And Hanowitz. Here. Thank you so much and welcome. We are going to start today's meeting by having an invocation by Pastor Ricardo Welch of Prayer Tower Church of God in Christ, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Would everyone please join us in standing? Good evening. Good evening. Bow your heads with me, please. Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to come before you for your presence. God, we beseech you to grant the endowment of wisdom, grace, and mercy upon this body of counsel and the audience. Give them the wisdom and the understanding of King Solomon. Give them the compassion of Ruth, the protection of King David. And grant all of our needs today in the matchless name of your Son, who is our Creator. We ask that you do all that is required today to give understanding, wisdom, compassion, and grace. We ask these and all of your blessings in the matchless name of our Savior. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Pastor Welch, for that moving invocation. You know I always appreciate you. Council members, we have before us an agenda where we have two items to be deferred, F-5 and F-6, to a future meeting. If there are no changes, I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval, second. We have a motion and it's been probably second. Can you please open the machine for voting? Now that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve the agenda passes unanimously with council members Strickland and Muhammad being absent. All right, thank you. Council members, we also have a consent agenda where CA-10 was pulled to reports as a good news item, F-7, if we have no changes. Do we have any comments or cards on the consent agenda? Public comment? We do not. Okay, I'll entertain a motion for approval. Move approval, second. Now that it's been moved and seconded, can you please open the machine for voting? Now that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve the consent agenda passes unanimously with council members Strickland and Muhammad being absent. Thank you. Now we will have open form. Clerk, can you please read the rules? If you wish to address city council on subjects other than public hearing or quasi-judicial items listed on the agenda, please sign up with it. Only the individual wishing to speak may sign the open form sheet. Only city residents, owners of property, business owners in the city, or their employees may speak. All issues discussed under open form must be limited to issues related to the city of St. Petersburg government. If you are speaking to an item on the agenda, you may only speak once during the open form or when the item comes up on the agenda. In order to provide an opportunity for all citizens to address council, each individual will be given three minutes to speak and after which the microphone will be muted. If you wish to address city council through the Zoom meeting, you must use the raise hand feature button in the Zoom app or enter star 9 on your phone at the time the agenda item is addressed. When it is your turn to speak, you will be unmuted and 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 muted. All raised hands will be lowered after each agenda item. Regardless of the method of participation used, normal rules apply, including the three-minute time limit on comments, the requirement that any presentation materials must be submitted in advance of the meeting, and the rules of decorum. If live public comment is disrupted by violations of the rules of decorum, the chair is authorized to accept public comment by alternate means, including by email only. And, Madam Chair, we do have some speakers. I will call them two at a time. They can go to either podium. Once I call your name, please go to a podium, state your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address city council. Peter Kent and Reverend Ben Winder, please go to either podium. All set. Good afternoon. I'm Peter Kent, retired commissioner of public works, 8 Academy Way, St. Petersburg. Councilmember Hanowitz's Monday Tampa Bay Times article accurately summarized part of what's wrong with the proposed raise-hines deal. If it is approved, Stu Sternberg is likely to immediately sell the raise for a billion dollars more than before the approval and take over the raise-hines development corporation. He will have sole control of 65 prime acres for a half billion dollars under its current fair market value with no money down and 30 years to pay. The city is obligated to build most of the required infrastructure. His goal is to sell parcels at an increasing price to builders and make another billion dollars. If he receives the additional grants and tax write-offs from the local, state, and federal government, he may build 200 affordable housing units for people earning under 80 percent of the AMI, an additional 450 units off-site. If something bad happens like the 2008 financial crisis or a hurricane strike in the next 30 years, he can walk away with partially finished, developed, and no loss. If the proposed raise-hines deal is not approved, the raise should build their new stadium near the high-speed rail connection with Orlando. The city will start building the development infrastructure and sell the parcels after the raise 50-50 split expires in 2027. The city could take that billion dollars in property sales profits and invest them in four programs. First, a quarter of a billion dollars in a zero-interest, second-mortgage affordable house program to help 10,000 families obtain and renovate and profit from owning homes. Second, a quarter of a billion dollars in the most impactful elements of the unfunded three-quarter billion dollar stormwater program to reduce flooding and harden the city from hurricanes to damage. Third, a quarter of a billion dollars into enlarging the city's water and sewer system to handle the population increase and reduce water rate increases. Four of a quarter of a billion dollars into property tax reductions to continue to attract people and businesses to St. Pete. Also, the city and county should end the downtown in-city development districts. That will contribute $20 million annually to pay for citywide expenses. Overall, a family of four will be at least $24,000 better off. Thank you. I'm Ben Winder, 765 85th Avenue North and the pastor of First Baptist Church of St. Petersburg at 1900 Gandy Boulevard North. I'm here today as a member of Faith and Action for Strength Together and it will come as no surprise to you that we are here again making sure that you hear from us our desire that during the mayor's first term, he builds 5,000 units of new housing affordable for those making 80% of the area median income or less. As you probably remember and have heard, we hosted an event at First Baptist a few weeks ago. We hosted an event a few weeks ago at First Baptist Church. The sanctuary was full of folks wanting to hear from the mayor and hear from their city about what the plans were to be able to meet this goal and this need in our community. I almost every day hear from someone in our community who needs an affordable option for housing and I'm not here to tell you how to do your job but I am here to remind you that we need to do what we can to help those who are the least of these among us who need an affordable place to live. And 80% of the area median income are the folks who should be getting these things that we can use from the state and the federal government and the city to help them have affordable housing rather than helping folks who, like me, might be at a higher income level and sure, we'd love the help, but it's not as important for folks who are making 120% of the area median income or more to get that support as it is for those making 80% or less. So again, our ask, what we are hoping that the city will be able to do with your leadership is to come together to create 5,000 units of housing for those who trust that you will be able to do that and I hope that each of you will make plans already on your schedule that when you're invited next year to come to Nehemiah Action, if you're still in office, that you will come and be a part of that. And just quickly to Councilor Gabbard, who is both my representative of where I live and of my church, I hope that you will make efforts to be there that would mean a lot to me. Thank you. Two speakers, Madam Chair. Scott Cooper and Geneva Nelson, please go to either point of the record and you have three minutes to address the city council. Madam Chair, could we have them fix the microphones before anyone else speaks? Okay. Texting TV now. Thank you. Okay, thank you. That was fine. You want to turn that one on? You said just, okay. You can go to that one. I'm sorry, I missed the names of who is this. Scott Cooper and Geneva Nelson. My name is Geneva Nelson. I live at 1049th Street North, Unit 106, St. Petersburg, Florida. I'm a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of St. Petersburg, which is also a member of FAST. You know we have an affordable housing crisis in St. Pete, not just here, but we do have it here, for anybody who's not wealthy. But the most adversely affected are people who make less than 80% of the area median income. We all know that paying more than 30% of your income for your housing is pretty much unworkable for most people unless you're wealthy. 90% of the people, more than 90% of the people in St. Pete who pay more than 50% of their income for housing are people who make 80% or below of AMI. I know people who have left the state to go live with relatives. They work full-time, but they can't afford a place to live here. I know people who have doubled up. Seven people in a tiny two-bedroom house. It's just not workable. Now, I know there's been a lot of people moving into St. Pete. It's the wealthy and the luxury high-rises. How long is that going to continue when they find they can't find child care workers? They can't find people to clean the buildings. They can't find people to manage the amenities in all the buildings. The mayor has made it clear he's going to build some affordable housing. He's willing to do a tiny, tiny amount of what's needed. He's not going to step up. We asked you to step up because he won't. There are lots and lots of funds out there to help with affordable housing, but the city has to add some money to it too. Helping people who are low-income have a place to live does not just help them. It helps the city. We have a more stable population. I also know many people who live in their cars because they can no longer afford to have a place to live or are homeless, live on the streets. How many more of those people do you want to be here? I don't think that's what we want to have in the city, and you can do something about it. Good afternoon. It's an honor and a privilege to address you and to stand up with the fast forward. Can you speak in the mic for us, please, sir? Sure. Sure. Move it. You can move it. You can hear me now, right? Scott Cooper, 305. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Street South. Apartment 416, St. Petersburg, 33705. I'm going to make this short and quick because I have to get back to work. But basically, there's a dire need for affordable housing in the city of St. Pete. The average resident that is renting an apartment in the city of St. Pete is paying an average of $1,500 monthly. The average individual residing in the city of St. Petersburg earns $39,375. The pay scale in the city ranges from $33,065, which is the 25th percentile, to $61,094, which is the 75th percentile. That's a whole lot of room. In a lot of households here, there's over a third of one's income that is paid out. That amount of money doesn't mean that your place of residence will be clean or safe. Case in point, I pay $1,500, and I live at the Wayland Apartments, which are 100 yards from where the proposed stadium is going to be built. I live with roaches. I've dealt with various disturbing issues from maintenance and management, which have led me to hire an attorney through legal aid. For people who were unable to deal with the mental health, financial, and inability to obtain the resources in our community and state, it's become increasingly more difficult. That difficulty has a lot to do with affordable housing. The stress of not being able to find an adequate place to live or being able to financially sustain your living situations weighs heavily upon residents in the community. The lack of grocery stores on the south side of St. Petersburg is more disturbing. It's been an issue since I moved here almost nine years ago. You can't do anything productive if you don't have food, housing, and mental health. With all due respect, please step up. We put you in office. You can be voted out. Have a nice day. Next two speakers, Madam Chair. Bradley, I believe it's McCoy, and William Kilgore. Please go to the podium on my right, your left. State your name and address for the record, and you have three minutes to address City Council. Hi, my name is Brad McCoy. I'm from 1856, I'm area way south. Dear Council members and leaders of St. Pete, I'm deeply concerned with the proposed Ray Hines deal. It doesn't represent the needs and wants of our community. Additionally, I'm concerned that council members aren't representing the people for which they were elected to represent. In talking with my district council, or my council member, last week, I was told the reasons for their intention to vote yes include the following items. In the following order, from the most important to least important. Number one, the Black History Museum. Number two, her grandchildren. And number three, to get this approved before another potential mayor. What I didn't hear was that this brings a large amount of affordable housing. This is what the needs of District 5 want, or the people of District 5 want, and their needs, meets their needs. This will benefit the community as a whole, or that this will be a net positive project that provides more than we intend to spend. Here are my remarks to the whole project. We can build a Black History Museum without giving money to a bunch of old, rich, white men. There's a lack of affordable housing and a lack of accountability for affordable housing, and it's pitiful. St. Pete is losing its greenery, and this project has very little to add. Overall, this project does not consider all of the necessary environmental concerns that we will be facing over the next few decades, and this doesn't align with the city's green plans. This is robbing taxpayers and sending too much money to someone that doesn't deserve it. You're accountable to the people of this city, and this deal doesn't represent what the people need. It represents what a select few want. A deal this big shouldn't be pushed through for the sake of getting it through. Please do what's right for St. Pete as a whole. Thank you. Hi, everybody. Thank you, Chair. My name is William Kilgore. I'm 2550 28th Avenue North, and I'm with the St. Petersburg Tenants Union. I'm here, yeah, I stand with all of these folks who are speaking out against the Rays-Hinds deal. You know, it was funny. There was that Cal meeting that happened. I wasn't out here, but there was a protest outside, you know, and during that meeting, because I watched the recording afterward, you had the Rays' co-president, Brian Auld, blasting critics of the deal in his opening comments saying that, you know, criticizing the deal is a simplistic, cynical, and counterproductive view of the world. You know, I thought that was quite smug in my view. You know, I'm sorry, but, you know, demanding transparency, accountability, and equity in a deal where we're giving hundreds of millions of dollars to a giant corporation is not simplistic, cynical, or counterproductive. You know, it's called being a good citizen, and it's called, you know, demanding more from your elected officials, you know, and it's those comments that he made are just fundamentally undemocratic. I'm sure he'd crown himself king if, you know, he had the, you know, ability to. You know, I think it's immoral to be giving big handouts to corporations when there's so much suffering in this community. You know, is it cynical to be against, you know, these corporate handouts with no benefits? You know, when people are sleeping out on the streets, you know, sleeping on the sidewalk, you know, exposed to the elements, homeless individuals having a life expectancy 30 years lower than the rest of the public, you know, that is a crime to be giving that much money when you got that kind of thing. Or when you have little kids who are living in motels, in hotels like we do in Pinellas County, you know, because their parents and the families can't afford housing and kids have to grow up like that. When you have hundreds of evictions being filed every month in Pinellas County and you've got folks looking at that writ of possession, you know, and having to tell their kids, hey, you know, we're going to have to we're going to have to move. We're going to have to move out of the area. You're not going to be able to see your friends anymore. You've got old folks living in the golden years of their lives and they're not able to enjoy it. They're not able to enjoy the fruits of their labor, everything that they've contributed to this community because they don't have a place to live. And they're forced to live in their car or they're forced to live out on the street or in a homeless shelter. And it's wrong. Thank you. Next two speakers, Madam Chair, James Scott and Kathy Harrelson. Please go to the podium on my right, your left. State your name and address for the record. You have three minutes to address City Council. Good afternoon, Council. Good to see you again. So I, 5318, 6th Street South. I've been a St. Pete resident for over 16 years now. Good to see you guys again. I have not been at the dais in a while. I'm here to talk about the Heinz. Am I missing something? My name, James Scott. I apologize. It's been a minute. So I'm here to talk on behalf of Sierra Club about the raised Heinz deal. Back in 2019, I think three, I know Gina's not here right now, but three of the eight of you voted in favor of the Integrated Sustainability Action Plan. That was the city's commitment to transition its energy supply to 100% clean power. Yesterday, Ron DeSantis signed a bill striking climate change from Florida law. Is St. Pete taking climate change seriously or not? You'll see in the news later, we just had a press conference outside at 2.30 about the deal. Different perspectives. Sierra Club has their own perspective. We like the raised. The raised has been a good part of this community. The tax part of it, there's people living in their cars. There's hungry kids. There's homeless kids. So the idea, the finances, the taxes, there's a lot to this. I'm coming at this from an environmental perspective. Are we a leader on climate change or not? I popped into the Hearst Committee meeting, and I heard Council Member Gabbard asking really good questions to Duke Energy. Duke Energy is not going to get us to where we need to be if we take climate change seriously. The fact that this project, as proposed, does not have serious, tangible, accountable measures around renewable energy is a dereliction of duty. It's a breaking of a promise. St. Pete is a progressive, thoughtful, forward-thinking city because of this really remarkable coalition of downtown Chamber of Commerce types, neighborhood association types, hippie environmentalist types. That coalition is why we have such a cool council and such a cool city. But we keep finding again and again that a lot of it's talk, that the substance isn't there. If this project does not have a key component to be powered by renewable power, to transition our city to clean power, that is a litmus test. If you think that climate change is an issue of our time, just like poverty and homelessness are, if you take that seriously, this project has got to reflect that. And I know that, you know, the Sierra Club, part of our role is in our advocacy is endorsements and being involved in politics and elections. And we elected a lot of you folks, understanding that you took this really seriously. The project, as proposed, does not reflect that. Climate change is happening. Google NASA climate change and look what's coming our way. We are ground zero. The Sierra Club asks that you take this seriously. We want to work with you to make that happen. This deal should not be – there's a lot of reasons why this deal is problematic. But the climate issue and the energy issue, you all have the power to make St. Pete a leader in the state and in the nation. Other stadiums have done it. Other cities have done it. Please do the right thing. Thanks for your service. Good afternoon. Kathy Harrelson and Governor DeSantis, if you're listening, my address is 2577-32nd Ave North, just so you know. Okay, what James said, I agree with all of that. But I did want to let you know that I understand that this is a TIF-funded deal. And I can tell you I was working for William R. Huff on the bond desk when TIFs were invented, you know, and also phones. But anyway, TIFs funding never makes it into the community. And this is one of the problems we have here. That's been true pretty much of this downtown TIF all along. For us to, this is not really a deal if we get no tax funding, no tax dollars, no revenue dollars, including TV, my little monthly belly app that I pay for because I'm a fan of the raise. And we're giving away hundreds of millions of dollars from the get on the market value, which you can't get that back. I mean, the opportunity cost of the city is massive over time. So I say keep the raise and fix the deal. On another note, I did send over my stop-to-chop task force request in April. And I did want to please ask you all, you all got it, I did want to ask you to please move this forward as soon as possible. I noticed it was not on the new business for today. You are moving some things forward into committee, but that was not on there. So I'd love to see that happen. We do want to save our big shade trees because I think we all know the heat is on. And I did also want to mention that we are having Citizen Forrester listening sessions at various rec centers around the city. Last night was the first one at Bay Vista, which Bay Vista, by the way, has an oak tree out front that is older than the United States. I recommend checking that out. It's pretty damn impressive. If I could still climb trees, I'd definitely be climbing that one. But there is one tonight at Shore Acres and several next week. You can look on the website. But they start at 630. It was a great discussion. We are currently also talking there about the problem of insurance companies telling homeowners that they have to cut trees down in order to have coverage. And that's another whole discussion, I think, that probably needs to be above my pay grade, but that needs to get done. So I thank you all for what you're doing. Climate change is real. Writing it out of the laws doesn't make it go away. Thank you. Final speaker, Madam Chair, I believe it's Nicole Morris. Please go to the podium on my right. State your name and address with a record, and you have three minutes to address city council. I am Nicole Morris, 2875 23rd Avenue North. I'm coming here on environmental issues, but I can rope it back into what everybody's talking about with the Ray Stadium. Good afternoon. My name is Nicole Morris, and I'm a fifth-generation St. Pete native. If you know my last name, then you know my family's bookstore, Wilson's Book World, which we have owned and operated for 55 years in this town. That's my girl right there. I loved growing up here as a child and embracing the wonder that our environment has to offer us here and the immersive experiences that last a lifetime. Working from home has enabled me to open space to explore the city more and with open eyes. I, like a lot of the community, frequent Illinois Park multiple times a day, not just to enjoy the scenic beauty, but to engage with the local and diverse wildlife that lives there. I am saddened today to present an 80-quart tub of zip ties that the city leaves on the ground after every event. That was the tub that I had with me that I had to take downstairs, so I apologize if that put a bit of a ruffle in the committee. When I called the Parks and Rec Division for the county to inquire about the mess, the only alternative was to use metal wire. National events like tacos and tequila come into our home and trash it with no penalizations, no environmental standards of operation or care for our wildlife, which I walk with a dolphin on that seawall every day. He's nine feet long, and he's lived there for 15 years. A lot of the community engages with him. Today, I ask that this changes and we show environmental stewardship as we grow to one of the top operating cities in this country, and I ask you to think of those who lived here before us for thousands of years, which we have parks that barely get any acknowledgement for, like Wheaton Island people, and thousands of years in stewardship with this land as preserving it for generations that will inherit what we leave unattended. Thank you for your time and listening with your hearts. No more speakers. Anyone on Zoom? No Zoom? I'm sorry, someone just raised their feet. Jay Tolberg. Jay Tolberg, once you enter into the meeting space, please unmute yourself, state your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address city council. Can you hear us? Yes, thank you. Please state your name and address for the record, and you have three minutes to address city council. My name is Jeremy Tolberg. I live at 417 Lido Way Northeast in St. Petersburg. You know, it'd be an understatement to call last week's Q&A with the team. It's really hard to decide which is worse, the complete lack of solid answers coming from the team, or the apparent lack of concern that's caused by some officials. I know there's some on this council who have said they won't support this deal unless it's changed to better protect the interests of citizens. But we've seen zero compromise on any of these demands. There's been no serious commitment to affordable housing. There's been no profit sharing with the city. There's no binding agreements even to stay in the area. Even something as simple as a proposed name change from one of the council members was ridiculed and denounced by team representatives. So let's stop pretending like this is some sort of a negotiation instead of a complete surrender if we approve it. And we need to also stop pretending like this project would be good for the people of this city. I mean, this project only promises to be a fiscal sinkhole for generations to come. For those local businesses in the area, this virtually guarantees economic hardships. There's a looming financial downturn ahead of this country, I think. And the people who can afford to attend an expensive ballgame in the next coming years will not have the money to support local businesses. And those businesses are already struggling. We can also know that this project is almost guaranteed to harm families. I think most of the speakers have already presented figures representing how much money will be taken away from parents. And those parents also need it now more than ever. Those funds get taken away from generations of children. And those kids are already severely lacking in educational and community support in this area. Instead, we can already see this project will only saddle those children with 30 years of debt and a deteriorating infrastructure to build an unnecessary stadium for a business that could easily afford it right now. The best interest is the parents and the children of St. Petersburg should be the only concern of everyone sitting on this council. I mean, I know their well-being has been completely ignored by supporters trying to rush this deal through. But everyone on this council who cares about protecting the future generations of the city could not approve this project in good faith. You have to vote it down until a better agreement can be reached. Thank you. Thank you to all of our speakers. Now we will close open forum and we will move to awards and presentations. And presenting our first proclamation, D2, is the Military Appreciation Month Proclamation by our Mayor Kenneth Welch. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of council, our great St. Pete team, members of the public. Madam Chair, we're actually going to start with the Law Enforcement Officer Proclamation and then we'll do the Military. Okay. The first proclamation is for Law Enforcement Appreciation Month and acknowledges the dedicated men and women of law enforcement, including our own St. Petersburg Police Department, whose commitment to duty ensures our community's safety with professionalism and accountability. We commend their selfless service and the sacrifices that they and their families make every day to keep our city safe. As you see, Chief Holloway and his team have joined me at the podium. Thank you all for the work you all do every day. Chief, hold that. And the proclamation reads, Whereas the safety and security of our community are paramount, and whereas law enforcement officers dedicate themselves to protecting and serving our citizens with courage, integrity, and professionalism, and whereas these brave men and women risk their lives daily to uphold the laws that safeguard our neighborhoods, our businesses, and our families, and whereas law enforcement appreciation month provides an opportunity for us to express our gratitude and our admiration for their unwavering commitment to public safety, and whereas their dedication often goes unrecognized, yet their contributions are invaluable to the fabric of our society, and whereas their sacrifices and selfless service deserve our utmost respect and support, and whereas we honor their bravery, sacrifice, and unwavering dedication to the protection of our community. Now, therefore, I, Kenneth T. Welch, Mayor of the City of St. Petersburg, do hereby proclaim May 2024 as Law Enforcement Appreciation Month in the City of St. Petersburg, and I call upon all citizens to join me in recognizing the invaluable contributions of our law enforcement officers and expressing our deepest appreciation for their service. Thank you all for your service. Thank you, Mayor, and on behalf of the men and women of St. Petersburg Police Department and law enforcement throughout the United States, I want to thank you for this public mission and recognizing the work that these men and women do each and every day, putting their lives on the line for others, so thank you again. We do have a few speakers. Councilmember Monteneary. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I don't want to be too repetitive, but every morning before I get out of bed, I have my prayer time, and I pray every morning for the safety of our police department, also our fire department, and everybody in the military, so I'm glad that we're honoring law enforcement today and also our military members. You all have a tough job every day, put on your uniform and your badge and your weapon, and you just never know what you're going to come up with, what sort of issues you're going to have to deal with that day, and I know I stand in awe of everything you do. I did want to just share just a little bit of scripture, and I carry a challenge coin with me everywhere I go that the PBA gave me, and on it is the words from the prophet Isaiah, and it says, And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Who shall I send? Who will go for us? And I answered, Here I am. Send me. That's what you all do every day. Thank you for standing up and protecting our community. As our police department goes, so goes our city. So thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Vice Chair Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Certainly I echo Councilmember Montaneri's sentiments. The one thing he didn't mention is you guys have to put up with us. And so when I was reading this proclamation, I said, Where's the where as that they have to answer text messages and phone calls and emails from the eight of us? And so I just wanted to communicate my thankfulness, my sentiment. Every time I reach out to a handful of you here and then another probably dozen that aren't here, it's almost an immediate response. It's helpful. It's thoughtful, trying to fix a problem. And it just, I tell you what, it trickles down and the community sees it too. They see it. They feel it. It's just amazing. And so this Appreciation Month, I have the deepest appreciation for all of you. I hope we communicate that enough to you. But I'm certainly happy we get to celebrate the month with you. And so thank you for everything you do. Thank you for continuing to want to do it every day. That does not get lost on me. And thank you for continuing to keep our community safe. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Hanowitz. Thank you. So before I became a council member, I was a prosecutor. And I worked with the city of St. Petersburg Police Department on cases in a different capacity, right? They'd work the case. They'd be in the community. They'd have to deal with all that, bring it to the state attorney's office. And then we saw their work product, and we had to make a decision on whether to go forward. And I did that not just with the St. Pete Police Department, but I did that with every agency in the county because the state attorney's office works with every agency. And it was at that time that I learned how fantastic the St. Pete Police Department is. And some of you worked with me when I was a prosecutor. And now I get to see it from the other side, from being a council member and seeing how you respond with the community and when I call and there are issues and you immediately answer that call. And it goes from the top all the way to the bottom, from the officers on the street every day to the sergeants, to the community service, everyone. And that level of professionalism should always be acknowledged. And I am so proud of what you do. So, thank you very much. Thank you. Councilmember Gabbard. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Chief, for being here today and to everyone who took time out of your very busy schedules to be here to receive some kind words. You know, a month is never enough to say to all of you how much we appreciate you. I have worked with so many of you individually as council members. I call many of you friends. And I just respect you so much. You are heroes among us. You are angels among us. The things you do for the residents of our city. Me as a council member, I rest well at night knowing that you are all the ones who are protecting us, keeping us safe. We have the best, best police force in the country, I believe. You know, you have a lot of scrutiny that goes with the job that you take on. And I know that you carry yourselves in a way that many others should emulate. And I have no concern about the interactions that you have with our residents. I know that you do it right. You do it with your heart. And you do what is best for the residents of St. Petersburg. And I just want to personally thank you for that. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. So, I'm going to round this off by just saying thank you. I don't have a whole lot of experience with police forces, thank God, but the experience that I do have with the St. Pete Police Department, and I'm going to have to give kudos to Chief Holloway. I have definitely noticed and have seen a difference under your leadership. I am definitely appreciative of your out-of-the-box thinking, your openness, doing different things to reach all of the city of St. Petersburg. Now, is everything perfect? No, nothing is. But you're as perfect as perfect can get when it comes to community involvement and listening and being able to take some of the things, because I know when I call you, you came out of your yard cutting your grass to answer my phone. So, I know how convenient you've made yourself to council members, especially to myself. And you surrounded yourself with a really nice team. I love the support that you have and support that you've given us. Every day, every time I see an officer, no matter where they are, I always say thank you for your service and be safe out there, because everybody wants to come home. Everybody wants to go home. And so, thank you, Mayor Welch, for this proclamation, but more importantly, thank you, thank you, thank you to our fine men and women in uniform and for what I've seen you do. And a lot of things that I don't know that you do, you have quite an operation that I know that we can all be proud of. So, I want to thank you all for that. Thank you so much. All right. That's it. Thank you. Now, we will have our Military Appreciation Month proclamation. So, thank you, Madam Chair. Before Chief leaves, I just wanted to echo the comments from council on the quality of our police department. We have folks, you know, the secret is out, and folks want to come from all over to join the police department. We've had folks as far as away as New Zealand come to join our force. Now, we do screen for Yankees fans and Red Sox fans. Thank you. But six new officers will be sworn in tomorrow. I know I'll see Councilmember Montaneri there. There's one Gibbs gladiator among that bunch, Madam Chair. But I just want to thank you, Chief, and your entire team for the job you do every day. Now, we also want to present a proclamation declaring May as Military Appreciation Month. And as you know, a lot of our officers are veterans, and a lot of our city employees are veterans as well. And this month, we want to recognize the courage, sacrifice, and unwavering dedication of our military personnel, past and present, who have laid the foundations of peace and freedom that we stand upon. I'd like now to invite city employees Bryant Harrell of Security, Lisa Wheeler-Bowman, our new community impact and safety liaison, Marine Corps veteran Gershom Faulkner. Is Gershom with us? And Eddie Pringle, Jr., commander of the VFW Post 6827, to join me at the podium. And all other members of the military, if you would, to stand where you are as I read the proclamation. Stand up, Ed. I understand. So, like, spouses don't... Whereas Military Appreciation Month is a special time to recognize the contributions, sacrifices, and service of the members of all branches of the military. And whereas for generations, our military have proudly served our nation during times of conflict and peace. And whereas our brave servicemen and women, their families and loved ones, have made immeasurable sacrifices to protect the freedoms we enjoy daily. And whereas during Military Appreciation Month, we are reminded of the essential role that the United States Armed Forces have played in the history and development of our city, our state, nation, and the world. And whereas their dedication often goes unrecognized, yet their contributions are invaluable to the fabric of our society. And whereas we owe a debt of gratitude, we could never pay for their bravery, sacrifice, and unwavering dedication to the protection of our country. Now, therefore, I, Kenneth T. Welch, Mayor of the City of St. Petersburg, do hereby proclaim May 2024 as Military Appreciation Month in St. Petersburg. And I call upon all citizens to join me in recognizing the invaluable contributions of our servicemen and servicewomen, veterans, and their families, and expressing our deepest appreciation for their service. God bless you. Thank you all so much. First of all, I'd like to thank everyone and say that, first of all, I'd like to thank everybody that's here for coming out to hear what we have to say. Well, as a veteran, we all serve. Some gave all. Some gave some and some gave all. But we all took an oath to the Constitution of the United States of America to defend our country, both domestic and foreign. Thank you. Brian Harrell. Thank you, Your Honor. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, City Council. Very, very proud to be American. And it's a blessing and honor to serve the greatest country on earth. Thank you so much. I am Lisa Willow Bowman. Chair, Vice Chair, members of Council. Thank you so much, Mayor, for that proclamation. Being a veteran myself, we experience a lot of things. We are regular people, yet when we, at 18 years old, I think back on my life that I made the best decision in my life at that time. And that was to join the United States Army. That is what has made me who I am today. So, Mayor, I want to thank you for your proclamation. And let us remember this Memorial Day, every man and woman that served and lost their life in the military. Thank you. I feel obligated to say something. I just want to say thank you to the Council. Thank you to Mayor. And as all of my fellow veterans have stated so eloquently, you know, we as veterans just thank you and it's an honor to serve. And I just think of all the veterans that live in this city, in this municipality that aren't here today. We stand on their behalf as well. So, thank you. Council Member Monteneary. Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to welcome all the veterans that are here from all over the city. I know we have a lot of veterans that serve in the city of St. Petersburg. And it's very appropriate, and thank you, Mayor, for the proclamation so that we can recognize people that served in the military. I, too, was able to go and serve in the Air Force right out of college, and it changed my life. And it set me on a path that I still do things today when it comes to just basic things like shining my shoes and keeping things, like, in certain order. It was all taught to me from the military. Sometimes I think I have OCD because everything needs to be lined up perfectly. But my father was a veteran, my brother Tim, and my son-in-law is serving in the Air Force. And like I said earlier, I say a prayer every day for everybody that puts their life on the line, whether it's in our police department, fire department, or in our military. We have a lot to be thankful for in this country. And it may sound cliche, but it's not. Freedom is never free. People have paid a price. And if you go, any time you go visit a cemetery, you'll see the price that was paid to make our country such a great nation, the greatest nation on earth. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Vice Chair Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. First, I just want to say, well, thank you to everybody and thank you for your service. It's an amazing, amazing thing that you've done for us in our country. I want to specifically say thank you to Councilmember Montaneri for bringing that experience, that thoughtfulness to this dais. I talk to Councilmember Montaneri often about his value system, and I'm sure some of that came from your time in the military. And I'm very appreciative of that perspective here on the dais on a daily basis. The word that comes to mind when I think about military and military service is selflessness. And, Brian, I'm going to embarrass you for a second. So I'm at the doctor's office three and a half weeks ago, and there's Brian sitting there with a loved one. And he's got his own stuff going on, right? I got my own stuff going on. I'm going in for a procedure. His loved one's going in for a procedure. And he takes the time out to grab me right before I'm about to go in and say a prayer. I was blown away. I was blown away. I'm like, this guy's got so much other stuff to worry about. In the middle of a work day, they're with a loved one. They've got their own thing going on. You know, he's got to watch this crazy guy up on the dais. I mean, what's he doing? And that is the epitome, in my opinion, of those who serve. I don't think that is innate in everyone, unfortunately. But I think certainly to be able to go and serve our country, it was innate in you. And you continue to have that selflessness today. And I want you to know it doesn't go unnoticed. You affected me that day. And I will never forget that. It blew me away. I was literally guys putting a needle down my neck. And I'm going, what just happened? I needed that, by the way, because I didn't want to think about the needle. But I'm thankful for all of you. Thank you for your service. And Brian, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Council Member Hanowitz. I want to thank you all, especially Council Member Montaneri, who I sit with, who is always reminding us of the importance of service. And he said freedom is never free. Our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, the United States of America does not exist without a military, period. My family had to leave Cuba and came here. And as a child, I was always reminded to never take freedom for granted. People have no idea what people suffer everywhere. And they don't have the freedom that we do here in this country. And that freedom is because it's defended. And you guys are that line. So I thank you. And I thank you for the service that you've provided our country. Thank you so much. Thank you. So I'm going to go somewhere completely new with this. I think all of our military, there is no doubt how important and how valuable you are. But those spouses of those in the military, those children of those that are in the military, they pay a price as well. And I want to thank all of you for what you've done. Because like I said, I'm a wife of a veteran, a mother of a veteran, a daughter of a veteran, a niece of a veteran, a granddaughter of a veteran. And those that thought it not robbery to put their lives on the line in foreign countries, places where they weren't born, they went to fight for us. And it's unfortunate we're still fighting for some of those freedoms. But the fact that the spouses, the children, the families that held it down while you were gone, I want to acknowledge you as well. So to our military, you rock. You're here to continue to tell the story and to continue to shine that light on what the military has pretty much embarked upon you. And everyone has thanked Councilmember Montaneri, and he wants to know, Councilmember Montaneri wears a suit everywhere he goes. And so that's that military cleanliness that he has. And we absolutely love him for that. So we see it in those that have served in the military. I know I do. There's just something there about those that have been in the military that you can see it. Brian, thank you. Prayer is just something that we just don't do enough of. And I want to continue to ask you to please pray for all of us. Please do. Thank you so much. Anyone else? All right. Thank you. So now we will have our Employee Recognition Committee presentation by our Human Resources Director, Chris Guella. D1. Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, Council. Good afternoon, Administration. It's my pleasure to discuss the great work that the Employee Recognition Committee has done this past year, punctuated by the Employee Appreciation Week last year, the Party in the Park. It was a great hit, and we're really looking forward to doing that again this year. But before I get too far, I want to take the time to introduce the members. Not all of them could be here, but I will certainly read the names. If you go to the next slide, that would be me. This one. There we go. So our Chair is Jennifer Jorn from Neighborhood Relations, Vice Chair, Margaret Wall and Budget, and then our members in no particular order, LaTanya Barnes, Human Resources, Belinda Ross, Human Resources, our emcee and great member for many years, Sean Druin, Heather Early from the St. Pete Police Department, Nadia Elkhartawi from the Department of Technology, Brittany Harris, Parks and Recreation, District Chief Tanya Hart from the St. Pete Fire and Rescue, Julie Littlewood, Stormwater, Pavement and Traffic, Jessica Taylor, Water Resources, Patty Beliveau, City Clerk, Taryn Blackledge Sanitation, Lanier Waters Golf Course, and last but not least, Rebecca Moissner, Transportation and Parking Management. What I want to do now is just discuss a little bit about the makeup of the committee and what they do. We have members. They're all volunteers, employees from each of our administrations. So we cover a wide variety of employee groups and different perspectives across the city. The group meets once a month, except for July's, at various city facilities. And at those meetings, that's when they plan the events. They plan how to make the city better, the culture better, more team-oriented. It's also the time to address the nominations that they get for awards, and of course to plan and implement the ceremonies. And I know many of you have been to our ceremonies that meet three times a year, January, May, and September. And, of course, we do have one next Wednesday. If you plan to attend, we'd love to see you there. So that's just a quick look at what they do. Sort of the backdrop, though, of what they do, of course, is always to encourage appropriate recognition of service, which exceeds expectations. That's what we want to be known for here. We don't just do what our job descriptions say. We want to deliver the best service that we can. And we like to also promote individual and organization pride. And that's really, as I said, the backdrop of what this committee is there to do. Now, we have some awards that we give out to employees, and I'll quickly run through those before we get into some of the statistics. First up, we have the Kudos Award, and I need to get ahead of that. And that is to recognize employees for really doing just excellence in their work every day. Employees can nominate their fellow coworkers. It's also a great platform for citizens to nominate employees when they receive that excellent work. And, of course, it fosters strong relationships among teams, increases employee engagement. It really just builds that strong sense of reward intrinsically working for the city. The next step up is the Sunshine Award, and that is given to employees who have received two Kudos Awards, two or more, within the past six months. Stepping up from there, we have the Ben Shirley Impactful Service Award, and that is for employees who really have performed something maybe a little bit extraordinary. It's still within their job, job-related, but it was just of such excellence and had a great impact on either the department, employees, citizens. It's just really a great award and very gratifying to give out. Then sort of at the top of the heap is the Servant Leadership Award, and that is for employees who have gone well above and beyond their job description. These are just great citizens, great human beings who have done something extraordinary, and we've had several of those or a few of those this year, and perhaps we can highlight some of those. And then last is the Innovation Award, and that is a monetary award for employees who have come up with a great idea. They've implemented something that's really improved efficiency, processes, or has resulted even in increased revenue, decreased costs, something really tangible related to innovation, and we like to reward those employees individually or in groups when that occurs. So those are the awards, but right now I want to focus on what we've done the past year and what we're continuing to do this year. And at this time I'd like to ask Jennifer to come up. I want to make sure she gets recognized. She is the chair of the committee and really does the heavy lifting. So I'll turn that over to you. Thank you all. Jennifer Jorn. Yes, I'm humbled and honored to be the chair of the Employee Recognition Committee. However, yes, I might do some heavy lifting, but we've got two members of our team here. We have our vice chair, Margaret Wall, and we've got Jessica Taylor with Water Resources. And I know Council Member Gerda says this a lot, teamwork makes the dream work. We are a strong team of 14, and we do a great job. So last year we had a year in review with Chris. And for those of you who don't know, the Employee Recognition Committee rolls up through to HR. So recognize a fellow employee. If you go to the intranet site, hopefully it's one of your first default pages when you sign in in the morning or in the evening, and you will see across the ticker recognize a fellow employee. So we worked with Ginny Astazi, who is our technology services representative, who helps our Kudos intranet page. And when I asked her, could this be done? Yes, it can. And it was done, I kid you not, in about 30 seconds. So needless to say, I sent her a Kudos. So she was recognized last year. We updated our bylaws. Something that we found important, as we started to get more employees interested in joining the team, to cast our net a little wider, as opposed to making it a departmental group, we extended to administration-based. So, for example, one of our longest-serving members, Lisa Butler, who I hope will be attending next week, she is within city development and planning and development services. So if we just limited it to PDS, we may have had a hard time backfilling her role. We opened it up, and that's how Rebecca Moistner joined our team. So administration-based really helps us. We also, for our awards quick guide, we didn't have anything to recognize our five-year employees. So for a year, for an anniversary for one year, an employee will get a pin and a letter from the mayor, and then nothing for five. And then starting at 10 years, they will get a plaque. So we wanted to do something a little different, and we agreed on a St. Pete-branded pen, because hopefully everybody needs a pen, even though in this digital age, we still do take notes. So that is something that we started last year as well. Let's see. Revamped our logos, award logos. Again, I mentioned the genuine interest in ERC members. Again, we have Kawa Coffee, who we all love, who sponsored our employee recognition ceremonies last year with coffee. They are doing it again this year. And for those of you who drink decaf, I don't know why you would, but there will be decaf at the May ceremony. And then working with Jim Nixon and the Mayor's Service Center, if you have the C-Click Fix app, you'll see that we are actually on there. And what you see circled, if a citizen or a St. Pete staff member employee just clicks on there, it'll take you right to the employee recognition external website, and someone can submit a nomination through that. Yes. Okay. Where am I going? Okay. So this is super exciting. This is a lot of numbers on the page, but this is what really, really, really gets me pumped. So this is a year over, so it's a year over year. So what we're presenting, what you see on the right side is what we're presenting year over year from when we presented last year, which I would be remiss if I did not recognize Council Member Montaneri for continuing to support us and allowing us to present at a council meeting. So thank you for that. So as you can see, the number 162, we have recognized 162 people, which includes up through May of this year because we do meet the second Wednesday of every month. Take a look at the left side number, you guys, 163. We recognized 163 in calendar year last year. We are at 162 through May. So we are going to easily exceed 200. I think, Margaret, you guys, what was my goal? 250? 250. So we put a goal for calendar year 24 to recognize 250 employees. And recognition defined as the different awards that Chris went through. So kudos, sunshine, Ben Shirley, servant leadership, and innovation. So you can see the breakdown there. We already have 12 Ben Shurleys. 11 of them, 11 of them will be recognized next week at our May 22nd ceremony. It's super exciting. We also have an outstanding number of RSVP yeses. So of the 72 invitees and for the employee recognition ceremony, we invite those 20 years and above. So 20, 25, 30, 35, et cetera. 72 are extended invitations. 35 have responded yes. So as part of my notes that I have here, if you do attend, which I encourage everyone to attend, I recommend that you carpool because I think parking may be a little tight at Sunken Garden. So I do recommend you carpool. And another reason I strongly recommend you attend is the ERC has worked very hard on upping our brand, kind of giving us a little more juge. So we will be unveiling new awards, so new-looking, very modern-looking plaques for the 20, 25, and 30 years of service. We have a new 35 years of service award as well. But super exciting, our 40, 45, and 50 are odes to St. Pete. And I'm just going to leave it at that. I have a pelican pin on it. Use your imagination. There may be some pelicans involved. So we are very, very excited to be unveiling these new awards. And something that is really, as a good, as a citizen, of course, you know I live here, I want to see our city save money where we can. As a good employee and as a steward of fiscal responsibility, we actually found two new vendors as we were having challenges with our current awards vendor. And we are working with two women-owned businesses right here in St. Pete. And we're probably saving about 40%. So we are being good fiscal stewards as well. So that's all I have. Did you have anything? Oh, let's see. Hold on. I know. All right. So, of course, how you can nominate an employee. And I'm going to leave this to Chris to close us out for nominations. How's that? Is that okay? Okay, good. Okay, by me. All right, super. Thank you. Just wanted to make sure you got some recognition. So there are several ways, as we mentioned, to nominate employees. We are on the intranet, easy way for employees to recognize each other. But we're also on the city website, the C-Click Fix. There's e-mail. So there are various ways for citizens to also nominate our employees. So I don't want to spend too much time on that. Just I'll end the presentation with some photos of our recognition ceremonies. As you can see, we've given out Servant Leadership Awards, Ben Shirley Awards, recognizing years of service. We're really proud of that, that we're able to continue that year over year. And also, I want to say we are planning another employee appreciation week. We'll have another party in the park. We're still working on the details. But we plan to exceed even last year's. And it was a great event. Hopefully, you were able to make it. And I strongly encourage you to come if you can. It's really a great time. And great to see employees outside of just the normal workday. So with that, I will have one more comment on that. So, no, of course not. So with Party in the Park, we're super excited for this to celebrate our employees and their families as well. So because we know our families support us in every way they can. And some of the challenges that we've had with last year is it's a Friday. We're going to host it again on a Friday. And getting people to have their families come, either work conflicts, school conflicts. So where we host our employee recognition ceremonies at Sunken Gardens, they have really stepped up. And I don't know if I can't announce, but I am going to announce. We are going to do family days as part of We Are St. Pete Week. But it will be July 13th and July 20th, both dates. Those are Saturdays, in which Sunken Gardens will be open for city staff and families at no charge. So I don't know if I was supposed to announce that, but I've announced it. So we hope to see you there on both those days. We know it's going to be warm, of course, as I like to say. It's warm. It's never hot. It's just warm. But for those of you who have been to Sunken Gardens at that time, it's 10 degrees cooler. So it will be all right. So thank you. And we'll be here if you have any questions. Thank you so much. Council Member Hanowitz. Thank you, Chair. And thank you so much for the presentation and the work you do with your committee. I will tell you, I try to make all the employee recognition ceremonies. And what I love about them is I get to learn so much about the wealth of knowledge and experience in our city. And then you hear the stories behind the awards and what our employees have done. And I don't know about other council members, but we get some complaints sometimes. But we also get kudos. And I've gotten that, you know, from good work that employees have done and I forwarded on. And those employees have been acknowledged for their outstanding work. And I think that's just fantastic because sometimes that goes unnoticed. And it's important that people know that every day employees are doing the work out there and going above and beyond. And that's the work that you're doing. You're putting those stories out and you're letting people know. And I want to also thank the citizens and the peers that are nominating these employees, that are taking the time out of their day to write that email saying, this employee made my day because of this, this, and that. And I think that's important. So if you have something good to share about what someone has done from the city of St. Petersburg, please do that. Because I think they deserve to be recognized. So thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Moteneary. Thank you. Let me just start by saying we, our most important asset in our city is our people. And, uh, I'm, I'm very, uh, glad that we've got strong leadership of the employee recognition, uh, uh, committee, uh, Jennifer, thank you for, for leading Margaret, the, all the other members of the committee, uh, you all do wonderful, wonderful work recognizing and, and, uh, helping us say thank you to our most important asset that we have. And, uh, we could have the best facilities, we could have the best, uh, police cars, fire equipment, all that sort of stuff. You don't have good people. Your operation isn't going to be successful. And we've been blessed here at a city in the city of St. Petersburg since our founding with, with good people, strong leaders, leaders, and great employees. And we need to continue to lift them up and thank them, uh, for the good job that they do to serve our community every, every day. Chris, thank you for the presentation. Thank you for your leadership also. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Vice Chair Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, our, our people are amazing and I'm so happy we celebrate them. Thank you for doing that. Um, it, it goes unnoticed far too often and, and I couldn't agree more with Council Member Hanowitz and Council Member Montaneri. We've got the, we've got the best damn people. It's awesome. Um, I, I see them work. Work on my block. We see them every day at city hall. It's amazing. Um, Chris, thank you for the presentation. Uh, thank you for, for leading this, but Jennifer, you are a, uh, you, I'm at neighborhood meetings and Jennifer's there just like soaking it in. She doesn't have to be there. I mean, it's incredible. I, I, I feel like everything I go to Jennifer's at. And so just, uh, you continue to blow me away. Uh, thank you for everything you do. Thank you for leading this. I know it's a passion of yours. I saw you pumped on Facebook earlier to be able to do this. That, that's leading from the front. Um, and I appreciate it very much. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. All I can just simply say is thank you. I know that our staff, um, and our team and our family don't hear it enough. So if we can say it from the mountaintop, thank you, thank you, thank you. And again, that also comes from leadership on its way down. So if you would take this hug from me and give as many to your staff as you most possibly can with an accompanied and a heartfelt thank you for all that you all do. Thank you to the staff. You're done. Thank you so much to our employees. Thank you for the presentation, Chris. Thank you. Thank you. See y'all next week. So now we are moving on to our reports and thank you so much for wanting to, um, acknowledge and, and, um, adhere to our 10 minute report request. And we have our St. Pete police department quarterly report, our own police chief, Anthony Holloway. Good afternoon again, chair and council members. I just want to also thank the mayor again for the proclamation. Uh, as you were, we had the police memorial service at the beginning of the month and I've been here almost 10 years now. And he asked, uh, have we ever did a proclamation for the police department? I said, I don't recall, sir. And this is just show you how he follows up exactly what he said he's going to do. He did. So I just want to extend that. Thank you to him again. So this quarter is going to be covering January, February, March, going to talk about now the work that our outstanding men and women here do at the police department. But most importantly, the information we also get from our community, how we work hand in hand. So the homicides for, uh, this quarter is four. Uh, they all been a close with the rest of those four homicide three were by firearms and one was by a vehicle. Our, our grit team continues to work quite well. As you can see, compared to last year, the men and women out there and the citizens, uh, as we receive phone calls of shooting, the officers respond to those areas. They recover the shell casings. We have what's called a Navi machine. We have, uh, there's only two in the Tampa Bay area and we use that machine so we can identify the shell casings. And through that, we're able to close out, uh, numerous cases where we can link that gun to several shooting throughout the city stolen gun reports. Uh, we had not only a meeting, uh, last week, but also this meeting this morning with, uh, a group from the Florida police chief to talk about this. And I know I got called today by a reporter, uh, talking about this. So I'm going to give you a breakdown on this guns took taken from vehicles. You see 29 of those 29, 16 were fun and you hear all the time unlocked vehicles, 11 unknown. So probably unlocked and two locked, uh, the guns that we're taking were 20, excuse me, 28 handguns and one rifle was interesting. I know council asked me about this and I talked to the police chief and law enforcement in the Tampa Bay area. We still are about 80% of the vehicles, 80% of the vehicles are unlocked and people leaving their car, leaving their guns in their cars in the Tampa Bay area. And then where we go nationwide is probably going to be about the same. The six guns that were recovered, one was, uh, local, I'm sorry, five were local guns and one was elsewhere. The robbery calls, as you can see, we had a big trend in January and that trend in January. What we saw was in our downtown corridor, people were stealing cell phones. That was the thing to do in January. People would go to bars, leave their cell phones on, on the bars and people would grab their phones and get in confrontation. Because a lot of people have a new cell, not new cell phone, but they have the carrying case inside the carrying case. They have credit cards. So people will tend to take those, uh, cell phones. Uh, Yolanda, uh, Fernandez and her group did a great job. We did some PSAs, got the information out there. And now people are remembering to not leave their cell phones on the, uh, in the bars. Would that come with all those cases? Again, talk about the work that the men and women have done, the arrests that they're making off of this. And that's because of the also doing a great job, our forensic people doing a great job. And most importantly, our community calling in and giving us information that are helping us lead to these arrests of these cases that we have. Our second chance program is still going strong. We had some issues for a small period of time. And that was the computer system was down. So we had to track. So when you see not completed, it's because the computer system were down. We were unable to get some of the kids into the program. Same thing with the home. We're still monitoring kids, but you can see there's a decrease. Our path unit, our homeless population, you can see we're still working on that. And I always want to give Amy Foster and her team for helping us as we continue to see our homeless population here in St. Pete and how we're dealing with it. But you can see 53% of our homeless population is going to turning point. What I can tell you as the officers are making contact with the homeless or unhoused people in Amy's team, we are trying to find places where we can help these people locate and get them back on their feet. Our use of force, and again, always have to remind council, we track it differently than other agencies. Whenever an officer use any type of force, he or she has to document that. So that's whether an arm bar or pushing someone or taking someone down to the ground, they have to fill out all those reports. Those are our complaints. And in the complaint period of time, we did not have any complaints about use of force. Our traffic stats continue to go up. As we do traffic deployment, we do put it on our Facebook page to let people know that we're going to be doing traffic enforcement at what intersection and what community. And we still write tons of tickets of people driving 15 or better over. And the last thing I have for you is our call program. It continues to be a success. People are calling and asking us how we're doing. The most important bullet that I want to point to you is bullet number three, where it says 98%. We were at 93, so now we increase to 98% of them responding without law enforcement. So with that, I'll open it up with council. Council Member Hanowitz. Thank you, and thank you, Chief, for your presentation. The traffic stats, it's good to see that you have the traffic crashes that have decreased and there is more enforcement going out there because obviously I'm sure that you've heard from other council members. That's one of the complaints that we hear a lot from our neighborhoods and how unsafe it is across the industry. And people are, you know, driving like crazy and, you know, all the things that you hear about. And so the fact that there are more traffic stops and there's more visibility and, and, and, and by the way, communication, you know, it's, it's amazing. You go out there, you tell them we're going to be out there and you still get these numbers. So, um, I just want to say thank you for that because that is something that we hear about a lot. Thank you. Council Member Monteneary. Chair, thank you. Chief, thank you for the, uh, for the, uh, update. Uh, one of the things that I really appreciate is the communication. When something goes, goes on, you know, it, it seems the, the, uh, when, when I get a phone call, I, I, I, I don't get too many calls and I, you know, it's a, it's the right balance is what I want to say. But, um, it does seem to me, uh, and maybe it's just, uh, uh, uh, my, my recollection, but it seems to me like there's a lot more shootings going, going on, uh, citywide. It's not that that's not reflected in any of your report. Can you, is that just me, uh, just, uh, thinking that, uh, there's more violence going on when it comes to shootings in our city? I think it's the notification, as you saw from, uh, last year, probably calling you in your district. Cause last year we had 83 cases, uh, Santos in, uh, this year, 87. So it went up, uh, four caught four more calls. Okay. For this quarter. So, okay. All right. Well, thank you. Um, on your slide for the habitual offender monitoring enforcement, it seems like there is a spike. And can you talk about the different categories? Just remind me you've got, uh, and start with the intensive super supervision. Can you kind of explain those, those different categories that we have? Sure. So the home program is where all the law enforcement in Pinellas County, uh, work together, the sheriff's office, Clearwater, so forth, all of us. And when these kids get on some type of, uh, probation status from the court system, we monitor intense supervision. Those are the kids that we're monitoring all the time because they need intensive care, so to speak. So what I mean by that is the, they may have a restriction where the ulcers come by instead of just once a day, they also may go by their location three or four times a day to make sure they're following what they're supposed to do. So radar means they're on our radar, uh, that we need to start monitoring them more because we're starting to see them more involved, uh, when they're both supervision. That means they're just about there, but intensive supervision. So we try to keep track of both sides of it, electronic monitoring, as you'll see, that's increasing. The judges are putting more, uh, ankle monitor on kids. And what happens when they're not in that right area, it goes off. And then we send a detective to that spot and says, you're supposed to be home, it's eight o'clock, why are you not at home? Uh, the way the kids used to look at it was nothing against, uh, the, the state or whatever it is and have enough employees. So the kids would know that, hey, if my ankle monitor went off on a Friday, the state's not working. So they'll get back with me on Monday. Ours is if it goes off on Friday, somebody's coming to your house Friday afternoon to figure out what's going on. Where are you? And then the curfew compliance, uh, that's the one that the kids, it's kind of funny when I listen to some of the detectives, the kids will tell you, I'd rather go ahead and do my 21 day than to do the curfew, um, compliance check because the officers will go out to the home and they will check seven days a week. Uh, again, whereas they knew on the weekends, uh, the state couldn't follow up on it. If your curfew says you have to be home eight o'clock on a Saturday night, uh, you best believe one of the detectives may come knock on your door at 830 to see if you're home. Uh, the parents like it. And of course, some of the kids will say, you know what, go ahead and give me my 21 days and juvenile detention center. I don't want to be on curfew. Okay. Thank you, chief. Uh, so it looks to me like intensive supervision spike from 2023 to 2024. And then it looks like radar went, went up by, you know, 33 cases. And then the, the combination of both supervision and radar, the numbers just don't line up for, for me. And let me double check on, on that counselor, cause you're right for that number just to go down that quickly. And then I'll double check with them and I'll give you an answer first thing in the morning. Okay. All right. Thank you, thank you, chief. Uh, thank you for answering my questions. Thank you, chair. Thank you. Do I see we have public comment? Yes, we do. Madam chair. We have one speaker, William Kilgore. Please go to the podium on my right and state your name and address for the record. And you have three minutes to address the count. Hi, everybody. Thanks, chair. Uh, thanks, chief. Um, my name's, uh, William Kilgore. I reside at, uh, 25, uh, 50, 28th Avenue North. Um, and, uh, I organized, uh, St. Pete Tenants Union as well as St. Pete Cop Watch. Um, I wanted to bring to your attention just a couple of things. Um, I always like seeing these reports. Um, just, I, I have some concerns with the, uh, police dealings with the homeless. Um, you know, I had mentioned to y'all last quarterly report. I think I gave public comment. It was kind of all over the place. But, uh, you know, we, we had been logging, uh, the sleeping citations, uh, that had been written and municipal ordinance violations. And last year there were 251, um, uh, sleeping citations issued, uh, many, many more ordinance, uh, violations toward the homeless. Um, and that 251, that, that's a huge increase. And we're seeing that ongoing, um, use of the, the, that ordinance and many others, uh, you know, to, um, kind of, uh, punish the homeless, uh, for just existing. Um, you know, we saw that 71% of those occurred in the area of St. Vincent de Paul. That's an area where folks do just naturally congregate because there's a lot of services. That shelter's always full, but they have meals and storage and other things, uh, that, that folks can use. Um, and I, I have a real big issue with this because there's, you know, they, what's ending up happening, most of the time people aren't getting sentenced to jail, although two people did receive jail time last year for it. Uh, and there were six warrants that were issued for failures to appear, uh, but there was $27,000 in cumulative fines issued. So they're fining people, uh, but the majority of those fines, they're going to collections, you know? Um, and so you're just fining people in, in, uh, people who have nothing and they can't pay it and they were just sending them to collections and putting them further into debt. Um, and I, I really don't think that's right and especially in light of, uh, you know, the lawsuit that's going on with, uh, uh, uh, Roberto, uh, Sanchez Mayan, uh, you know, he was paralyzed and had his legs amputated after suffering an injury. He was sleeping, he was charged with trespassing, um, and it was actually thrown out because the trespassing signs weren't properly marked. Uh, it makes me wonder how many of these issue, uh, citations are being issued in error, uh, because even some of the sleeping citations we found almost all of them were the daytime sleeping ordinance, but we found them outside of the prohibit issued outside of the prohibited zone and during nighttime hours too. So some of those were, uh, improperly cited, um, you know, and it's a, it's a big issue, especially with this HB 1365 coming up. Uh, you know, now they're the state's mandating that, uh, you know, they crack down on sleeping, uh, in public and things like that. Um, so I wanted to bring that to your attention and, and just, just so you all know. So thank you all very much. I appreciate y'all listening. I have a couple of questions for you, if you don't mind. Um, I know we, we praise it. Thank you again for the report. I know we, we praise the call program. Um, and one of my questions is, do we actually deploy the call program to any homeless calls? Are, are they residents only or location only? If, if the navigator is available in the past team, I believe they need to be responding to that. Then they will most of the time calls handling a lot of, uh, calls that are coming in through 911, but they can get those calls referred to them by the past team. So there's a mixture of both. And then we also, again, thanks to Ms. Foster's team, we have, we have a great blend of mixture. We've got the ulcer that are being trained in it, that we can, uh, find, uh, services for our unhoused. Then we got called to back up if they're dealing with someone with a mental issue. And then we also have Ms. Foster's team. So you're talking about three layers of, that we are doing our best we can to help out with our unhoused in our, in our city. Okay. And thank you. And that's the reason why I asked that because a large part of our unhoused actually do have the mental health issues. And I wanted to make sure that we pay attention to, um, that fact and those calls to, you know, to pay, to, to play, uh, pay attention to, uh, those mental health issues. My next question is, I know that we've had a, a true trauma, um, in regards to shooting of a child and the gun was stolen from an unlocked car. And I see we have our numbers of taken from a vehicle at 29. Do we know how many of those 29 were actually unlocked? Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry. I gave you that breakdown early. I can, I can repeat it. No problem. Uh, so of those 29, 16 were unlocked. Okay. Thank you for that. 11 people said unknown. They don't know if they locked their cars or not. And two were locked. Okay. And then the breakdown was, uh, 28 handguns and one rifle. And I can always tell you when we do it also, there's always extra ammunition. That's either, you know, two magazines or three magazines and a box of ammo usually in the car. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, thank you for that. Thank you chief again for the presentation and those are my questions. I appreciate it. Any other questions? Now we will move on to F2, our preserve the Berg. And here to provide that update is the preserve the Berg executive director, Manny Leto. Welcome Mr. Leto. Hey, good afternoon. Well, good afternoon. Uh, my name is Manny Leto. I'm the executive director of preserve the Berg. I know a lot of important issues, uh, in front of you today. And so I appreciate you carving out a little bit of space. It is historic preservation month. I know you're all celebrating in your own way, but, um, we wanted to take this opportunity to share with you a report that we have been working on, uh, for over two years. And I know that we have spoken individually, uh, with many of you about this report. Um, one of the things that I've learned is you do not launch a report in the middle of a stadium negotiation. So we've gotten a little, uh, we wanted to schedule individual meetings with you in advance of the release, but nonetheless, the report is, uh, out in the, in the world. It's out in the public and it can be found on our website, preserve the Berg.org. Um, and I, before I get too far in, I want to recognize our board members here today. Emily Elwin is our immediate past president and Bill Herman is the chair of our, uh, advocacy committee. Um, I also want to recognize, um, the report, uh, keeping the vibe alive, the impact of historic preservation in St. Petersburg. Um, the report was commissioned by an organization called Place Economics. They're based in Washington, D.C., and they sort of work at this intersection of economics and historic preservation. And I know that many of you are familiar, obviously, with Preserve the Berg and, and our work in this community over many years. Um, one of the things that was perhaps missing was maybe putting some numbers and some quantitative data behind the value of historic preservation. You know, often we talk about preservation, uh, and we talk in terms of aesthetics, uh, we talk in terms of, uh, places that we like or buildings that we like or, uh, historic events that occurred in these places. And that is, uh, of course, uh, a community needs to see its history, uh, reflected in its neighborhoods and in its communities. Uh, but equally important, uh, is trying to, uh, relate some of the economic value and the economic impact of these studies. And so Place Economics has done these studies, not just in St. Petersburg, but in cities, uh, and states across the country, uh, and indeed internationally. Um, so we were really excited to bring them, uh, to our city. Um, lots of support for this effort, including, uh, from the Downtown Partnership and, uh, from the city of St. Petersburg. So I want to thank, uh, the city for helping to underwrite a portion of this study. And you can see the other community partners, uh, listed here, including, uh, more than two dozen individual donors. So what are we looking at? Uh, we had a lot of different routes that we could take. Uh, we landed on these four, looking at property values. What is the effect of, uh, historic designation on property values? We looked at Central Avenue, because Central Avenue is such a key asset, uh, for this city. And it's a historic Main Street. We looked at, and, you know, this maybe ties in a little bit with some of the comments that we heard during our open forum, and maybe something that is not really being, uh, discussed. And that is the role that existing historic, not necessarily historically designated, but just old, older housing. What role does older housing play in housing affordability? And then, lastly, we completed a community survey. So, just some quick stats. I know I've only got 10 minutes here. This is a 50-plus page report that I hope you will all read over your morning coffee. But for our purposes here today, we're just going to run through a couple of the key findings that I, I thought were, uh, particularly enlightening. One is that less than 1% of the city's land area is governed, uh, by, uh, a local historic designation. Um, often we hear, you know, I look at the report as doing a little bit of myth busting. And so, often we hear, well, you know, these designations, they're really going to kind of stifle what we can do, or, uh, they're getting in the way of the growth of our city. But when we really look at the land area that is, I guess, under the regulatory purview of the historic preservation, uh, commission, uh, we're looking at 0.5 in local districts and less than 3% uh, that are in a, a national register district. Uh, I did look at some of the other studies that were conducted by, uh, place economics, uh, places like New York City, Nashville, Frankfurt, Kentucky. And, uh, we're actually last on this list compared to those other cities. Density. Density is, is key for this city. It's a ongoing conversation. We hear about it, uh, again, at, at many of these meetings. And, and we think it's important. Uh, we want to see, uh, more development, new development, infill development, small-scale development. We want to see all of that. What we looked at, what is the density of these historic neighborhoods? And what we found is that historic neighborhoods are actually providing a little bit more density than the rest of, uh, than the city, uh, as a whole. What does that mean? That means that often when we're going into these historic districts, we're replacing density with density. So, uh, you know, and, and that is sort of visually true when you walk around these historic neighborhoods and you often see, you know, quadplexes, duplexes, uh, these historic walk-up apartments that have no parking garage, right? So they are able to house more, more people. And we'll see later that often those places are more affordable than what is currently being built. Property values. So the study looked at the change in property values. So this is not the, the value of the property. It's measuring the change in value. Over 15 years. So from 2008 to 2022. So you get a really good cross section here. You get, uh, the housing downturn of 08 and you get COVID. And what the study finds is that properties that are located within historic districts, they recover stronger and they recover faster than neighborhoods that are not historically designated. Um, does that mean that historic designation is solely responsible for their success? It does not. Uh, there are lots of reasons why a neighborhood can be successful or, or desirable. Um, it could be schools, could be walkability, lots of other things. But what this is showing is that historic designation is not having a negative effect on property values. In fact, the exact opposite is happening. Central Avenue. So one of the things that I, you know, I personally love about Central Avenue, uh, or St. Petersburg is Central Avenue. It is such a distinctive, uh, historic Main Street. And I was actually having a conversation with, with Derek and the preservation staff a few months ago. And I said, can you name me another, uh, Main Street in Florida that is 30 plus contiguous blocks of all types of retail and different types of businesses, um, I couldn't think of one. We couldn't think of one. I mean, you can think of maybe Duval Street in Key West or something like that. Lots of bars. Uh, you can think of Ybor City in, in Tampa. Nowhere near as robust as Central Avenue. Um, so we wanted to look at why Central Avenue is so successful. And so we looked at first, uh, through about 31st, so into the, the Grand Central District just to have a sort of a defined study area. We'll talk about our community survey in a, in a moment, but what's so impressive really about Central Avenue when we ask people, it is, it's an economic driver. It's the heartbeat of the city. Um, majorities of people are visiting Central Avenue, uh, multiple times a month. Uh, so it's, it's really a driver for the community. What's also true about Central Avenue is that it's a historic Main Street and that the majority of the buildings that line Central Avenue were constructed prior to 1950. So what does that, what's that tell me as a historic preservationist? It tells me that these, these old buildings, these two-story buildings, four-story buildings, they're doing a lot of heavy lifting. It tells me that Central Avenue is succeeding because of its historic buildings and not in spite of them. Older buildings also have a higher, uh, occupancy rate than newer construction. They're also housing, overwhelmingly, they're housing local businesses. So what does that mean? That means if you love local, you need to protect your historic because that's where your local businesses are choosing to locate. A surprising stat that we were not expecting, um, the share of minority and women-owned businesses. They are expressing a value preference. They're choosing to locate on Central Avenue, outpacing the rest of the city. And again, I think that speaks to the small scale of these, uh, these businesses, the small square footage that allows for kind of, uh, business incubation, um, and small businesses to thrive. We asked people, how important are these different variables when we're visiting Central Avenue? And again, I want to be sort of the, let's see, third one from your left. Am I out of time? I don't know. Um, I'm, I'm almost done. Um, people are, are preferring these local businesses by over, uh, 70 to 80% or the local character. And then I just want to touch on this affordable housing issue because it is so important. We looked at census track blocks or census tracks where the housing was older than 50 years and the median income was at or below AMI. And so what you see is this scattershot here, uh, graph and on the lower quadrant, what you're seeing is that these older, how older housing types are providing, uh, a measure of affordable housing for people that are making below or at or below median income. Um, do I have to wrap? Yes. Yes. We're going to hold everybody to it. We appreciate all the information that you have. Council members, do you have any questions? Council member Hanowitz. Well, first of all, I just want to thank you, uh, for your presentation and the report. There is a lot of information in there, a lot. Yes. And I was reviewing it, uh, before the meeting and I will tell you there, some of the fascinating stuff, you know, besides the, um, the fact that you touched on the importance of, you know, what it is to preserve, um, our history, you know, there are things like, why do you live in St. Petersburg and a lot of that tracks with what I hear from residents. I think when we all probably ran for office, one of the things we heard of that was important to people is keeping St. Pete special, right? And it's, it's in there. It's interesting keeping that St. Pete vibe and, you know, the character sense of place of St. Petersburg is one of the biggest reasons why people live here. Um, the amenities, the arts and culture of the natural beauty parks and public spaces, right? Ranked extremely high, like the top in terms of when thinking about St. Petersburg, how important are the following to you personally? And so there is a lot of things in here that I think resonate with what I've heard as a council member, uh, from our residents. Um, but getting that data is also very helpful. So I will continue reviewing the report and I just want to say to those that were involved to making sure that this happened. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I think I, I introduced you, your last name incorrectly. I said Lato and it's Lato. Lato. Lato. Thank you so much for the presentation. Very welcome. Thank you. Take care. Now we will have our Youth Opportunity Grants Item F3 presented by our Senior Operations Analyst, Jess Rydell. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. All right. Jess Rydell, ARPA Impact Monitor, here to take, here to talk to you today about the Youth Opportunity Grants ARPA Projects. So the total ARPA funding going to this project will be $946,365. This is a pilot project for young adults who have aged out of foster care and are not engaged in formal aftercare services. And administration's recommending approval of this project and to execute an agreement with Ready for Life to administer the project. So I'm going to walk you through how we got here, the project overview, why we're focusing on this population specifically, the evidence base for the model, and then close out with our next steps for our project. So how we got here, we presented to you all at Youth and Family Services last summer, we released an RFP back in November, received three responsive applications, and the review committee selected Ready for Life to administer the project when we met at the end of January earlier this year. So we will be giving monthly cash disbursements directly to program participants with no strings attached. So this is really intended to be an economic floor that supplements someone's existing safety net and it does not replace anyone's full income. And I will get more into this later, but this is an evidence-based approach and research from other similar projects show that participants spend money on things they need, like food, utilities, housing, and not on so-called temptation goods. And the other projects that exist out there have led to other outcomes like increases in full-time employment and well-being. So for our Youth Opportunity Grants project, we will be providing $500 a month for 12 months to 88 young adults who are former foster youth. So as far as eligibility criteria goes, they will be former foster youth who are not currently enrolled in the formal aftercare services available through UCF. The age range will be 18 to 27. Participants will have strong ties to St. Pete, of course, being current residents, working in the city or attending school in the city, kind of like a live, work, learn approach to that. And Ready for Life has proposed a three-cohort model where there will be 29 to 30 people in each cohort that are staggered and when they receive their 12 months of funding. And this way we can adjust between cohorts if needed and also add more people to later cohorts if possible. So Ready for Life will go out into the community to identify and recruit eligible participants, assist in the application process as needed. If we have more applicants and spaces, we can use a prioritization scale if we need to. Participant onboarding will include benefits counseling, and this will make sure that nobody's existing benefits like SNAP will be lost due to the increase in funds coming in each month. Ready for Life will also assess and connect participants to any needed resources they would like to engage in, you know, from the beginning or that they need. Ready for Life has also built in Life Skills Reimagined curriculum into their budget. And this is an app, an online-based life skills development course that basically gamifies learning life skills such as financial literacy, getting and obtaining a job, things like that for the participants. And, of course, participants will have access to case management and wraparound support services that meets them where they're at. And just to give an idea of what else Ready for Life can provide participants, they have life specialists who have lived experience as former foster youth themselves. They're to support with any needs that come up. Ready for Life can also provide counseling, mentoring, and they have a program for parenting participants as well. Ready for Life has also partnered with USF to conduct the required evaluation component of the project, which will look at spending data from the prepaid cards that the money goes on. They will conduct surveys, focus groups, and interviews. So we can really lead into the storytelling component of this and then report back to you all at council what we're learning and what the impact is. So zooming out a little bit, I want to talk more about why we are focusing on this population. And I have a series of statistics on the next two slides that help demonstrate why we should invest in supporting this population in creative ways. And I'm going to read them off because I think they're really impactful to hear out loud. 20% of youth who age out of foster care instantly become homeless. In Florida, 37% are homeless by age 21. An estimated 50% of the homeless population spend time in foster care. Only 50% find employment by age 24. It is estimated that 60% of child sex trafficking victims have a history in the child welfare system. An estimated 80% of foster youth experience significant mental health issues compared to about 20% of the general population. Less than 3% are in a college degree. In Florida, by age 21, 61% have a high school diploma or GED. And in Florida, 7% of transition age youth had a child by 17, 9% by 19, and 18% became parents by age 21. So these outcomes just show how a lack of support, lack of stability, lack of resources when they age out of foster care can just really snowball into these terrible situations that they have to continually face and try to overcome in this transition to adulthood. We did do some focus groups initially with this population to get their thoughts on the concept and their feedback was in line with what the research shows. You can see some things here on the slide. This would help them maneuver, get on their feet. They would pay foundational bills like rent and groceries, child care costs, prevent the domino effect, all these things that help someone attain and maintain more stability. I just have a map here that shows a snapshot of where other similar projects have and are actively occurring across the U.S. And then same thing here. This is a snapshot of other projects with high level details. And you can see that our project giving $500 a month for 12 months is in line with other projects and how they set their structure up as far as, you know, duration and monthly amount. This is data that shows what people spend these funds on. And again, they're spending money on their basic needs. So for example, 39% at super stores and retailers on items like food, household goods, clothing, 27% at grocery stores, 9% on transportation, and 7% on housing. This slide just has some of the outcomes from Stockton's mayor-led demonstration project, which was a randomized controlled trial. And they saw increases in full-time employment, improvements in emotional health and well-being, and increased ability to pay for an unexpected expense. And then here are some more research outcomes kind of like busting some of the myths that people have about these types of projects. So the research shows that people don't lose their motivation to work. They do not spend their money on temptation goods and that these projects can help reduce inequality and have had positive impacts beyond just the financial piece of it all. As far as next steps from here, we are seeking council approval today, and we will be able to execute our agreement with Ready for Life, which will be a two-year agreement. They have a three-month startup period built into their timeline to get operations going, set up application process for group participants. And then months four through 21, the three cohorts receive their 12 months of payments staggered. Evaluation along the way, reporting to you all what we're seeing, what the impact is. And then the last three months are evaluation wrap-up, impact reporting, close out, all of that. So that two years brings us to mid-2026, which is well in advance of the December 31, 2026 ARPA expenditure deadline. So we're good in shape there. That's what I have for you today. Happy to answer any questions. And we do also have team members from Ready for Life here if any questions are directed to them as well. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Gabbert. Thank you, Chair. And Jess, I just want to thank you so much for your work on this program. I'm very excited to see this finally come forward. You know, I think like once we've, you know, we've spent ARPA dollars and then we still have more ARPA dollars because I forget all of the good that we talked about when we first started to really dissect and allocate that money. So I'm very excited that we are finally bringing this program here. I wholly support this. And so I just wanted to thank you personally for all of the work with Foster. Thank you as well. And look forward to it. Yes. Thank you. Seeing that there are no further requests to speak, I entertain a motion. Motion to approve. Second. Now that we have been properly motioned and seconded, Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please cast your vote. Now that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item F3 passes 6 to 1, with council members Driscoll, Fig Sanders, Floyd, Gabbard, Gerdes, Hanowitz voting yes, council member Montaneri voting no, and council member Mohammed being absent. Thank you. Thank goodness I have an observant vice chair. We are going to move into, if we don't mind, go in, we're going to recess the city council and convene into CRA, because we do have public hearing that was scheduled to start at 501, and we have quite a bit to go through before we even get to our public hearings. So now we're going to have CRA2, Transfer of Neighborhood Stabilization Program Lots to the Affordable Lot Disposition Program, and presenting that is our Special Projects Coordinator, Beatrice Zafra. Did I say that correctly? Yes. Thank you ma'am. Thank you Madam Chair and members of city council. My name is Beatrice Zafra. I'm Special Projects Coordinator for the codes compliance assistance department, and I'm here today respectfully requesting your approval to transfer the remaining 32 NSP lots into the Affordable Lot Disposition Program. So HUD has requested that the NSP program be closed out, and the transfer into lot disposition will allow us to achieve the same goal by constructing and selling affordable homes. So as some of you may remember, we did go to the January HLUT meeting to request the ability to make changes to the lot disposition program. We did take your feedback from that meeting and have been working on a request for qualifications with our procurement department for the last few months. We're at the point where we're putting our finishing touches on that, and we plan on going before the citizen advisory committee and affordable housing advisory committee next month. And then bringing that back to you for full council. But today we are just respectfully again requesting the approval of the transfer of lots. And I'm here to answer any questions. Move approval. Second. Thank you. We have requests. Vice Chair Gerdes. Thank you Madam Chair. Just one quick question. I know we're moving all the properties into the program, but we're going to let them go in stages, right? We're not going to let them all. We talked about the HLUT. I know this is different than that, but we're only going to do sections at a time, right? Okay. I'm all good then. Thank you very much. Thank you. Council member Driscoll. Thank you. In the material here, it looks like there are 26 properties that are going to be transferred. The list is in the CRA resolution. Yes. So just for clarification, are all of these properties then going to be slated for demolition? No, these are all already vacant lots. Oh, they're vacant lots. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Since we've had this properly motioned and seconded, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please cast your votes. Seeing that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item CRA2 passes unanimously with council member Mohammed being absent. Thank you. So now we will adjourn as CRA and we will reconvene as city council and move into our public hearings with item J3, the transfer of the neighborhood stabilization program lots to the affordable lot disposition program. Move approval. Okay. Second. Now that we've probably no conversation, can you please open the machine for voting for item J3? Council members, please, any of your votes? Now that our present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item J3 passes unanimously with council member Mohammed being absent. Thank you. Can we now move into item J1? Well, it has on here J1 and J2, so I guess we can do both of them together. And providing that is going to be our code's compliance assistant director, Mr. Joseph Bois. Move approval J1 and J2. Okay, so we have motion and a second for J1 and J2. Seeing that we have a motion and has been properly seconded for J1 and J2, Mr. Clerk, can you please open the machine for voting? Council members, please enter your votes. Now that our council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the vote? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda items J1 and J2 passed unanimously. Council member Mohammed being absent. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wall. Now we'll move into J4, the FDOT grant for security gate access control and camera system upgrade at Albert Woodard Airport. And providing that report is airport manager Rich Lesniak. I want to read the title, Madam Chair. Please, thank you. Thank you. Excuse me. Proposed Ordinance No. 578H, an ordinance in accordance with Section 1.02C5B, St. Petersburg City Charter, authorizing the public transportation grant agreement, PTGA, and the assurances grant assurances, which are attached to the PTGA to be executed by the city as a requirement for receipt of the Florida Department of Transportation grant for security gate access control and security camera system upgrades at the Albert Woodard Airport, authorizing such encumbrances or restrictions not to exceed 20 years from the effective date of the PTGA, authorizing the mayor or his designee to accept the grant in the amount of $105,600, authorizing the mayor or his designee to execute all documents necessary to effectuate this ordinance, providing an effective date and providing for expiration. And we do not have any cards for this item. Move approval. Second. Now that we have a motion and it's been properly seconded, can you please open the machine for voting for J-4? Council members, any of your votes? Now that all council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item J-4 passes unanimously with council member Muhammad being absent. Thank you. Now we have J-5, the FAA grant for the design phase of the Rehab Airfield Vault Project at Albert Woodard Airport. Opposed Ordinance No. 579H, an ordinance in accordance with Section 1.02C5B, St. Petersburg City Charter, authorizing the execution of the restrictions and assurances regarding airport availability, setting forth and grant documents for the design phase of the Rehab Airfield Vault project for the Applewood Airport 19235 in order to receive a Federal Aviation Administration grant in an amount not to exceed $173,164, authorizing the mayor or his designate to apply for and accept the grant in an amount not to exceed $173,164, authorizing the mayor or his designate to execute all documents necessary to effectuate this ordinance, providing an effective date, and providing for expiration and we do not have any cards for this. Move approval. Second. This has been motioned and properly seconded. Can you please open the machine for voting? Council members please enter your votes. Now that all present council members have voted, can you please tally and announce the votes? Madam Chair, the motion to approve agenda item J-5 passes unanimously with council member Muhammad being absent. Thank you. Before we move to J-6 legal, because we jumped into J-1 and J-2 and did not read the title for either for the record, do we need to? Those are not ordinances. No resolutions? Okay, I just want to make sure I don't miss anything. Okay, J-6 providing for the sales, service, dispensing, possession, and or consumption of alcoholic beverages in a portion of Azalea Park for an event on September 24, 2024. I just had one quick question. Do we need a vote? I want to make sure that we are going to vote for it? Recreation Supervisor for the second, Mr. Dennis Burns? How are you? I want to read the title. Please read the title. An ordinance providing for the sales, services, dispensing, possession, and or consumption of alcoholic beverages in a portion of Azalea Park for an event to be held on September 24, 2024, and providing an effective date, and we do not have any cards. Okay, thank you. Move approval. Second. Vice Chair Gerdes. Thank you, Madam Chair. i just had one quick question do we know is it is the portion quote unquote portion is that just the area of where the picnic is happening or is there a designated area that that only can happen it's uh the alcohol will be designated to the outfield of the baseball field adjacent to the picnic area perfect thank you very much thank you madam chair thank you we've it's been motion and properly seconded can you please open the machine council members please enter your votes now that our present council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes madam chair the motion to approve agenda item j6 passes unanimously with council member muhammad being absent thank you so we're going to go ahead and finish our reports if we can uh f7 the dmp proposal for construction phase services for city-wide seawall inspection renovation and replacement and presenting that is our engineering director brujesh freyman how are you day council chair good day council always a pleasure um so i will try to be brief um i do have a very simple presentation that i put together you go ahead so let me if i need to make sure that i offer the opportunity to council member martinieri because he pulled this item as good news and he may want to introduce this and say why he pulled this item thank you thank you madam chair and uh i'll be very brief this has just been a project that uh i've been uh one of the sea walls is being done as project i've been working on for for years and uh it's uh finally finally coming forward and i've been bugging brujesh way too much on on this project in my district and i know there's a couple other sea balls and other council member districts that uh i'm sure are very happy to see this coming forward so i wanted to pull it for good news and thank you for letting me do so thank you thank you mr freyman all right so today we are bringing forward a gmp from pcl for project number 21092-110 so consistent with our approach um you know we will continue to look at sea walls as it is um becoming um structurally or more deficient and actually planning for those replacements while we're still moving forward with the bigger picture seawall vulnerability study but as council member montanari mentioned there are some specific locations that we have moved forward with design and construction on um the first priority and going through the list um right now is the 31st street section again that's the section adjacent to a bridge it is showing some signs of rotation will be replacing sections of the seawall some joint filling as well as some additional um restoration for it then down on 79th street south in the causeway boulevard area we'll also be replacing a section of seawall adjacent to bridge again um now those tend to be more susceptible as you can see because it's not the bridge structure but it's also within those areas that we can get scour critical movement during a storm event and then one other section northwest 101 at 87th avenue north in that vicinity and this is a very important section of seawall because um it is a section of seawall that was essentially um lower than the adjacent sections so what we noticed during a storm event was that water was coming up through that section onto the roadway even though the residence seawalls were higher so that's a section of infill um again taking that thought and that approach of assessing where our risks are and having the highest priority um so those are the sections and generally generally generally generally to keep in context for construction what we're looking at is the contractor will start ordering the materials following the approval of this council item we expect those material to come in in around july august time frame the priority of work is to start from 79th street then move to 31st and then 87th average time we're looking at about 45 days at each one of the locations uh the effective residents will be notified prior to construction the impacts during construction again because we're off onto the side of the roadway with the exception of the one on 87th that will be adjacent to a property on a dead end um we'll pretty much be limited to those shorter time frames of delivering materials or actually the concrete truck showing up on site to pour the concrete itself we'll try to limit and minimize the construction to off the road itself that way to avoid as much traffic impacts as possible and with that we do ask for approval approval approval second we do have a couple of speakers we have vice chair girders thank you madam chair uh i just expressed the same sentiment as council member montaneri i think this was one of the first things i started working on um when i came on a few years ago and so just really appreciate it i know i've been bugging claude and marshall and brej on this one and so i appreciate you putting up with me and i appreciate your patience with me in the neighborhood and and very excited to get this done thanks for doing it i know it's been a long road probably not as long as my colleagues but still very much appreciated thank you madam chair thank you councilmember gabbard thank you uh chair and thank you brujesh for the presentation now um thank you for our one-on-one time earlier today i swear i'm sure you all probably agree when brujesh walks in the room everybody gets smarter because you are just so brilliant in the way that you are looking at our infrastructure and you're looking at it from all angles in order to be able to address the vulnerabilities that we see in our city we're talking a lot about doing this resiliency action plan but i think that i don't want it to be lost on the residents that action is happening now and so i'm so excited that this particular seawall in riviera bay is going to be addressed finally um this has been a request of the um of the members or the residents for a very long time and so when i kind of do the projecting here brujesh so if we start in august ish let's just say even late august and 87th avenue is the last one on the phasing can my residents expect to see work out there january or on that time for me okay yeah i was doing the 45 45 you know six weeks so okay then that definitely is a message that i can relay and i just want to thank you so much and echo councilmember gardis's sentiments we really appreciate you taking care of this and what i'll do is i'll well because now we have the gmp with the outline schedule um we'll give once council approves it today we'll give the contractor to go ahead and start ordering the materials and hopefully we can tighten up that schedule i'll get you better clarification on those schedules um and if do you have a motion yet yeah okay just wanted to make sure yes we do well i have a third so there we go all right thank you so much thank you councilmember hannoy thank you chair and thank you for josh for the work on this and i'm happy to hear that we are going forward with some of the replacement on the city-owned seawalls um i'm just curious i mean in terms of storm surge do we have what is the plan i just want to make sure what is the plan that we have um city-wide plan to deal with that i know the stormwater master plan is not about storm surge do we have a city-wide plan for storm storm surge so we did get a fema approval for city-wide um seawall vulnerability assessment okay and as part of that study we will you sent real picking up the elevation data of the sea walls across the entire city then what we'll be doing is if you could think about it if you had a cup and you cut little notches in that cup and you put it in a bowl and you start to sink it down then we'll start to see where all our critical path of water is coming in okay so that's what we'll be doing with the entire city simulating that surge model now we have exact elevation but we'll be coupling that data with the over 12 000 basins of um stormwater model data that we have so we'll know okay the water is coming in from this direction but it's going this way so walls that may not look good but structurally sound may not be the highest risk of vulnerability and that gives us towards our proper planning and prioritization of our replacement well that's wonderful to hear in terms of time frame when where where are we on that so obviously we got the money from fema what are we looking at in terms of time frame so we've already completed the survey and um our public notifications and meetings will probably start later this fall and we're expected to complete the project in the winter of 2025 and primarily because the deliverables do have to go back to fema for review so we did have that time for review rolled into there okay and then from that once we get that assessment then we'll have recommendations and we'll have some concrete ideas of what we have to do and i would and i would also be leaning towards similar to like the stormwater master plan we knew that there were some once we started doing that analysis we knew there were critical basins to move ahead um by example the basin c projects where we knew those were critical basins it's a high priority so we advanced those projects and helped us get grants while the rest of the stormwater master plan was being finalized if we know the high risk locations we can start that planning process doesn't necessarily mean we can't but we can start putting our dominoes online essentially great well thank you so much for that update sure thank you councilmember driscoll thank you um not to go into what about the seawall and that one um recently there there has been more discussion with the neighbors of historic roser park regarding the seawalls that prop up booker creek and of course last week we saw renderings and heard wonderful descriptions of improvements that are going to be made at booker creek hopefully with the historic gas plant district redevelopment but just further south just a bit south of that is historic roser park which is seeing the the seawalls starting to cave in it's pulling sidewalks um with it um you know we have a footbridge that's that's unusable right now it looks really bad um i know that this one is is also in in a plan yeah but i i just want it to be out there you know from you you know what what the plan is it sounds like the planning process with a critical um situation and i believe this is is one can start early and you've got the the funding but we're just not able to access it yet is that correct so this uh rosa park project that section was included in this current round of penny um so it's just where that available funding is falling into place um because as the resources comes in it all depends on that bank how much is building up over time it's a large project ask we had on the budget um but it is something that we continue we will look into and see but we can also follow up with the condition assessment on um rosa park to see if it is becoming more critical yeah that's great and any any update um that could be provided um to me to share with the neighborhood or if you wanted to speak with them directly you know with the unique um historic resort park is probably the most unique neighborhood in our city because of the the um topography there but the people with their houses on the hills near the creek are a little nervous uh and rightly so but any any communication and um keeping those folks in the loop on how that is moving forward as you move forward would be really really helpful i'm excited that we've got these projects here that are that are ready to go i'm hoping that this is one that's not too far out i will follow up and i'll take a look at it see where it is falling and the penny funds availability excellent thanks councilmember montaneering okay i'll be very brief but on page uh two of exhibit a it uh items 12 13 and 14 talk about uh bonding of these projects and it's something that since i've been on city council we don't talk a lot about but uh the mayor and city council on monday received a email from a resident of the tanglewood neighborhood and uh rajesh clod uh my my staff myself have been involved with the tanglewood bridge where we have a contractor walk off the job and we're dealing with surety bonds right now i'm i'm becoming uh a lot more knowledgeable about surety bonds but i just want to bring everybody's attention to to this because this is what protects us uh when when we do have these issues with contractors this one particular bridge uh that i'm dealing with and i don't want to get sidetracked with that that issue but it it kind of brings to light the the whole issue with surety bonds and how we protect ourselves as a as a city and brej i don't know if you can give us like a one minute like just a synopsis of how this works okay so bonds think of bonds as the insurance you buy you hate to have to spend the money for it but it's good to have it so i'm gonna use my two administrators as examples right now and i am the city so claude is the contractor going to do work for the city statutory wise doing public construction we're going to require him to purchase a public construction bond now he purchases it from city administrator well rob rob has the financial guarantee that if anything happens with claude's company if he sells it or it goes belly up or anything or files default or decides to walk off the job or wins the lottery and goes the opposite direction is rob's job having that financial guarantee that is written in the city's name that he's going to find a contractor to step in to finish the job so it's that insurance that we have um so it's the surety essentially and that's why um or even on permits that we issue for work in the public right away i hold a very strong line i don't waive the public construction bond it has um there's even for all our city projects i am very hesitant to ever weave it for any simple dollar amount um that covers us as i see it's it's a cost to the contractor yes but it's insurance on us thank you thank you for explaining that uh there's going to be more more to follow on the on this one particular bridge uh in in our city but just because we had this written in the contract i wanted just to have you explain what how how this operates because we're dealing with it right now thank you thank you opportunity thank you councilmember henowitz thank you and just thank you for that i'm glad that council member montaneri brought up the issue because we all received the email um i'm curious in your example you said um it's and you use rob as the example job to to find the contractor to finish the job is that the surety yes so now the surety is responsible to find the contractor correct and how can we ensure that that contractor meets requirements that we would want on the job so we will the contractor they're responsible for bidding it what we did in this situation is we sourced contractors that were capable and met the minimum contract qualifications and provided that to the surety and say please is um request bids from this con these contractors which is the same process that you did with the original contractor that is caused now had did not do the job yep but keep in mind this is something you know we've never been in in well i won't say never but in the time i've been here um i've we've not run into it i have a construction manager who works in my department 40 years in the construction industry and he ran into this once in his entire career when he was a junior engineer and he worked in a private industry doing jobs all across the state and then with us as a city um the com this one contract at the time they bid the project was on the fdot pre-qualified list meaning they were qualified to do bridges by the highest qualification in the state of florida major and minor bridges um now this contractor also has default defaulted on four bridges two within actually three of them uh two with pinellas county one for fdot and ours um defaulted on other bridges across the state so something of this magnitude is not something we could have foreseen now i understand that in terms of the insurance that we get how long does this process take if things go sideways at what point do you pull the trigger i guess so and to ask the question when you say pull the trigger meaning how long does the job is installed or whatever you know in this bridge for instance you know at what point it's like okay we're going to the surety or whatever just so i can understand this okay so this is great because with your background you'll understand the the complexity and the coverage we have to make sure that we have so because we have to contractually we've hired claude so claude he has to perform certain work so we have to issue him deficiency notices so we have to track that and build essentially our case because if we just tell claude we don't like the job you're doing get off the job we're issuing a default letter then the surety could say you never gave him the opportunity to rectify then surety could walk away and say sorry you're on your own so that's what we had to do in this situation the contractor was doing enough to keep kicking the can down the road so no i'm still doing it i'm still here so we're showing up enough just to keep that going until we had enough default deficiency issues deficiency notices issued that we can say look we even though you keep fixing it we keep having to tell you about it so in that case we are filing the issue and default on it once we issue the default then we take that notice with the supplemental support from our legal department submitting that to um the surety as a demand for performance at that point the surety now steps in and when the surety steps in you know sometimes they're large enough that they have their internal consultants internal engineers or internal legal counsel um now in this situation the surety has hired an independent engineer who's a multinational firm and it is their job to provide the services to the surety to come on site check everything but also to source a contractor they are the ones responsible for pursuing the bid receiving the bids and giving the recommendations back to the surety i appreciate that and that obviously explains how long the process could take and at some point offline because this is not the place for this i want to touch on that doing enough to just keep this going and what contractual language are we requiring so they can go ahead and continue to do what they're doing any any guidance i could get that's all right we we we can have that discussion i'm glad you welcome it thank you thank you seeing no more further requests to speak and it's been motioned and properly seconded clerk can you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes seeing that all present council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes madam chair the motion to approve agenda item f7 passes unanimously with council member muhammad being absent thank you we will now move on to our new ordinances thank you mr projects thank you our new ordinance is e1 an ordinance amending st petersburg city code section 21-7 related to substantial change of use criteria for charter parks approval second proposed ordinance number 582-8 yeah thank you ordinance amending st petersburg city code section 21-7-9 related to substantial change of use criteria for charter parks clarifying when active uses in passive parts triggers the requirements of the city charter related to substantial change of use in parks and providing an effective date and the public hearing for this item is excuse me scheduled on june 6 2024 and we do not have any cards and thank you and to present exactly we got that was our community we got it was our community enrichment administrator mr mike jeffries you are here but i'm not sure if you're needed but we want to say hello thank you e1 has been motioned and properly seconded can you please open the machine for voting council members please enter your votes now that all present council members have voted can you please tally and announce the vote chair the motion to approve agenda item e1 passes unanimously with council member muhammad being absent thank you we are going to now move into our new business items and we're going to go to vice chair girders for g1 thank you madam chair i am respectfully requesting a referral to the budget finance and taxation committee for a discussion on adding new lights for fields five and six at northwest park to the wiki wachi project list and just a little bit of a background these these lights or these fields originally did not have lights because frankly they weren't needed on those fields but there is now a wait list for the last few years at northwest baseball and um so our kids can't play because there's no lights and lights have changed now so the neighborhood is open to it and so we've got all the project costs ready to go so i will move approval second thank you can you please open the machine for voting council members please end your votes now that all council members have voted can you please tell and announce the votes madam chair the motion to approve agenda item g1 passes unanimously with council member muhammad being absent thank you we will now go to g2 a referral to a referral to hlut council member gabbard respectfully requesting a referral to housing land use and transportation for a discussion on a proposed program that will provide assistance addressing code violation issues this is a staff request and i motion approval second having it being properly motioned and seconded no request to speak can you please open the machine for voting council members enter your votes now that all present council members have voted can you please tally and announce the vote chair the motion to approve agenda item g2 passes unanimously with council member muhammad being absent thank you we'll now move to g3 a referral to hlut by council member driscoll thank you for this new business item i am respectfully requesting a referral to the housing land use and transportation committee or other relevant committee for a discussion on the expansion of the jamestown apartments for affordable housing and i move approval second having a motion in properly seconded with no request to speak can you please open the machine for voting council members enter your votes now that our present council members have voted can you please tally and denounce the votes madam chair the motion to approve agenda item g3 passes unanimously with council member muhammad being absent thank you we will move to g4 oh i'm sorry i'm sorry may i have the floor for just a moment i didn't see your button pushed i was trying and it wouldn't go on i think we were voting um i just i i forgot to mention when i brought this forward that this is one of the projects that had been submitted for consideration for the innovative equity project list but it was one that did not make the top five that everyone is voting on right now but i asked for the list of the ones that did not make it and this one jumped right out at me because i remember talking about it with some staff when i first got on city council so i was pretty excited that there's been some discussion about this among the administration and staff and so i just wanted to give you all that little background on how this came up thank you thank you council member floyd thank you thank you for that info i didn't realize it had been yeah yeah that's good information to know um when i saw your new business item i was really excited because i had heard that there was potential for it to happen and uh i'm glad that we're going to finally have the discussion on the open thanks thank you thank you we will now go to g4 which is a referral to yfs and that is myself uh respectfully requesting a referral to the youth and family services to discuss staff exploring the idea of reinstating the social action assistance for non-homeless initiatives move approval second seeing no request to speak and it's been motioned with properly seconded can you please open the machine for voting council members enter your votes now that all present council members have voted can you please tally and announce the votes madam chair the motion to approve agenda item g4 passes unanimously with council member muhammad being absent thank you we will now move to open forum do we have any cards okay now we're going to move into announcements and adjournment you got some announcement oh okay y'all know i got to get my ball together council member montanaire thank you i i have uh two two things that i wanted to bring up the first i um since this is a for the first meeting that we had since our committee the whole meeting i'd like just to have a little update from administration on scheduling of meetings to deal with the raise heinz uh uh issue and i know that we're looking at uh doing a committee the whole meeting on june the 13th and then a city council meeting afterwards with uh potentially a final vote on uh july the 11th after uh city council break i just wanted to kind of get a sense of what administration is is thinking and uh there are a lot of questions that came up at the community community the whole meeting that i know administration is working on with both all the parties involved so can you just kind of give us a a sense of where where we are sure thank you council member and uh good afternoon city council so um certainly first of all as you all know city council of course controls uh your own schedule we do make requests of city council from time to time related to scheduling we have requested that there be a cow on june 13th related to the stadium agreements we've asked that that cow go from nine to four with a hard stop at 4 p.m so we could have a city council meeting at 5 p.m on june 13th and besides the consent agenda the only thing that we would put on that agenda is the first reading and first public hearing for the historic gas plant rezoning the first reading for the vesting development agreement and the first reading for the second amendment to the in-town cra interlocal so if we were able to do those things then when you come back from your break on july 11th we could have a city council meeting where we could present all the items including the second public hearing or second reading on those items that went on june 13th and city council should be able to vote on july 11th on the complete set of documents related to both the redevelopment and the stadium operations so you know we are still working on the documents for the june 13th cal um as you know we've had to to move a couple different cows but we're working very hard on it and hope to hit that date and that's the plan that we would prefer to go forward with with city council's blessing and so if if we let's say we ran out of you know i'm a little concerned about if we have a committee of the whole meeting because the the first one that we had on the redevelopment went from nine in the morning till six in the evening uh what it seems like a very aggressive schedule i i want to be respectful of trying to get this this to a final vote but what if we run out of time for the for the committee the whole meeting i i mean again we city council schedule is controlled by city council so we can certainly talk about that if you want to have a discussion about that i mean i think some lessons that we learned from the first cow is maybe our presentations were a little long um council seemed very well prepared to answer questions and dive right in so i think you can anticipate uh shorter presentations from us and more question and answer period i also think that miscoville larch is going to provide city council an executive summary of the documents that i anticipate will be as her work always is excellent so i think that council will be starting in a very good place there and um we anticipate that that we think we could get through this by four o'clock but certainly open to the discussion and how council feels all right i'll just uh leave it leave it right there see if any of my colleagues want to weigh in councilmember gabbert okay well i was going to say something completely different so since you brought this up i will talk about this and then i'll come back to what i was going to say um so i have similar concerns about the hard stop first of all and concerns about if we don't get through everything what continuation we have but you you said something that i just want to comment on which is you know presentations and making them shorter and i have i have no problem with however long the presentation needs to be to give us all the information that we need i don't want to put us in a position where you guys have to shorten the delivery of the information because you're worried that we won't have enough time to answer questions i i just i don't know that i don't want you to feel a pressure to do that because of our timeline so i want to hear what everybody else has to say but that concerns me to feel like you're being shoved into okay you only get this much time for your presentation this is the largest thing we will ever do i don't want there to be any hesitation to have a complete and complex conversation about it so i want to hear what everybody else thinks but just that you know like thought process that the schedule itself is shoving you guys into that place i don't want that to happen so um i'll leave it there madam chair but that would be my concern council member driscoll thank you actually i feel like we're the ones who are being shoved here last week at the beginning of our budget meeting which was supposed to be two meetings and someone decided it was decided that we could do that all in one day another and the most important job that city council has which is handling the budget and there was an apology at the beginning for setting it up that way last last week that schedule and i know this is what i signed up for but when it's unnecessarily like that i i start to wonder where the priorities really are do you want us to get it right or are you just looking to get it done we want to get it right i want to get it right so you know we it happened last week and there was an apology but then turned right around and did it again and to cram that meeting so next week i'm assuming we have the day off again like we did on april 24th the reason that we took nine hours last thursday wasn't because the presentations were too long it's because our city council hasn't had an opportunity to discuss this with each other in public since october so we had a lot that had built up that we had to get done so i was fine with council member floyd taking 45 minutes or was it 50 i lost track that's what we need to be doing and if we had had the committee of the whole meetings in february and or march and or april then maybe last week could have been a little bit smoother but instead we left with more questions than answers and we need answers to those things and you know so does the public we can tell we can tell that the public is very engaged on this topic and i think they have a right to know what the follow-up is on this i was very surprised that when we decided to move or when it was decided that there would not be a stadium cow next week i thought well maybe we'll do a follow-up on some of the information that's been gathered since last thursday's cow that would make sense and it would be a way to show that we're still we are going through this process in the sunshine and not behind closed doors i worry about that so now we've got an all-day meeting that's crammed into a day that we already had filled that morning we had committee meetings and those are important because that's where we get policy done that's where we have our discussions and and really work on the initiatives that are our ideas and staffs we have we had hlut that morning ps and i bf and t which was the fy25 utility rate program it's pretty important but we're shoving that off into sometime in july and july is already starting to sound like it's getting pretty heavy so i wonder how many more committee meetings will be canceled how many more um meeting shell games are going to be played so that we can try to keep up on what we need to prepare for because i for one start preparing pretty far out and i feel like i'm i'm getting the the rug pulled out from under me every time i turn around i want to do well on this i i i want to be prepared and i want this process to be something that when it's done we don't feel like we got rushed and we feel like we did it the right way and got to the right conclusion so i appreciate that this was brought up so i would have an opportunity to vent um but the two main points are we got to get some some breathing room here and have a chance to do this right and the public deserves to see how we're following up on the things that were brought up last week and going forward thank you councilmember floyd thank you and thank you councilmember montaneri for bringing this up um i'm just going to take this moment to express incredible frustration over the brief amount of time that i get to talk about this in public specifically with my other council members up here like it's been very difficult for me to get the points out that i want to get out in the amount of time that we have allotted it's it i say difficult it's impossible i have a list just as long as what i got through in the last cow that i think it's very important that i key my colleagues into um and i've just not been able to and through both cows and uh that's not even to mention the follow-up from a lot of the questions that we asked that you know some of them i feel might be intractable but others are completely reasonable and so um personally i'm struggling through the process um but even more than that i think that we do owe it to the community to see uh that we were given our time to do due due diligence uh and that we were able to follow up on it so i'd like for us to start having a conversation about um having another meeting before it gets sent uh to a final vote um so that we can just review everything that changed between the first time it got presented to us and uh the vote and you know maybe we're not going to be able to change much after that meeting but at least we can have a conversation about it um i'd like to see that because i do think i think there's a false sense of urgency around how fast this needs to be done i think we've been told over and over again it happens now or it doesn't happen at all and that's just nonsense because those deadlines have come and gone 18 times over and we're still doing the best we can and i think if everybody sees that we're doing the best we can it's it's fine and so um yeah i was very frustrated um although i do appreciate you all giving me the chance to um go for as long as i did the other day but i didn't get through what i needed to and there's probably things that you care about all of you care about on the list um so you know whatever that looks like going forward i i know individual council members don't control the schedule we give that power to the chair often um but yeah i want to add my voice to the um chorus of people who are saying like we need uh more time to discuss this and it's it's not for any particular reason other than it's a big deal and i've seen us have more meetings on things that are so so so much less important than this and so i i definitely just want to make sure that you all know how i feel about it thank you vice chair girders thank you madam chair um i certainly um hear my colleagues and and the stress about the timeline i will say that uh my my feelings are i i want to wait to see the redone development agreement and how the stadium agreement conversation goes about adding another meeting or anything like that that's just where i'm at i mean i i completely appreciate um wanting more time but i just personally i've had a one-on-one about this for the last eight months every other week so i i appreciate the changes but i'd want to see the changes before i decided that i wanted or needed more time that's just me but i i'm i'm certainly listening to my colleagues and hearing what you're saying um but council member montaneri asked for everybody's perspective so i just wanted to make sure i shared mine thank you madam chair council member hanowitz thank you chair i don't think any it's going to come to a surprise to anyone that i think this is completely rushed i'm the only attorney here in city council and even for me it was a ton of work even for me after going to law school after reading all the contracts and that was a ton of work in two weeks time we had less than two weeks time we had a cow two days before the other cow and it's not like i was sitting at home saying okay i'm going to wait for this agreement and all i'm going to do for the next 10 days or whatever it is is to read the agreement because i have a life i have a family have children and i have to do everything and read it and make sure that i get it right because it's that important and it was a ton of work for me and now we're going to get a ton more agreements we have a council break june 13th is the next cow and we're supposed to go and break right after that and some of us have vacation plans as we should because it is a break and what right after the break we're going to have the vote that's not fair to us that's not fair to the citizens of st petersburg at all and i do not see the rush these are arbitrary deadlines there is nothing that is requiring us to have this so quickly nothing whatsoever we have a fiduciary duty we have an obligation to do our due diligence for the citizens of st petersburg and we are being rushed and if anybody had the time to actually look at that contract and read it through and look at all the issues and i haven't probably spotted all the issues not in the time that i had and i did not bring them all up in the meeting trust me that i did not because i did not want to put you all through all the issues that i brought up because i would have been speaking a lot longer and i did not i tried to focus on what was most important believe it or not there's more there so i do think we owe this to us and the citizens and to get it right that's what's important it is huge this is a 30 year relationship this is not a one and done this is 30 years we're talking about and a lot of public money the largest ever in the city's history thank you council member gabbert so i just wanted to ask a question about the council meeting that you're wanting us to have on the 13th so you said you know it'd be a one item meeting for just the rezoning of the gas plant three items three items can you repeat those again sure it'd be the first reading and first public hearing for the rezoning on the historic gas plant the first reading for the vesting development agreement and the first reading for the second amendment to the in-town cra in our local so because for me when i read you know like i said earlier the hard stop of four o'clock for city council recognizing that that was to have a council meeting but at that point in time had not been told everything that was planning to come to that council meeting so now that i understand that all of those items are specific to this redevelopment and this stadium deal is there a path where that particular council meeting can get pushed to july and we can just have a cow on the 13th what i mean what does that do to the sequencing of everything else well it would move the actual vote probably to the 25th of july which i think we may have one council member out on the 25th so i'd be i'd have to look more into that i'd also have to talk you know there's four partners here so i'd have to talk to all the partners about how they feel about a change in timing and see where they're at understood okay thank you you good okay so thank you i'm gonna go ahead and give my two cents this chair and i definitely have not taken any comments personal um and thank you uh council member montaneri for wanting to have a discussion on this and and so as i didn't receive it as personal i don't want anyone else to receive it as personal either but um when we look at the the schedule um and i'm going to address council member driscoll specifically so when we talked about um what we signed up for yes i did make that comment and i still make that comment i said it and will say it again when we looked at council member floyd um and i addressed his 50 minutes i also stated at the beginning of the meeting we can be there all night that opportunity was given to each and every one of us sitting there that moment that moment that opportunity was given to all of us if we wanted to stay and when council member floyd wanted to take his second round and i offered you still have four minutes your comment was don't encourage him so i listened to what my colleagues say um and we can continue to have this conversation i know one of the um options was to take the council meeting on the 14th the day following the cow we could do the cow on the 14th i don't have any travel plan um i do we oh june i'm out the 13th it was on a friday okay so your that was my reaction um that was that was my reaction to have it on the 14th so when we looked at the timing on this it wasn't um an issue of rushing it um but i was going at the request of administration and as far as the the 23rd you all wouldn't be ready on may on the 23rd would you rob no ma'am yeah so that's why we didn't have anything on the 23rd and some of the things that we're having in june will be moved to the 30th um so we are going to accommodate those um council members so we're not canceling um any committee meetings we're not canceling we're trying to accommodate a project that we have never had to address in any time that we've been on council so for us to think that um it's not going to take time we realize it's going to take time and we want to make sure that it accommodates everyone in their schedule um and how we're trying to get this done so i am in the place where and i'm kind of like vice chair girders on this we can talk about this from now until next year if if that is the the will of the body um but i just don't see where we are with trying not to and and i made note when we're saying we're getting these two weeks um ahead of time well that was what we voted on two weeks what's the timeline that was the request we asked for two weeks we as a body asked for two weeks and we're getting it two weeks ahead so we're changing this now we voted on it that is what we requested that is what we requested and so um we can i can meet with the administration um to see where it is and i will please allow you um rob to talk to the other parties um because i'm here i'm here for the long haul i'm here to have the conversation um i will allow us to have that opportunity to have that that you know for you to get with the partners and to see if we can because i hear my colleagues i do i hear them and i felt i felt bad having to to stop you council member floyd but i wanted everybody else to have the opportunity to speak it wasn't that you couldn't speak i just wanted everybody else to have the opportunity to speak because i think had i let you go you'd have gone two hours and that'd have been fine but i wanted everybody else to have the opportunity to speak so i'm not apologizing for that but that was the reason behind it is that i really wanted everybody to have the opportunity to speak um before we broke so we're okay um with having that conversation um if you all are in it for the long haul but i just want to remind us we asked for that two-week time frame i just want to remind us that the opportunity um was provided for us to stay as long as we needed to meet on that particular day um and i didn't hear anyone on the way out saying that they weren't ready to leave so um with that being said i'm going to stop there and i will go to councilmember montenari thank you i just wanted to follow my my big concern is the the 13th and running out of time with the cow and then taking an hour off and then having a city council meeting uh that could be a could be quite quite a city council meeting after uh committee of the whole meeting and my other concern is running out of time uh you know just i i know my my colleagues uh do their homework ask ask the questions that need to be asked uh and i just want to make sure that we don't run out of time and then we have to schedule another committee the whole meeting because we didn't finish up what we what we started uh and i i also understand that sometimes we need we need to be flexible but we're trying to put a lot of things on our agendas and we need the time to to study everything and that's why the two weeks was to me the minimum amount of time necessary for us to do the the reading and the studying of of these uh generational type decisions that we are making on behalf of the residents of of st petersburg and i understand you know uh that uh that we have other parties that are working extremely hard i know i know rob you and the administration is working hard we've heard about legal and and everything that they're doing and i know the other parties are are also working harder on this but we i want to be respectful of the time uh the the timeline and trying to get this uh get to a final vote but i i also um we also have a responsibility to make sure that the right questions get asked and we get the answers that we uh we need to to take a final vote on this this matter thank you council member montaneri before i go to council member driscoll um rob council member gabbard had a good question is there any way that you can go back and see if the council meeting had to be that same was there a what what was the what was the the question council member gabbard about the because i know everybody's having an issue with the four o'clock hard stop there is a possibility if i'm not mistaken even if we had to go past that we just had to go we would just have to go past that time and that would be an option correct yeah i i think so i mean i think we were trying to start the council meeting at five for the benefit of city council so you know that it would get started at a reasonable time i mean there's a couple things you could look at and i may need janine to weigh in here i mean we could do the council meeting at 8 30 in the morning we could do the three first two first readings and the first reading at the public hearing we don't know how long it might go but let's say it goes to 10 30 then you start the cow at 11 30 and you know you could go to eight o'clock that that or nine o'clock however late you wanted to go um you know that's one option if you feel like flipping those two things um could you have a council meeting on another day i defer to janine on that could you could you do it on wednesday have the first reading and and first council meeting on wednesday and then have the cow on thursday i don't know if that's possible or not so i'd defer to janine on that you could schedule the city council meeting on a different day so that's an option okay thank you councilmember driscoll so when we had the committee of the whole meeting last week the documents that we were given were still in draft they weren't finalized so i was very confused that the stadium cow got canceled wouldn't those have been drafts too is it is it just that it's not something that you want released to the public yet because i don't yes last week we had no problem at all having a robust discussion about draft documents i think to answer your question it it really comes down to a subjective decision on the status of the documents i mean if the status of the documents is 95 percent i'm pretty comfortable going forward i'm not at that point yet with the stadium documents i hope to be there two weeks before june 13th but that's that's how we view it you know we talk about how how short this city council meeting could be on the 13th but i think we have to keep in mind that there is open forum and although it's limited to 30 minutes at the beginning of the meeting it's completely unlimited at the end of the meeting and if we're doing that meeting especially on the day of the stadium meeting i i can just imagine we'll have quite a few people there ready to speak and even even if the items seems seem small on the agenda we still have to prepare and there still could be things that are added we don't know but loading this all in i just it it was it was really difficult last week and i just i can't believe i'm really really frustrated that this this is being done to us again i i i'm getting really nervous about this rushing um it's starting to feel like red flags and i don't want it to be you know i felt like we were in a pretty good place after the meeting last week that yes we left with more questions than answers but it was very positive and and there are things that can be addressed and so i was feeling optimistic but now with this these meetings being moved around and everything i'm starting to wonder what's really going on well i mean what's really going on is we're working as hard as we can to provide quality documents for you to review um and you know there's four parties and there's still negotiations happening and it's very difficult to bring it home for a landing we're trying to do the best we can i completely apologize for every cow that's been canceled or moved and for doubling you up on a cow last week i'm sorry we're we're trying to do the best we can the work of the city to bring it forward to you i don't know what else to say about it council member i i sincerely appreciate all that you are doing it it's quite admirable i don't want this jammed into the 13th i i don't i don't know what i don't know what to do i mean i don't have a choice nobody asked me what i think about how how this should go but i also know we've got a a public that um is paying for this and they don't want to be kept in the dark so you know i'm i'm for more open meetings of having discussions about this i'd love to know the follow-up why are we why are we for except for october and last week we've been kept in silos is that by design because i thought it was really productive that we had a chance to talk with each other i'm glad that council member floyd uh voiced a similar sentiment we got to start doing this different because i'm i'm starting to get really worried about this deal i don't want to go the other way but i'm not going to be a fool either let's get this let's get this right if we're going to get the deal right we got to at least get the meetings right thank you councilmember henwood thank you chair so we talked about the fact that two weeks were given to us no one knew how much time it's going to take to review those documents you all can think okay two weeks is enough and then you get the document and it's going to take more than two weeks no one knows how many issues are going to come up that you're going to think about when you read the documents or how long it's going to take you or what's going on that week like the cows and everything else so this idea that just because you know someone thought well two weeks is enough well the reality is it really isn't enough to review everything because as it stands right now these stadium documents are still being worked on ninety percent of the documents that you mentioned you said 90 you want to be ninety percent good to go that means we could get documents come next meeting that really ninety percent no it should be a hundred percent not ninety percent so it's not being just rushed for us it's being rushed in the back end it should be completely i asked questions that there should have been answers to at that meeting there is no way no way you should not know who all the parties are and who's involved in an agreement this size at that point or who the partners are as i asked no way and you can ask any attorney out there that does this for a living that should be hashed out and we should have had those answers and so that shows what we're being we're rushing we're rushing to get this to what i don't know why we're rushing it you mentioned there's four partners who are the four parties we're talking about that are that are that are involved who are the parties city of st petersburg pinellas county the heinz development corporation the tampa bay race okay and of all those parties they all want it rushed they all want it rushed we need to do this well i mean i i'm not going to agree with the premise of your question that they want it rushed so are we trying to move expeditiously towards a successful outcome yes we are and just for the record i said 95 percent not nine okay i just want to clarify we can go into pedantics 90 or 95 percent but my point my point is it's not it's not a hundred percent a hundred it's not a hundred percent it's not a hundred percent thank you for allowing me to correct the record i i'm not trying to be argumentative with you rob i'm not i i'm i'm not but my point is we should have everything ready the presentations were given to us right before that meeting not not awkward i understand that not yours the other presentation yeah yeah so and you knew exactly what i meant the other presentation by the rays was given to us right before the meeting okay so clearly things are being rushed by different parties and i think we and the public are entitled to have all the information early enough before we go into a meeting all of it including presentations and the agreements should be a hundred percent ready so we can have a discussion about the agreements that was my only point it should be ready to go so we can have a full discussion and you could say okay a hundred percent we've looked at it this is it thank you thank you council member gabbard thank you chair um so i just want i'm sure there's lots of public listening to this lively conversation we're having right now and so i just want to set the record very very straight um this whole idea that city council is only getting two weeks to do their due diligence two weeks to read all of these agreements two weeks to understand this deal i just pulled up my electronic version of the numerous documents that we've been privy to over the course of the last few months because at home i have volumes and volumes of documents drafts upon drafts january 25th in my electronic version i was given the first draft to review of the stadium development and funding agreement as well as the stadium operating agreement as well as the historic gas plant initial term sheet yada yada yada yada i could go on the raise hines development agreement january 25th i started reading then let's be clear two weeks is for the presentations two weeks is for where the documents are at that point that it is not two weeks the first time you've ever seen it so if we're setting a record straight let's set that record straight and a lot of that came from public record requests that happened through media that happened through council members we have a lot of information so i just want the public to know that it is not two weeks yes it's two weeks for the final backup for the meeting it is not two weeks for everything that we should be doing our due diligence and i am not going to sit here and have anyone say that every single person on this council is not qualified and able to read and understand these documents i didn't go to law school but i can tell you that i can read these documents and i can understand these documents are they perfect hell no nothing that comes is perfect but do not sit here and insult the intelligence of this council and say that we are not able to understand these documents i have been tracking changes on these documents for months this work is heavy last week was heavy and this right here doesn't make it any easier my question is is there the ability to be able to move the cow to the tuesday of the week that you want to have the council meeting because i would like us to have another cow before we have these conversations in council and the public gets their opportunity for their first true open forum is that tuesday of that week available for us to be able to have the cow then because then we could have the cow then we could have the council meeting and some of this could be resolved so that we could move forward into final votes and other conversations and maybe we have to have another cow to wrap everything in a bow to bring it to full council at the beginning of july i don't think we're going to know until we have one more cow on the actual stadium so is that a possibility it's absolutely a possibility for us to have the cow on that tuesday i would have to talk to miss kovalarch and see about if she could get you the documents prior to the 30th so that would be two weeks in advance of that tuesday i think would be the 28th of may so she's not here to speak for herself so i'd have to talk to her about that but from a staff perspective absolutely yes we could and i'm sure she's listening to this conversation i'm sure as soon as we started having this conversation she made sure to tune in i know how busy she is but i also want to say publicly that when we started getting all of these drafts i sat down with her and i said guide me here show me what i should read first where i should begin so that i can envelop all of this and understand and so if she is listening i just want to say a personal thank you to her in public in front of everyone because her guidance on delving into this and understanding this from two three months ago has been invaluable to me personally and so i just wanted to say that because she's not here but i'm sure she's listening thank you thank you council member floyd thank you um i'll be brief i mean i agree with some things that people have said don't agree with other things like every issue that we have here um i want to ask a clarifying question of the administration um and i know that you know throughout this conversation we've seen how things might be up in the air so a little bit but is the intent to bring us the documents at 95 completion get our feedback and then send it to a council meeting after that is that what the intent is right now so the attendance always bringing the documents at 100 well i meant for the council meeting that's the intent yeah yeah yeah we don't make it and we're at 95 okay comfortable bringing them okay yes we'll bring them um you know at 90 i would probably pull the plug like i have on a couple different um cal so for example we i'll just say from the administration perspective we thought there were great questions and great comments at the cal uh last week we're already having very productive meetings with our partners um you'll be seeing a red line version of what came out of that cal we'll be sitting down with you walking through those changes with you and then we think at that time that that document will be ready to go to city council uh for a potential vote so it'll be the same concept with the stadium agreements okay that's what i was getting at i wasn't trying to comment on like what their status was at the cow i was wondering what it would like what the intent was after that was so like that comment about 95 was more offhand like it was just the question was more about is the intent to bring it to us in a cow and then immediately bring it to us in a um like have it redlined uh you can present it to us in a meeting and then bring it to us in the council meeting for a vote at that point so there's no in-between steps is that what you were hoping to do so the way we were looking at it is june 13th uh cow take your comments we work on the document you would have a little bit of break to spend more time with the redevelopment agreement and the stadium documents um we could brief you when you come back the week prior to june 11th and then i'm sorry july 11th and then on july 11th we would have the full vote on every single document that is a part of this package okay all right yeah i just wanted to make sure or i just wanted to make sure i understood that the uh what y'all were thinking um because i i do think it's just going to be tricky if we get it and then there's changes made and then it's brought to us here um if that's the process like i do think it'll be tricky and we'll probably end up with a lot of discussion on the dais at that point um and so you know that's why i brought up like maybe one last cow to wrap everything up and then uh you know i'm when a lot of things in committee we like have a vote on and then we send up here to get the final approval and so you know it seems like just getting feedback and then coming here without like i don't know it being more firmed up like it seems like it's oftentimes for important things they're finalized in the committee and then just brought here for a vote and uh just seems a little different from that and i think it we we could get into a situation where we talk a lot up here and so i just wanted to make sure i understood what y'all were thinking thank you chair thank you council member montanerian thank you i'll i'll be brief i did want to uh kind of follow up with some of the things that were brought brought up because i did work with jackie on on the new business item uh to schedule the two committee the whole meetings one on the redevelopment one on the stadium uh and we talked uh we talked in detail of how much time that uh city council should have to review the documents once and and when when i draft i don't have the new business item in front of me that that we voted on but uh i think the language was a final draft version of the documents and then we wanted two weeks minimum to review those those documents so that's where the the two weeks came from it wasn't just some arbitrary arbitrary figure that that came up uh jackie kind of advised you know knowing knowing us and and she she kind of advised that that was that was the time frame uh that that we needed um so let me just kind of sum up what i would like to see i'd like that you know that the chair administration to work on another option besides trying to cram everything in on uh the 13th and i think we we need to have a another option and i'm the eternal optimist that we're going to get this done there's going to be there's there's some issues that we're going to have to go through and we've got to figure a lot of stuff out but i'm confident that we'll get to a place where we feel comfortable when it comes to taking the the final vote so i'm i'll leave it right there but uh i appreciate the discussion and i you you know i i had a feeling that uh there were some people that wanted to follow follow up on what happened after the committee the whole meeting so i'm glad we had this discussion thank you chair thank you council member henwood thank you thank you all for for the lively discussion i will i will get to two things i want to talk about the drafts and red lines that we have received there's a huge difference between getting drafts seeing the work that the attorneys do the back and forth which shows what the negotiations are and getting a final draft and reviewing that reviewing a final draft is very different and every word matters and every word in a contract whether it's may or will whatever you use and you're going to look at it in a fine tooth i don't base my decision on something on drafts that were received three months before that have been changed all over the place and honestly when you have to go back to these documents you have to review all that you have to review the final draft with the red lines so receiving something way early does not mean that you're not you're going to have all the time in the world it's the final draft that you're going to look at and the final drafts language that matters not the ones that were received in january that have been worked on back and forth by the attorneys and as to my comment about going to law school i said for me it was difficult for me even law school and i will tell you this people specialize in this people specialize just in doing this type of work in law not not every lawyer can even go and look at these documents and figure it out quickly because this is specialized work and that was the point that i was trying to make i was not trying to insult anybody here i was trying to say it was difficult even if you have some training it was difficult thank you you vice chair girdus thank you madam chair yep i'm gonna be the happy police and so we've got a couple of birthdays kim's gonna yell at me tomorrow but that's okay uh so we've got two birthdays kim amos and courtney phillips both uh legislative aides city council and so let's sing kim and courtney happy birthday happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday dear kim and courtney thank you madam chair thank you okay so first of all um um my last two cents if we can administrative girdus because we've heard everyone um and thank you vice chair for changing the mood on that um again thank you for the conversation we will have a conversation in regards but at the end of the day we know we know how it works and i i agree with you uh councilman floyd this is so hard and it is so frustrating um but we're gonna make it work we i i am confident that we're gonna make it work and i thank everybody but what i got that y'all don't have bam so you know that we um recognize the gives gladiators florida state champs and i spoke at their senior awards dinner on well actually at an event and our winning team signed an autograph ball just for me say you're jealous say you're jealous so anyway i just wanted to publicly thank them because we we did recognize them um and for that that just shows their gratitude but more importantly um they were appreciative of the acknowledgments that we gave them and they just wanted to say thank you i keep i keep the ball but they wanted to tell everybody thank you and i wanted to share that message on their behalf so thank you thank you thank you and having no further announcements the meeting is adjourned thank you